Cultivating a Curious Faith: A Conversation with Mark Matlock

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 Dr. 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 am Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Mark Matlock. He's the author of Faith for the Curious, How an Era of Spiritual Openness Shapes the Way We Live and Help Others Follow Jesus. He's also a senior fellow at Barna and a facilitator of Innovation and Impact, and he's also the founder of Wisdom Works. And so I'm excited to dive into this book. I read it. I found out a lot that I didn't know, and I was pretty excited to see some of this data, and so I'm excited to jump into it with you, Mark. Mark, how are you doing? Doing great. It's great to be with you, James. Yeah, welcome to the podcast, and thanks for coming on. This is good. Yeah, we're part of the Black Jacket Club today. Yeah, yeah. Well, this is how I cover up my T-shirt. So this is all it is. Yeah, occasionally I just... Yeah, occasionally I just go right with the T-shirt because I'm kind of lazy, but today I decided, nope, I'll get fancy for you. So here I am. Hey, man, this book, I really loved it. I thought it was great. And I think that I thought it was great because I've been doing a lot of research in the political arena and reading through some of the gloom and doom of this political season. And so when I was reading your book, I was thinking to myself, wow, this is kind of an uplifting message. This is actually a positive set of data that I'm reading right now that gives me more hope than gloom and doom. It wasn't a sky is falling sort of book. And so I'm just interested, why don't we start by maybe talking about how you got into this research, why you were interested in this research in the first place? And then we'll kind of talk through maybe some of your findings. Yeah, well, it was kind of interesting. So I've been working with Barna for, gosh, 20 some years. Started as a client, actually. And one of the first projects I did was when David Kinnaman, the president of Barna, who owns it now, he literally was just out of college and he went to Biola with my brothers. And I had gone several years ahead of them. And I called the Barna Group to do a research project, not knowing what I'm getting into. And Dave answers the phone. And so I told him what I wanted to do. And he goes to George and George is kind of like, you know, this time it's me and a band called Mercy Me that were working out of our garage running these student conferences across the country. Right. Yeah. And we had enough money to rub two nickels together and maybe make a spark, get a fire going. So anyway, George goes, look, I don't think you have enough money to do this. But I'll tell you what, I'll do it for cost if because I really believe in this project and we don't do enough research on young people if you work with David. And this began like a decade's long relationship with David Kinnaman, where he's one of my closest friends. And when I've helped him with a lot of different projects that he'd worked on, just doing analysis and looking at things, helping him frame different data insights, working with Barna's clients to help them figure out how to put things into action. Anyway, working with all of these other clients, people like the American Bible Society, he gets us Alpha. I started noticing that there was this like chunk of people that didn't fit into the boxes most of us have when we think about the unchurched. Yeah. And I wanted to try to discover more about them. ABS called American Bible Society calls them the movable middle, but they represent about 70 million to 188 million, depending on which data variables you use to slice them that that are not hostile to Christianity, that actually want to grow spiritually. That doesn't mean they're necessarily interested in Christianity, but they want to grow spiritually. And so we started realizing there's this real openness. And I started realizing that a lot of the churches that I was working with, the ministries that I was working with, had gotten into this. Like you said, the sky is falling. Gloom is doom approach and the people that they were encountering were some of the most hostile people to Christianity. And they were kind of ignoring this larger segment of the population. So that was kind of what got me into it. And then my children who are 25 and 28, they really aren't children, but they I started interacting with their friends and they are artists and creatives. And a lot of the people that I was running into, I was meeting through them. They really had no religious history or understanding. When they heard that I was a minister, the only thing that that meant to them that I was an evangelical minister was, oh, you must have voted for Donald Trump. That's the only thing that they assumed about me. Which is exactly what you want them to assume. I mean, let's face it. Like that's that's that's what you want to lead with all the time. Jesus or Donald Trump. You know. Yeah. So. So it was really interesting in talking with them how blown away they were by, you know, oh, you're wow. You're not like anything like what I thought a Christian would be like. And there's these huge misperceptions. So that kind of led me to kind of think I would like to go into the field and see if we can figure out what's going on with this this group of people with a little more, you know, a little more definition and try to see if we can learn some things could really help the church maybe reframe this moment that we're in. And what we found is this group of people that we call the curious. And further research actually showed us that there was actually two groups within that curious group. But we can talk about that a little bit more. That's cool. I I will say, I mean, I think when I I just was watching yesterday, the guy who played Dwight Schrute and I'm blanking on his name right now. Rainn Wilson. Rainn Wilson. He does a show called Soul Boom. Yeah. It's a new podcast. And he just had a lady on who was talking about the difference between spirituality and religion or encouraging spiritual thought and, you know, those kind of things. And so I'm watching this and I knew we had our interview coming up. And I'm like, this is interesting because there is, it seems, an ongoing interest in the spiritual. And there are so many things then that can fill that gap, at least for a certain time. So I've been following the work of John Verveke and Jordan Peterson. John Verveke did The Meaning Crisis. Jordan Peterson talks an awful lot. He's got his Bible series and does all those things. And it's like, this is, in some ways, I think confirming to what you're talking about. There are a lot of people who are willing to listen to this kind of idea, this sort of spiritual things idea. And I'm just, I'm fascinated that the data actually demonstrates that these folks are curious about, would you say it's about spiritual things as opposed to religion? Would you say it's about Jesus specifically? Like, what are they curious about? What's maybe, what are they curious about? And then as a follow-up, what's driving that curiosity? Yeah, it's a great question. I have a fun story about Rainn Wilson, the guy who