Jared Stacy: Holy Paranoia

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. [00:00:10] Speaker B: Welcome to Becoming Church, the podcast where we discuss how the message and movement of Jesus is not just about becoming Christians, but about becoming the church. I'm your host, Kristin Mochler Young, and my guest today is Jared Stacy. We're going to get into exactly what his work is in just a minute, but I want you to know this is one of those episodes where I need to ask you to pause and take a breath and get ready to be curious about what you're going to hear and maybe what you're going to feel. In this conversation, we are going to be talking about conspiracy theories and propaganda and digital information, but through a lens that most of us have probably not dared to look. Now, you do not need a tinfoil hat required to listen to this episode, but we are going to jump in to some Christian conspiracies. Jared Stacey, welcome to Becoming Church. [00:01:05] Speaker A: Thanks so much for having me, Kristen. [00:01:07] Speaker B: We're excited to have you guys today. Well, you guys, I guess it would. [00:01:10] Speaker A: Be just you school because of the snow. So it is you guys. We're all here. [00:01:17] Speaker B: That is true. There could be children in the background coming from either side of this microphone. [00:01:22] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely. [00:01:24] Speaker B: I'm. [00:01:24] Speaker A: I'm shocked. It hasn't happened yet. [00:01:26] Speaker B: Did you bribe them? Did you bribe your children? [00:01:28] Speaker A: I mean, my wife is down there and she's like, she's got them on lockdown and they've got stuff to do. I mean, it's a snow day. They're excited. But we should be okay. We should be perfect. [00:01:37] Speaker B: Perfect. Yeah. Mine are usually if I can put them in front of a screen, they don't bother me. [00:01:41] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:01:42] Speaker B: Like, I have cereal in a bowl and a screen and I'm good. Like, I won't even notice that you're not around for the next hour. Jared, where do you live that you're on a snow day today? [00:01:52] Speaker A: So right now we're near D.C. up 95. So in a town called Fredericksburg, which is just kind of just outside or just within, depending on how you think of it. The D.C. metro area. [00:02:01] Speaker B: Okay. Awesome. Well, I know that I am new. You and I, this is a new friendship. We've just kind of discovered each other, I would say, over the last few months, I guess on social media. Yes. So I'm excited to introduce you to a lot of our listeners. So let's just do kind of a quick little Q and A, get to know you a little bit. What is the favorite job that you've ever had? [00:02:23] Speaker A: My favorite job was working at Chipotle in New Orleans. I helped open the first Chipotle in New Orleans, and it was great. I worked the grill and. And we got to serve. Like, the New Orleans Saints came in. Jimmy Graham and Anthony Davis, who's on the Lakers now. So. Yeah, I love that job. I loved. And you learn how to cook. Like, I got culinary skills working at Chipotle, so. Yeah, I love it. Loved it. [00:02:46] Speaker B: I did not expect. I did not expect you to say that. [00:02:49] Speaker A: Yeah, I. Yeah, it was great. I love. [00:02:50] Speaker B: Took me by surprise for a second. Yeah, Chipotle. Okay, listen, I can hear my staff, like, metaphorically in the background being like, you have to tell Jared I don't like Chipotle. [00:03:02] Speaker A: Why not? Do you have a. Do you have an alternate that you prefer? Is there. Is it, like a Not Chipotle, but this, or is it just. [00:03:10] Speaker B: Yeah, but you're gonna hate my answer. [00:03:12] Speaker A: Is it Moe's? [00:03:13] Speaker B: It's Taco Bell. [00:03:16] Speaker A: Here's like, look, the world is big enough. The world is big enough, and it's fine. It's fine. I don't hate on Taco Bell. I just. I like working the grill, and I've never worked at Taco Bell, so I can't say I just like working the grill at Chipotle. [00:03:29] Speaker B: That's fair. Okay, listen. No wrong answers here. I love that. All right, in five words or less, what are your thoughts on this upcoming year? We are very early in 2025. Five words or less. [00:03:42] Speaker A: God is still with us. God is still with us. [00:03:45] Speaker B: Okay, good one. [00:03:46] Speaker A: Yeah, I need that. So I don't know if anyone else does, but that's. That's what I need to hear. [00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah. I do think that that is going to be a theme in a lot of arenas as we go through 2025. I mean, even now, right. Like, looking around at the wildfires in LA and. And just adding that to the list of all of the other things that we look around the world and go, like, what is happening? I think just holding on to that. [00:04:12] Speaker A: Reminder, I've been thinking about, like, the difference between despair and dread. And I've traveled a little bit since coming back to the States. I was in Scotland for three years, and I just came back to the States, and we've been here for a few months. And, I mean, despair is kind of how we think about the present, and dread is how we feel about the future. And I've been in a lot of spaces where despair and dread is almost like you could just cut it a knife. It's in the air, and that's. That's across the kind of partisan ideological spectrum. And so, you know, people might hear God is still with us as some sort of, you know, pious juke or way to not face these things. But I think that there's a way to come around full circle and kind of wide eyed look at the reality that we are living through and in some ways dreading what might come next. And it's a confession. It's to say, you know, there's no need to despair even with eyes wide open to the real challenges that are confronting us and the pain and the suffering that is all around us. And so that's just, that's, I'm sensitive to that kind of piety that sort of puts its head in the sand, words just like that. So how do we say that with an open, an open, open mind to what's in front of us. And that's, that's what I need to hear. So that's kind of was my thinking behind those five words. [00:05:35] Speaker B: No, that's great. So basically that's your way, that's your hope. I guess remembering that God is Manuel with us, that's what keeps you from your despair turning into dread. [00:05:45] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh yeah, that's, that's, that's what I have to say because that's the, that's the air that I'm breathing. [00:05:51] Speaker B: I love that. All right, who is your favorite social media follow? [00:05:57] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good question. I would probably have. So I've gone long form, like long form content. And LM Sakasis has an incredible substack. So he's not as anything that you see him active on Instagram or X or threads. It's always going to be driving you to read these really long pieces on substack. But he works a lot at the intersection of technology, media, faith, culture. And so he just has some really good, provocative ways of talking about. One of my favorite quips that he introduced me to was that all information, all digital information is disinformation. And that was a very provocative statement that I've kind of picked up and taken along. And so if I was thinking like there's one person that I could kind of name and introduce people to, I'd probably be him. [00:06:48] Speaker B: Okay. I'm not familiar with him, so I will find him myself and then we'll link him up in the show notes so everybody else can. [00:06:54] Speaker A: There you go. [00:06:55] Speaker B: Follow along too. I'm glad to hear somebody say, Jared, that you are going to like long form content. Because I myself, as one who is not short with the words. I'm always like, nobody wants to read all this, but I really have a hard time editing it down. