Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:09] Speaker B: If information overload tends to lead you towards cynicism like it does for me, you might be surprised to find that hope isn't found in optimism, but responsibility.
I'm Kristin Mochler Young, and this is Becoming Church, the podcast where we discuss how the message and movement of Jesus is not just about becoming Christians, but. But about becoming the church. Each week, we explore conversations around faith, culture, and the evolving church.
Today, my guest is none other than the one and only Sharon McMahon. You probably know her as Sharon says so America's favorite government teacher from social media. In this episode, we talk about the work of hope, what happens historically when faith gets too close to power, and how we can enact meaningful change in a world that we cannot control.
Sharon McMahon, welcome to the Becoming Church podcast.
[00:00:59] Speaker A: Thanks for inviting me. I'm so happy to be here.
[00:01:01] Speaker B: I'm so thrilled to have you. We are actually both former educators.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: I don't know if you know that
[00:01:07] Speaker B: I went from kindergarten to pastoring, so that was a weird. A weird jump.
[00:01:11] Speaker A: But I bet you. I bet you still used many of the skills.
[00:01:15] Speaker B: You know what I do. And it's funny. A girl that I used to teach with came to our church and she was like, I started laughing when you pointed to the wall and made us, like, read the scripture with you. So
[00:01:28] Speaker A: the, The. The crowd control of any teacher, you know, like, controlling the room of, like, here's what we're doing. I mean, it's just. I would imagine you're stopping just short of saying, one, two, three, eyes on me.
But those are the vibes.
[00:01:43] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. Well, because, like, they forget that I can see them. Like, I know when you're on your phone. I know when you're sleeping. Like, yes, I'm going to start doing the clap and response. Hello.
[00:01:52] Speaker A: Yes.
You know that I can see you. Yes.
[00:01:56] Speaker B: Well, you. Yours was a little more similar. You were a high school government teacher, Right. And now you're basically America's government teacher on the Internet.
So what is it about government that's drawn your affection for so long?
[00:02:10] Speaker A: I wouldn't say that it's an affection for government per se, in the sense of, like, I just love government.
What I do find it is fascinating, and I find it fascinating in the sense of, number one, there's much to learn. There's much history to learn. There's still a lot to learn about how things have worked and how they're continuing to move forward. But also, these are topics that greatly impact the everyday lives of individuals. This is not just some theoretical Idea of like, maybe this could happen someday. Like, this is actually on the ground really impacting people's lives. And how can we harness the power of the people for the good of the people? That's a question that I'm, you know, endlessly fascinated with. So to me it's about studying complex systems and also thinking about ways that we can harness their power for the collective good.
[00:03:04] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you feel like you use a lot of what you used to teach in high school or are you like, no, this is very much different now.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, 100%. I'm used, still using all the skills.
I'm still using all of the content.
Most people did not pay careful attention in high school. That's no shade.
[00:03:23] Speaker B: That's just like, I remember almost nothing from history. Government in high school.
[00:03:28] Speaker A: Yeah. That's just the truth of the matter. That's we're 16 years old, so like we're not hanging on every word of a teacher. Also, half of states do not have a government requirement to graduate from high school.
And another large chunk of states have a one semester graduation requirement. So most people today have received, who are adults today, received a very small amount of government education. Even if you did hang on every word of your teacher, the amount of instruction that you were required to have, it was very small. So I'm still teaching many of the exact same concepts that I would have taught in a high school classroom to enter to adults on the Internet today who just weren't paying attention or never got the chance to learn it.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you find. It's often when I'm. Even when I'm teaching the Bible, right. I tell people, I'm like, I don't think it's necessarily that what you were taught when you were a kid was wrong, but it was incomplete.
Do you find it to be that where you're like, is it a combination of both? We were taught wrong. It was just missing stuff. What are you finding?
[00:04:33] Speaker A: You know, I don't hear a lot of stories of teachers who are telling students, you know, there's eight branches of government.
Right.
So in that sense, it's a little different than the Bible because there are, you know, many, many possible ways to interpret a very long book that covers the span of, you know, many, many hundreds of years, et cetera.
So it's not quite a one to one.
I would say it's more along the lines of teachers only have so much time in the curriculum. And again, going back to what I just said, they may not have even taken A class.
