Thinking about Theology and the Creative Process: An Interview with Jason Gray

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, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm joined by Nate, my co-host, and I'm gonna let Nate introduce our special guest today. So, Nate, take it away. This is Jason Gray, and for me, I'm excited because it's always good to have one of your buddies on. I've been a fan of his music for years, but working with him on K-Love radio when I worked on the radio side there, got to do a couple tours with him, and I'm not just saying this, honestly, I think he's one of the most authentic, one of the most genuine, and one of the most big-hearted people I've ever met. He has this ability to just make people feel so valued and so seen and so loved. And so I'm just super grateful he made time to be here with us today. So welcome, Jason Gray. Thank you so much. May I live up to all of that. And there was a moment there where I thought, is he talking about himself or is he talking about me? So, takes one to know one. I don't know. You know, there's a running joke around the office that Nate knows everyone. And so there's one of our employees works out in Portland, and he was at a church conference, and there was a skater guy out there. And he said, Nate, my buddy went up to him and was just like, hey, do you happen to know Nate? And he's like, yeah, I know Nate. And so everyone knows Nate, and we're blessed to have him because he has a way of relating to people and actually being genuine about it, which is pretty awesome. Well, I appreciate that. That's really kind. That's my experience. I'm sure he's a jerk sometimes, but I haven't seen it yet. No, I haven't either. I haven't either. I keep waiting for it. I feel like I'm good for like three or four hour blocks of time. I can be really good. Hang out beyond that, you'll catch glimpses of the dark side a little bit. That's right. Yeah, my wife refers to me as generally unfriendly. So I try to limit my interactions to about an hour at a time. That's why the podcast only runs about an hour because then after that, it's like I just can't keep it up anymore. Well, a part of kindness is knowing our limits, right? That's right. You got to know your limits. Well, Jason, man, welcome to the podcast. Why don't you start off, just give us a little bit of your backstory for people who may not know you. Help us understand, you know, how did you come to Christ? Maybe we'll start there. Yeah, you know, when people ask for my backstory, I'm 52 years old. I know, I know. No, you don't look like you're 50. Thank you. Thanks for saying that. You didn't need to say that, but thank you. So I feel like I have a few backstories at this point, you know. But going back, the earliest, and I've shared this elsewhere, but I'll share it here too. And also here at the beginning, for anyone who's hearing this who hasn't heard me before, I do suffer from a speech handicap known as stuttering. So that's going to happen. I just wanted people to know that so they didn't think that James and Nate were making me nervous or something, you know. So it's just what I do. Some people find it endearing, you know. Anyway. I didn't grow up in the church, but I did grow up on the road with my mom's rock and roll bar band. And what that looked like is we would haul all the gear into this old converted school bus and drive it all around Minnesota, where I grew up, and the Dakotas and Iowa, Wisconsin. And we'd pull up at the corner bar in Alexandria, Minnesota, let's say, and haul all the gear into the bar. And then my mom would stick me on a barstool at the bar while she'd go on the stage to work, you know, singing The Eagles and The Doobie Brothers and Hart. And she had me at the bar so she could keep an eye on me while she was working, you know. And so there I was, a five-year-old, just hanging out at the bar, you know. And I remember complaining about the smoke a lot. I hated the smoke. But I did have my Star Wars action figures, a bottomless glass of root beer, and witnesses adored me, so it was a great life, you know. So I grew up around a lot of music. Didn't grow up in the church. There wasn't a lot of conversation about God. But growing up around a lot of music, I suppose it's no surprise then that the first time I recognized God speaking to me, it was through music. It was through the first group that I cared about, Simon and Garfunkel. First music I loved. After that, it was Kenny Rogers and then Kiss, but I won't go into that part of the story. But I loved Simon and Garfunkel. There was a lot of chaos in my life at the time. My parents were in the midst of a very ugly divorce that went on for years. And actually, that was the trauma that triggered my speech handicap when I was five. So that's where that came from. It's the enduring scar from that season of my life. And we were living, like in the midst of all that, we were living on my grandparents' house. And I didn't have my own room, so I'm sleeping on the couch every night. And my grandpa, he was a good man. In many ways, he was my best friend when I was growing up, but he was an alcoholic. So there was a lot of volatility and chaos. And through all of that, God knew how to speak the thing he wanted me to hear in the language that he knew that I could understand it. And so I just, I remember having this experience. I was out doing errands with my grandpa, and it was winter in Minnesota, so he left the car on when he went into the liquor store. And on the radio comes a song by my favorite artist, Simon and Garfunkel, the song Bridge Over Troubled Water. And I remember having this experience of hearing the words, and if you don't remember, it goes, when you're weary, when you're feeling small, when tears are in your eyes, I will dry them all. Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down for you, right? And I remember listening to it and having a sense of a benevolent presence with me in the car, as though it was whispering to my heart, hey, I want you to know the words of this song that you love so much. This is my heart toward you. And I believed it. I was only five, you know, so I didn't have language to say, oh, I think God spoke to me or the Holy Spirit spoke to me. You know, like that language would come later. I had the experience first and the language would come years later. And I don't think I could have contrived that experience because nobody was talking to me about God. For sure, nobody was encouraging me to imagine that I could interpret songs spiritually, you know. So it's hard for me to think that I could have dreamed that up. So I think it was a genuine encounter with the Spirit of God. So that's kind of where it all began. And I just had this awareness of this benevolent presence with me all the time. And I remember I would talk with it as a kid. And as I grew up and I began to hear things about God, you know, like it all kind of, all the pieces slowly came together. But, you know, when I look back on that, music is one of the first ways that I heard God speak. And so it makes sense that I would pursue music, you know, because I do, you know, Quincy Jones.

