Erin Moniz | Intimacy, Identity, and the Church: Reimagining Relationships Through the Gospel

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. Before we start today's episode, I want to take a moment to tell you about usefultogod.com. From online courses to free downloadable study guides, I'm confident you'll find something to help you live faithfully in today's world. You can also check out some of my books, including Christian Resistance, Serpents and Doves, and my most recent contribution, the D.L. Moody Essentials Collection. As always, if you find this podcast valuable, take a second to like, share, and leave a positive review. It really does make a difference. And if you haven't yet, subscribe to our YouTube channel for even more content to equip and encourage you. Now, let's get into today's episode. Hey, everyone. Welcome to Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm joined today by Aaron Moniz. Aaron is a deacon in the Anglican Church in North America, and she's also associate chaplain and director of chapel at Baylor University. She's the author of a new book from IVP called Knowing and Being Known, and we're going to be talking a little bit about probably her work at Baylor as well as the book because they kind of dovetail. So, Aaron, welcome to the podcast. Really appreciate you being here. Oh, so good to be here. Really looking forward to the conversation. But talk a little bit. I read, you know, sort of the bio for the book and, you know, the little ads that IVP sent me. And so I was intrigued by the book. But talk a little bit about how you came to write this particular book and what prompted these thoughts and feelings to kind of come out in word form. Yeah, yeah. I didn't know that this book was going to be something that I would participate in or do at any point. Because there's always this idea in the back of your mind, like, do we really need another relationship book coming out of Christendom? Like, really? And honestly, for me, I've been in student ministry for over 20 years. I've been in higher ed chaplaincy for over a decade. And so it's an occupational hazard, of course, with my office hours, students coming in and so much of what they bring has to do with their intimate relationships. But in the course of attempting to just care for them, to just try to help them navigate what is a constantly shifting landscape and technology and the different things that they've been encountering, just in trying to have healthy relationships, it occurred to me that I may not know what I'm talking about. That I may not actually know how to help them. And you begin looking at the receipts in terms of, like, Christian relationships and how well we're doing compared to those who don't follow Christ. And it's really heartbreaking how similar our track record is for the types of relationships that are so important and meaningful to ourselves personally and to our society and to church that I thought, you know, we have all this content, but what is it? And is it helping us have healthy relationships? Because it doesn't really seem to. And I'm sitting across from my students and they're seeking ways to do this. And their faith is important to them. And they're trying to integrate all of this. And yet it only seems to be nominally helping them with this. And I couldn't quite figure out why at the beginning until I realized something, which is it's not just that this content wasn't specifically helping them have better, healthier relationships. It wasn't making them more mature Christians either. And that was a moment where I thought, has something been unmoored along the way about how we talk about relationships in Christendom and in discipleship spaces and the essentials and fundamentals of the gospel and Christ in our lives? And so that began a journey. I eventually got a chance to do a doctorate where I formally studied this subject that was so life-changing for me and how I care for and disciple in these topics that I actively pursued ways to just turn this content into something that could be shared. So that's how the book came about. Very cool. So I worked in higher ed for a long time and I kind of had a similar experience, not around relationships. Students didn't really come to me for relationship advice. I remember one of the part-time workers, you know, sort of my office asked me one time about dating and I said, my wife and I are high school sweethearts. Like if, you know, the only advice I can give you is go stand by his locker and maybe he'll ask you to the dance. Like I have no clue how to do this. Right. And so I didn't have a relationship advice, but one of the things that you talk about that just came to your book prompted for me, we had this issue where the students were sort of having conflicting thoughts about how their faith and their politics meshed. Yeah. And, you know, there were some people at the school that were like, wow, the students are just going liberal. And other people at the school, you know, kind of wanting to police what was going on. And I was kind of sitting back saying, well, what if they just can't figure out how the two are related to each other? Like, it's not that they're, they're saying that this is biblically right. You don't like, if you talk to them, they knew it wasn't biblically right, but they just couldn't quite figure out how to bring the two together, how to integrate them. And I feel like that's a lot of what you're addressing in this book. It's like, they have, to some degree, an understanding of the faith, maybe an intellectual knowledge or a head knowledge of these things. They understand the right things to say, but then when the rubber meets the road, it's very difficult for them to understand how that actually matters. I think at one point you talk about, you know, how does my Christian faith influence my relationships? And you kind of say their understanding of it was, meh, right? Yeah, essentially. That's a technical term, right? That the relationship is meh. And it's, yeah, truly some of that discovery was sort of critical for me, even thinking about my own formation in these topics. And that's why it was such a powerful shift, both for me as a minister to emerging adults, but then also just for me as a person living this out in my own life and attempting to have this robust gospel that is actually being animated in a way that has been gifted to us. And so a lot of that is, do I know how to articulate this? Do I know what the gospel is? Do I understand sort of the integration of intimate relationships into a life following Christ? Because if I don't, then there's no way I'm going to be able to