But these are, these are systems that are built in a complex fashion on purpose.
And even if you took a class in 10th grade or 11th grade, the teacher's ability to sit and parse out all of the nuance of what does it mean to be on the Senate Armed Services Committee?
[00:05:32] Speaker B: You know what I mean?
[00:05:33] Speaker A: Like, that's not a.
Probably high on the curriculum requirements.
So I would, I would land it more in the category of incomplete, probably due to lack of time.
[00:05:45] Speaker B: Fair. Yeah, totally fair. As educators, we get that. We're like, no, we have to actually teach us on the test because that's what we're going to be graded on. So to focus on those things first.
[00:05:54] Speaker A: Right. If you get to the end of the school year and the children don't know what federalism means when it, in this concept of government, then you've lost. You lose.
You know, like it doesn't matter if they know the Senate Appropriations Committee. If they don't know what federalism is, you lost.
[00:06:09] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Well, you have transitioned to the Internet and you wrote a New York Times bestselling book, the Small and Mighty. I've got it right here to share stories of unsung Americans who changed the course of history and then, which I love so much. The kindergarten teacher in me wrote another New York Times bestselling book for a kids version. We are Mighty.
[00:06:32] Speaker A: Yeah, I love that. That's so nice. Thank you for having them. I appreciate that.
[00:06:37] Speaker B: I love it. Why did you decide to do a kids version?
[00:06:42] Speaker A: Well, one of the pieces of feedback that I heard from so many people who read my book for adults, the Small and the Mighty, is that they, they wished that these were the kinds of things they could have known growing up.
That they wished they could have known that there was more to America than George Washington.
They wished they could have known that history does not just belong to the Carnegie's and today's billionaires and you know, like the rich and powerful, that ordinary people have changed the course of history just by continuing to do the next needed thing.
And those are things, those are ideas that all of us want to believe about ourselves. And we find it difficult to believe. We find it difficult to think that like, yeah, I could do something meaningful.
And, and also doing something meaningful doesn't need to mean.
And then they named a museum after me and then I got a rocket ship of my very own. You know, like we have, I think, come to these. The, the Internet has helped facilitate this, that we view anything meaningful as something that has to be extraordinarily grand. Then they filled the entire swimming pool with J work.
And those are fun things to watch. No, no question, they are fun videos to watch.
But we have forgotten how much work was done in this country and in the world by ordinary people with no delusions of grandeur, with no access to the levers of power.
And that's still, that, still a power that we have today. And I think it's time for kids to start internalizing that lesson as a young person and not just living their whole lives thinking, I'll never be LeBron or Beyonce or, you know, fill in the blank. Billionaire.
[00:08:38] Speaker B: Right. My kids are a little bit older now, but they read those. I think it was like the little learners. There's all these collections.
And I was like, no, my girls are going to want to read about Disney princesses and whatever. And they did.
But I was surprised how much they also loved learning about historical figures or people who just, like this, did things in their lives. And so I don't know. And maybe that's just me as a parent, and I wasn't great starting out, but I think I just assumed, oh, my kids won't want to read stuff like this because it's not going to be like, exciting, razzle dazzle enough.
[00:09:12] Speaker A: It's not a fairy tale. There's no dragons, right? Yes. And it's so stunning. Isn't it beautiful? It's so beautiful. I cannot take any credit for the illustrations. Those are done by Susanna Chapman, who's a, an award winning illustrator.
But it's the, the illustrations are just incredible. They really. Yeah.
[00:09:32] Speaker B: Well, Sharon, what's something that you hope every kid learns to understand maybe about the government before they're old enough to vote and use their voices?
[00:09:41] Speaker A: That's a great question. I mean, I really hope that young people come to understand enough about how it works so that they feel empowered to be able to try to impact how to make change and to understand where changes actually happen at a governmental level. If you go on Facebook, you'll see a lot of people who are, who are still saying, you know, like, it's, it's too bad my, my eggs are, you know, $95 a dozen. You know, thanks, Ronald Reagan. You're like, they're still, they're still misattributing blame to people that are not to blame for things. And also, you know, and, and all iterations of that topic. Right.
