Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.

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Jonathan 0:00

All languages, linguists will tell you, and they all agree, all languages will either change or die. All languages will either trend toward extinction, or evolution. And so what we have to do with the language of faith is to begin to engage in something called “wordplay”; to begin to talk about these things, but to ask how should we understand these words in our day? And how should we understand these words in ways that will avoid the pitfalls of the past and also empower us to to live in the 21st century and that's what I'm really trying to model in this book.

Seth 0:52

Hello family this is Seth, you're listening to another episode of the Can I Say This At Church podcast. Many of you may know the name Jonathan Merritt. He is a writer for The Atlantic for the religious News Service. He has written more than 3000 articles he's written in the New York Times The man writes a lot of words. He has written a new book, Learning to Speak God from scratch, why sacred words are vanishing and how we can revive them? What does that mean? You and I, when we talk about being quote, unquote, saved, or being quote, unquote, sanctified, or any word that you throw around in church, that if you say it out at lunch around someone that is not have the same faith, they just give you that side-eye look. That's what we're talking about. Learning to speak about God in a way that defines the language and revives the beauty of talking about the Creator of all things. And so I really hope that you enjoy it. Here we go. Jonathan Merritt.

Seth 2:14

Jonathan Merritt man I'm a fan. I'm so glad that you could join the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I enjoy your writing. If I'm honest, I enjoyed the Atlantic writing more than the religious news service writing, but that's, that's okay. I stay in the religion quite frequently. And it's nice to hear a different avenue. But thanks for coming on to the show, man.

Jonathan 2:33

Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure to be with you.

Seth 2:36

You have a large following, but for those that are possibly not familiar with you, could you just briefly give me a crash course on you?

Jonathan 2:44

Oh, gosh. Now how do you do that quickly. I'm a son of a Baptist minister, a TV preacher, who went to college to get a degree in biology and chemistry and then felt this call to be a writer and just started running after it. And so today that's what I do. I'm a religion writer. I write books, I help people write books and I write columns. And I live in New York City and I love all of it.

Seth 3:20

In reading your book, and I didn't know this, the college that you're referencing, you went to Liberty, correct?

Jonathan 3:25

I did. I went, my undergrad is from Liberty University, which those may know that's very conservative Christian school. Jerry Falwell was the founder of that school and went there straight out of high school with the prodding of the parents and, and I graduated shortly thereafter.

Seth 3:45

I fully relate with that because that's also where I did my undergraduate work.

Jonathan 3:51

Get out of here!

Seth 3:53

Ya, when I read that, halfway through the book, or maybe a third of the way through the book was like, how did I not know this? When did you go when were you there?

Jonathan 3:58

I graduated in 2004.

Seth 4:00

Okay, well we graduated the same year then so we were literally there at the same time. When I started Demoss Hall was one floor nasty shag carpet and when I graduated it was, well you can do whatever you want it on the third floor, because after that it was vacant.

Jonathan 4:13

Same, that is the exact same thing. And of course, when you go online and look at the campus today, it's like what is this place? I don't have any idea…

Seth 4:20

I feel like I should get royalties because I'm certain my tuition paid for at least the lobby of one of those buildings. I don't know which build on that I need royalties.

Jonathan 4:30

I’m sure. You should you should get a kickback or at least have a brick with your name on it.

Seth 4:36

Well they want more money to do that. I'm sure you get the same letters. They don’t don't give away those bricks for free.

Jonathan 4:41

I do not forward my mail when I move. There's a reason for that.

Seth 4:45

Well, I started to get them in my email and I don't know how; that's fine. But no when I read that, yeah, and I almost for certain know which class you were talking about for biology. I can't remember the gentleman's name; baldhead, glasses wrote his own textbook, in a survey class here at the bottom of Demoss. So yeah, I was reading that it's like, Man, there's a lot to relate here. Which do you prefer to be an author or the columnist version of yourself. When I say author, I mean, the long form book author.