It's a great producer. He says, music is the voice of God, and I get why he would say that. And so I love, I have loved getting to participate in music and the ways that it speaks to people all these years. That's awesome, man. Yeah, that's a great story. Yeah. So when you started out in music, what was, you know, you talked about being kind of influenced and some of your favorite artists were Simon and Garfunkel, which I can resonate with. I can remember my parents playing Simon and Garfunkel, the Carpenters, which I wasn't super in love with, but also the Carpenters, you know. But I remember Simon and Garfunkel. Did they, do you feel like they influenced you musically, or were they just sort of that your favorite band coming in and like really, like how do you think they framed your approach to music? They definitely influenced the music I love. And, you know, when all my friends were into Quiet Riot and Motley Crue, that music just didn't appeal to me. I would say as I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate, especially a band like AC/DC, like that's just great rock and roll, you know what I mean? Grooves are great, you know. So I'm not, I don't have contempt for all that, but I think Simon and Garfunkel's music, especially Paul Simon, spoke so deeply to the human soul, the human experience, and the divine as well, you know. If you haven't heard his last three records, four records, Paul Simon is wrestling with the big questions about God and the afterlife and the meaning of it all. And he's a guy that you would want to wrestle with those things because he articulates it so beautifully, you know. So his music remains one of the main ways that God speaks to me, you know. Okay, so has it influenced the music I make? I would say at some point, and I don't know if you're into the Enneagram at all, but the Enneagram is a personality profiling system that really is geared for spiritual growth and understanding and exploration, and that's been a good lens for me, understanding that I'm an Enneagram 2, and an Enneagram 2 is very motivated by love. I want to love. I want to help people, you know. The dark side of it is that I, you know, is that I can, I like giving myself the experience of being a loving person. Look how loving I am, you know. And there can be a self-righteousness in that, a manipulation too, like if I'm helping you all the time, I make you dependent on me so that you can't reject me, you know. But in its purest form, the Enneagram 2, you know, finds great meaning in helping others. So that has helped me to understand my motivation for music making too in terms of the music that I make isn't, it doesn't look a lot like the music that I love personally. Right, yeah. And I think, I think it's because at some point I looked at Christian radio and I did not, I thought these songs, they're not, they're not deep enough. They're not as true as they could be. And I can either, you know, itch about that and stroke my own ego and self-righteousness and all that, or I can get in the mix and humbly see if I can make a contribution there, right? And so I think about how, like the authors I was reading, let's say, like Frederick Buechner is an author that has been very helpful, important to me. Thomas Merton, Henry Nowen, Nouwen, sorry. And I thought, I don't know if other songwriters in this genre are reading the same people I am and engaging with the depth of these ideas. And so maybe this is where I can make a meaningful contribution. Maybe I could take Buechner-esque thoughts and embed them in a pop song and disperse them so that people who might not be exposed to that wisdom would get to experience it, you know? And that seemed like a meaningful thing that I could do, which is a way of, like, I can share the medicine that has helped me. That's awesome. And so a lot of my music making has been driven or shaped by how can I love this demographic, this kind of music listener, so well that I know how to speak their language and break into their world, which is very incarnational, right? That's what Jesus did. He didn't expect us to get to heaven's doorstep. He broke into earth and came as a baby in a way that we could understand and converse with him. So how can I apply that principle to what I do? So how can I write legitimate, radio-friendly Christian rock songs, pop songs, and infuse them with these bigger ideas that have been so helpful to me? And that's a different game I'm playing than just merely expressing myself. 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? 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So when you started out in music, what was, you know, you talked about being kind of influenced and some of your favorite artists were Simon and Garfunkel, Funkle, which I can resonate with. I can remember my parents playing Simon and Garfunkel, The Carpenters, which I wasn't super in love with, but also The Carpenters. You know, but I remember Simon and Garfunkel. Did they, do you feel like they influenced you musically or were they just sort of that your favorite band coming in and like really, like how do you think they framed your approach to music? They definitely influenced the music I love. And, you know, when all my friends were into Quiet Riot and Motley Crue, that music just didn't appeal to me. I would say as I've gotten older, I've come to appreciate, especially a band like AC-DC, like that's just great rock and roll, you know what I mean? Grooves are great, you know. So I'm not, I don't have contempt for all that, but I think Simon and Garfunkel's music, especially Paul Simon, spoke so deeply to the human soul, the human experience, and the divine as well, you know. If you haven't heard his last three records, four records, Paul Simon is wrestling with the big questions about God and the afterlife and the meaning of it all. And he's a guy that you would want to wrestle with those things because he articulates it so beautifully, you know. So his music remains one of the main ways that God speaks to me, you know. Okay, so has it influenced the music I make? I