help my students make those connections. And so it was good and it was challenging and it was formative. But then sort of seeing that disconnect from them began me trying to figure out what questions I needed to start with. And that was the biggest starting point because some of this really just has to do with our most essential formation as Christ followers and its evidence. So sort of the proof, the receipts are being shown in how our intimate relationships are or not working well. But you track that back and sort of the root cause actually sort of begins with, do we understand our identity in Christ and the gospel and how that is animated in our lives? And so it began less about how do we have healthy relationships? What are the behaviors and concepts and ideas and framework that we want? Those are still important. Like that's still like good and valuable. But we can't start there. It forced me to have to push backwards to see what is the root that informs this. And that essentially, I mean, the short answer is really just the gospel, the story of God unfolding in Scripture and in our lives. So for my students, that's a point now I try to connect the dots on for. And you talked about, you know, when you're talking about sort of this storied aspect of how you I don't know whether you how you approached it, but I think, you know, as we try to immerse ourselves within the gospel, there's a there are certain changes that need to take place. And I thought one of the really interesting aspects of your book was the way you talked about almost Christians co-opting the culture and sort of drawing that in. And so what we think we're being immersed in is the gospel. But in some ways, we're getting sort of a mixed bag of culture and gospel that are keeping us from having good intimate relationships. Is that a fair way to summarize that? Yeah, absolutely. Like, I think for so long, especially for folks like myself, that they grew up in like the heart of purity culture, these moments that shaped the narrative the way we understand and talk about these these subjects. There was always sort of a sense that something was a little off and we weren't always able to name it because the leaders and the narratives that were pushing us felt so Christlike, so on track, so moving towards like purity and goodness and these things that it was all dressed up in a way where you go, I guess this is right. Like, I guess this is the way forward. And now my book doesn't doesn't necessarily try to dive too deep into sort of unpacking purity culture. There are other wonderful authors and scholars who are doing that with whose books are definitely.

It's worth reading because there's a lot to unpack there, and I think my generation and the generations just below me are doing that pretty well, but it's a warning light on the dashboard, right? That it signals something about the way we've been talking about this in the church. And so I try to just name a lot of those things. I try to just say, hey, we tried to elevate marriage, and in doing so, we've actually diminished it. And we've done that by sort of creating this hierarchy where we invite people to think about their romantic relationships as the way to be successful humans and adults. And so this becomes part of our narrative of our identity and where our value and worth comes from. So we diminish singleness and anything that doesn't have an active pursuit of the married nuclear family ideology. And in doing so, we've also placed this incredible amount of pressure on marriage and the nuclear family in a way that we can see in our churches is often not actually leading towards good, healthy units. We're still struggling with the same problems because of these narratives where we said, hey, just get married, just have kids, live this sort of life that checks these boxes. But so many of my friends and colleagues who are in that phase of life are also saying, you know, this on its own isn't sustainable without these layers of communal relationships that are then building up the family and building up our marriages and allowing us to have a larger engagement as the family of God and to think more critically about what that means and how that mechanism is used in the local church. And so in some ways, just wanting to name what this has been like for our single friends, which of course, is a growing population in our churches. Fewer and fewer people getting married. There's just a lot that is there are a lot of people sitting in our pews who are waiting to hear something different about their lives mattering to God in more than just a pursuit of what may or may not turn out for them. Not everyone finds that marriage. Some people do, they get divorced. It's not a clean or predictable narrative. And yet we impose this on folks as if the successful achievement of this is paramount to them being a full adult, a fully actualized human that then also has value and worth. And that's a cultural narrative. That's a narrative that we've been selling in areas that don't have Christ as the center. That's happening out in the world. We sort of baptized it, maybe without really thinking, maybe sort of unintentionally, but in doing so, we've actually dislodged the fact that it's the gospel. It's Christ that gives us our identity. It's Christ that gives us our value and worth. It's not actually these things. And so we've gone off message, again, with the intention of trying to create good, stronger marriages. Like we wanted to elevate that. That's not a bad thing and we don't have to diminish it in order to kind of reset that. But those are some of the things that I just wanted to be able to take and pull out and name in the book and say, hey, we've been stuck in this and it's not really pursuing Christ or the gospel, but we don't have to burn it all down to recover it. It's just re-centering and recapturing how the gospel then informs these things. But yeah, I think it was important to take a critical eye of culture outside of the church and the culture within the church and hold them up together and say, they're not actually as different as we'd like to claim. And as ministers, especially as leaders, we have to kind of reckon with that. It was a starting place for me and something that I hope to call people to. I thought that aspect of your work was really interesting. I've been looking into biblical masculinity or the so-called biblical masculinity, I suppose. And one of the things that I sort of came, became convicted about was that whatever manhood is, it has to emerge from discipleship. So in other words, it can't be, here's what it means to be a man. Now we're going to