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing. We always like to say a long form content is in and it's, it's what's. But you know, we all can, it's because we're already consuming these bite sized bits and so we, you know, kind of push against the grain, go against the grain and find people who've just kind of stuck and said, no, we're going to do long form and long form only. So that's, that's my attempt at resistance because I do consume a lot of short form media. [00:07:37] Speaker B: Oh, we all do. We all, we all do. I mean, that's just the world that we live in right now. [00:07:42] Speaker A: Yes, absolutely is. Absolutely. We don't have to try. It's right there. [00:07:47] Speaker B: Yes, yes. I'm actually trying to go the other way. My, I was talking to my agent this week and she was like, hey, actually being on threads is good for you because it's going to force you to practice being more concise. And I was like, see, that's like doing things I'm not good at. [00:08:02] Speaker A: But I, I, yeah, it's really difficult to fit anything into like 140 characters or less. And I, I'm, I am notorious for wanting to qualify my qualifications. And so, yeah, I'm feeling that, I'm feeling that as well. That's a very good one. [00:08:17] Speaker B: Okay, good, good. I'm not alone in this. [00:08:19] Speaker A: No, no, no, no, not at all. [00:08:21] Speaker B: Well, Jared, your bio says that you are a theologian, ethicist, writer and a former pastor. And that already is a little intimidating. Like, that's a lot. So can you give us like, what's the kindergarten version of what your work is about and what you're doing? [00:08:37] Speaker A: Sure, sure. So I, I look at conspiracy theories in Christianity and I know that that always puts people on edge. Like what are you saying when you say that? But really what I am is I'm a theologian that I help the church talk about God in the time that we live in. And that is part of this process of speaking about God from this generation to the next. So Robert Jensen has this beautiful definition of theology. That's what he says theology is. It's the thinking and speaking that takes place in transmitting the gospel from one generation to the next. That's all I'm doing, but I'm doing it. I'm using conspiracy theory as a window to really do two things, to talk about my tradition. So I Grew up evangelical. And the second thing I'm doing is that conspiracy theories are stories. And I started this research and realized very quickly that it's really easy to pathologize people who would identify, kind of wear that conspiracy theorist badge, is like a badge of honor. I realized really quickly that when you really start to look at conspiracy theory, they are attempts to talk about evil. They're attempts to talk about and narrate the world that we live in. And in so many ways, the Christian story on the lips of the church is attempting to do that very thing as well. We're trying to narrate the time that we're in. We're trying to narrate what it means to follow God in this time. And so while I am working to kind of show that we don't have to be conspiracy theorists, we don't have to fall into this corrosive suspicion. We can get into that. But at the same time, we do have an account of evil. We do have an account of what it means to pursue justice. And the way that we narrate our world as Christians matters. And so that's why I say I'm a theologian, because the work I do for the church, the work that I do is not meant to hold the church up to contempt, but it is meant to spur the church on, to think seriously about the language that we use to talk about God and to talk about our neighbor. And those things are our witness, and so they matter. [00:10:38] Speaker B: This is. I'm so excited to learn more about this from you over the next few minutes, because I think that you already have put a different spin on conspiracy theories, especially, like, within the church, than most people listening probably have ever considered. Like, I know when I hear of, you know, Christian conspiracy theories, it's very easy to demonize those people, and it's very easy to like other them and go, well, I'm not that kind of Christian. Because we want to separate ourselves from the world of, like, I know you think those people are looney tunes. I'm. I'm not looney tunes. [00:11:13] Speaker A: Right. [00:11:13] Speaker B: So validate. Let me validate myself by telling you that's not what I'm doing. But I just heard so much grace and compassion in that explanation of, like, how people actually get to where they're coming from, you know, or where they're. Where they're going to with this because of where they're coming from. And so I just think that's really fascinating. And I think it's really important also that people like you show us There's a different way, you know. [00:11:39] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, and to your point that that whole move to kind of justify ourselves, like we're not, we're not the crazy kind of Christian, eventually, if we take that approach, eventually we're going to find ourselves in a really odd place, claiming that all of reality hinges on one event in Jerusalem in 33 AD that this Jewish itinerant peasant preacher was really the son of God and that his execution under the hands of the Roman Empire was somehow the one thing that put humanity to rights with God. That's scandalous. [00:12:11] Speaker B: Right. [00:12:12] Speaker A: In some ways, you do have to pick. You're crazy. And, and, and this is the language of the New Testament. I mean, it's a scandal and it's foolishness. But we want to put the pressure where, where it belongs. We want to put the emphasis in the. And to use this word, the offense in the right place. And, and that's what I'm aiming to do. Because when the world looks at Christians who kind of spout QAnon out of one side of the mouth and Christ on the other, you really find that the world kind of sees the pathology of Christianity like, this is crazy. Of course you're going to believe xyz if you believe abc. We can get into this more. But I'm really trying to remind us of the, the scandal of our faith and to recognize that the way that we narrate our world is a reflection of what we believe. And disconnecting some of those. Those kind of points has been really key to some of my work. [00:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, let's, let's get into it. I have some questions, but I also am like, I don't even know what questions to ask you. What does. I guess let's start with this. What does conspiracy look like specifically? Like, in the Western Christian realm? [00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah. So I think probably the best way to talk about this is talk about it historically, that a lot of the ways that Christians in the west, we've learned to narrate our time have come from two big things, and they're alliterative. So it's really helpful to remember the Christians in the west, we've learned to narrate the world in terms of empire. Right. So this, this domineering, totalitarian government that has. That goes by the name Christendom. And so that includes colonialism. That includes. So just. But I just want people to think of