played Dwight Schrute. So he was speaking out here at the Dallas Museum of Art, and we have a membership there. So we got invited to like a member's, you know, kind of reception with him thing. And he signed a book for my daughter Sky, and he signed it, Sky and Rainn together again at last. I thought, man, that's quick. That's nice. But what was so fascinating to me about that, about his presentation was here he is, he's a television personality. He's funny, an actor, but what he really wanted to talk about was a search for meaning in his life and finding this something deeper that was out there. And no matter what, and Pete Holmes, comedian, went to a Christian college, Gordon College, studied youth ministry, thought that's where he's going to go. And then he went on this journey as well. And there's a lot of that going on. And so what we wanted to do was try to see how to tease out this group, try to understand them better. So what we measured was, first of all, do you believe that there's more than what we experience with our five senses? So is there a supernatural realm? Is there something greater? And then we measured another set of variables, which was how curious a person was. And there are some wonderful sets of research done by a guy named Todd Cashin on looking at how to measure curiosity in a person. And so we used that scale. And then from that, we found this group. And in that were two really extreme groups. One is what we call the spiritually curious, and the other is what we call the curious skeptic. And the curious skeptics were actually kind of like the surprise. We were expecting to find the spiritually curious group, but then we found that there was actually like something that made these two groups a little bit different from one another. And so we teased that out in the data. And the spiritually curious

Now, there's less than 10% of American population that believes that the physical world is all there is. We call them naturalists. There is some degree of curiosity within them, but they weren't our focus because they don't believe in a supernatural world. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up, and many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878, or call 888-958-6579. That is kind of the traditional group that I think a lot of apologists and evangelists think of, and what a lot of us in the pew just think of when we think of a non-Christian. Well, you believe in evolution. There is no God, that kind of thing. The overwhelming majority of Americans believe there's God. And in fact, 55% of the spiritually curious believe that they will be accountable for how they've lived their life when they die. So there's even a sense of moral punishment for the way that they live on earth. So that was just mind-boggling when we kind of went in and diced the data up that way, right? But at the same time, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're interested in Christianity specifically. So anyway, so when we're doing this, we also, you know, had pulled out practice in Christians in this group, and we measured their levels of curiosity as well. And interestingly, the curiosity levels are very different for people inside the church than outside of the church. And that kind of led me to just wonder, like, is there a culture that we've created within the church that is not wonder-seeking? We're seeking information for certainty as opposed to wonder and, you know, exploration of what's beyond and mystery. And maybe that's why church is so boring to so many people, is because there isn't a sense of discovery. And in God's creation, he's created everything with a sense of mystery and discovery. Yet in the church, we might be creating something around what we call our need for closure, which is getting information so that I don't have ambiguity in my life. So that's kind of the interesting hypothesis that kind of, you know, that kind of drove the book and why I think Baker and Barna let me pursue it. Well, I mean, a couple of just comments on that. I think it's fascinating the amount of information and response that we give to the naturalists or, you know, that materialist sort of perspective where the general perception is they don't believe anything exists beyond just our meat, you know, the matter and things around us. And for that group to be such a small, relatively small group is sort of crazy. And it's interesting to hear, you know, okay, there's a God out there. We're accountable to that God. But then we also have this intermingling of probably scientific perspectives and all of these different other areas that sort of inform our broader worldview. And so it becomes a little bit of a mixed bag, I would assume. Is that fair? Yeah, I think that's a fair way of describing it. Yeah, for sure. And I think what's interesting is that, like, what I started noticing is I'm sitting on airplanes. I'm starting to have conversations with people next to me. And there's always a point when, like, they, you know, it comes up, so what do you do for a living? Sure. And I never answer usually the same, you know, way twice. You know, sometimes I'm an author. Sometimes I'm a magician. Sometimes I'm a nonprofit consultant. Sometimes I'm a nonprofit executive. Sometimes I am a minister. Every one of those conversations, regardless of where it starts, will end with me being an ordained minister. Yeah. But it doesn't always start there. Because once I bring that information, and depending on the person, that can be a conversation stopper right away. But what I started noticing in my interactions with people is that very few of them, once I mentioned that I was a minister and they realized that I was safe, they wanted to talk more about that. Yeah, they have more questions. Yes, and I'm going, where are these hard? Nobody's telling me, I don't believe that. I don't believe there's anything. You know what I mean? Some of them might have some challenges about Christianity itself specifically. Sure, yeah. But I wasn't running into this naturalist, you know, this person who believes that the world just started spontaneously and, you know, and there's nothing more out there and there's nothing that happens after we die. Almost everybody has a worldview that falls within that Judeo-Christian, even Islamic kind of worldview of a monotheistic God. And that was really surprising to me. And the data kind of proved out why I'm not finding them because there are not very many of them. Right, you're not running into Richard Dawkins on the planes very much. Yeah, right, right. And even he would say, right, like, you know, the morality of Christianity is better for the world than not, right? And not. You call yourself a secular Christian now. And, you know, so mind-boggling, right? Yeah. It is sort of fascinating. And I guess where I'm wondering is, as we approach, if we think about the majority of the people that we're going to, which is the way I'm understanding the research. So the majority of the people we're probably going to meet, if we're meeting, you know, 7 out of 10 people, it's more likely for them to be part of this curious group than it is for them to be part of, you know, a hardcore, skeptical, we, you know, we hate spiritual