Jonathan 5:17

Yeah. It's like saying, Do you prefer to be awake or asleep? I like both. I like sometimes I like one. And sometimes I like the other. They're good. They're, they're different skill sets. But for a writer, they can be sort of necessary states because there's one that's just like, get it get to the point get it out and there is another where you really get to explore the story as a form and narrative.

And I think they both sharpen me and helped me hone the craft of writing in a necessary way. So once I get done with a book, I tend to be like, all right, I just want to write columns, but after you write columns, For a little while, you're like, man, I'd really like to get in and dig deep and do something more substantial than this.

So I just finished this book. And the publisher wants a new book. And I'm like, I think I just want to write columns for a little while.

Seth 6:13

You're not Seabiscuit? Can I breathe for a minute? You're gonna make me bleed from the nose. The book that we're referencing, it comes out August Learning to Speak God from Scratch. There is a lot in there. Can you briefly tell me what that even means? Because I know we're both from the south and speaking from the scratch or bless her heart or that type of stuff is commonplace speech. But as I asked a few friends, some of them didn't even really know what that meant, learning something from scratch. So what are you getting at there?

Jonathan 6:44

Yeah. Well, the subtitle is “why sacred words are vanishing and how we can revive them”. So the point is, I moved a few years ago, I'd written three books by the time I was 30. And I thought, how much wisdom does a 30 year old have to share with the world I mean, I'd written 150,000 words and thought, I have nothing to say. Writing a book every two years is not a good idea. And so I decided when I moved to New York, before I moved to New York, I said, I'm not writing another book, unless I really feel like I have a message that's so important that the world needs me to write it.

And it's now been five and a half years since the last book I wrote, which in the publishing world is an eternity. But what happened was, is I moved to New York. And as I explain in the book, I run into this language barrier. Not that I couldn't speak English anymore, I could still speak English, I could still converse with people. I could order a hot dog from a street cart or hail a taxi cab, but I could no longer speak God.

And by that, I mean I could no longer have spiritual conversations or just draw from the sacred vocabulary in the way I had previously done. So there were words that were so negative in connotation, a word like sin or hell or judgment that I didn't feel like I could use. And then there were other words like grace or gospel that I’d used so often, I didn't even know what they meant anymore. I was now in a culture that people around me Didn't work from the same script. They either didn't know what those words meant, because they hadn't encountered them. Or they had encountered them with wildly different meanings that I had. And they would stop and ask me for a definition, please. And I couldn't come up with one.

Seth 8:46

That wasn't based on other Scriptures or another word.

Jonathan 8:49

Well, right. That was that I wasn't I couldn't, I had to define religious words by using other religious words. And so what I found out was is that I suddenly became Like 10s of millions of Americans who claimed that faith was important to them, that God was important to them, that spirituality was important to them. And yet they, they, they struggled to articulate those things in everyday conversations, because for some, for one reason or another, they had lost confidence in the vocabulary of faith. And when I realized how widespread this problem was, I said, Okay, it is time to pick up the pen again. It's time to write a book.

Seth 9:34

So if we're talking about learning to speak God, and that's those sacred words, how do we define what a word is sacred? Like, how does that? How does that matter? How, do I know which ones are in which ones aren't outside of people just given me a weird stare? And the reason I ask is, so a few weeks ago, my son was baptized. And as we talk more and more and more, he's in the same boat as the adults that you're alluding to in the book where he doesn't understand the vernacular because you don't teach an eight year old to talk in generalities of a presumed assumption of understanding, because that's my job as a parent to teach him. And so I'm finding it hard to define what things are without making a church speak, which is another I guess, word that I'd have to define “church speak” would be another topic.

Jonathan 10:19

Right. Yeah, once you start going down this route, it's hard to come back from it. When I say sacred words, there is sort of a little squishiness to that, right. Because even there are some words that some people would consider to be, quote, unquote, secular, a great example of that as the word family, which I have a whole essay on in the book. But it's a word that when we use it, we're intending to point beyond. Beyond the, the temporal beyond this realms to beyond the natural so it points to the spiritual it points to the transcendent it points to the supernatural.