would say at some point, and I don't know if you're into the Enneagram at all, but the Enneagram is a personality profiling system that really is geared for spiritual growth and understanding and exploration. And that's been a good lens for me, understanding that I'm an Enneagram 2, and an Enneagram 2 is very motivated by love. I wanna love. I wanna help people, you know. The dark side of it is that I, you know, is that I can, I like giving myself the experience of being a loving person. Look how loving I am, you know. And there can be a self-righteousness in that, a manipulation to, like, if I'm helping you all the time, I make you dependent on me so that you can't reject me, you know. But in its purest form, the Enneagram 2, you know, finds great meaning in helping others. So that has helped me to understand my motivation for music making, too, in terms of the music that I make isn't, it doesn't look a lot like the music that I love, personally. Right, yeah. And I think, I think it's because at some point, I looked at Christian radio and I did not, I thought, these songs, they're not, they're not deep enough. They're not as true as they could be. And I can either, you know, itch about that and stroke my own ego and self-righteousness and all that, or I can get in the mix and humbly see if I can make a contribution there, right? And so I think about how, like, the authors I was reading, let's say, like, Frederick Buechner is an author that has been very helpful, important to me. Thomas Merton and Ray Newen, Nowen, sorry. And I thought, I don't know if other songwriters in this genre are reading the same people I am and engaging with the depth of these ideas. And so maybe this is where I could make a meaningful contribution. Maybe I could take Buechner-esque thoughts and embed them in a pop song and disperse them so that people who might not be exposed to that wisdom would get to experience it, you know? And that seemed like a meaningful thing that I

That he can never really reconcile. And so it's this unresolved tension that gives the music depth. I know the one that he referred me to specifically to listen to was Show Me the Way. They have a song Show Me the Way. And you listen to it with that background in mind, and it takes on a whole different meaning. Like, knowing him and listening to that song, I had a completely different experience than just listening to the song before. That's nice. Yeah, and so I love the way you're describing it, this sort of depth of, you know, how do I bring what's healing to me, what's interesting to me, the vocabulary that you're getting from now and others. You know, how do I bring that to Christian rock and really infuse it with a depth that you recognize is lacking? I think it's just a fascinating way to think about doing that sort of work. It is a work of theology in a lot of ways where you're trying to draw in not only an intellectually satisfying sort of understanding of God and reality, but you're trying to do it in a way that's truly impactful because music just has an impactful moment to it, you know, in many ways more than writing and those kind of things. Yeah, sorry, go ahead. Like the impulse to help, right? That's... I do have to admit, though, also, in all of that, there is an arrogance in that, right? On my part, or at least there's the risk of that. I am going to condescend to bring these grand ideas to these naive people, you know, which is where love has to come in, like love has to temper that, and I have to do that in humility, too, and also remember, oh, you know, I would like to bring this Buechner-esque idea that I read two years ago, so that the person who's where I just was, you know, can receive the goodness that I've experienced. So there has to be a humility in that, but, you know, self-righteousness is always knocking at our door, right? That's... I'm an Enneagram 2 as well, and I can fully relate to what you're saying. I think it's something we always have to keep in check because we have good intentions. We're not trying to put ourselves on a pedestal or, you know, be self-righteous. It just sometimes our excitement can get it to that point without us realizing it, and I have to catch myself all the time. So I didn't actually know you were a 2. That's funny. Another thing we have in common. I didn't realize that, but I totally relate to that 100%. You guys, I'm an Enneagram 8. That's the challenger, so we don't even think about it. We just keep pushing, and we don't worry about that, you know, being nice to people stuff. No, I'm just joking. But it is a different feel. I mean, when you all are talking about it, from my perspective, it makes perfect sense that you would do this. It makes perfect sense that you would find a way to prod Christians to move forward and to make a unique contribution within the space because that's my orientation. It's like 8 is the challenger. Let's push. Let's nudge. Let's, you know, constantly be, you know, pressing the envelope forward. And it always makes sense to me to do that. But that's a personality thing. You know, one of the things that I understand is that an Enneagram 2 in unhealth can express the unhealthy aspects of an 8, right? Which means when I get backed into a corner or I get angry, I can become a bully. But as my mentor and my therapist have helped me to understand my anger, to own my anger, and then to integrate it in a healthy way, it's interesting because I do think that when my anger comes up, I do go to the challenger side of 8, you know? And I think that's becoming healthier and healthier, you know, so that, like, I've learned that a good place for me... Okay, so if I'm going to write a song, what I used to do is I would ask myself, what am I most afraid of talking about right now? And that's a good indicator of where a song can start. I do think that's valuable. I'm also learning to pay attention to, like, what am I angry about right now? Like, in terms of, like, I'm working on a record about the church right now, and what bothers me about church culture? And I think that's useful because it