things. We don't even want to think about it kind of people. And so how do we approach these conversations with these folks to, I think, number one, frame it out so that they're safe asking questions of us, right? People who have been involved in what they might consider to be spiritual pursuits, what we would call Christianity, right? How do we help them be comfortable asking us questions and then not feeling like we're just going to shove our religion down their throat kind of idea? And then I think the other side of it that I want to get to, and we can answer this question first, but I don't want to lose this. It's concerning to me that Christians aren't more curious. And so how do we cultivate that sense of wonder and help Christians embrace the ambiguities of life, right, and not be afraid of those? So I guess those two questions, number one would be, how do we talk to the curious folks so that we have the best shot of really engaging them well? And then number two, how do we, as Christians, it almost feels like we're going to have to get more curious if we're going to reach those who are curious. You know what I mean? Well, 100% because curious calls to curious, right? And so, and we should be curious about our faith. I mean, everything about Jesus' ministry was kind of based on that, right? People asking questions, Jesus asking them questions, people being confused by what Jesus said and going, you know, Jesus saying, you guys know where I'm going. And they're like, we don't know where you're going. You know, you're acting like we have it figured out. We don't, you know. You know, we see Jesus praying and he's not saying, okay, now it's time to sign up for the course on prayer. He waits until the disciples go, Lord, teach us how to pray, you know? So he's kind of appealing to their inquisitiveness. And, you know, so one way to think about it, you know, James, is if 20% of our population is a practicing Christian, okay, that would mean that 54% are in that curious spiritual kind of a space, whether they're a skeptic or spiritually curious, they're in that space. There's about 70% who believe in a supernatural world, but they have low curiosity. Okay. And we didn't really look deeply into that group. Right. And then there's the 10% that are naturalists. So you basically have about a three out of every four people that you talk to are likely going to be a Christian or spiritually curious. And when you, because we didn't cover this, could you just distinguish between the skeptics, the curious, the spiritually curious, and the skeptics? What's the distinction there? I know you mentioned I meant to ask. Yeah. So both of them believe that there's more than we can experience with our five senses, right? Spiritually curious are all in. They are convinced that there is something more, and they may even have some definition around it. It may not just be greater energy out there or a higher power. A lot of times it actually is that monotheistic view of God.

Okay. And so just that it's similar across Judaism, Islam, and Christianity, that kind of conception of God that all comes from, you know, Father Abraham. And then the skeptic, they will either say, I don't know that there's more. I believe there's more out there, but I can't know that for certain. So there's a little skepticism in that even though they will say, I believe there is more, they're not as convinced of it, and they may have a little more skepticism toward it. Now, what I find interesting about the skeptics are they usually have a real high sense of moral responsibility. And part of that is because they do believe that there's going to be some kind of consequence for the way that they live when they die. Even though they don't know what it is, they're not certain of it, there's a sense of that. And so talking to them about morality and how they figure out, you know, what is what is right and wrong is really interesting. What they think the consequences will be just and once again, me not telling them what the Bible says, but saying, What do you think? Where do you get that? You know, where did that come from? Where, you know, how did you arrive at that? People love to talk about these things. And usually in listening to them and really being respectful of what they have to say and then to be able to say, you know, is it okay for me to share my story or, you know, what I've experienced? And what's really important, though, is, I think, expressing and talking to them about Jesus in relational terms. Because I think that's where we've where things have fallen apart. I think the pandemic's kind of exposed some of this in our churches. We live in a discipleship crisis because we have people that believed ideas, but they didn't have a relationship with a person of Christ. And I think the pandemic kind of revealed some of the the lack of true spiritual formation and development in our churches. And that's not a slide on anybody. It's just a reality, you know, of the way churches evolved in our country. But I think we're kind of waking up to that and seeing, oh, there, we, we have to help people really have a relationship with Christ, not just know the right answers. And so I found those two things are really, really opening. And then you have like the seeker sensitive model, right, that a lot of our churches gravitated toward. And you would, it'd be real easy to say the curious are probably really interested in that. But to be honest, they actually want more intense spiritual experiences. Yeah. And that's what's really interesting. They're not, the seeker sensitive model almost was about making church more palatable to those who already thought church is a good idea. Yeah. Whereas the spiritually curious are actually looking to connect with God and the supernatural. And so, and I first encountered this with the small group that I was as a volunteer leader in our youth ministry at our church. You know, some of the students, when I said, what do you want, what do you want to learn here? They go teach, you know, what, how do we connect to God? How do we talk to God? What is prayer really like? And I go, you know, what if we do a few weeks where we learn how the ancient, the desert fathers like prayed to connect with God, right? And so now you would think that in this really cool youth group setting where it's real easy to bring your friends because it's fun that people would be like, okay. Cause I, I, I even let moms and dads know, cause I'm like, if they talk about, you know, we did all this breathing and I go, I'm going to, you know, I'm going to get straight out of church. So I told her, we're doing these things that are rooted in church history. You know, we're going to talk about it, right? We're not saying this is the way to do it, or we're just going to see what history has taught us and we're going to practice it. The students actually brought their friends. More of them came to that than came to the regular Wednesday night experience. Cause they were like telling their friends, we're doing some real stuff here. You know what I mean? Like we're, we're trying to connect to God and, um, and know him. And so, so I think we've sometimes got it wrong, right? And, um, and, and that's why I think this is