totality, that we've learned to kind of narrate our world in terms of. Hey, Christians are supposed to exercise dominion over the entire, you know, the entire empire, the entire world. And then the second thing is enlightenment, that we in the west see things in terms of individuals and we see things in terms of mechanics that, that cause and effect A, B. And so those things all kind of combine and converge in very unique ways that when we're talking about conspiracy theory, it's a way of narrating what's going to happen to the Empire, what's going to happen to the, the, the, the world within the walls, so to speak. And, and we narrate that in terms of individuals, in terms of this very cause and effect type of structure. Like, if something happens. So take the Los Angeles wildfires for an example. Like, people are. People are looking for a way to understand these events that aligns with and corresponds with, like, the way that we think the world works. And so when people say, when people blame the mayor or when people blame climate change, or when people go to theology and say this is God's judgment, like these are all different narrations, ways of kind of understanding what's going on, that I want to be quick to like, not blame people immediately for that. That in many ways, conspiracy theory in the west is a mirror to ourselves, to how we think the world works, how we think it functions. And that's where theology comes in, because theology kind of gives us the language to narrate like that. And so conspiracy theory ends up being this window into what we believe about God, what we believe about our neighbor, and how we narrate things that we can't possibly explain, but to kind of converge all that into a very key point. One of the errors that happens a lot is this idea that in the west, because we believe in cause and effect, we believe it's really difficult for us to narrate chaos, to narrate complexity. And so that's when we find that conspiracy theory kind of has an answer for everything. And it kind of projects based on what we believe and how we believe the world works. Oh, well, if there's a void here, this must be true, because we believe everything else. So it kind of just, it becomes a caricature in such ways that we can't really. It, it destroys complexity, it destroys chaos, and it really wants to insist on the most simplistic and almost cardboard caricature of these events. And I think the LA fires right now are just a great example of just a very complex, almost infinite number of variables from 200 years of climate change to now. And we don't have to get in any of that, but it's just a great example, I think, of how we struggle and we want meaning and, and, and so a lot of what we've already decided is true or decided how the world works that kind of is projected onto these events. So that was a very, a very far reaching answer. But I. Empire and enlightenment and the way the world works, like that's, that's all on the table. [00:17:12] Speaker B: Okay. No, and I think the la. I mean, it's so timely right now, the fires, the wildfires, because I know in my being back on threads now for like four days, there's a lot of talk about it and people love to, you know, be the first with the spicy take to come out and like say a thing. But what I've been seeing the last couple days, it's so interesting now that you're, you're connecting conspiracy theories to theology and that it basically is a window into what somebody believes because you've got people who are saying that, you know, certain natural disasters are God's punishment and also maybe saying that other natural disasters are not that, that maybe they're, you know, the weather being controlled by politicians or whoever or whatever. And I think this, this idea of a window is what is going to give us compassion. I will at least speak for myself. Give me compassion to understand where these people are coming from. Because it's, it angers me truly when I'm like, how can you look at one thing and completely remove God from it and say that it's all human and all whatever, and then in the other one, go so far to the other side and say that it's all God. And there's no, like, I get very frustrated with the duplicity of Christianity and the way that we want to explain things. That is not consistent. [00:18:34] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:18:35] Speaker B: But I think it does really point to like you could probably trace back people's theological beliefs on who they think God is, what they think we're supposed to do as Christians, if we kind of dissect the conspiracy theories that they are aligning with, when this is where. [00:18:50] Speaker A: Some of my work, I, I use this word. I kind of take a word that is so commonly associated with conspiracy theory, which is paranoia. Okay, take that word. And I, and I give it a different meaning. I infuse it with new meaning. And, and paranoia literally means para. So split, like running alongside parallel split mind. And what goes on in our kind of common zeitgeist, this popular moment is that we pathologize people who promote an amplify conspiracy. Oh, they're crazy. And we Kind of use clinical language to not just describe but also distance ourselves from them. And I use paranoia. You talked about the difference between like theological beliefs or the strangeness of saying so I, my family lives in Tampa Bay. And so watching people kind of describe the hurricane that came through that area. As a Democrat, you know, conspiracy. And now this is God's judgment because California is a blue state, quote, unquote. So paranoia, this split mindedness, actually I use that to define a sort of theological paranoia that we have a Jesus whose content or whose portrait is split between ideology and theology. That whenever you mix the, the clarity, the, the illusion of clarity that ideology offers, that's what's going on. The duplicity that we're describing is frustrating and as angry as it makes us and as consequential as it is. Like, let's, let's be clear, these aren't just stories. These are stories that direct attention and inform action so they have real world consequences. [00:20:31] Speaker B: Right? [00:20:32] Speaker A: But at the heart of it is this paranoid portrait of Jesus. And by that I mean a Jesus who is kind of brought together with ideology, with national identity, with all of these things, so that he ends up kind of speaking out of two sides of his mouth that yes, he's God incarnate, but he's also Republican or he's also fiscally conservative or all these sorts of examples. And in these moments of chaos that kind of converges. And this is true of across the ideological spectrum. So let me be very clear and say that conspiracy theory is a human phenomena. [00:21:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:21:09] Speaker A: Conspiracy theory is not headquartered on the right, even though it might right now in our moment have a very strong pull on the right. Conspiracy theory is on the left too. It's, it has no ideological headquarters. It is a human phenomena because we are modern people. So my examples of a paranoid Jesus can be true of this kind of entire ideological spectrum that we're talking about here. But I mentioned that that idea of paranoia, because it's something that I kind of take out of the air and I want to infuse it with new meaning and say no. Like if the Bible's word for repentance is metanoia, this idea of a changed mind or getting the whole picture that is really suitable to kind of criticize the split mindedness that sort of makes Jesus a mascot