reveals to me a way that God has tuned me to the world to notice things that need attention. And that's also a useful, I suppose, like, a prophetic place for a song to start, which is very Simon and Garfunkel now that I think about it. Like, I think one of the things that we loved about them was he did have a prophetic voice, you know? Yeah. One, it was very storied. Yeah. I think that was the other aspect of it, and I think it is a gift to have that sort of moment where you can sit back and say, how is it that the church really needs help in this moment, and what is it that I could do to contribute to moving it from where it is to where it needs to be? I think you're right. And I don't want to trivialize this. I don't want to just dismiss it. I think there is a level of arrogance that can sneak in with that. Sure. But I also think that we can't be afraid of the arrogance such that we refuse to help the church. And so we're constantly trying to sort of fight our own demons as we also try to prod and push in inappropriate ways. Because if we don't, we're not going to do anything. It's just going to be sort of there, and we're going to be there with it, and that's it. The arrogance can be useful, right? Yeah, to some degree, yeah. If we make it obedient to Christ, all those things can be useful. Like I've realized, like when I speak with young artists now, and they're so, they believe so much in what they're doing, and they're so full of, overly full of confidence and thinking that their song, and you hear it's like, that's not that good, you know? And coming back to like me, like when I was young, I listened to those old songs. I'm like, oh my gosh, those were, those were terrible. Thank God I didn't realize it. Thank God. Like I needed that overconfidence, that ambition. Exactly. You know, so those things can be very, very useful. And God can use our ignorance, our presumption, our arrogance, our overconfidence. My experience is that God makes really good use of those things. Absolutely. I tend to agree. There's very few things that I can think I would have done in my career had I not been a little too arrogant to recognize how bad they were actually going to turn out. You know, it's like, and I agree with you, looking back on them, I mean, there are things that I've written, things that I've done where I sit back and I say, what was I thinking? This could have been so much better. Like I've got, I've got so much behind me now that I look back at it and I just say, wow, like I really missed a lot here. And so the contribution I made was pretty minimal based on what I could do now. But I still tend to look back and sort of use that as a humbling moment to remind myself that probably what I do in another 10 years is going to dwarf what I could do at the moment, you know? I'm right in the middle of all this right now. I'm, I'm working on a book and it's a book of devotional essays for all my songs I've ever released. That's fantastic. Awesome. Well, I hope so. It's coming along nicely now, but I thought I've already done most of this work because I've, I've written these things for each album over the years. I'll just reopen them and spruce them up. And I was going through, you know, one of them was the, these devos I wrote for my album, A Way to See in the Dark that came out, I don't know, 2011 or 12, something like that. I remember when I wrote these things thinking, this is the stuff. Like I, like I wrote some good stuff and feeling so proud of it. I hadn't returned to it. And I, and I, and I opened them up again to spruce them up for this book. And I was like, these are out of date.

Disaster. They're naive. They're pretentious. There's no real point to it. And it was a very humbling experience. But also, and I think you alluded to this as well, because I was looking at them 10 years later, and I thought, whoa, well, then I can recognize it now, means I've grown. You've grown, yeah. And so I'm writing, I've reworked it, but it's also made me nervous too that that means this book, when I get it done 10 years from now, I'm gonna look back on it and be like, what were you thinking? That's right. Isn't that funny how that's the journey, but literally, like, every artist I've ever talked to, listened to, heard in an interview, read, whatever, they all say that. And I think it translates more than just music. Anything we look back at. When I look at the way I used to conduct skate ministry and the way I would do it now, I'd be like, boy, you didn't know anything back then and you thought you did, because you're breaking new ground, new territory, whatever. But I think that just shows that we're not in the same place. We're not stagnant. We're growing. We can look back. And so there's healthy parts to that, like you said, Jason. I love that. That's so relatable, I think, to anyone, whether they're in music or not. I mean, I hope 10 years from now, I'll look back and be embarrassed, right? That would be good news. That's right. That's pretty much the way I've come to think of it. It's, how can I do the best work that I can do right at the moment? You know, put something out that I'm not embarrassed of right at this second. Right. And then 10 years from now, hopefully I'll just be mildly embarrassed of it when I come back to it. It's, I think it's really important to have that perspective because so many times we can just sit back and think, well, this is the best work I'll ever do. And I actually think it's something that got drilled into me during my doctoral work. My doctoral advisor said, your dissertation is going to be one of many. And he said, I'm not expecting it to be the best work you ever produce. So go through, you know, he didn't say it like this, but I'll say it like this. Go through the motions. Like demonstrate that you have the competency to research and write and collect your ideas and put things together and have novel thoughts and all that kind of stuff. But the reality was, I mean, I was in my late twenties when I started it. I mean, I had no sense of, I mean, my understanding of the scriptures was