really important for us to really evaluate this. Now, one of the, the really interesting things that came out in this is this idea of uh kind of a DIY do it yourself culture, um, that, um, that a lot of the curious people possess in this post truth world that we live in. Yeah. A lot of these people, they want to have agency. They don't want an expert just to tell them what to think. Yeah. The need for closure people are happy to have experts tell them what to think, which is a little bit higher in the church than outside of it, right? So we've created a culture that kind of doesn't necessarily appeal to a curious mind. So does that make sense? It does. And it's such a fascinating insight because, and I don't want to stereotype the church either, but it does feel like there is a dynamic where we value, let's say, preaching from the front over something. I had a, a female pastor on the show probably two months ago now. Um, and in her church, she said she had stopped preaching for a time. And what they would do is they would have someone come up and do like a corporate lament. And they'd talk about what they're experiencing in their life and people would pray for them and those kinds of things. And my comment was, it's so odd to me that you wouldn't have someone preaching the word of God. But at the same time, really appealing to me that you don't have someone doing that at least for a time. Because I think that it, what it gestures toward is, look, the sermon isn't the, isn't what we've made it. You know, it's not that the preaching of the word of God isn't important, but that does sort of play into that. Here are the three points you need to know about this passage. Go and do. It has a certainty to it, whereas the lament is, it draws into something that is far more chaotic, far more, I would think, would lend itself to curiosity, because it's messy. There's no immediate solution for it. There's that you have to work to understand and connect now with the person who is in pain versus just listening to a sermon and walking away with three points. And so, again, I don't wanna stereotype the church, but it rings true in a lot of ways where you would sit back and say, yeah, we tend to develop a hierarchical culture and much of that hierarchical culture is around teaching. People who can teach tend to move up in the world, uh, in the Christian world. Um, so it's sort of fascinating. I would say the other thing I, I just love about. It's kind of like, just to, just to build on that for a moment. Yeah. It's kind of the difference between like cooking for yourself and going to a restaurant where somebody is going to cook for you. Yeah. There, there's a different joy that comes in making your food and a, and a different kind of joy in receiving something that somebody's already worked through and perfected. Yeah. And church has become a place where, where we don't get to see the pastor's process or journey in how he assembled what he's sharing with us. He's sharing with us the conclusion, the kit after it's been assembled. Yeah. And the DIY curious mind is like, I want to build along with you. Right. And so, you know, uh, an example that I use from the book is like one of the top 20 Google things about the Bible is what does the Bible say about dinosaurs? And so I asked pastors, uh, you know, if you were to, you know, knowing this, let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed with inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty? More families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary metals makes it easy to get started. Text guide to 9 4 8 7 8 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 8 8 8 9 5 8 6 5 7 9 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text guide to 9 4 8 7 8 or call 8 8 8 9 5 8 6 5 7 9. How would you present this to a curious person? And they'll say, well, I would, you know, we would do an ad campaign saying we're going to talk about what the Bible says about dinosaurs. I would prepare a sermon, uh, depending on what their view of Genesis was, they would, they kind of framed it around that. And, um, and I was kind of like, now, now wait a minute, you know, you're, you're doing all this work and you're gonna, you're going to provide the conclusion to the matter. But what if, you know, you actually let show them, here are three different approaches that Christians believe that believe in the Bible

think about them and what their experience says and whatever. And all of a sudden I saw these pastors, like, you know, and I'm not being pejorative at all, but I mean, I saw them going, are you kidding? That would be the most irresponsible thing I could do because the shepherd's heart comes out, right? I'm here to take care of the sheep, not to, you know, whatever. And I'm like, well, you, you still are. You know what I mean? Like, like, like sheep were constantly in peril as they were moving. The shepherd just tried to, you know, prevent the magnitude of, of harm or injury, right? And keep them from starving as long as they, you know, they could. So, but I think the, the idea there was, do we have enough confidence in the word of God and the work of the Holy Spirit that we can step out a little bit of ourselves to allow people to experience the Holy Spirit and to experience the power of his word. I've talked to enough people who have said, I went to the Bible looking for this and when I read it, it totally flipped the script on what I thought it was going to be like, right? We've seen that, right? We need to have more confidence about that, but those are usually personal experiences that people had, you know, just taking a Bible and reading it on their own. How do we do that corporately? How do we do that from a leadership perspective? It's a really different paradigm. It is funny. I mean, I teach a Bible study on Wednesday mornings via Zoom and we just went through Genesis 6, 1-4, so the sons of God and the daughters of men and the, the intermarriage there. And so the, the, the guys in the study, you know, they keep pushing me, pushing me. They're like, but what does it really mean? And I'm like, listen, I don't know. Here's like these four interpretations. This one's weird. This one's not that well supported. This one's strange too, but it's also, you know, it's got, and so I'm just walking in through and one of them actually said, uh, he's like, I have no idea what the answer to these questions are. But he said, one of the things I'm I'm getting is I'm getting insights from the process you use just to think through it. And he said, that's really interesting. And so I was really happy about that because I didn't want to walk in and be like, okay, the sons of God are this and the daughters of men are this, you know. I mean, you can read five, you know, academic journal articles and not figure the answer to that one out. Like everybody's got a different nuance and argument. And so I think that sometimes we do over determine the text and there's a certain degree of, there's certainly core convictions that we don't wanna lose sight of, but then there's also play, you know, there, there's a fair degree of play. And, you know, conveying that to people, letting people have that, maybe the tension and put