So if we want to make meaningful change, which I think everybody listening to this does, there is something about the United States that they will love to make meaningful change on whether that is childhood poverty or, you know, environmental concerns or, you know, fill in the blank. There's something we would all love to move the needle on.
Being able to understand the ways in which needles are moved is a very, very important lesson. And I think it's also really important to learn that cynicism, which we are all very prone to in today's day and age, because we see how much. How many terrible things are happening in the world. Easy to be cynical and be, like, great, you know, like, never gonna be able to fix that. Like, it's a very easy emotion to reach for or tool to.
Understanding how something works helps us avoid the trap of cynicism. Cynicism feels comfortable.
It absolves us of responsibility. If we just blame everything on billionaires. And by the way, there's plenty to blame on billionaires. This is no free pass to them. But if we.
If we are. If we look around and think there's nothing I can do, then we have no responsibility to the world, to our communities.
And in reality, meaningful change has never happened from groups of cynical people.
They have always happened from people who believed that the change was possible, that they believed that the ending had not yet been written and that they had the opportunity to impact how the story ends. It has always come from people who look at what is wrong. Honestly. Yes. And said, this is wrong, and it may be how it is today, but it doesn't have to be how it stays.
And being able to have that, that posture of this may be what is wrong today, but it doesn't have to be how it stays.
That is a tactic that I wish more people, including young people, could adopt, that we actually can do things and it doesn't have to stay this way.
[00:12:54] Speaker B: Well, that's hope. Right? I mean, that is the hope of, like, we can keep going. It will be better even if we don't know all the answers or have the. Even the pan, the plan forward, like man, without. Yeah. Without hope of what could be.
I would just spiral Sharon right into a pit of cynicism, as I do sometimes.
[00:13:14] Speaker A: Yeah, right. And again, that's an understandable human reaction. To be confronted with extraordinary set of circumstances on an almost daily basis. It's an understandable thing to reach for. So this is no shade to people who find themselves prone to it. But, you know, one of the things that I.
I keep coming back to is this idea that we have that things are going to get better at some point. You know, like, we feel like, well, it's going to have to improve at some point. And then when we are reaching for that sense of easy optimism, of like, well, it'll probably get better next quarter. Probably next year. It'll be fine. Probably. Whatever.
[00:13:56] Speaker B: Whatever.
[00:13:57] Speaker A: When that doesn't happen. Yeah. Our, Our feeling of being able to move forward, you know, like what. What some people would describe as hope crumbles. And that is because we're not reaching for hope, we're actually reaching for optimism. A forecast of brighter times ahead.
A forecast that conditions will surely improve.
And, you know, you would know this from teaching the Bible that most often people throughout history have had the luxury of no such forecast.
[00:14:35] Speaker B: Right.
[00:14:35] Speaker A: They have had the. They have never had the luxury of soon job.
Your conditions will be improving. Yeah, just hold on one more day. You know, like, up around the corner are prosperous times with no, no loss of family members. You know, like, they have never had the luxury of an easy optimism. Yeah. And so understanding how to.
And I don't like using this term, but this is a term that is used, I know, like in, in Catholicism, frequently. Understanding how to suffer is something that our forebears, our ancestors, the people that have come before us, whether they're related to us or not, have learned and channeled. Yeah. In ways that I think we have become a little soft to. Not that there's no suffering in the world. There absolutely is. There's absolutely spades of it. But the. We have internalized this idea that if we're suffering, then we're doing it wrong. Yep.
And that, you know, like, there's something that must be fixed immediately and it's an injustice. If I'm suffering, it's injustice. Right. And I don't want anyone to listen to this. Right. To listen to this and say that injustice is fine. I don't. Don't believe that. I don't believe injustice is fine. And that we should ignore it and not do anything about it. I don't believe that at all.
But we seem to have come to believe that we are owed an easy life.
And, you know, I would. I would ask the question, owed by whom?
Who owes you an easy life?
[00:16:18] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:19] Speaker A: And. And if you don't get one, what are you going to do about it?
[00:16:22] Speaker B: Yeah. So funny. I literally just preached that, like, we have to have realistic expectations. I mean, just in life in general, across the board.