strong, I suppose, but I mean, it was nothing to what I have now. My life experience was laughable compared to what it's been now. You know, there's just a different depth that I think you develop with time and experience that we have to give ourselves a bit of a break on and say, this, almost everything I write, I sit back and sort of think of that. This isn't the best work I'll ever produce. You're still chasing that. Yeah, I was gonna ask you, James, if the way he described that with music, if you're the same way with the books you've written, because you've written several books, you would say it's pretty accurate to you, so it does translate over more than just music. I think you have to. I think you have to look at it and say, this is not the best work I'll ever produce. You know, until you're done, that's how I think of it. You know, maybe my last one, I'm hoping it'll be the best one I ever produce, but the reality is, we're such growing animals. We learn as we do that it seems intuitive to think that the thing we're working on right at this moment probably won't be the best work we ever do if we're going to continue working. And there's a humility in doing it anyway, right? Right. May I share an anecdote? Please. Okay. So in addition to the book I just described, I've also been working on a memoir of my faith. And one of the things that's been cool about that experience, and like it's the story of how I came to faith and then how I lost my faith and then how it came back to me. But what I was doing when I was only working on that book is I'd wake up in the morning and I'd go outside on my deck and I would just sit there and just say, okay, Holy Spirit, I'm just going to be quiet and allow you to bring up memories. And then I'll be curious about them. And it was such an interesting practice because a memory, like the one I'm about to describe was from when I was five years old. And I don't know that I've thought about it since I was five. No, that was rattling around in there still. But the memory was, so I put the gum in my mouth and my mom tucks me in the bed, wishes me good night and I'm hoping I don't get caught. I've got it hidden up in there. And then she leaves the room and I go to sleep and I can't wait to see what happens if you go to sleep with gum in your mouth. And then I woke up in the morning and the gum was right there stuck in the back of my hair, right? And I remember I panicked cause I'm trying to get it out and I can feel it's back there. And I know I'm busted. And I start crying and my mom comes in the room and she's like, what? And I'm like, the gum in the bed, you know? And she's like, we told you don't go to bed with gum in your mouth. You know, I'm like, I know, I know, you know, and I didn't realize, and I wish they would have told me what could happen because in that moment I realized that how dangerous it was because apparently when you go to bed with gum in your mouth, the moment you fall asleep, it begins to burrow through the flesh and bone of your skull to pop out the back of your head and your hair, right? And if it had gone any higher, I could have really got seriously hurt, you know? And that was my idea. That was, you know, my little boy brain. That's what I thought happened. And, you know, you kind of make discoveries and figure out pieces of the world. And then you kind of, you know, save it in your brain, Apple save. And you don't really think about it again until you have a reason to open that back up and relook at it. And so it was many years later, and I can't remember exactly why that I realized, oh, wait a second. That's right. Somewhere in my brain or like in my mind, I've still been holding on to this idea that if you go to bed with gum in your mouth, it'll go through your flesh and bone. But even though that was the wrong idea, the wrong conceptualization, it was true enough to get me to not go to bed with gum in my mouth anymore, right? It got me to the next thing I needed to learn. And so as that memory came up in me and I'm like, okay, Lord, why are you bringing that to my mind? I began to think about the concept of true enough. Can I hold everything that I currently believe as true enough with an open hand so that I can continue to grow and have my conceptualizations tweaked and expanded, you know? So I'm very in love with this idea of true enough. Like what I believe right now is true enough for what I can manage and the decisions I need to make today, you know. According to your journey and how much you've learned and how much experience you've had, I really think that relates to all of us too. Yeah. It's a good way to think about it. Yeah. It helps me to write the book I'm writing now knowing 10 years from now, I'm gonna think a lot of this was, I missed the mark, but it's true enough for right now. And if I can have that humility, hopefully that kind of humility infuses the work so that people will be gracious with me, you know. And I think God can take it too and compound it and multiply it and make it, you know, to where it doesn't matter 10 years from now. It's not gonna make as much sense to you or you're not gonna be as proud of it like we were talking about earlier, but I think God can still take and use it because someone needs to hear it when it comes out. And even if it affects and changes and helps one person, it's all worth it, right? Yeah, yeah. I hope so. If only me, it's changing me, working on it. Do you have that experience? Like when you're working on a book, James? I do. I mean, it's interesting to hear you say it because I just had a conversation with another author and he was sort of suggesting that I needed to change the title of my latest book because he thought it would sell better and, you know, sort of X, Y, Z. And I don't disagree with him. I mean, I think he's probably right. He's sold a lot more books than I have and it was actually really helpful advice. I don't know that I'm gonna go change the title of the book because that seems like a lot of work and, you know, whatever. But I took his comments to heart, but what I...