forth the effort to do that is, is really fascinating. I, I usually tell people like I used to be a personal trainer and I said, I've never had, I never brought a client in and said, okay, today, what you're gonna do is you're gonna sit in the corner and watch me work out. And that's gonna be your workout. On some level, they have to put forth the effort in order for it to work for them. I can't put the work in for them. I can't lift the weight for them. They've got to lift it for themselves. I'm just there to sort of guide them through that weight training. And I think that sort of picture is what I hear you expressing that these folks who are the DIYers want. They don't wanna watch somebody lift weights. They wanna hop in there and lift with somebody who's lifting weights, that kind of idea. And it's, and, and we're talking about people talking about truth, right? Like how do I know what to trust? People right now only trust themselves as the judge of that. And we can have lots of theological conversations about the implications of that, but the reality is it's true. You know what I mean? And so, okay, I believe the power of God is bigger than you. And if you really have a sincere heart, and almost all of these people that are spiritually curious have a sincere openness to finding the truth, I don't need to be afraid of the journey that you take to get there. In fact, Jesus, I mean, think about the rich young ruler, right? I mean, that's one of the first things I, by the way, that I have on my agenda when I get to heaven is to see, figure out what happened to that rich young ruler. Like, did he ever come back? Because I have a feeling he did. There's something in my spirit that says he came back and I don't know that, the text never tells us that. But, but I, I feel like Jesus like could have stuck with him, could have chased him down, goes, hey, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, we're not done yet. You know, you made the wrong choice. Jesus let him sit and wrestle with, with his words and was okay with that tension. And I think even watching some of the Pharisees, right? Joseph of Arimathea and others and Nicodemus who were struggling along the way, right? You know, they were Pharisees, but yet they were listening and they were watching and as certain things came to be, they started realizing this really is the Messiah. And their faith became, became real and their heart was maybe more curious than others who were protecting other things. So I think we have to be really careful about that, but just understand that that's what it's gonna take in this moment. We can't just reach into our old bag of tricks and think that that's going to reach people. And that's the other thing too, is a lot of our evangelism became very transactional and where it's all, and a lot of that was based on like efficiency, right? How do I, how do I share the gospel with as many people as quickly as possible? This is slower work and it has to be rooted in real relationship. And that means, you know, it's gonna take some time and you have to have a genuine interest in the person. If you don't, it's not gonna, it's not gonna work. These aren't tricks. That, that was the hardest thing writing the book was how do you take these insights and not make them sound like tricks or gimmicks or tactics to like make a person believe or to, you know, hook a, hook a lost person. You know what I mean? That's not what this is about. This is about introducing people to Jesus Christ and understanding their frame of reference because ours within the church has grown so far apart from that that we almost are, are missing each other. But it's really, I think a lot of my work that I've, I've done here recently has revolved around this idea of embodied cognition. So we, we experience the world physically, you know, we don't just know propositionally in our heads. We also know like procedurally. I know how to ride a bike and that's different than knowing that that a bike is a mode of transportation. I actually know how to do it. And because I know how to do it, then the bike becomes relevant if I need a mode of transportation, right? I can walk out in my garage and if my cars are all broken, but I have a bike on the wall, that now is relevant to me if I need to go somewhere. And so that's a different way of knowing. These are John Verveke's categories, not mine. But then he talks about participatory knowing and he says, you know, think about, you know if you've ever ridden a bike, what it feels like to have your quads burning as you're going up a hill and have the wind blowing over your face when you're going down that hill. But someone who's never ridden a bike doesn't know that. Propositionally, they could get it. Sure. I understand that your quads would burn. Sure. I understand there's wind. Sure. You know, whatever, but they don't know it. And those are different ways of, of really experiencing the world and knowing the world. And that last one is very much that embodied cognition. And and so when you think about that and just realize that we are experiencing the world in a particular way and that we can challenge other people to take a journey where they're experiencing not only the world, but hopefully experiencing God in that world. That's just sort of a new and fascinating way for us to take these curious people on a, on a ride and say, God will meet you if you just keep moving in this direction. Like we can trust God to do that and we can fill in some of the gaps so that their experience, which can be inherently ambiguous, right? We don't always understand where things are coming from. That's sort of the general revelation problem, but we can fill that in and say, no, that's probably God. And, and here's, here's been my experience with this. And this is how I see this working. But I, my, my intuitive sense is, and this goes back to that question of why isn't the church more curious is that we don't think like that. We, we don't, we know, we know stuff about God. We maybe have had some experiences with God, but on our day-to-day basis, we don't really view the world as if God is an active participant in everything we do. Is that a fair, like sort of. I, I think you're nailing it. Yeah. It's, it's kind of like, there's that scene in that movie