It points to things like morals and virtues and ethics. And those are things that I kind of lumped into this, this category of sacredness. And so, I'm less concerned about whether somebody says, You know what you think that word is sacred and I don't. Instead, what I am attempting to do is to get people to say, to engage in this process of figuring out what is sacred for them, and how do they talk about those things?

Seth 11:34

You speak a bit, thinking of sacred words and how we speak about dead languages and, and to put that into context. I mean, the Bible is pretty much written in a dead language. nobody speaks Greek anymore, or Aramaic. Well, I guess some people do, I don't in the vernacular, and the only Latin that I know is in vino Veritas, because, because wine, and I like wine. So how long does it take a language in your research to go from commonplace vernacular to a dead type language where the only people that use it are people in that in that network or in that in that study?

Jonathan 12:15

Well, this is interesting because I looked, I looked at dying languages, and there are a lot of those. I mean, you mentioned Aramaic, that's one, and there are a lot of reasons for a language dying. Either the people who spoke it die, or a different economy rises up a trade language emerges and it eliminates that in Latins case, it becomes more and more restricted simply to certain places and spaces and people.

But then there are also other languages that we call, that linguists call, comback languages. So we when we talk about the language of the Bible, Hebrew, for example, is a language that went to the brink of death and has come back now as spoken again. And so you can revive languages that are moving to the brink.

So what I try to do in this book is is to say, Okay, if a language is dying, and you don't want that language to die, how would you revive it? And I began to look not just at languages like Koine Greek or Aramaic, or Latin, languages that are effectively dead. I began to look at languages like Hebrew that have come back.

And what I found was, is that there were some commonalities in come back languages that could be overlaid into this conversation. But one of them is, very simply, a renewed commitment of those who spoke it to keep speaking it. So people who speak that language wake up and they say, we don't want this language to die. And so in our own homes and in our own communities, and in our own religious spaces, and in our own workplaces and in our literature, we're going to begin speaking this again despite the awkwardness—despite the difficulties despite the obstacles, we are going to start speaking this language again.

And that's sort of the baseline. The thing that really surprised me is that in order to revive these languages, you have to take an imaginative approach to the language. You have to say, we have to allow these words to change. We have to allow for new syntax to enter in; new rules, new meanings to arise with these old words. If you look at come back languages like Hebrew like Yiddish that spoken here in Brooklyn where I live, like Hawaiian or Irish, Catalan, you will find that they never come back in the same form that they originally existed. That all languages, linguists will tell you and they all agree, all languages will either change or die all languages will either trend toward extinction, or evolution.

And so what we have to do with the language of faith is to begin to engage in something called “wordplay” to begin to talk about these things, but to ask how should we understand these words in our day? And how should we understand these words in ways that will avoid the pitfalls of the past and also empower us to to live in the 21st century and that's what I'm really trying to model in this book.

Seth 15:47

You write in your book, I don't think you're quoting anyone; I'm pretty sure that you say

when we lose our spiritual vocabulary, we lose much more than words. We lose the power of speaking grace, forgiveness, love and justice over others.

And when I hear that, I think a little bit beyond that. And so I have a few friends that have leaned into learning like their native American heritage. And with that the language that comes with that, like languages that just aren't spoken here, I still live in Central Virginia. And what they're finding and what I'm learning through them is that when they think about a divine creator, or God, or whatever you want to call it, it's more beautiful because they have more than one word to say the same thing.

There's more depth to the meaning of what we're trying to talk about, as opposed to just being another wall is white. Of course, the wall is white, it's always white. It's no other color but white. If the church can't figure out and I guess our generation specifically can't figure out how to course correct and revive speaking sacred words. What does that future of the church look like if you know what would the future of the church was like now had some had Hebrew continue to just pass away?