The problem was, you know, I've gotten to the point where if I think I'm writing to try to sell books, I'm probably a little crazy. Because books are hard to sell. Like, they're not, like, selling a book is not, unless you have just a huge built-in audience, which this gentleman did. You know, he was a pastor for a lot of years and all that kind of good stuff. And so, he has sort of a built-in audience that whenever he puts a book out, he's going to sell X number of copies no matter what. Well, I don't have that. And so, I don't write them to sell them. There's a big part of me that just writes them because I need to process it. And that's a really good way for me to process it. If I sell them, that's gravy. And I think the more tasty gravy, perhaps, is when other people benefit from it as well. They benefit from the work that God has done in me as I'm writing that book. And so, I'm really after the impact that the books have as opposed to the sales that I could accrue. So, again, while I completely take his point, and I think he's probably right, I would also sit back and say, yeah, I'm going to implement some of those things later, but that is not why I do it. I don't have any sense. There's nothing in me that feels like, oh, I'd really love to be a... And I guess maybe that's the wrong way to say it. There's probably something in me that would take all the sales, right? Like, to be a best-selling author, that'd be cool, and there'd be benefits to that, I'm sure, or whatever. But I think if I ever lost the idea that I'm doing this for myself and that it's formative for me, that the effort I go through is actually shaping me into somebody different and more closely conformed to the image of Christ, I don't know that I'd really care about writing that much. Is there a consideration of the reader as you write, though? I mean, like, in terms of, I'm going to craft this sentence as clearly as I know how so that the reader can catch it. I think in this last book, I've really spent a lot of time on that. I had a wonderful editor who helped me out with it, and she was not a Christian, and that was actually really helpful because she was catching all the jargon. Like, whether it was, you know, the academic geek stuff that I usually write or whether it was just, you know, sort of Christian jargon that maybe people understand, or even if they understand it, they may not actually, they may know the word and they may have an idea about the concept, but it's not really conveying what I'm hoping for. And so as she questioned a lot of those things, I ended up going back in and defining terms and re-describing things and adding additional description, clarifying things. And so I think I, I feel like this last book, that was the best effort I've ever given to, okay, let me make this as clear as possible. Now, it's not that I didn't do that in other books, right? Like, you know, you kind of try to do that every time, but it's sort of what we're talking about. It's a learning curve. And, and I think I would have said, yeah, I'm being clear. Right. But there were just considerations I'd never considered. Like, clarity involved more than I thought it did. Yes. So, you know, here I am. Like, like when I'm writing a song, I'm attending to whatever the Lord is doing in me at that moment. It's kind of, it's kind of about the conversation that I'm having with, with me and the Lord. Um, but there's this other element too at play, which is a consideration of the, an empathy for the audience who's going to hear it. You know, is this gonna, am I going to alienate them or am I bringing them in on this conversation? You know? Yeah. It's, it's, yeah, there's a lot, there's a lot going on in those moments, right? Yeah. And I would say that that is a really great way to phrase it. Am I alienating them in this moment? Because I don't know that I ever would have felt that I was alienating them. Right. But as I look back on some of my earlier works, it's evident I was. Um, I was just, I was too in my own head. I wasn't thinking about the words I was using. They're natural to me, so I figured they're natural to everyone else. And those assumptions sort of code into the work. Yeah. And so I think I'm, you know, I'm recognizing that in some of my other writing, they were very much tailored to an audience that looks more like me than maybe an audience that is broader than, just academic nerds who have a theological background, right? You know? You know, I, I, this is a conversation I have with other artists too. Like, I, I think it's my opinion, my experience that, that the great artists, people who are artists, artists, right? Like a Paul Simon. Um, I think Bono is a great example. He's a deep well of wisdom, philosophy, deep. Um, and when an artist makes their personal artistic record or it's, it's only serving their vision. Uh, and, and who cares what anybody else thinks? It, that doesn't always produce the most interesting records. When a Bono or a Paul Simon, uh, when they swing for the fences commercially, which means they are trying to have the broadest reach and consider the audience. I think that usually produces their masterpieces, right? So there is some combination of when the inward artist type forces himself to look outward and go broad that that produces something really good. Better than if they were just true to their artistic vision, which we, we talk about that all the time, right? Like we, we, we, uh, We hold that up as the ideal, the artist who is true to their vision. And it's like, yes, but, uh, my experience is that the greatest works, at least in music and movies too, you know, and probably books, is when that artist who's true to their vision is also aiming broad, you know, and, and is, is considering the audience, you know? Yeah. Agreed. I, I just had the opportunity to go over, I was in, uh, Rome for a few days. And I, I've been there before, but I got to go see the Sistine Chapel this time. And, um, super cool experience. Like, absolutely loved it. There, you know, along the way, they're pointing out all these different works that Michelangelo had worked on. And, you know, he was just, he did carvings, he did architecture, he did, um, painting. But one of the things our tour guide noted was that back then they didn't really have sort of mass media. You know, literacy wasn't as widespread as it is today. And so many times what people were trying to communicate through were these different art forms. Music would have been included in that. And so you, you have these designs, these paintings, these, um, extraordinary sculptures and all of this different stuff that are trying to convey something to a world. And so, um, you know, we saw the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, we saw the Pieta. Um, we saw a number of different, you know, sort of artworks. And you just sort of think about, these were the only things people, this was the frame of reference that was given to people in that age. They didn't have another frame of reference. This was what they were seeing. 