Because when we do go for that blind optimism, like you were saying, I think it leads us to going, okay, well, like you said, it's. Then it's circumstantial and we don't know how to get through things. And then it actually leads us to a more negative place because we are grasping for something empty that's not real.
[00:16:49] Speaker A: That's right.
I totally agree. We are, we're waiting for, like you said, this, this air quotes promised land up ahead, and we may never get there. Yeah.
[00:17:02] Speaker B: And let's develop some grit. Let's develop, I mean, like the stories in your. In the books, you know, let's figure out how to make the change. And. Well, and I want to ask you about this too, because I know that you are very good at preventing, preventing, presenting people with, like, new and better information.
But information alone does not change people usually.
[00:17:22] Speaker A: No.
[00:17:22] Speaker B: Especially when it makes them uncomfortable.
[00:17:24] Speaker A: That's right. That's absolutely right.
[00:17:26] Speaker B: So what have you learned about the conditions maybe that actually makes someone willing to change their mind or their actions or their behaviors?
[00:17:35] Speaker A: Yeah. You're. You're 100% correct that if facts changed people's behavior, nobody would be addicted to anything.
[00:17:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:17:44] Speaker A: If we were like magic facts. Right. Here are the facts of drinking too much alcohol, nobody would be an alcoholic.
If we could just fact our way into changed behavior, it would. Humans would be very different creatures. Right.
So we don't like to admit this because we like to believe that we are rational beings and that we make choices based on rational information, the consideration of rational information, and that we have, you know, looked at all the available options and chosen the one that is most logical. And that is absolutely not how humans make decisions.
If I present you with, you know, you're going to go buy a new car and you read all the specs of the new cars. This one costs this amount and has these features and whatever, and you, you know, blind choose a vehicle based on the specs. And then I drive it up into the lot and it's purple with yellow polka dots and it has like a giant Winnie the Pooh on the top of the roof. Are you buying it? You're not, you're not buying it because in actuality, what you're making a decision on is how you feel about the car.
[00:18:57] Speaker B: Yes. Right.
[00:18:58] Speaker A: Like it needs to look the way I want it to look.
And then these other features are actually secondary to, you know, like, we like to think it's all just rational.
[00:19:08] Speaker B: Right?
[00:19:08] Speaker A: Right. Blah, blah, blah. No, if you don't like the way it looks, if it's purple with yellow polka dots, it doesn't matter how great it is on paper, you're not buying it. Yeah. So humans are not very rational actors, and we do make Decisions based on how we feel about things. And so when we come to know that, we can stop beating people over the head with facts and expect them to change people.
In fact, there have been studies that show that the more facts we confront somebody with that are run counter to their worldview or how, you know, how they understand a situation, the more deeply entrenched those ideas become, they actually. It has the opposite.
[00:19:53] Speaker B: They just double down in this is what I know and believe to be true.
[00:19:58] Speaker A: That's right. It has the opposite of the desired impact.
What we do know changes people's minds is.
It's it. This is almost always frustrating when I tell people this, but what we do know about changing minds is that it is based on somebody's psychological safety to make a change.
When they feel safe to admit that what they had been believing or thinking or engaged in was not the correct path.
When they feel insulated enough from potentially the, you know, the loss that they might experience abandoning that identity that they previously had from the loss of community, from the like. I'm sure you see this in church spaces as well, where people had held one set of beliefs.
And when they. But it takes them a long time to move to a place of being willing to let go of what might have been, you know, a harmful belief. Because the. The price of letting it go has to be worth paying.
[00:21:06] Speaker B: Oh yeah.
[00:21:07] Speaker A: And if it's not worth paying, if the loss of identity, the loss of community, the life of loss of social standing, all of those things together, if that price is not worth pay, people will always struggle mightily with the willingness to abandon a position.
It's it, it's. And we have to know that. We have to understand that that is how humans make decisions.
And we then have to work to create the conditions under which it is okay for somebody to change their mind. Yeah.
[00:21:39] Speaker B: Which really means not attacking them and dehumanizing them and screaming at them on the Internet when they disagree with us.
[00:21:47] Speaker A: That's right. And also, also when they do dip a toe in the right, moving in the right direction to not be like, told ya.
[00:21:54] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:55] Speaker A: You know, only losers thought that was true.