Jonathan 16:58

Well, you have to start with With the problem, and as identify in the book, they’re really twin problems, there is the decline of sacred words. And so when you look at Sacred words using Google Ngram data, Google has compiled all of the speeches, and books, magazine articles and blogs in the English language going back hundreds of years and you can search the frequency of certain words what we find is, is that religious language has been in massive decline for the last 50 years, at least in the English speaking world. So words that grace, salvation, all of these words are declining, but also virtue words, just simple words like courage, kindness, compassion, love, these words—words that we call the fruit of the Spirit—all of these words have been in decline. So there's been a decline in sacred words, but there's also a decline in spiritual conversations.

What I did for this book was I conducted a survey with the Barna group of over 1000 Americans. And I said, How often do you have religious or spiritual conversations? What I found was despite widespread religiosity in the United States, only about 7% of Americans say they have spiritual conversations, religious conversations, about once a week, which is not all that frequently. Now what I thought was, is when I looked at just Christians, practicing Christians, while that number would go way up, well, it didn't only about 13% of church going Christians say they have spiritual or religious conversations about once a week.

That means if you go to church, and just the faithful show up that day, and you look around, only about one in eight are having spiritual or religious conversations about once a week. And that's fascinating because we talk about things we care about. We talk about things we love. So we care about our children. We love our children, we talk about our children, we care about our favorite sports team. So we're going to talk about our favorite sports team. We care about this hobby or that hobby, we talk about it. We say we care about our faith. We care, we care about God, we care about spirituality. And yet we're not talking about these things. And so what I wanted to know was, why not?

But you asked an interesting question, what is lost if we don't recover these things? What I point out in the book is that there is an emerging body of research that now shows a connection between the words we use and the thoughts we think, and the behaviors we display. So the more that we talk about something a great example I use in the book is the concept of time. In English we are a future language we talk about the future we have a future tense. But in in other languages you don't have a future tense. Chinese, for example does not have a future tense. So they use the same tense no matter what they're talking about. Well, what's the difference? Because we talk about the future more, we as a people think about the future more. And because we think about the future more, we behave in different ways.

When you compare languages with future tenses over and against those that don't have future tenses, you'll find that the language’s in the cultures where they have a future tense will practice more safe sex, they will smoke less, they will save more for retirement. Why? Because we're talking about the future. We're thinking about the future because we're, we think about the future more. We're behaving in ways that take into account the future. Now, how does that relate?

The less that we talk about God, the less that we talk about about faith, the less that we talk about faith and courage and grace, the less that we will think about faith and God and courage and grace, the less that we will become people who are tuned to these transcendent realities. And the less that our lives and our behavioral patterns will be built around God, faith, courage, and grace. And so if you think these things are important, and I do, then you see that we are we are heading very quickly toward a crisis point where we will be living in a culture that will not be shaped about these things. These things are be shaped around these things, simply because we have lost the ability to articulate them.

Seth 21:42

Yeah, well, and we also won't worry about the present day because we're always looking forward to what's coming and not heeding the warnings of what happened that I've read other things unrelated to theology, specifically researching a bit on pornography and a few other things. That the more that that a person engages in that type of actions, that's the way that their brain and their pathways in their personhood becomes wired to crave the reward and pleasure systems of that; and it makes it where with a spouse, they can no longer really enjoy that anymore. It's a chore, as opposed to being something more holy, because they've reprogramed their brain. And then I've read similar studies that for instance, and you reference it in your book as well, you know, if you can focus on a form of prayer that isn't transactional, that if you can be contemplative and for me, that's been I've been wrestling the issue with the examen, which I find extremely hard because I'm not a patient person at all. But it, if you can allow it to, it'll it'll change you it'll if you want to be more graceful and you're focusing on that intentionally and praying for that but doing it in a way that is not expecting a “I prayed for this next Tuesday, I'm more graceful because that's how this works”. I I made the purchase. I said my prayer. I need my receipt. Prayer will change you in the words that you pray and think on will actually physically change you.

Jonathan 23:08

Yeah, I totally agree.