You know, and what it means when she passes away from cancer, all that. And he's like totally saying there's this lived experience. And I think that's one of the issues facing, and once again, don't like to paint the church with broad brushstrokes. But there is, I think, a lack of real experience of Jesus that's very similar to the Pharisees of their day who were struggling with the type of Christian nationalism that we see very present in the U.S. culture today where Jesus was in their midst. God in the flesh was in their midst, and they missed him. And that's the thing that as a kid, when I would read about the Pharisees, that always terrified me. What if I was so close, and yet I couldn't recognize Christ himself? And that kind of haunted me and kind of always kept me kind of going, how do I really know Jesus, and how do I really experience Jesus? And I think that's a really critical thing that I think we need to take away that theology, biblical knowledge, it is wonderful. It helps us know and experience God. But knowing God is a little bit different than that. And Jesus talked about that same thing. Well, and increasingly, and this is a pet peeve of mine, so if you don't agree, feel free to disagree. But I feel like we've gotten stuck a little bit on biblical literacy. And I know that biblical literacy is important. I get it. It's crucial because it demonstrates a familiarity with the biblical text. And I think that that's important. But I also think that what we've been missing is the way I've been phrasing it lately is there's not very many people who are going to mistake a bath for a baptism. Right? But we should be able to tell the difference between, you know, discipleship and political engagement, for instance. We should be able to tell that difference as easily as we can distinguish a bath from baptism. And the fact that we can't suggest that there is that deeper miss of, no, this is my relationship with Christ, and now I understand how to operate in the world, and I can approach the world with a disciple posture. That's not biblical literacy. That's a different sort of experience of Christ and knowing Christ, trusting Christ. That's a different thing than just, I have doctrine in my head, which, you know, having gone through all the theological training, like, I get that part. It's fun. I enjoy it. So I'm not dissing it. But at the same time, I think what I've had to learn over the years is it can't just be all letter. There also has to be spirit involved here. And so there has to be that sort of embodied experience with Christ in the way that we posture ourselves in the world. And I'm wondering if you have any insights based on the research, how we would go about cultivating that, enhancing that experience within the church. You know, there's two organizations, not organizations, but just kind of writings and things like that. They aren't organizations attached to them. They come to mind that really have challenged me, helped me even navigate that. You know, one is a true face ministries out of Arizona and Atlanta, and they have a book called The Cure. And it's basically about this pilgrim. It's a fable about a pilgrim who comes to a fork in the road and is written by some friends of mine. And one arrow points to the to trusting God, and the other one leads to pleasing God. And the pilgrim kind of goes, well, gee, both of those sound good. You know what I mean? Like, which direction do I go? You know? And pleasing God leads to the room of good intentions and trusting God leads to the room of grace. And the pilgrim goes through these really interesting experiences encountering these different rooms. And it's told in a in a fableistic way that really gets to the heart of this issue of what does it mean to trust God? And the other person is Pete Scazzaro, who wrote Emotionally Healthy Spirituality. I had the privilege of working with with him for three years on doing a team version of this. And what we're finding is that so many people, even pastors that have, you know, all the alphabet soup behind their names of their degrees and everything like that, that they kind of reach a point where they go, wait a minute, I don't have a relationship with God. Like, I know about God. I believe in this, but I don't I don't know God. And Pete's journey and his transparency around that, I think, has really helped people reconnect through maybe less of a mystical theology, but bringing in some like current research on what we know about our relationships neurobiologically and Scripture and then ancient practices and kind of bringing it together. But, you know, your point about biblical literacy is so critical because, and I've spent my whole life advocating to eradicate Bible poverty through Bible translation. The word alone is just is part of it. Right. As you've said, I mean, when you think about the Bible in America, you know, and in English. Right. Most people haven't had access to a Bible. Literacy in the United States was, you know, there was no. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text guide to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text guide to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Economic reason to be literate other than to be able to read the Bible. And so, but most people couldn't even afford to own one. The American Bible Society started to give, make sure the Bible was available to people because that was not a common thing. Their big breakthrough was, we printed 10,000 Bibles in a year, you know? And everybody's like, whoa, that's a phenomenal number of Bibles. You know, what a breakthrough in technology, you know, compared to like what you look at what, you know, Bobby Gruenwald with YouVersion is doing now, right? But that was huge because people didn't even have access, yet they were still faithful living. And there has been for centuries. And so, so the text is really important, but that is not the problem in and of itself. It's the way we theologize the text and live it out and embody it. So I think you're, I couldn't agree more. Well, you know, we're getting to the end of the show and I try to ask. I know we're having a good conversation. The hour flies. So this has been awesome. I, I, I usually try to end the show with a question for my guests. And I don't want to assume what you're going to say to this question, but here's what, here's what I usually ask at the end. What do you think the church in America needs to be thinking about in order to be and make disciples more faithfully today? You know, it's interesting. We've been asking this question a lot at Barna of pastors, you know, like how would you get, you know, kind of like if you were asked pastors to give a letter grade on how they think their church is doing at making disciples, most pastors give like a C minus. Okay. And it's probably a D plus, but think about that as a self, you know, that is an honest answer. And yet as the church, we were called to make disciples. So this should be like the thing that we're doing really well at, or at least, you know, B plus. And so, so I think it is kind of a critical question that you ask because I do think that there's, there's something about that. And I do think that we, we have to realize that we can't have consumers in our churches, that we have to literally live a life of faithful presence because we want people to also be curious about Christianity. And right now they're not, they think they know that story. And, and when we're living a faithful presence in our communities and in our neighborhoods, I think the gospel shows up in really amazing ways. And so, you know, in the scripture, you know, in the Old Testament, you see you're either in Israel or you're living in exile, right? And for the New Testament believer, we are always in exile. Our spiritual regeneration means that we are, our citizenship is now in heaven. And in the United States, because we have Christianized the founding of our country so much, we have adopted a paradigm of dual citizenship. I'm a citizen of the United States and I'm also a citizen of heaven. But biblically, theologically, and you can disagree with me if you want, I think we're all.