or a puppet for our ideological commitments. And Jesus destroys our ideologies. He does not reinforce them. And that's a really uncomfortable point because when you go out and talking about paranoia, that's not a very comfortable thing to hear. [00:22:21] Speaker B: Right. Nobody wants to be called paranoid. [00:22:24] Speaker A: No, no. And, and that's, that's kind of the challenge of taking these words out of the cultural zeitgeist and infusing them with new meaning that is distinctly theological, that is in the church's language of saying no. Like, to follow Jesus is to be, to, to participate in metanoia, a changed mind and to not make Jesus paranoid in the sense that he's becoming a mouthpiece for our party, a mouthpiece for our ideology that in many ways he, he destroys and unsettles all that we assume is clear and obvious and true. And that's a very, that's, that's dispossessing us of a lot of our ability to see the fires and to come up with a hot, hot take, come up with a spicy take. Jesus, Jesus isn't in that. And, and so, you know, there's, there's more to say there. But I wanted to emphasize that point because I think it really drives home how this, this work is really for the church and what it really does is position ourselves for discovery about ourselves and about what God is doing in the world and who he is. So I'm preaching a little bit, but forgive me, Kristen. [00:23:36] Speaker B: Great. [00:23:37] Speaker A: Let's go to the heart of it. And I know we, we have more to go through, but yeah, that's, that's kind of at the heart of what we're doing. [00:23:47] Speaker B: I would be remiss to talk to you about the Los Angeles fires without pointing you to action. A big part of becoming the church is praying and remembering that we have a God given agency to be his hands and feet to people that are in need. As a church, we are giving to Convoy of Hope, who is already on the ground helping with relief efforts and delivering much needed supplies. Personally, I have also contributed to direct relief. Who is there on the ground in Los Angeles? I would love for you to follow us on social media where we will continue to update you on how you can help as needs arise and opportunities are presented. But I do encourage you that even if you think what you have to give won't solve the problem, that it does still matter. You can still help other people who are straining to see where God is in the midst of this tragic situation. And it's how we can truly become the church outside of our buildings and communities when we recognize where there's need and see how we can help. [00:24:49] Speaker A: Well. [00:24:50] Speaker B: Help people understand this paranoia a little bit more because I know that you've done a lot of historical research on this and how, you know, none of this disinformation is actually new. Like, we're kind of cycling through and history is repeating itself. Do you have an example that you can share with people just to help them kind of click and be like, oh, I get it, sure. [00:25:10] Speaker A: So I, I'm going to be a little provocative here and actually suggest that some conspiracy theories are true. Some conspiracy theories are true. And I think one of the. One of the ones that's most potent in America was the fear of slave revolts. The conspiracy theories about slaves revolting against their masters in the south was a. A huge part of evangelical preaching in, in the early America. And slaves did revolt. So there's this. It's called the Stono Rebellion, and it happened in South Carolina. And a lot of the preaching from George Whitfield and some of these very celebrity evangelicals was preaching that was in many ways that would promise to preserve the social order. That they would say, if you just repent, America will be saved or your town will be saved, that there will be no slave revolt. Which is curious because that the having of people in bondage, the owning of people, if we had dealt with that in a. In a Christian sense, it would have upended society. And in the Civil War it did. And so I think when you kind of bring that to the point, the narration of, well, if we would just as a country repent, then things would. The Democrats would be out of power or, or, you know, all of the different ways that we narrate that. There's a lot of commonality in that. And, and my point in saying, like, some conspiracy theories are true, like, yeah, the, the. The fear, the anxiety of slave revolts in the same way that the fear or anxiety around immigrants coming into America, right, like that people are coming to America, there, there. There is difference in our communities. There are people from other countries. And, and the burden on the church is are we going to tell stories that, that penalize this difference, or are we telling a story that welcomes the sojourner among us, that welcomes the foreigner? And so Stanley Hauerwas has this great quip that much of the sin that exists in the church is the things that we assume or take for granted is given. And in so many ways, our national citizenship is arbitrary, that our humanity is what the Christian story really deals with. And to the extent that we are allowing ourselves to recognize humanity, that transcends national citizenship, that adoption into the family of God, adoption into the human community is a more firmer ground for what we mean when we say citizenship than what's on your passport. So the way that we talk about our neighbors and in these conspiracy theories matters. So, yeah, so that's my answer to that question. You look at the slave revolts and the things that did happen, the conspiracies that were realized to our present time, and how we talk about immigration and not discounting the various policy differences and challenges with that, but it's. It's the responsibility of the church to curate a story that kind of shows what's being missed in those policy discussions. And that's where our prophetic, not just voice, but also action really can be realized. [00:28:21] Speaker B: What's being missed is. That's really good. What? Practically. Practically. Right. So if these conspiracy theories are true to an extent, you said the church has to talk about this differently for people that are listening, what does that look like? Like, what does that mean? How do they go? Okay, well, yes, it's true that we've got people migrating into our country. Maybe some of the things I'm hearing are not fully true, but they are here. Like, what do we do with this as Christians, right. As we are all the church, not just pastors and leaders like Jared. What can people. How can they enter into, I guess, this conspiracy theory and make it better or do it different? [00:29:00] Speaker A: I mean, I think the first thing I'm going to talk about this in two levels. And the first thing is, you don't have to be a theologian or even a Christian to say this is information literacy is understanding that the digital world and the way that. So our. Our word for media. You know, people talk about the legacy media or digital media and finding different sources of media. Let's just talk about that word for a minute. The word mediation, right? Like, it, it goes between two. Two things and, and mediates one to the other. So that word of mediating reality, that's. That's a really weighty thing. And we need to have good information literacy. We need to be able to understand that the scale of information that you and I just probably today alone have. Have consumed probably puts us in a very unique place in all of human history. And the, the sheer scale of this information, we