Seth 23:50

In the beginning of the book, I had to stop and think about a section that you wrote for a while because it was a thought, especially being going to Liberty and then since then I had never given much idea too and since then I have, and you bookend towards the end of the book as well. So I think you do you talk about the imago day as one of those words. And in that some is argued that the imago dei isn't necessarily my soul or the way that I look or whatever, it's the ability to speak and that, you know, other creations don't really have that.

Can you go in a bit to that? And the reason I ask is the Erasmus version of the prologue to John I think if we treat words that way, it'll it should affect the way that we have arguments on Facebook or Twitter or in real life and it makes every conversation matter more.

Jonathan 24:44

Yeah, so when God creates, in the poetry of the first chapter of Genesis, when God creates with words, by the way which is significant; God creates us as people who speak. And that's interesting that God creates us with words, as people who create with words, our selves. There's a quote in the book by Barbara Brown Taylor, that I love that says

God could have made us stone creatures, tree creatures, sea creatures, winged creatures, but God made us speech, creatures instead, human beings made in God's own likeness, which is to say, capable of joining God in the work of creation, by speaking things into being ourselves.

And I think that is interesting. That what does it mean that God with words forms us and says, you're gonna be like me? And immediately following that, we find Adam trying to find words to name all of the animals, we find him walking in the garden, using words to communicate back and forth with God. It seems to me that that the ability to speak is so central and we take it for granted. But it is so central to who we are as humans. And it is so central to who God is in the text. And it is so central to both of us in that story that in context, it could be or it seems likely to be that the imago dei is pointing to that reality.

And when you read the text going forward, you find it becomes a drumbeat, an echo if you will, throughout the text, where language as a essence of divinity re-emerges again, and again, and again, throughout the Old Testament, into the New Testament, throughout early Jewish communities, in early Christian communities, and if you really look at this holistically, which I paint or a try to paint, in this book and a chapter called our divine linguiphile, I think you cannot get away from the fact that words are so central to who we are as Homosapiens. That it just might be that's the way that God intended it.

Seth 27:37

Which is, to me, it makes me fearful because I only know one language and I know other languages very, very badly. And there's a portion of me that feels like because of my lack of knowledge of words I don't see aspects of God that I want to.

Jonathan 27:54

Yeah, that's true. Listen, the way that you talk about things will always expand and limit the way you conceive of things. And so the more languages you learn, the more broadly you're able to conceive of things. There are languages for example, and I didn't include this example in the book but it's a great example there are languages, I believe Russian is one, that has/have different words for different shades of blue. In the English language, we have blue, and we can say dark blue, light blue, Navy blue, royal blue, but in Russian there are all these different words for all these different shades of blue. What does that matter? When you look at the way that speakers who have different words for different shades conceive of the world and see the world they more readily pick up on on different shades of blue when they see it.

So if I take a person who speaks that language to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, here on 70 whatever street on Central Park, they will have a different experience looking at the same piece of artwork than I will. Because he or she will notice things that I won't see. And so you're exactly right when you talk about like Greek having multiple words for different kinds of love. Now we can put an adjective on it, say romantic love and brotherly love. But it strains us to understand those different ways of expressing love, simply because we don't talk about love in that way.

So you're right, you're limited in ways. But there are ways that you have a certain consciousness that people who speak other languages will not have. And I think that's a really fascinating way to think about the connections between consciousness and articulation.

Seth 29:55

Yeah. So is there a generation that does this better. So say you take five people with five different languages all to the Museum of Art there in Central Park, and you're all looking at the same thing, and you experiencing things in a different way. And so let's say you're looking at a, I don't know, a spiritual picture, it doesn't even matter what it is. Are there generations, or cultures that do this better that when you ask a question they're like now, but here's what I see and here's what that means?

Jonathan 30:24

And I've never thought about that. But it could be that. I wouldn't say, you know, I wouldn't say that that's true, generally, that there are some that just sort of speak God better than others, like, well, you speak French, you're going to speak God better. I do think that there are aspects of spirituality that we are better equipped to talk about or to conceive of, because of the languages we speak.