disciple you toward that. And it was just one of those things where you start, you know, once I started reading scripture and reading some of the ancillary works on it, and I'm going, whoa, but if we're all supposed to conform to Christ, what does this do for discipleship that is aimed at conforming to Christ? Is Christ the pinnacle of manhood or is he the pinnacle of humanity? You know, we don't really worry about discipling women toward Christ and thinking that they're going to become manly. Right. And so it's like, this just doesn't work. And when you start to unpack it and really look at the biblical texts, you find that a lot of the things we're saying aren't necessarily bad, they're just not biblical. And so they're a stereotype of manhood that's laid across the discipleship. And so what I heard you saying was we have something similar going on with relationships. And I could see that sort of dovetailing into the masculinity aspect because almost every time you talk about biblical masculinity, it always dovetails into, you have to be a good husband, you have to be a good father. You need to protect your family. Like it leans back into that. And we sort of lose this other aspect. It's like, why can't it be a single man and be masculine? I'm kind of lost. Like how does this work? And so I just really appreciated the way you discussed that in the book. I thought it was very good. You bring up such a good thing, James, because, and this is only really touched on in the book. It's really sort of just a kind of a moment, but really this discussion about how we disciple men and women towards this really beautiful flourishing identity of masculinity and femininity, which I think are also places where we've been very competitive and territorial in the sense that we can't, again, adopting sort of a secular narrative where it becomes this zero sum power game, where in order for me to be fully actualized, I have to diminish you and vice versa, right? We're caught in this. And we know that that's not of Christ. We know that that's not how Christ exists. And yet we're struggling in our churches to really capture that narrative in a place where our men feel really seen and utilized and actualized. And then also our women feel really seen and utilized and actualized and that we're doing it well for both without having to put them in competition with each other. I believe that what we're seeing in churches, I don't know if anybody is familiar with that. There was a last fall, a New York Times article, Ruth Graham came out that talks about this new revelation of men sort of outpacing women in church participation, religious zeal for the first time in recorded history. I saw that, yeah. It's crazy. It's this wild thing. But when you begin to look at what the data is showing, men are becoming more active in churches, but they're tending to gravitate towards churches that have sort of a framework that is invitational and inspiring and empowering to men. And then what we see about women is they're either starting to exit the church or they are looking for churches that are doing that more specifically for them. So when I go to a church to talk about relationships, right, in the book, I'll oftentimes find that I'm talking afterwards to somebody and they're like, yeah, we have a lot of single people here, but they're all women. Or we have a lot of singles here, but they're all men. And this place where many of us kind of saw as a portal to finding a life partner is the church is now, we're going to be seeing sort of what I believe is going to be a crisis of Christian marriage, where we have these splits of single women and single men building in these demographic areas where they're not actually meeting each other at church and struggling with some of the shared values. But a church or a denomination that can think about how to do that well for both genders can, I believe, save Christian marriage. Like I believe can be an instrument towards these relationships that we've sort of taken for granted that the church has always sort of been a housing for, but that's changing. And that's changing in ways that I think we will see the effects of pretty rapidly. Researchers are starting to come out with this. Ryan Berg has data on this. I think Relevant Magazine just had an article that came out about like what this is doing to Christian dating. Like we're already beginning to see the implications. But it's all tied in to each other. So that search for Christian masculinity and femininity is, the fates are tied together with how we think about relationships. 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 you,

To 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. So, and I know this is a really complex issue, so I don't want to go down a rabbit trail with it, but— Let's go there. Let's go there, Jason. So I have two thoughts in my head. Number one, I grew up Lutheran. You're Anglican, more high church, liturgical, you know, it has a set structure, and it never felt to me like it was tailored particularly to men or women in the same way that I see some of the churches, you know, more like mega churchy kind of places that are, that are really like, they have a, they're oozing machismo, right? And so the men want to go there and eat meat and grill and whatever the men do, right? And then, you know, there, I guess there are feminine churches or whatever. Like I don't, so I think there's a tailoring that we're doing that is creating, I would say, just based on what I read in your book, a context in which intimacy is going to be hindered because when you define intimacy, it has those three categories, self-giving love, attention and curiosity, and then commitment. And so the more we're sort of fracturing this or teasing it apart and saying, you're over here and you're over here, you do start to lose the ability to exercise self-giving love within an ecclesial context. In other words, I may not like the service, but I look what it's doing for everyone else and I can give this one up. Like, maybe I don't, I'd rather have hymns than praise songs. It's okay. No big deal, right? Like I'll suffer through. And then attention curiosity becomes over-sexualized, which is another thing you kind of talk about in the book. And then you've got the, the really a lack of commitment because the commitment becomes to being a commitment to yourself as opposed to someone else. So I don't think that's a, I don't want to oversimplify, but I would like to sort of discuss, is that a reading, do you think, part of the problem like that we're seeing? Yeah, I think there's no way to get around that what we've known for a long