Does your article promote down-the-middle identification with the Republican Party as a pastor? Is that where this hour is going and this article is going? Or what are the words that we should be using you would lead out with as you would describe your own political framework on how to think and talk? And then Steve can chime in.

To the first question about, uh, should pastors identify exclusively or down the line with the Republican Party, I would say no, not in that way, because it's a political party that these are things that can shift over time.

And so Republicans of today may be different from Republicans thirty, forty, fifty years ago.

And so political parties, they have shifting alignments, and so that kind of strict identification with a party I don't think is wise.

At the moment, I think the Republican Party is preferable to the Democrat Party, but not without their own problems, and I'm sure we'll get into that.

The language that I prefer is conservative because that best represents what the Christian faith leads us to.

I mean, I think that the Christian faith is inherently conservative because we're told to contend for the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

But in particular, you know, pick a few commandments and then tease out how they're actually useful for our public life together.

So wh- where did this i- idea start? As a, as a publishing guy, I'm always curious, man, how'd you come up with this?

[laughs] Well, there, there is an interesting story behind the title, and I can get to that in a moment.

The story of where the ideas came from is as a pastor and church planter, I was trained in tools about how to reach people for Christ and how to preach and run a church, uh, in our, you know, modern cultural context.

And especially as an inner city church planter doing urban ministry among very liberal, in a very liberal environment, I was given a set of tools and told, "If you really want to reach urban leftist type people, you gotta be very, very conser- or you gotta be very shy and keep your conservative convictions close to the vest.

But you wanna kind of, you know, flatter those that are more on the left, show sympathy towards their perspective, and then kind of, you know, put down and make fun of those that are more of a conservative bent." And I, I, I never, never did it exactly that way, but I certainly was influenced by that way of thinking and thought, "I need to, I do need to be careful in how I speak." And what I, what I found was is that the tools that I was equipped with were wholly inadequate for the environment I found myself in.

It didn't matter what I said or how nice I said it.

When I confronted the idols of the age, the sins that our world cherishes, people are gonna get upset.

Like, what, what are some of the concerns with th- some of these very prominent leaders that you identify in the book?

What are some of those main versions of loser theology that you see, and then what are the effects that it's had on the church?

Great question.

Um, there are three major tent pegs of loser theology.

One of them is called spectator spirituality, and that's, that's what I would also call pietism, which takes the entirety of Christian faithfulness, and it shrinks it into the interior realm of the heart, such that what God really cares about is my theology, my Bible study, my prayer life.

Um, but I need not assert that in any public way because that would be asserting power, and I'm not supposed to do that.

I'm supposed to lose.

So that's spectator spirituality.

Yep.

What are some of those main versions of loser theology that you see, and then what are the effects that it's had on the church?

Great question.

Um, there are three major tent pegs of loser theology.

One of them is called spectator spirituality, and that's, that's what I would also call pietism, which takes the entirety of Christian faithfulness, and it shrinks it into the interior realm of the heart, such that what God really cares about is my theology, my Bible study, my prayer life.

Um, but I need not assert that in any public way because that would be asserting power, and I'm not supposed to do that.

I'm supposed to lose.

So that's spectator spirituality.

Yep.

We have come to look at sin as a victimhood status through this term that you use in your book called spectator spirituality?

Yeah, so spectator spirituality is an aspect of loser theology that, uh, basically it shrinks the gospel down to the interior realm.

And so private inner devotion is all that really matters, and embodied external expression of Christianity is largely, um, you know, secondary if, if not irrelevant.

And so what happens is the the- ...

Well, s- the thematic core of loser theology is the denial of agency.

So if you have no agency, then you cannot be held accountable for your actions.

What the Bible does is the opposite.

Mm

Where did this idea come from, and what inspired you to write the book?

Yeah.

And so the title is, uh, if, if it were just a total fabric- fabrication, you know, the, the idea that it's, you know, provocative, um, you know, that might have...

And I, I, I admit it is, there is some provocation there.

But there are Christian leaders who will speak this way directly.

Um, and so in the, in the, in the introduction of the book, there's a few people that I've, a, a few instances, examples that I mention.

One is a, a video by Skye Jethani, and the video is called Be a Loser Like Jesus.

... expand on that s- uh, spectator spirituality that you work on in the book.

