That's a Wrap... Your Questions, Answered (S1E9 Encore)

Well, you know, Pepper, that takes us right, I think, to the whole notion that we described in one of our episodes about the process of storytelling.

Mm.

And, you know, I think that, uh, in our world, we sometimes think of, uh, Christianity as a religion, and we kind of line it up with all the other world religions.

And especially in the West, we have this category for where religion sits, right? I have my leisure, I have my work, I have my family, I have whatever it is that I have, and then I have my religion.

It's, you know, it's a category.

And the thing about following Jesus that is so significant is that, uh, Christianity isn't the religion.

It is a story.

It is a way of understanding the nature of history.

It's a way of understanding the nature of what is the story that we're actually living in.

It's not a religion.

We often talk about it as if it is, or we often live it like, like it is, but it's, it's really a story.

And so that story is the basis on which everything else that we talk about rests.

And so when we talk about spiritual formation, again, it becomes easy for us to think about our spirituality as being this separate category, kind of like our religion is a separate category.

But the story of the Bible, the story that the Bible tells us that we're living in, is this story in which this beautiful arc of how God, out of love, made us, gave us this enormous freedom and gifting to become deeply known by one another in order to create beauty and goodness in the world.

How we have, in our own sense of wanting to do things our way, have kind of really broken our commitment to God and to each other, and we've kind of screwed things up, and we look around, and it's not that hard to see how we've done that.

And God's, uh, unstoppable pursuit of us, that His love for us that made us, is the same love that pursues us and continues to do so most formidably, I would say, and most powerfully in the life and death and resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

And that we really believe that we are all As part of this story that we are being formed into people of great beauty, we are being formed into people of great kindness and goodness, and that we are called to be creators of that beauty in the world.

And so I'm, I'm well aware, you know, that we, we Christians and, and, and our, our, our Jewish brothers and sisters talk about the Ten Commandments, and, you know, I tell people I'm just really glad that there are only 10, because if there were 20, I'd be breaking all 20.

I'm glad there's only...

I only have to account for 10 every day.

And they remind us of, like, all the different ways in which I'm not formed very well in the image of Jesus.

But life is about God forming me into the best version of Curt and forming you into the best version of Pepper that we can be in order for us to be prepared and practiced for the world that we believe is coming, this new heaven and new Earth that we read about in the New Testament and that was prophesied about in the Old Testament.

And so when we talk about formation, we wanna ask, well, in... what are the tools that we can use to become better human being, a more beautiful human being, a human being that is more likely to create greater beauty? What does it mean for me to be formed into an image of a person like that? And that notion of spiritual formation, of Christian spiritual formation in and of itself then turns to any number of different things that we find in our world that can really help me be better at being human.

And in the same way that if I wanna be a better tennis player, a better golfer, if I wanna be a better pianist, if I wanna be a better at anything, and I find something that enables me to enhance that skill set, that enables me to perform my piano better, then I wanna use that.

If I find a new machine that I can work out in the gym that enables me to be a stronger athlete on the field, then I wanna use that.