time, which is religious freedom in a country like ours in North America means that you create a religious marketplace, which is language that lends to basically a framework of consumerism. So church shopping, religious marketplace, all of these things reflect the ideals of when I'm looking for a church, when my students are looking for a church, they're starting with sort of a shopping list. Because with religious freedom comes the market, comes, what are you going to do for me over here? Is this pastor funny over here? Do I like this? And I never grew up with any sort of direction given to me of how to choose a church as an adult. These are things we kind of had to figure out in real time as we were moving to new cities and saying, well, what is important? But there's a lack of that. There's a gap in our discipleship and ecclesiology of thinking, like, what is the church? What is it for? What are we aiming? What makes a good church versus another? And so what we have, though, are just consumer skills. So the same way that we would judging whether or not we want to go to this store or that store, patron, you know, be consumers of this or that brand, we relay down to how we think about churches. And it's really difficult because it's a tough thing to dislodge from because it's the cultural water in which we swim in. But it also means that church leaders, if they want to survive, almost have to think in that same marketable way of church. And so you got to sell it. You got to sell it. And so what we do see, especially in the free church tradition that has a lot of autonomy and ability to kind of build up this brand for the church, is that they're catering to different demographics. And again, like I'm not saying this in a way that I'm not trying to diminish or critique anyone in this. It's a very difficult thing to dislodge. It's to mainline churches can kind of appeal to these older traditions and kind of stay there. But you also kind of have to figure out some ways to schmooze the are we a church that people are wanting to come to? We become sort of consumer enterprises in religion. All of that has is pretty foregone in the growth of American Christianity. But what it means for us now is that as we're encountering these religious and political dichotomies, as we are getting into more severe cancel culture, as we are mediating our intimate relationships through technology, as we're beginning to be formed in different ways, the church has less and less ability to really be in these spaces and be the formative presence and institution in these spaces. And so it lends people that I work with my students and emerging adults who are out in the world to say, How what's the function of the church in my life? And also, how am I going to find my people? And is it going to be the church? And is it going to be the dating apps? Is it going to be my workplace? And these questions are becoming more critical as our loneliness and isolation is starting to have greater and greater effects on our mental health and our sense of understanding of who we are and our value in the world. So it's all tied together. It's all tied together. It's a very complex problem, but one that is worth naming and striving for because I don't think it's a fatalistic foregone conclusion because what I do see is also the inbreaking of the Holy Spirit into people's lives every day moving us towards Christ and towards each other. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point. It's and and I appreciate not wanting to disparage the churches because I do think they're trying to do what they can. Absolutely. You know, like it's there's I do. I do. I mean, I meet with a lot of pastors and so I don't get the sense that a lot of them are just out for themselves. I think they're really trying to do what they can, do it faithfully. But it is challenging, especially now, even with things like, and I've mentioned this before, like travel sports, you know, where it used to be when I was growing up, Sunday was, you didn't do anything on Sunday, especially Sunday morning, right? And even Wednesday nights were usually blocked off because catechism and, you know, those kind of things. Now it's not like that. Like the church has been sort of displaced and it doesn't have those holders within the culture. And so there's a really difficult dynamic that's created. How do you get people there? You're having to be part of the competitive space. Like, how do I get people here on a Sunday if they're not just for whatever reason, committed to be here on a Sunday? You know, those kinds of things are really important. But I think the consumerist aspect, you also talk about, don't you, in terms of just one-to-one relational intimacy. Like this idea that we should be kind of autonomous shoppers looking for the right fit for us kind of vibe to it, right? Is sort of influencing even the way that we do our one-to-one relationships as well as the church. So, I mean, this is sort of a bottom-up, top-down problem. Yeah, yeah. The consumerism, the reduction of the consumeristic framework affects our religion, affects our ecclesiology, affects the way we think about the family, and most critically, affects the way we think about our intimate relationships, particularly our sexual relationships and ourselves. So we are commodifying others and commodifying ourselves in sort of this acquiescence to how do I find connection? And we sort of settle for what's available to us. And technology has come along and said, we'll help with that. We'll streamline. You'll get connection without any of the risk. You can have it all and you don't even have to worry about the messiness of being a human. And there's always a new app or a new thing just willing to sell us like a way to have connection without the risks of intimacy. It's a massive market, you know, and we're all here for it. But it's leaving us unsatisfied and we feel that and we sense that. And I think that for my students, just starting from a different starting point, asking different questions, creating a different imagination is the best thing I think we can do to dislodge from some of the feeling of inevitability of being swept up in this cultural narrative that tells us that we are essentially consumers and sexual animals at heart, that it's a scarcity mindset. No one's going to help you. There's a functional atheism that we sort of find ourselves in as Christians saying, it's up to me to get what I need from the people in my life, from what's in my life. And I'm starting from behind and it might just be no one is coming to help me. I might have to figure this out on my own. And that is a life.