So I wanted to ask you, why Loser Theology? Why did you write this book?

Loser theology is – the thing that's weird about it is that it's not like a doctrinal system that is formalized as such to where there's not like a statement of affirmations and denials that you can put on a white paper and then evaluate them in light of scripture.

Loser theology is – it's more of an ethos and a vibe.

and it transcends particular denominations.

It's everywhere.

The thing is that I think of it like an overdose on some good impulses that are true and biblical, but they're taken as the entirety of Christianity.

Right.

In the book,

Pastor, has this been a slow slide toward where we are today? Was there a particular moment or a particular time when this shifted among those of the faithful?

Well, there's been a version of this that's always been around.

There's, you know, Jesus teaches about it in the scriptures where you have the parable of the minas and you have two servants that were given 10 minas and five minas and they came back and earned a profit and Jesus praised them.

But you had the third servant that just buried his mina and he did nothing with it.

He kept it in a handkerchief.

And then Jesus, he scolded that man.

And he said, you worthless servant, you should have at least put my mina on interest with the bank so that you could have given me a profit in that way.

Where does that belief come from? Why do you think it's so wrong?

I'm curious to get your thoughts on that, Michael.

Yeah, it doesn't work.

And I can.

Not only by the numbers, but just from my own experience as a pastor, I could see just from my own ministry what really has power.

There's a text in 2 Timothy where Paul is talking about power.

False teachers who have a form of godliness, they deny the power, meaning that it has a certain look that appears religious.

It might look the part, but there's no real power to it.

And for many of these people, functionally what they worship it's not god it's not scripture it's being comfortable right it is having a high social status again the very same thing that they love to criticize their grandparents and great-grandparents for there's sort of a a deep poetic irony if you see what i'm getting at the deep poetic irony The deep poetic irony of making that kind of cultural Christianity out to be the greatest sin possible because of that insincerity while functionally doing literally exactly the same thing even in making that argument.

You know, is my church a loser theology church? But what would be some signs for a Christian or a pastor that's reading this book that they've kind of been teaching some loser theology in their church? Yeah.

Well, in the book there, there are each, each of the first three chapters ends with a quiz.

Um, and the quiz basically is based on the concepts explored in that chapter.

And I mean, it's, I mean, obviously it's not scientific.

I mean, it's just something that I made up for the book, but it does give you the, some ways for you to, to, to just think through, um, have I bought into this, this type of mindset? Um, And so I'm pulling it up here on my iPad, some of the questions.

So here's some of the questions in these quizzes.

Are you suspicious of very strong desires, feeling that they may be a heart idol? That's one.

How are they misreading this passage?

But what's the, what's the problem that you see and, and who are some of these leaders and slogans that you're talking about?

Yeah, so loser theology, they're ...

It's not an exclusively left-wing phenomena, but it is ...

It definitely ...

You could say it's coded left-wing, in that the, the practical ...

The most damaging effects is to the more conservative-minded Christians.

Um, but the ...

I'm sensing another vibe that I'm also kinda concerned about.

We could freestyle in this thing.

Yeah.

So loser theology, as a concept, it traffics in pithy slogans that often are good insights and quotable, memorable phrases from Scripture that it's kind of like a burr in the saddle.

It gets in your brain and you remember them.

And because they are short and pithy, they kind of stick with you.

And so people just, let's say the phrase gentle and lowly.

I mean, Dane Orton wrote a book on this.

Woke leftist ideologies to me are the host species that are allowing and inviting this in, and it's both inside and outside the church.

"Well, I mean, I, I turn the other cheek, and we're supposed to be nice." Can you talk about this?

Yeah, weaponized empathy, um, I don't know who coined that term, um, but it's a, it, it's a, it's a term that really describes taking something that is often a, a virtue and turning it against the person that is, uh, that is meant to, uh, express it.

And so empathy or, you know, to use a more biblical word, you might say compassion, you're...

That's a good thing.

Uh, it means that you, you care about people, you, you care about people that are suffering, um, and that's a good thing.

But, you know, anytime you have something good, the greater the good, the greater it's evil when it is distorted.

And so that can happen a lot of times, where the good of compassion can just become untethered from reality, and whenever that happens, then people are feeling sorry for rapists and murderers and people that are committing fraud.

Can you speak to them?