Holy citizens of heaven, right? And so, you know, we're encouraged to live as aliens and strangers, resident aliens, you know, in this world. We're ambassadors, right? A foreigner living in a different place. And I think that if we can really adopt that idea, I don't belong to the place that I reside. That is not where my allegiance and my loyalty is. My trust, you used that word earlier, it's a great word, trust, my trust is in Christ alone. My identity is not in a political party or in political power. My identity is in the power of the one who sent me as an ambassador. I am an official capacity for the kingdom of heaven. I am an ambassador as though Christ were making his appeal through us, Paul writes in Corinthians. And so, I think we really have to tap into that idea as the church. We really have to divide ourselves from that, and we need a better theology of heaven. Because there's kind of a meme going around, it's saying, you know, hey, evangelicals, I got news for you. If spending eternity in heaven means spending it with you, I don't want to go. And so, you know, I've seen variations of that popping up all over social media, and I'm kind of like, I kind of understand that a little bit, right? And so, if church is boring, then we're not doing something right. Because heaven is going to be so great, the memory of things past is going to fade away. And, you know, I tell a funny story if I've got time, James, of working with my youth group. And I didn't prepare one night, and so I did the classic, all right, everybody, we're gonna have a discussion, all right? I've come to learn since then that discussions actually require more preparation than a message. Yeah, if you really want it to have an outcome. But I gave everybody a piece of paper, and I go, I want you to imagine that we all know that Jesus is returning next week. What are you gonna do differently, right? And so, what I was expecting them all to write was, you know, I would share my faith, you know, I would drop out of school and tell everybody about Jesus. And then what I was gonna do after reading these was jump up on the coffee table and go, we don't know when Jesus is gonna come back, we should be doing that right now, right? That was the plan, right? I opened up the first piece of paper and it says, I would get married so I could have sex. And then I opened up another piece of paper, I would get married so I could have sex. And another one, I would get married so I could have sex. And my plan is falling apart as I'm opening it up. And I look at my, you know, my other adult leader there, like, what do I do? And he goes, well, hey, at least they wanna get married first. You know, you're doing something right. It's a positive. Yeah, but it made me realize, oh my goodness, we actually think that, like, like sex would be better. I wouldn't want to miss out on that before being in the presence of God. And that right there tells you that we do not have a good idea of what heaven is gonna be all about. And so I'm trying to figure out, you know, I'm on a mission to make the church more curious, because I think when we're more curious, we're more appealing to other people, and we experience wonder and the wonder of God in ways that is appealing to other people that are looking as well. And it doesn't mean curiosity without, you know, curiosity with compromise, right? I think that's why we sometimes don't like curiosity. Right. There is curiosity without compromise, and that's what we need to live into with the church. Because it will help us have a bigger understanding of who God is, not a smaller one. I love that, man. Yeah, curiosity without compromise. Because, yeah, you know, the other big issue we deal with a lot is deconstruction. And so I could see, you know, people being a little bit skittish of curiosity because, oh, you're, you know, you're going to be questioning things that you shouldn't be questioning, but that's not what this is. This is, let's be... Well, I would actually say that our lack of curiosity is what's caused deconstruction. Caused deconstruction. Yeah. Because all of a sudden you have enough things that stack up that you go, wait a minute, I have to step out and figure this out. Whereas if we welcome people's questions and that was a part of the journey together as in our faith. Yeah. I don't understand this. I don't believe this. You know what I mean? I mean, look at even Thomas, right? I mean, right. I won't believe it unless I see it, you know, stop doubting and believe, you know what I mean? We take that as being like a pejorative thing, but Thomas was authentically experiencing his faith. And I was in the area of India where Thomas was martyred, right? For preaching the gospel in Chennai. And, you know, you sit there and go, wow, you know, this is the guy who doubted, but it was a part of an important part of his journey and a part of him coming to full faith and trust in Christ. And I think that's what we need to realize is, Hey, God can take your questions. Let's make church a place where this is the place you want to ask them, not the internet, not with your non-Christian friends. Church should be the safe place, but we have to let people sit with those things and not try to land the plane too quickly for them or tie it up with a bow or, you know, we got, we gotta be willing to say, you know, let this, let, let the rich young ruler walk away and wrestle with it, you know, a little bit. What's interesting. You say that, and I I'm no Oh, an old Testament guy. That was my specialty. And so I've been writing some pieces up. I've got them in the works on discipleship in the life of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And if, if you actually look at the way that God forms Abraham, it's exactly this process we're talking about. Abraham does some really strange things, arguably some immoral things, right? Maybe not even arguably some immoral things. It seems like he does some immoral things, but you never see the pronouncement. Right. Hey, just say you're my sister. You know, but, but God doesn't judge him