The enemy that is, I think, drawing us into this false sense of self, this false sense of the world that pulls us away from God's vision and economy, that is actually what is true, that is not about scarcity, but is about abundance. That is about an identity that's already set, that we are already free, that we are already full, that we are loved and adopted. And yet we don't wake up feeling free. We don't wake up feeling full. And a lot of that is this overwhelming tide of scarcity and competition and consumerism just bears down on us all. Which again is why I think relationships are both the ends and the means for getting out of the rut, because it's not just we have to get out of the rut to have these healthy relationships, but it's those relationships that grab us by the lapels and say, don't forget who you are. Don't forget what is true. This isn't real. All of these are just sort of lie seeping in. You're not, you're not living in scarcity. You're a child of abundance. You're not in some sort of slavery. You're in freedom. And that is a game changer. But to be able to be ripped out of those lies over and over again requires a power equal to the massive weight of those lies. And boy, what else, but just the beauty of intimate relationships of people who know us and see us and name us and love us that that has the power to do that. It's such a beautiful thing that it becomes critical to our living as Christians in the world. I will say, I mean, I think one of the, one of the trends that I've seen lately has been sort of the utility of religion, you know, the quote unquote utility of religion. And it just strikes me as you're talking there that that conversation is even more pernicious than I thought it was, right? You know, to think that utility or the religion only has value to the extent that it's helpful to you. Yeah. There's something just distinctly unchristian about that. Yeah. Right. And yet, as you think through some of the themes you address in the book, that consumerism aspect, but also the autonomy aspect. Right. We think about, you know, human autonomy as independence from God. And even though we might not, you know, say that, oh, yeah, I'm independent from God. I don't know that you catch a lot of Christians saying that because if they know intuitively, that's not true. But functionally, it's always, yeah, I'm going to do it. I'll take care of it. And we don't cultivate in that active presence of God in our lives, which then in turn sort of creates these holes for us that we can't fill. It puts us on paths that are the wrong way. You know, it has this implementing strategies that will never really work. Right. That are aimed at something other than what we should be aiming at. And it just strikes me that the way you're crafting the whole story and challenge here is really crucial because it does get at so many core issues that we don't often think about. They're sort of the defaults that have been programmed into us and we need to go in and change those settings a bit, to use a computer analogy. Yeah, absolutely. I think it was a real shock for me and sort of a beautiful moment to realize that a theology of intimacy in Scripture has less to do with the behavioral proof texts that are sort of the low-hanging fruit that we often get to as we're building these narratives for others. But it's really this story where God is communicating about God's self to God's people and using the portals of intimate relationship, using these different motifs of marriage and family and friendship because there's this drive and this draw for connection and closeness, this weird God who uses language of the holy parent and bridegroom and bride and just like stuff that ancient gods are just like, that's weird. I don't know what you're like. Why would you do this? This is so bizarre. This should just be about sacrifices and fealty and your sort of moodiness and will you bring us rain? And like when Yahweh began shifting the narrative and using intimacy language, it was a game changer. And it began to continue to build all throughout Scripture until we have Jesus saying, this is how you pray. You start with our Father who art in heaven. Right. And all the way to John 15 where he looks at his disciples and he says, you're not, you're no longer servants. You're my, you're my friends. And this stuff just keeps coming in like an electric shock to what we think about utilitarian religion, both in an ancient sense and in a modern sense. And that to me when I was like, oh my gosh, intimate relationships is not just something we want to do well because we want to be good Christ followers and do this well along with many other things. It is core to me actually knowing the gospel. It is core to me actually knowing who God is. It is core to me understanding who I am in Christ because I am now connected intimately to the story and the person and the economy and the narrative that I have been created into purposefully. And so this is not a serving suggestion anymore. Our relationships, our pursuit of intimacy and our friendships and our family life and our romantic relationships at the heart of it. It's not just so that my husband and I can live as good, healthy people sharing the same space, which hopefully we do, right? Like that's, that's a win, right? That's kind of a baseline. That's a baseline goal, right? You know, It's a good thing, but it's not the point. It's not the purpose. It's not the end game. It's the fact that we have this front row being each other's frontline brother and sister in Christ who get the proximity to be able to understand each other's lives well enough to be the first ones to see the warning lights go on and to be able to look at each other and say, this isn't you. You don't need this. This isn't who you are. Don't forget that you are free. Don't forget who you are. Come back to the light. I've got you. I know you. I see you. I also know what a jerk you can be like. I, I, I don't have rose colored glasses. I know all the things, but that's why it's even more compelling. And that our marriages are that, our friendships are this, our family life is this. These people who occupy these really critical spaces are the best ones to be able to do that. And we do that reciprocally for each other. And it's like, oh, the point of this and the point of doing this in the local church is this community of remembrance because I'm living in a constant state of spiritual amnesia, forgetting who I am, forgetting who God is, forgetting why I'm here, forgetting what this is all about. And we have this mandate to then like build these relationships and keep them healthy for the purpose of being able to live out of the identity that is already ours because of Christ. We