use shortcuts all the time that we've formed, it kind of said, well, this is legit, and this isn't legit. And it's the ideologies that we have, it's the stories that we tell, it's all of these things. And so it's. When I say media literacy, you know, that that's a big, big field to play. In, but it's really saying, how can we tell and trust the sources that we have? I'll make a recommendation for people. So Jeffrey Bilbrough has a great book on a theological take into the news. I would just recommend people start there. There's plenty of, like, practical resources to improve media literacy if you just do a Google search. But that, that would be a great, A great place to go. So I want to start there and say, like, media literacy matters. The second place I'd say this kind of, as a theologian is to challenge not just pastors, but also parishioners, people in the pews, to start to think about gathering as a church in a way that. To expect our preferred slogans to. To be questioned and destroyed. That, that if the gospel is preached, partisan offense should be part of our church experience. [00:31:17] Speaker B: Okay. [00:31:19] Speaker A: And I understand that what that does is that does two things. It puts pastors at risk. So it puts pastors. But see, I can say this as a theologian and put this out on the table to say, churches, let's have this conversation. Because the slogans and the catchphrases and all of the rogue words that kind of organize our political world, doesn't the church have something other than that? And I think one of the things that I'm experiencing coming back to America is the extent to which we can carry our cherished slogans into a church community, not just the preaching event, but into the church community. And, and we can leave with them still functioning and unchallenged. And the, the, the, the reality of what it means to come in and to participate in the word of God, in the people of God, I think involves having our slogans and our catchphrases and all the things that not just organize, but supercharge politics and supercharge what's going on in our social fabric. I think the church, with its witness to the Word, fundamentally questions the power and empties the power of those slogans. And so I say that as a theologian who kind of encourages the church to be what it is and recognizing that a lot of what goes on in churches, there's partisan lines all the way through these various churches. So how do we, how do we deal with that? What's the unity of the people of God? And that's, that's the theological question underneath all that. You know, you say, how can people be practical? Okay, media literacy, but what's the church's role in this? And I think it really comes down to this question of will the church be the church and will we Allow ourselves to be a place where these slogans are emptied of their power, because that's, that's what God does. [00:33:20] Speaker B: And so an example of one of these slogans, Jared, that you think needs to be challenged, that Christians and churches are kind of maybe hiding behind or like. Yeah. Manner. [00:33:30] Speaker A: Let me, Let me say one that I think organizes the left and the right and, and, and brilliant. It's this. It's. It's rights. [00:33:39] Speaker B: Rights. [00:33:41] Speaker A: Okay. Rights. Is this human rights? Rights. Our rights. It's, it's this kickback that. It's, it's. It stops conversation. It silences conversation. The right to free speech, the right to choose. We're modern people. And I'm not denigrating rights. I'm questioning how that language signals this is where the church can't speak. [00:34:13] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:14] Speaker A: And so it's a question of how does the church enter into this sort of. These slogans that just get dropped as a way to end conversation and say, what's the starting point for the church when it comes to our responsibilities to one another? That's. That, that, that takes a different conversation. And, and it, it's one that kind of empties these slogans. And probably the most powerful one over the last 10 years has been Make America Great Again. Right. Like, we can, we can say, look at, look at the way that this slogan has organized things. Woke is another slogan. What do we mean when we call someone woke? But so these, these kind of words that are charged and yet never get touched. Yeah. And so I would, I would offer all of those, which I think if listeners are hopefully honest with themselves, they can see how appeals to rights, appeals to wokeness, kind of brings the entire ideological spectrum together and allows us to answer this question of what does it mean to be the church in the midst of all of these sort of rogue words and slogans that are trying to organize us under a particular banner and giving pastors whose task it is to minister this reality to the church permission to wade into the difficult task of questioning, challenging these things as a consequence of delivering to us the word that was delivered once for all things. [00:36:00] Speaker B: So practically, I think you said it, We're. We have to question, what do we mean when we say these things? We have to take it down one level deeper. When we say make America great again, what does that mean? [00:36:12] Speaker A: Right. [00:36:13] Speaker B: What does that look like? Who is that for when we say that people are woke or this is woke? Yeah. What does, what are we trying to actually say with that when we, Even when we talk about. Right. Whose rights Are we talking about. Are we talking about the rights that we want to have? Or does that also apply to the rights of the people who are in our country, regardless of how they got like. I think that's the practical right, Jared, of going, let's not just take these. Make these slogans, spiritual platitudes, basically correct. This is going to become a. Everything happens for a reason. You know, like, what do we mean? What are we trying to say with these things? I think that's maybe where the challenge comes in. [00:36:52] Speaker A: And if people are looking for a verse to kind of package all of this up under, we are following Romans 12:1 through 2. Do not be conformed to the patterns of this world. Be transformed. [00:37:04] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:37:05] Speaker A: By the renewing of your mind. That's metanoia. But what we've so often missed, because as evangelicals, I use that term very broadly, we focus on revival, we focus on transformation. We focus on people repenting and coming to God. We miss how in some ways, what. What Luther said when he said all of life is repentance. Another way of saying that is all of life is conversion. And I'm speaking for myself here in that over the last four years, I feel like I've become Christian all over again. There are certain ways of talking about and being Christian that no longer have any meaning for me. And so that when I've. When I read that, I'm like, oh, all of life is conversion. Well, that makes sense. It reminds me, oh, man, like, I am being dispossessed of so many of the certainties that I once held. Yes. And to find out that God's in that, that's liberating, but it's also terrifying. And as a theologian who's focused on how do I help the church articulate its witness, the most practical thing I can do is prepare people in the pews and encourage pastors who address them that the word of God is far more unsettling and dispossessing than it. Than we ever imagined. And so going to church to have ourselves be encouraged is one thing, but going to church and