from a moral perspective. He doesn't come to Abraham and say, Hey, you shouldn't have done this. This is a, you know, he isn't judged ever. The narrative just doesn't go there where it goes is God comes in, shows Abraham how he's going to continue to care for him. And Abraham grows in his trust of the Lord as he experiences these things and goes across his life, which culminates then in Genesis 22 and the near sacrifice of Isaac and all of that. But I think there's an important lesson there for us, which is we tend to want to fill people up with content first, get them to adhere to all of these different things and then start experiencing God. And it's like, well, those two don't have to happen in sequence. You know, they could go, they could go concurrently across time and people could really wrestle with this in a way that Jacob wrestles with God and the way that Abraham, I think, wrestles with God. Like you see those paradigms in scripture. We just don't usually lean into them. Well, the reality is trust is not a binary experience, right? Yeah. You don't all of a sudden trust God and now you're done. Right. There's something new to trust God with, right? There's constantly deeper levels of trust, just like in our marriages, other relationships and at work and business, we learn to trust people more and more. And I really, boy, we need to talk more about that because I have a whole paradigm around discipleship and the role of place in discipleship. And you're hitting on it with, with, with what I'm dying to know more about what you're, what you're digging out there in all of that. But you look at the role of place in trust and how Jesus and God sent people to places and dealt with places to put them in those situations of trust. It's powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Oh no. Agreed. I mean, I, I think it goes to that sort of embodied cognition that we're supposed to develop. And, you know, particularly when I look at the life of Abraham and this is just the one little tidbit I'll give you, but That initial removal of him from his father's family, from any level of security that he could have leaned back on to say, okay, it's okay. I'll try to trust this God. But when it doesn't work, I've always got this to lean back on. God has to remove him from that place and put him in a context where he doesn't have anything to lean on. And so there's, there's no more crutch left for Abram. He's either going to learn to trust God or he's going to have to figure out some other turn to take with his entire life. And so that place was really crucial. I think the movement down to Egypt and his interactions there, those things couldn't have been taught to Abram in the land. They had to be taught in Egypt. And so I agree with you. I think the places we inhabit are really crucial to forming and shaping us into different sorts of disciples and that we can learn different lessons as we're embedded in those contexts. Yeah. I love that idea. Yeah. Fantastic stuff. Yeah. I think, I think place is the missing component of

was lean on a tree and do not fall. You can't see the root structure, you can't see any of that, but you lean and you put your full weight. And so anytime that I think about trusting in God, I feel the muscle memory of leaning into a tree. And I've always done that since college, and I can totally feel it in the moment when I'm struggling, like with my checkbook or with, you know, a decision. And I go, wait a minute, where is my center of gravity? You know, oh, it's on my feet. It's not leaning into the tree. I'm not putting my weight into God. And that has kinetically, you know, like. Amazing how that stuff works. Yeah. It really is. It really is. And that one thought has helped me, I think, lean more into my relationship with Jesus in a dynamic, real way than I have. And I still cannot find the source of where I read that. I've looked for it, tried to find the word and all that, and I've not been able to find it. So if any of your listeners know, let us know because I'm dying to be able to give some more detail around that because people always ask me, now, what was that word or what language was that in? I'm like, I have no idea. That's cool, man. Well, Mark, I honestly, yeah, I honestly think we can go for another half an hour, but we probably should close it up. Yeah. Hey, thanks. Thanks for having me today. This was fantastic. Again, love the book. I just encourage everybody to go out, check it out. Faith for the Curious by Mark Matlock. It's available on Amazon. You can get it at Baker. It's, you know, just Google it. You'll find it and buy it, read it. Actually, if you go to faithforthecurious.com, there's some extra things you can get. You don't have to buy it through there, but there's a way that you can claim some preorder specials and things like that that you may want to, your readers may want to take advantage, your viewers may want to take advantage. Yeah, and we'll link that in the show notes. We'll get all those links in there for you. So just check out the show notes if you're interested. But I'd really encourage you to pick up the book and check it out. Mark, thanks for the work. Thanks for the great conversation, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This has been awesome. Great way to wrap up the day. So thank you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, we're doing this at the end or at the beginning, I guess, of Labor Day weekend. So this is the last thing for both of us, but it's been a pleasure. So thanks for being here. And thanks to all of you for listening. And we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian. 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.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances. God invites us to cultivate thankful hearts by turning our eyes toward him in good times and bad. To listen to more Abide Christian Meditations, just go to lifeaudio.com or search your favorite podcast app for Abide Christian Meditation. You can also download the Abide app for more biblical meditations at abide.com.