You know, we go back to that previous example of future languages. It might be that because we talk of future we have a future tense, we're able to Think of the eschaton more easily. Because we're, you know, there's some languages that are more communal in nature. And perhaps they're able to speak of religious communities more easily. I think what this teaches us, however, is and I'll take a little bit from the from Paul's language in the New Testament. In the Pauline corpus, you find this language of the body. And it may be that those who speak different languages are actually the foot or the hand. And that's why we need each other. That's why we need to listen to each other.

Most of us when we do theology, we're really doing predominantly those of us in America are really doing white, Western, male theology. But could it be that those who grew up speaking other languages could provide us something that we are missing? I think probably that could. And so I would say one thing that you're bringing up here that's important is, is learning to listen to the way others speak God and considering that maybe they're conceiving of God in a different, but true, way that could help you achieve some higher level of consciousness about spirituality yourself.

Seth 32:28

Apologetically, and so when I say that I know being that we both went to Liberty, that word means something different to a Liberty student than it does say to a Notre Dame student or to a different school student. And so the way that I was used to frame sacred words like sin, or holy or sanctification or salvation or saved or damned or whatever the word I want to use, I was geared to use words as quivers in an arrow, that this is logically the only meaning for that word. So apologetically if people are going to and I hope that they do for fear of losing a version, the who is it that said it? I don't know who said it. But if Christians can embrace the mystical version, but the mystical aspects of our faith, we won't have a faith for much longer. And that's a badly done paraphrase of someone smarter than me saying, I think something equivalent to you know, it's more nuanced than what you're trying to make it. And so as we engage in it, and we begin to try to, like toddlers, learn to speak God in a better way and grow with that. How do we handle apologetics using those words?

Jonathan 33:37

Yeah, well, I I think that there's something to benefit from apologetics in terms of defending what we believe. I think in some ways, this book is maybe a little bit of a counterbalance to where apologetics has taken us. So apologetics has taken us to a place where when somebody says something, we want to argue back what we believe.

So if somebody says, You know, I conceive of God in this way we go, Yeah, well, I don't conceive of God in that way I conceive of God in this way. And here the three proofs are three reasons why my conception is better than yours. And it robs us of our imagination. Because oftentimes, the way they conceive of God could be really helpful to us. The way they conceive of a particular doctrine could be helpful for us. But we are so programmed to argue and convince rather than to sit and imagine, I think we miss out on something.

You know, I really like the Quakers have a spiritual discipline that they call “wondering”. That whenever someone says something, you would disagree with that, rather than taking an apologetic approach, they take an approach of wondering, they sit and wonder about where that person could be right and where that person could teach you something. That is their first response. Oftentimes, I would say as somebody who grew up in an apologetics moment and an apologetics movement, before you even get done saying what you're saying, I'm already formulating my rebuttal to that.

Seth 35:27

And I'm probably pissed off already.

Jonathan 35:29

Yeah, that's right. And I'm already thinking about how wrong you are, how stupid you are, how I can say something that will show you how smart I am. And I think it takes both theological humility and theological imagination, to take the opposite approach. What I hope to do in this book is to tell people Hey, it's, it's a great thing, that you're able to defend what you believe, but could it be in this moment that the thing we need the most is not arguments for why you believe what you believe. But a certain amount of wondering that would begin to expand your own imagination about what you should believe, or what you should be fixing your mind on. And I hope that's what I do in this book. So I wouldn't say that this work is necessarily something that will help you shore up your apologetics, but it certainly I hope will expand your imagination.