don't have to earn it or go seeking it, but we do have to remember. And, and I need help because I can try to remember on my own and do my quiet times diligently. But there's something tricky about being in my own head that another voice outside that goes in has just this greater power because again, they're, they're filled with the Holy Spirit. And so I'm actually encountering the Spirit of God in these relationships. It's so mind-blowing to me that it means for me now, I'm not just trying to help people have healthy relationships. I want to show that these relationships are worth being intentional and critical about because they are the lifeline. They are the oxygen of the gospel if we are doing them in the way that God has gifted them to us. And so that has now shifted for me, how I exist in my marriage, how I exist in my friendships with my family. Am I remembering to be that voice and that presence that is constantly drawing them back to that truth in how we live our lives? So it's a major shift. 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. It's interesting because I think making that major shift is also fraught with challenges. I had a gentleman on who did some research on curiosity in the church. And as I recall it, I'd have to go back and look at my notes. It's been a while. But he said, basically, people who aren't Christians or just sort of visiting a church,

Christians who are exploring Christianity are far more curious than Christians. Christians aren't asking new questions. They're not really exploring. They've decided to be content or complacent, whichever vibe you want to give it, with what they already know. And it seems to me that that's just a recipe for, number one, being less capable of developing the sort of intimate relationships you're talking about that can actually challenge you and push you and pull you back and everything an intimate relationship does. But there was also a point in your book where you talked about, I believe you were discussing a book called How to Know People, and there was a reference there about questions being an act of morality or a moral act. And I think that, as we become complacent and we become less curious about people, this is then reflected in how we even bother to engage them too. Like if I can't even muster the energy to ask a probing question of someone, and it's more like, hey, how's your week go? And I'm just really hoping they go, great. And then we can all move on, right? If I can't muster the energy to do that, that intimacy is never going to be related. And I think you deal with questions a fair amount in the book. I'd just kind of like to hear you talk through that questioning aspect and maybe help people, how would we cultivate a genuine care and concern for others that would even prompt us to ask questions? Yeah, no, that's so good. So David Brooks is the one who I was referencing there. It's a really lovely book, how he thinks about the basic recipe, the basic ingredients for human engagement that leads towards flourishing and thriving and depth and goodness. And it's a very basic primer. I remember reading the book and thinking, I'm not encountering anything new. It's not like I'm having aha moments, but these fundamentals are so taken for granted in our interactions with each other that it's good that the book exists because it resets and reminds us of these fundamentals because we're just not doing them. And I think part of what starves curiosity is, again, the fact that I am working overtime to manage my own scarcity mindset and insecurities because I have these false narratives and false ideas in my mind about who I am and what I need. It's really hard for me to see you and to just love you and care for you if I'm coming feeling as if I need something from you in order to just exist on a baseline as a person who matters. So even good things become twisted and distorted because I'm trying to get the sense of self from my interaction with you. And it's really more about filling the tank, even if I'm not aware of it. Some of these things are really unintentional. But if I remember even for a moment that I'm free, that I'm full, that I'm beloved, that I have everything I need for life and godliness, then I come full to my job, to my relationships, and I get to just sit there and be like, how are you? Tell me everything. Because I don't have that sort of desperate craving anymore. I get to come and receive and interact and have reciprocity and curiosity because that is what a free person brings to the room. And again, we are free because of Christ, because of the cross and the resurrection, because Christ has given us this new identity in Christ, the blood covering us that is sanctifying us in our understanding of what it means to have the Holy Spirit in us. All of that stuff is set, is because Christ finished it, gave it to us. It's there. But I still don't always, I'm not really tapped in to what is available to me, who I truly am, how free and full I am. And so there's this sort of constant push of the enemy, I think, to kind of slowly draw us back to these lies of scarcity and need and lack. And so it starves the ability for us to build relationships on curiosity and reciprocity and attention because that might threaten what I'm trying to get and what I believe is required for me to not just feel so fragile and insecure. And so it puts up a block to a lot of that engagement. And as Christians, we're not really talking about this. We're not really talking about the fundamental building blocks of healthy relationships and how that ties in to what Christ has already, what God has already done and knows aligns really well with how this works seamlessly in our lives. And that the gospel, I think, gives us all the tools to navigate both that brokenness and that victory that is sort of the dichotomy that we're always living in as humans this side of the kingdom. It's true. We had a conversation not too long ago on church leaders and moral failures and those kind of things. And one of the sort of conundrums that we talked about was, how is a pastor supposed to practice the confession of sin when the pastor knows that confessing certain sins are going to have negative, like professional negative consequences? It isn't just like the sort of negative consequences that I might have if I said, oh, I'm doing this and people look at me like I'm a leper and scarlet A's and those kind of things, right? It's actual, tangible, this is not going to, you know, act back on my family because I've made this mistake. It feels to me like there's a really difficult thing we need to wrestle with there in order to get past the threats of opening ourselves up to the sort of curiosity and intimacy