encountering this word to have ourselves be dispossessed is. Is another thing entirely. And I think a lot of Gideon, we talk about Gideon, and there's a lot in our culture war context, there's a lot of kind of, yeah, like, let's go defeat the enemy. And the story of Gideon kind of plays into that. You know, like it's. It's like the Old Testament version of Leonidas. He's got his 300 and. And he's going to, you know, take it to the Midianites. But we missed the first part of Gideon's call is that he's frustrated at the economic oppression that's being taken over with Israel. But what does God tell him to do? God's first command to Gideon was to go back to his hometown and to tear down the idol, the Asherah pole that had been erected in his dad's backyard, essentially. And I made the mistake of reading that and kind of projecting some primitivism on it, like, oh, these are just primitive people. They have an idol. Okay, tear down the idol. Go do your thing. I think we would never. Yeah, we would never. The idols that we follow end in ism. We have capitalism, we have Marxism. We have these economics. This is the. With. This is how we think our world needs to function. Anything that we claim is necessary is. Is an idol. And so when I began to recognize that, like Gideon's taking down of that pole in the minds of his countrymen was him ruining the harvest cycle, was him disrupting their economy even more than the Midianites were. And Gideon was so scared, he did it at night. And so a lot of the culture war emphasis and a lot of the conspiracy theories that get entangled with the church's witness in public have this way of pinpointing the problem is outside of ourselves. And all we see in Scripture is a spirit of the Lord who comes back and encourages fidelity and faithfulness among the people of God as a witness to those who can still be included in that. And that's what we are trying to do when we're talking about conspiracy theory is kind of take down these idols that are in our midst that force us to narrate things that are going on around us by them, by their own terms. And so there's a dispossessing but also liberating element to this that we're talking about. [00:41:05] Speaker B: Yeah, I love that. The other side, people that we don't see. [00:41:09] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:41:09] Speaker B: Well, Jared, one more really timely thing to chat about really quick in relation to what it has to do with conspiracy theories is meta. Anybody who's on social media probably knows about meta. They own, I think, Facebook and Instagram, and I don't know most of what's out there, I feel like. But they just announced this week that they're going to do away with fact checking. What do you see that doing to conspiracy theories? Disinformation, all of that? [00:41:40] Speaker A: Yeah. I hope we have a little bit more complex or nuanced take about it, you know, I know that the, the first impulse was kind of to see it as, as capitulating to the incoming administration and, and, and all of those sorts of things. And, and the other question is just, well, did fact checking work that way to begin with? So I think I want to talk generally, okay, generally speaking, fact checking activisms. So they're still doing fact checking. They're just having it go through a different, a different form, a community notes. And that's, that's sort of, you know, fact checking by, by committee. And so my take, I would start from a very big point of view is that the bigger problem is that the reality, reality is not the sum total of raw facts alone that you can fact check all of these conspiracy theories to the end of, to the, to the very end, till they're down to nothing, but they still retain power because conspiracy theories are a storytelling act. And so in some ways, and this is where it gets difficult is that I saw a meme recently that had Eve, it was a renaissance painting of Eve and, and the serpent and, and the kind of the title said, you know, Satan the first fact checker. And, and there's this sort of sense amongst more conservative leaning Christians that see kind of all fact checking measures as censorship. And I want to say to that that there's a sense generally in which we should be suspicious of like fact checking operations that are underneath these auspices of corporations. When I think about that, I think about big tobacco in the 50s and 60s when all this research started coming out and saying, hey, like smoking kills. What they did was. They didn't create. They didn't, they did, they couldn't, they couldn't come back to that. But what they do is they could, they could buy research that flooded the market with doubt. So one tobacco executive said our product is doubt. They said we can keep selling cancer causing products if we understand that people will continue to buy them. Not if they're convinced that they don't kill you. They just need to be convinced that they may not kill you. [00:44:06] Speaker B: Maybe they will. Yeah. [00:44:07] Speaker A: And so that kind of doubt I think is kind of, that's healthy. And when we look at the sort of fact checking that happens underneath meta, my whole kind of take on these platforms is that they're fundamentally anti Democratic to begin with. That the logic that runs meta, the logic that runs X, these companies are in the game of mining human data. They want as much data on you and me as possible. The more data they can extract, the more that they can even begin to predict what we're going to want next. And so it is a money making operation, but it's also a power, it's an expression of power. That one man who owns Starlink, who owns Space X, who owns Tesla, can influence the Ukraine, Russian conflict by turning off the Internet with a switch. So there's new ways of power that's coming out of this too. Now, Kristen, you didn't ask for any of this when you asked me to talk about meta fact checking. But I think one of the things I want to communicate here is that the network analysis that I'm doing and all of this kind of talking about our moment is so, so, so much more complex than the conspiracy theories that across in social media. So when it comes to fact checking, when it comes to meta, when it comes to this whole change, I really just have two things to say. We should not despair over fact checking being taken away because we never should have trusted it in the first place. And I don't say that as a, as like, oh, you can, you know, fact checking is nothing but censorship. No, like things happen and things don't happen and there are such things as facts that we need to pursue. But on the other hand, it's never been just about facts. Yeah, it's never been just about facts. I could argue the historical veracity and validity of the crucifixion until I'm blue in the face. We could take a time machine back and witness the crucifixion. That doesn't mean we're Christian, that faith transcends the fact. [00:46:16] Speaker B: Right, right. [00:46:18] Speaker A: And, and so that's where the work into conspiracy theory gets really dicey, is because we do have to realize that even with all the facts laid out, faith is a gift. It's something that God bestows on us and we shouldn't use that lightly to just kind of claim this sort of omniscience that we know what's going on behind the shadows. We we don't. [00:46:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:39] Speaker A: So one of my, one of my mentors, Brian Brock, has this very, very, very good line that might be a helpful place to end all this is that the only thing that the church knows that the world doesn't