Seth 36:32

I think you hit the nail on the head there. Yeah, as I read through my apologetics revolver is full. It's been full since I went to LU and I will tell you, I really struggle still with that version of me that is the default me the me I would, I guess you could say, taught to be as a Christian, and I use that same attitude and everything I do banking for a living and it's things are black and white. There's very little gray, but I'm realizing that religion and spiritual spirituality specific is extremely grey. And even amongst Christians, it's more muddled than it isn't, regardless of what you hear on the news. As I begin to process this, and this, I want to make this one of the last questions as I give you back the rest of your morning, as I process this, and then I know based on your research and Barna and many other research as well, the lack of spiritual conversations happening as I intentionally try to engage in this, how do I do so? Be it at church or be it at work? Well probably not at work, be it somewhere and do it in an intentional way that doesn't somehow come off as arrogant or bragging that I'm wrestling with bigger things than you are. You're worried about fantasy football and I'm worried about something holy, deeper. How do I how do I do that?

Jonathan 37:56

You know, I just I'm about to produce a video series. I went down to Times Square with a microphone and I just started talking to people. And I said, “How comfortable are you with spiritual conversations”? Some people said, “Nope, I not. I don't think these conversations are appropriate”. Most people said it depends; if you're just trying to argue with me about what you believe, I'm not interested. If you're trying to convert me to something or coerce me to do or believe something, I'm not interested. But if it's a real dialogue, a real back and forth, I'd be okay with that.

And I think that's actually true. Even in a city like New York that's fairly secular, it's not a-spiritual, it's actually not antagonistic toward religious conversations or spiritual conversations. So what I find is, is if you can take some of your declaratives and turn them into interrogatives. If you can focus more on seeking to understand than seeking to be understood, if you can focus as much on listening as you do on expressing and articulating, that's about the best way to speak God.

And I think you would find people will welcome those conversations. If you can find those questions in your own in your own communities that can happen differently, but with people who are outside of those religious communities, it asked to have a slightly lighter touch. But I think that we should, we should create spaces for spiritual conversations that welcome doubts, that welcome honest questions, that welcome struggles with these words. You know, as the ancient rabbis used to say, God is in the wrestling. So God's in the answer, yeah, but God is in the question.

And if you can develop those kinds of spaces, I think you will find that Most people will be willing to enter in those spaces with you and imagine what spirituality looks like and should look like in the 21st century. And what I do is, is I think they should happen in community. And I offer there's at the end of the book, there's a how to guide for seekers and speakers. And I actually map this out for people to say, here's how you can do this in your family, in your, in your home, in your workplace, at your PTA gatherings, at your happy hours after work in your churches, in your small groups, here's how you can do it. And I think I think it's something that is quite possible and that most people are not antagonistic to if you do it the right way.

Seth 40:44

When is that video series out?

Jonathan 40:47

Well, I'm just reviewing copies of it. So hopefully in the next couple of weeks, I'll roll it out one one by one. So there will be a whole series that will come out on YouTube.

Seth 40:56

So those will be on YouTube. Where can people as they are listening to this The book is what's the website? Is it speaking God book? That's not what it is.

Jonathan 41:04

It is speakGodbook.com. You can any of my stuff will be posted at Jonathanmerritt.com.

Seth 41:12

Fantastic. And yeah, well from one Liberty grad to another we are rare at least in this conversation space. I find that we are we are a rarity, at least in openly in this conversation space.

Jonathan 41:27

For sure.

Seth 41:28

Thank you so much for coming on. Jonathan. I appreciate it.

Jonathan 41:30

Oh, the pleasure is all mine.

Seth Outro 41:51

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope that you I we the church and just society as a whole can begin to Embrace, speaking about things in a way that matter, not just using church speak, to use church speak. It's easy to do that. But when we do it, it takes away the beauty of the meaning behind the words. So I really do hope that we can all as Jonathan is written, learn to be begin to relearn how to speak God from scratch. And by that I mean just an honesty in the way that we talk about God. Because that matters.

Please remember to rate the show on iTunes. And if you feel led, go to patreon.com/CanISayThisAtChurch, you will find that link in the show notes and the website. become a patron. patrons are amazing. I love each and every one of you. And I'm extremely thankful for you. And if you felt moved to do so, kick $1 a month towards the show. It has more of an impact than you know. Music in today's episode is from The Silver pages be blessed.

I’ll talk to you next week.