and relationship that we are supposed to have without, while weighing the institutional realities in which we exist in. It just feels like all of us are sort of like part of what I hear you saying is intimacy is hard because it's threatening. Yeah. Right. I mean. Absolutely. Absolutely. And in some, yeah, in some relationships, it's even more threatening. Like, I mean, my wife knows pretty much everything about me, but I don't know that a lot of other people would, you know, I mean, you just, as you move out of that more, most intimate circle, you get more guarded. So maybe that's the question. How do you, how do you think about that sort of guardedness within intimacy? Do you, do you think about that? Absolutely. Like this is something that I sort of, again, sort of touch on. The book has so many kind of launching points where it's like, this could be a whole other book. This should be a whole other piece of content. It's very much a primer that I'm hoping content will, will sprout out of actually, as this is just the beginning of not even necessarily of me creating it, but I'm hoping it will inspire others to begin building healthy content on this because we need these moments. We need to be able to say, okay. Vulnerability is an essential ingredient to intimacy. We can't actually become close and be more intimate without risking being a little bit more known. But the more someone knows us, every piece of information we give someone is like giving them a bullet. And you talk about your wife. I always think about like my husband and I, we have these nuclear silos on each other, right? Like at this point, like the intimacy is so profound that like we have the ability to just destroy each other. Right. And even, so like even amicable divorces often like reflect this level of intimacy where we just have such a capacity. But what makes my relationship with my husband and having that threatening ominous nuclear silo, we don't live in the shadow of those things because that level of vulnerability is protected by a parallel track of trust building. Right. Okay. And I think ultimately a very, very basic and simplified recipe for thinking about intimacy is a parallel tracks of being vulnerable and trust building. So a lot of my students will become way too vulnerable, way too fast, like jump in, really put themselves at risk emotionally, physically, like all of that. And they haven't built any trust. There hasn't been active trust building to know it's like, is this person, this person, should I share this? There's also the temptation to overprotect. This was my MO. Again, it just stifles intimacy when it's like, oh, we're doing all this trust building. This person is a trustworthy person, but I am still holding back. I'm still like keeping them at arm's length. Another, another.

opposite to intimacy, but when these two grow in parallel tracks together, you actually can grow vulnerability safely. Which seems like, oh, that feels like a real simple and accessible solution. Great. We just become more vulnerable as the trust builds and we have these, you know, we grow together. And so I'll share this with students, and I can't remember if I shared this in the book. It may be one of the anecdotes I share, but I'll write this little graph on the board, and I'll be like, show these little arrows, like, look, vulnerability and trust-building together on this one linear track, and they're all writing it down, and they're like, oh, this is how I have healthy relationships. And then there's this moment where I'm like, but do we do this? Why don't we do this? What gets in the way? It can't just, like, it's not just the knowledge of, oh, we should do these good things. We still self-sabotage, and so, like, it's like, what's the problem? And I just write this big marker and smearing my stuff, like, shame over the top of it. Because what often gets in the way of that sort of very kind of easily understood trajectory of trust-building and vulnerability is the fact that there is a narrative inside of me that says, mm-mm, you can't tell them that. They will hate you. You've got to hide that. You can't. You've got to lock that away. That's inaccessible territory. Shame doesn't just tell us you did something wrong. Shame says you are something wrong. So, again, it hits at that identity language that is a personal affront to what the gospel says is true about us. But that's sort of the internal struggle, I think, that is happening on the battleground of our intimate relationships. So, that's being fleshed out. The symptoms exist in our attempts to navigate the risk of vulnerability because we also have this other narrative that says, you've got to hold on to that. So, when we see moral failings of leaders, some of it is the gravity of the failing itself, but in many cases, it is the long-standing cover-up. It's the hiding. It's the denial. It's that this isn't an act of confession. It's being drug into the light because now you've been found out. And so, there's sort of a dark path where we get so far down, where we see something like Ravi Zacharias, where we're just stunned. Right. Right. Just absolutely stunned. It's like, how could, how long, how far down that dark path can someone go and sort of still live in this public existence? And it's like, shame will do that. Shame will do that because it demands that you hide. It demands that you keep these things in the dark, and it says, this is you, and no one needs to know, and no one can know, and there's nothing stopping just that. That push into the darkness. And again, the only interception is if someone is able to get in that darkness with us and be like, what? No. Come back. And there really is something powerful that diminishes the intensity of that narrative when we confess, when we bring things into the light. I find with my students, this is such a powerful moment where they're like, oh, this loses a ton of power just by bringing it into the light, just by saying it out loud. And as leaders, again, this is sort of a different conversation, but we need spaces, I think, to be able to do that so that we don't end up just on the long, dark paths where we're just sort of tumbling all the way down the cliff. But confession has to, I think, be situated safely and in ways that are sort of a constant sort of maintenance of the battle of these narratives. And intimate relationships provide that space so that we can be healthy leaders, and we're also pretty broken people at the end of the day, like that we're never gonna be these outstanding, pure, awesome, you know, sinless people. But the stakes are higher when you're in a public position, for sure. But I know we're kind of coming to the end of our time here. And one of your last