is who sustains it. Everything else is on the table and that shouldn't make us to be more suspicious than the next person. And we shouldn't be naive at the way that power is expressing itself. When, when Mark Zuckerberg comes on and says we're going away from fact checking, certain ideological persuasions will look at that and say this is the worst thing to ever happen. We're going to be flooded with disinformation. And to that I kind of said we already were. None of this was really helping. This was already a PR move to pacify regulation. And then there will be conservatives who look at it and say, finally our free speech is restored. And to that I say, that is a slogan. When free speech is a slogan and not a policy, you're never more at risk of losing it. And so what we have to understand as the church, our responsibility is in this world of facts that we worship, that we seem to worship fact, and we never question it. We get to be a people who, and I keep saying this over and over again, that maybe the call of discipleship in our age is a call of dissent. And unfortunately, a lot of the dissent that people hear from Christians has been dissent that is not, not determined by the gospel. A more dissent that is baked into suspicion of the other, that is just based on lie. But the descent of the gospel is contained in our, our most earliest confession, right to say Jesus is Lord and, and that means Caesar isn't. And that that sort of dissent is treasonous. But oftentimes what happens is the ideology of conservatism kind of gives us a confusing idea that the dissent that we're supposed to make is supposed to look the same as the suspicion of being conservative or the suspicion of being progressive. So the fact checking thing is a big deal. It really is, but not in the way that I think a lot of people think. Fact checking was never stopping disinformation. It was never stopping misinformation. Community notes might work better, but at the end of the day, no fact checking activism can ever, ever deal with the sheer scale and speed of information that you and I deal with on a daily basis. It's way too much. And so we have to pursue truth and be suspicious of ourselves. That's what that looks like. Because there are things that come across that make are easier for us to say. And whether or not these platforms choose to be responsible or not is not. Is just not the question, is not the question. So that was a whole far reaching commentary on that. But hopefully there's some things to pick out. [00:49:35] Speaker B: No, what I really heard you say, especially in that tobacco example, is, yeah, that conspiracy is really about belief, not fact. Like, it's so emotional and that people are looking for, like you mentioned, certainty. They're looking for answers. They're clinging onto something to help them feel like they can control a bit of the chaos, or at least not get swept up in it as things are happening around them. So, Jared, if somebody is listening and maybe they're having this light bulb moment of, like, oh, maybe I'm falling prey to this. Maybe I do get emotionally caught up because. And truly I'm having so much compassion now because I'm like, as a Christian, everything I give my life to is based on belief and not fact. Like, if I can't acknowledge that in my own, that's what following Jesus is like. You know, if somebody's listening and they're like, oh, maybe this is me. Maybe I am just believing things on Facebook because somebody says it and I'm not actually seeing that this could be a conspiracy or not fully true, how can they learn to differentiate, like, and recognize what to believe and what not to believe? What's a first step in kind of getting out of the weeds of that? [00:50:54] Speaker A: I think. I think developing sort of a registry of questions to ask ourselves. That's part of media literacy. But I think in some ways, to the first question of asking myself, hey, why do I want this to be true? Like, before. Before we kind of turn the gas up. And that's going back to working the Chipotle grill. They turn the gas up really high to get those steaks nice and perfectly seared. And I don't know if they do that at Taco Bell. I don't know. But. But my point in saying that when we kind of want to turn the gas up and share this. This content that seems to, like, make sense of so much right in the moment, asking ourselves this question of, why do I want this to be true? What would it mean if this wasn't true? Like, what would change for me if I found out this. This. This wasn't true? And, And I. I think the other. The other element of this is recognizing the link between, like, disinformation and propaganda. Like, disinformation is a relatively new term, and so is misinformation. And they're so politically charged and loaded that it's really difficult to even mention them without kind of like, coding yourself on. On some place on the ideological spectrum. And so we really need to start talking more about propaganda. And I think that that's kind of a shift that I'm trying to make is saying, hey, like, yes, conspiracies, yes, disinformation, yes, but. But all of this information has a purpose and a point as it's. As it's kind of let loose into the. The. The sewage system of our information networks. And propaganda. The point of propaganda is to Normalize and legitimize the unthinkable. It's. Its point is to shift people's perception. It's also to shape it. And so when we talk about propaganda, I think one of the things, the other thing I would say is as you're asking stuff, these questions, to say I need to be uncomfortable with uncertainty. I need to be comfortable with uncertainty, that I need to be comfortable with dispossession, that I need to be comfortable with saying I don't know. And precisely because the need for certainty, the need for clarity can so often be abused and be a part of propaganda to legitimize and authorize certain actions. So those are kind of just two things like being comfortable with, with uncertainty, being comfortable with being uncomfortable, and then also developing a registry of questions to ask ourselves, hey, why do I want this to be true? Why do I need this to be true? And just patience. I mean, just patience. The speed of information alone. LM Sakastis says it to. To navigate this digital world requires a monastic level of discipline. I like that. That's a very, that's a very Christian insight that we need to be monks in some, some senses. We need to understand that our monastic life is content to say, if God holds the world, I don't have to narrate the world. I don't have to always have a narration to explain everything. And so allowing some things to pass us by and say, I don't always need to comment on this or that. And, and so, so many of that is like a, it's like a negative focus, like, hey, here's what not to do. So let me, let me kind of give a positive here, here, maybe here's what to do. Like, what do you do in the monastery as you're allowing the world to, you know, we're not retreating from the world. I don't want to advocate, but what's, what's the Christian attention is, I do think in some ways when we, when we look back to the source of the word fact, it comes from Latin factum, and it just means event. It means something that was done. And the Christian faith does rest on attention to particular facts. And those acts are God's acts, and those acts are the ones that Scripture bears witness to. And so if our faith transcends fact, if our faith is not just witnessing the crucifixion as a historical event, but trusting in it, in a particular meaning like