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. 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And you can actually see the story of the Bible. But I would say the one thing that really relates to our conversation here, they told us how he did that image sequentially. So he actually started with some of the what would have been later works in the Bible. So like the stories of Noah and different things like that. And he finished one and he's looking up at it and he realizes he's painted the characters too small. And it's so high up on this ceiling that it loses all the detail and the rich detail that's there. And so you can watch sequentially as he goes from these initial pictures into the rest of it. He designs the later pictures with fewer characters, much bigger. So they need to be shown. Yeah. And it's just, it's this beautiful picture of exactly what we're talking about where he does one, realizes people aren't going to be able to appreciate this. Yeah. Like they can't see it clearly enough for them to appreciate what's there. Considering the audience. And so now I have to pivot and change what I'm doing and make these characters. I need to blow these characters up and like make them bigger so they're more striking and the detail could come out. And I think that's the process that sort of all people who do creative activities go through. I think we end up having this sort of trial and error moment where we have to decide, is this going to be intelligible? Today, we don't test that by, you know, stepping back and looking at our work on a ceiling and deciding it's too small to see. Today, we do that as people respond to us. You know, they, do they resonate with the work? Yeah. So anyway, fascinating. Like, I always love the parallels. We've had a number of different musicians on, um, and I always love talking about the parallels between the creative work of creating music and writing and theology and those kinds of things. Because I think there's so many parallels there. They totally connect and relate and translate. Yeah, that's awesome. I love that. You guys were sharing literally the same stuff, but on two different sides of it. That was really, and then the way you tied it in with Michelangelo was perfect. That was awesome. Do we want to segue, Jason, just because I'm excited about this personally, just me personally, about a new heaven and a new earth, this new project you just announced that you're working on. Do you want to share about that? Sure. Speaking of Rome, I got to go there last year as a part of this project that I was invited to be a part of. I don't know, I'm gonna say it was like 2020. I got a call from Don Chaffer, who was the lead singer along with his wife of the band Waterdeep. That was very influential to me in very formative years of my faith. His articulation of their Christianity was very authentic and deep and beautiful and rough around the edges. And I just, I loved them, you know. So he's always been a hero of mine. So getting a call from him already, I've won. I've won the lottery. And he lets me know that this project that he's a part of, the person who's behind it, asked him to reach out to me. And it was, it's like a collection of artists and songs about creation care. And I thought, well, this is interesting. And this is a topic that's a bit politicized. It's become more politicized in the years since I agreed to be a part of it. But I thought, I don't know a lot about this. I haven't had a lot of opportunity to wonder, what does it mean to think Christianly about this, you know? I bet if I joined on with this, I could learn something, you know? Beyond just the anxiety I feel at the airport when I've got my garbage and I go to the bins and compost, recycle, the trash. I don't know what these categories are. I don't know what these are, you know? That's right. But I could be expanded. And I thought, well, that's interesting. In my mind, I thought, I don't know that creation care feels like it belongs high on the list of concerns in the hierarchy of concerns for me as a believer, you know? Especially in a world of human trafficking and extreme poverty. But, you know, I'm here to learn. And I'll get to work with Don Chaffer. How cool is that, you know? And the more I think of it like this, many years ago, I bought a minivan that was this dark olive green. And I picked it because this dark olive green, that's cool. And I haven't seen other cars like this, you know? So it felt unique. So I bought the van and I drove off the lot. And as soon as I drove off the lot, I saw that olive green colored car everywhere, right? Like everybody had that. Because that's what happens, right? Like you don't see a thing until you've engaged with it. And I thought, just by virtue of engaging in this project and these ideas, it's going to change the way that I see things. I'm gonna see things that I didn't see before. And that's useful. And maybe that's the experience I could provide for listeners too. And I would say one of the biggest things that I've learned in the process is I think I've come to see how politicized it is and how vulnerable people are to being manipulated politically around a lot of these ideas. And so I think it has delivered me of some naivety. But I'm not as manipulatable. And that's valuable. And in the process of that, it's ongoing. I see with more clarity. I know I'm giving a long answer here. I'm gonna say one more thing about it quick. And that is, what's emerging in me is that how we engage with the environment impacts the poor. And then all of a sudden, okay, here's a lens that I know for sure I can look at this through and begin to have discernment as a Christian about how do I respond because of its impact on the poor, you know? One of the things I'll say, and who knows who I'm gonna offend or alienate in all this. And I'll just ask people for grace. I'm a child in this whole realm of things. I'm still learning and I'm looking for the things that are true enough so I can then step move on to the next thing. But I'd say that where I'm at now and I'm open to having my mind changed about this is the question of in all of this conversation about energy and clean energy and energy in regards to how it relates to the environment. I'm aware, like, okay, yeah, we need to address those problems. But I think it goes too far when we create suffering, more suffering for the poor. Does that make sense? And so that seems like a Christian ethic for how do we solve emissions and all that kind of stuff, but without increasing the suffering of the poor. The plan on the West coast to eliminate all gas vehicles in the next 15 years, to me today looks like it will increase the suffering of the poor. And so as a Christian, I would want to really...