chapters in the book, you talk about friendship. Yeah. And I think friendship is a topic that doesn't quite get coverage as much as we probably should and probably should get coverage. I remember one time I was giving a talk, and I think I wrote a chapter on it somewhere where I talked about accountability is an act of friendship, you know, holding one another accountable as an act of friendship. But I think you take that much further than I did. And so I'm just interested, maybe we can close on this. Like, talk to us about the importance of friendship and how this relates to that intimacy you're trying to cultivate in the book. Yeah, I think if there was an opportunity to write another book on the heels of this one, the first one I would want to attend to is the art of friendship in the local church space, in the life of the Christian. Because I spent some of the book really, like, harping on these false hierarchies that we create. And then I sort of say, oh, but if there is a hierarchy, it's friendship. That's how everybody else is like, oh, but it really is like if we want healthier marriages, healthier family life, healthier dating, healthier leadership, like all, it's a tide that raises all ships. Putting friendship front and center to how we think about sort of the nucleus of intimacy as it relates to the Christian life and what God is inviting us into. If we study the art of friendship, I think all of these intimate relationships become healthier. And it applies to everyone across the board. It is not relegated to certain types of status. Anyone, no matter where they are on their developmental journey or in their relationship status, benefits and gains more intimacy as a result. And so I believe that the art of friendship has been an untapped spiritual discipline in our churches. And that's one of the sort of outstanding problems that I would love to see course corrected. But thinking about confession and accountability and just all the benefits of being known and seen by people who have such a depth of the gospel to understand the power and reciprocity of grace and forgiveness. Because there's limits there, right? There's boundaries set. We don't just turn people into doormats. We don't just say, oh, it's all good. And there's a way that the gospel really helps us understand the delicate and important balance of being grace givers and grace receivers. But also, it's like, how else are you going to do it? You're broken. You're a broken person. You're going to spill that crap out onto everyone you love. What do you do? Because you're never going to not be that person. And you're never going to stop having to be infected by other people's sin and brokenness. So I feel like the gospel is the only thing that has all the tools to say, no, no, no, it'll be fine. You can do this. Because there's an ongoing practice of confession and repentance and repair and grace giving and grace receiving that actually makes us better. That is part of that sanctifying process. But it lives out in real time in our relationships. That's where it just has this sort of synergy that keeps those ideas actually alive and embodied in how we do this. But it also means we have to be students of that. Going back to, like, do I know how to articulate the gospel to my students? This is sort of my moment of having to say, do I know how to be an agent of the gospel in my relationships and with myself and how to do this safely and well and good in the way that God has given us? But then confession becomes really helpful because it's part of how we repair. When I get to say, sorry, I was really, that was, that was mean thing for me to say to you when you were really just trying to finish the grocery list so that we could have food in the house. And I snap at you and I'm a jerk and like, can I just, let's just, let's just put that out there so that we can repair and patch. And of course, that's a small example, but, you know, when you live, when you share a household with people, whether that's roommates or family or married people or whoever, that's your day-to-day. That's the world you're constantly living in. But when it grows to bigger things, when it grows into deeper things, the only, the only safe paths are the kind that are being guided by the Holy Spirit and the power of Christ in the people of God. And so it's essential. It's essential for us to have those people in our lives and to learn how to be those people for other people in our lives. So I would love to see the local church. I would love to see the content coming out of Christendom. Move us toward that. Help us. Give us tools so we can be better. Yeah. Be interesting.

About what that needs to look like, because it is really challenging to think through right now, I think. How do we go about doing this? We've had such a self-help culture. We've had such a You know, three steps to your best life sort of vibe to us. And this is not what your book is conveying at all. Friendship is not a three-step process. It's a hard, arduous, risky, trusting, fun process to go through. And it's often messy. And so I really appreciate that. Aaron, we're out of time, unfortunately, but I really appreciate you being here. I appreciate you being on. This is a great conversation. This has been fun. Yeah. And I just encourage everybody, this is an IVP book. IVP gives us 20% discount if you order off their site, so you can check the show notes for that. Knowing and Being Known, really enjoyed this book. It prompted so many little spurs of thought. I think just like you described, there are so many tentacles out there that you could explore. It was just a fun read for somebody who kind of likes to think about these things. So recommend it to everybody who's listening. Go out, grab this. Check the link in the show notes. We'll also have a link to your website in the show notes and probably some other things. So check that out. But otherwise, thanks for being here, Aaron. Really appreciate it. Thank you. It was great talking with you. Yeah. Thanks, everybody, for staying with us. And we'll see 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. Have you ever attempted to read the entire Bible? Did you do it or did you only make it partway? I'm John Stonge and I host a podcast that will make it possible for you to make it through the entire Bible one chapter at a time. I've been hosting the Chapter a Day Audio Bible podcast since 2015 and every single day of the week I read one chapter of scripture, then follow that up with a time of prayer. And if you're looking for daily insights and inspiration directly from God's Word, I hope you'll give the Chapter a Day Audio Bible a listen. You can find it at lifeaudio.com or on your favorite podcasting app.