this, this thing has meaning. That's what we mean when we say to transcend fact that the Christian Devotion and Christian attention is shaped by casting our eyes on the acts of the Lord, the deliverance that God has, has done before and will do again. And so I think as we're content to sort of say, I don't know what caused the LA fires. Yeah, I don't know, the claims of stolen elections, all of these sort of alternative takes. Just because something's alternative doesn't mean it's more true or more plausible as all of things are up and kind of come and emerge on our phones and our devices. I think the Christian call of discipleship in an age of disinformation is really to draw our attention to dissent and draw our attention back to. To God's acts of deliverance. And the more our attention is drawn to those, the more we get to be responsible disciples in our own age. Like, it's not a retreat, it's responsibility. But we can't be responsible if the stories we tell and the dissent we offer is indistinguishable from the dissent that is capturing our current zeitgeist. Yeah, that. That's the difference. And that's the kind of conversation that as a theologian, I'm trying to provoke. But what so often happens is that the dissent that I'm talking about is because people are so influenced by propaganda already that the dissent that comes from a Christian, a Christian faith is treated as dissent from a disoriented Christianity. Dissent from the mediated party line. And that's a different thing entirely. So, yeah, to draw all that together, we can speak of it in a negative and positive way. You know, to withdraw ourselves from the need to have an answer for everything while at the same time drawing our attention to the acts of God that Scripture gives us. And I think that forms us into a very unique people who are suited, fitted for the time we're in to be responsible people and to have those sorts of conversations that the world can't have. And that should be happening in our churches. [00:57:19] Speaker B: Yeah, well, you kind of just touched on this, Jared. But my last question for everybody is always because the show is called Becoming Church. How can people listening become the church to people around them? And maybe specifically that is for people who have family members around them who fall prey to conspiracy. You know, anything there that. What can. What can people do? [00:57:38] Speaker A: I mean, I think the first thing, research shows us that those who. Those of us who have family members and friends who are shaped by conspiracy theory, we feel that as well. And so my first kind of encouragement is just to acknowledge that sort of burden and to not act like it's nothing. The second thing mainly being this, that, that we need to radically be a people who just say, I don't know. And, and to let, to let that kind of good suspicion create conversation and connection. There's so much conspiracy theory just, I mean, quite literally just spreads like fire. It is burning our social fabric. Christians can be the people, ought to be the people very quick to say, I don't know. Yeah. And don't need to be the people that have an answer for everything. Like, we need to be content with mystery and content with uncertainty and waiting on the Lord and, and that in that waiting, finding ourselves pursuing the truth. All the same, that, that, let me just put it real simply. Like if, if someone wants to have a conversation or make these mentions of climate change, there's, there's nothing distinctly Christian about climate change denial and, and there's nothing at stake for being Christian to say, well, what is the effect that we're having on the environment? That's an open door. And in fact, the realization that, that Christians can be a part of that without penalty is what gave birth to the scientific revolution to begin with. That this, this world is God's world and that we were called to explore it and unfortunately that got disoriented as well. But I, I don't want to end with that. I just want to end with encouraging people to say, yes, the pain of conspiracism matters and you have to find people in your life who kind of perform the ministry of, you're not crazy, it's okay. And then the second thing is being like, once you enter into those conversations with people, being able to be content and say, I'm not going to be, I'm not going to withdraw, but I'm not going to be hyper offended either to endure this, but to be honest and bold in the assertion that, that what, what the church demands our silence over sometimes is not based on Christian, Christian faith. And so drawing greater attention to where silence is enforced and figuring out with wisdom how to bring these conversations to light, there's a whole lot there. I don't know if that's a good way to end it. [01:00:18] Speaker B: No, I think it's great. [01:00:19] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:00:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Thank you. Jared. There's. You've given us so much information, so much for people to think about. Do you have anything. I'm like, I don't want to say the wrong thing here. Do you have anything upcoming that people can learn more from you? [01:00:38] Speaker A: Well, right now. So right now I'm, I am a little bit in A in a monastery myself, self imposed working in a book. And so that's a lot of the work that I'm doing. But I would just say if, if people, I'm, I'm, I'm open to these kind of conversations. I, you know, people can get in contact with me on my website. Jared stacy.com Happy to as best as I can respond to emails that come in with particular questions but I would just, again, I don't really have anything on the calendar at this point, but I would say this. If you're a church leader or if you're working in this kind of facility or context, I would love to come speak and you know, we could do a zoom call. I can, I can do these sorts of things to have these sorts of conversations in churches. And so that I would just kind of say like, I'm certainly open to that. If you feel like hosting this kind of conversation is too much or would be penalized in some ways, I can be a healthy mediating third party to kind of say, hey, how can we talk about this in a different way? And so if that works with some of what people are doing in the work and you see, yeah, you know, feel free to reach out and contact me. But other than that I am, I'm putting the hatches down and trying to get this book done. [01:01:53] Speaker B: Awesome. Awesome. Well, we will keep everybody up to, up to date when that gets picked up and published and all of the things and yalls I'll you have a substack. We'll link up everything in the show notes. Thank you for your voice. Thank you for your work. It's needed, it's timely and it's important and it matters. So thank you. Thank you so much. [01:02:12] Speaker A: Thank you so much. [01:02:17] Speaker B: As always. I've linked up Jared's contact info in the show notes as well as the resources that he's mentioned so you can continue or begin your own media literacy. I am of the belief that instead of jumping ship when things get dark or problematic, that that's exactly when it's in need of light and hope. So you can still find me on social media. Ristonmochleryoung and I would love to connect with you there. If you've enjoyed this or any episode of Becoming Church, I'd love for you to leave a review on Apple Podcasts, letting other people know why they should join you in listening. Thanks as always for being here and until next time, keep becoming the church to the people around.