Challenge that, or at least be curious about it. Does that make sense? Yeah, totally. So engagement with this project has, I'm now driving off the, you know, like, up a lot with the minivan and, whoa, I can see things that I couldn't see before, and that's been very valuable. Okay, hopefully that wasn't too long of an answer. Hopefully I didn't have to. No, no, that's awesome. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, I think just to sort of affirm, maybe, the way you're thinking, how is go back to the book of Revelation. There's a scene in the book of Revelation, I believe it's Revelation 6-9, where there's this vision of the souls who have been slain for the word of God sitting under the altar, and they're crying out to God saying, how long until you take vengeance on us? How long until you bring your justice? And so, here's what I tend to think about that. There's a sense in which I think we believe that we should be able to implement solutions in a clean way. In other words, there's no negative consequences for anyone. And when we pursue solutions, we're always trying to get out of the pains and tensions of a fallen world. But that's almost an inappropriate way for us to think about it. And so what we're ultimately doing is we seek to correct and restrain and hold together and manage the brokenness of the world is, how is it, just like you're thinking about it, let's not make the poor suffer more than they already are as sort of an anchor and a pin. And if we can't do something about this other issue while also making sure that the poor don't suffer more than they already are, let's not worry about this. Like, we've got to focus on our attention on something. That's right. Or think it through more. Because I think that part of the Christian life is recognizing that the world is just going to be broken. And it's going to be broken in a myriad number of ways that we can't fix. We can't fix everything, yeah. Yeah, and so part of our job, part of our vision has to be, how do I care for the neighbor who's in front of me? And a lot of those, and I'm with you, I don't really have a big opinion on this, but what I would say is my concern. I'll frame it like that. My concern is that oftentimes what we're doing, what we're looking to save the earth, the future earth, is that we're losing focus on the people who are right in front of us. And at the end of the day, it just feels to me like the best thing that we can do is care for the people who are right in front of us. Maybe that's the minimum we can do. But if we're not even doing that, I think we have very little hope of fixing a future earth. Yeah, yeah. Well, and having care for the poor being a guiding principle for how we begin to address these problems, right? Which, let's say the stereotypical sin of the more conservative end of the spectrum would be to value the profit margin of a corporation above the poor who live downstream of the factory that is pouring the sludge into the water, right? So we've got to address that. But then maybe the stereotypical sin of the progressive on the other end of the spectrum is we need to save the planet. We need to eliminate fossil fuels and all that. Well, that affects the poor too, right? And so caring for the poor seems to be, in my mind, right now, the thing that constrains both of those extremes, you know? Fair enough, yeah. I like it. I mean, I like that logic. And it reminds me of G.K. Chesterton once said that, you know, most people think that the world is bad, but he thought that the world was too good. And that the problem really was that the Christian virtues had been loosed from their theological context and were now running wild. And so essentially, we're practicing all these different goods with no rooting in Christ. And that was creating some of the problems. So as you list those out, you know, the conservative side versus the more liberal side or the right-leaning, the left-leaning, however you want to frame that, you have goods on both sides. The problem is that there's no central orientation to say, love God and love neighbor. And now we figure the rest of these things out. Those goods have to be nested in something. And if we're not nesting them within love of God and love of neighbor, we're going to run ourselves off the rails. Right. And so, yeah, I think that sounds like a fascinating project, bro. So when is that coming to fruition? When is all that? As far as I know, I think all the songs are out now, so they're all out there. And it was me, Phil Joel of the Newsboys, Jason Roy of Building 429, Waterdeep, Micah Tyler, Aaron Cole, Mariah Peters. I'm forgetting somebody, I'm sure. And me too. And, you know, like with my song that I contributed, it's not like a protest song about we got to, you know, care for creation and remember the poor. My tack that I wanted to bring to it was I just wanted to write a song about what we experience when we are in beautiful places, you know. Yeah. I suppose the idea behind that, my first pastor I worked for, he said this wonderful thing. He said, they say that you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. But you can if you mix some salt in with the oats. You can make him thirsty. So I wrote a song that I hoped would make people thirsty for that, that beauty of being in beautiful places in the world, you know. Oh, that's really good. I'm excited to hear it. I heard a couple. I didn't know the whole thing was out yet, so I'll definitely check it out. My song is called Awestruck. Awestruck. So available wherever you listen to music online, all the streaming. Excellent. I know we're getting close to the time. Yeah, it's good. It is getting close to time. I've got a hard stop here, but it's unfortunate because I'm really having a lot of fun talking with you and this has been an awesome conversation. I'd love to have you back on. And I know we had a little technical snafu there, but it's really awesome to talk with you. I appreciate the depth of your theological thought and just the intentionality that you put into the music and the way you think about it. It's really refreshing and I totally appreciate it. And it's been fantastic to get to know you a little bit. 100%. I knew you guys would connect and relate, and this has been awesome. So thank you so much for being here, Jason. I love it. And as we're going, I just want to say the last thing that you talked about, James, about the Chesterton quote. And after we hang up, would you please send me the quote? Happy to. Yeah. It perfectly named a theological piece that I'm trying to work out in my journey right now. So that was very helpful. Thank you for that. That was a gift. Very cool. Yeah. No, I'll make sure I get you a quote and I'll tell you where it's from. I'll shoot you an email with it afterwards. All right. Nate, good to see you again, man. Great to see you. Always a pleasure. Thanks for inviting me to the party. Yeah. No problem, man. We'll definitely have you back. So appreciate you being on, Jason. And hey, thanks, everybody, for listening. 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. Finding uplifting news in today's headlines is often like searching for a needle in a haystack. At The Story Behind podcast, we believe in the power of finding heartwarming tales and are happy to share empowering stories with you every week. 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