[00:21:59] Speaker B: Right.
[00:21:59] Speaker A: Wow. So glad you woke up. You know, like, that will not help anybody.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: Yes. A hundred percent. Sharon, do you think the people that now it's emotional. Right. We just talked about that. But the people that really refuse that double down. Right. Like you said, in what they believe and whatever.
Do you think it's that they really, like, psychologically don't believe it or. Because accepting like a new truth would Force them to admit that they were wrong.
Like, what do you think the angle is?
[00:22:29] Speaker A: Both of those things for sure.
[00:22:30] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:22:31] Speaker A: There's. There's a lot of people who are just.
They're being confronted with information with which we disagree feels deeply uncomfortable. Yeah, it feels deeply uncomfortable. I would imagine that if I stood up in front of, say, a non denominational evangelical church and presented the facts of that, there, There actually is no case for historical Moses.
Moses does not exist as a historical figure.
And if I, you know, like, like there is a historical Jesus.
[00:23:03] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:23:03] Speaker A: There's not a historical Moses. Yeah.
If I presented that to a group of people, they would feel angry.
[00:23:11] Speaker B: Oh, yes, they would feel angry.
[00:23:14] Speaker A: You know, like, what is this woman doing here? This woman is blah, blah, blah and blah, blah, blah. And that is because it feels deeply uncomfortable to be presented with information with which we disagree. Our brains are hardwired to protect us from danger, and new information feels dangerous to us. Very often changes in our environment, you know, like just going back to early human civilization, changes in our environment needed to be picked up immediately because that change in the environment could be dangerous weather or a dangerous animal or dangerous invading army or, you know, whatever it is. So we are hardwired to reject things that we are unfamiliar with and to blame the messenger of. Of the person that, you know, like, blame the messenger of, you know, like, she's the problem. Yeah, yeah. Just. There's just a wholesale rejection. Yeah. So I do think that that aspect is definitely a part of it. I'm just like, I'm not even going to consider.
Right. New information.
And then there are some people who maybe have been confronted with enough things like just. Just use one modern example.
[00:24:31] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:24:31] Speaker A: A lot of people feel really deeply uncomfortable with everything that has gone on with the Epstein files. Yes. Right. Like, that just feels bad and wrong. And the fact that we're just like not doing anything about it and that there are people who are like remaining in power in government today who are implicated in these files. Like, that just feels bad and wrong.
And it should feel bad and wrong.
[00:24:56] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:24:57] Speaker A: It should feel bad and wrong to traffic girls, children.
Yeah. So there may be some people who have had enough of an emotional experience with, like, that just feels so bad. How could they do that? Where they kind of might feel deep down that a belief that they used to have or a person that they maybe used to align with, they've now been confronted with enough that it just doesn't feel right anymore.
But again, abandoning that position and being willing to say I was wrong About X.
Yeah, that is, that is a man you are.
I'm not saying they shouldn't do that. I'm just saying it is a big ask, especially for somebody who clung to something really tightly with their, you know, with both hands of like, this is who I am.
Some people are able to hold beliefs more loosely and it is less of a painful process to, you know, abandon that, you know, loosely held belief. But when somebody is clinging for dear life to something either because that's just their, you know, innate temperament or the way they were raised to cause, you know, that their past has led them to this moment, you know, whatever reason.
Yeah. Those people to whom you know that belief is identity forming even when they're confronted with new, new information, it is really hard for them.
[00:26:30] Speaker B: It really is.
[00:26:31] Speaker A: It's painful. It feels physically to some people.
[00:26:34] Speaker B: It is painful, it is confusing. It is isolating. It is.
Well, and then you like go back and forth, you know, and again, this can be faith. This can be whatever you believe about anything.
[00:26:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:26:46] Speaker B: You have your eyes open to this. You let it change you and you're like, oh my gosh, okay, like this is good. But then those other voices come in and then you start to doubt and then you just get even more confused because you're like, wait, was I right the first time? Or is this actually it?
[00:26:59] Speaker A: And that can be disorienting that people who were part of your former community are now mad at you. You know, they're like, what are you doing? What are you talking about? Like, that's ridiculous. You've been brainwashed. You know, like they, they try to insult you into feeling shame about a change in your belie and that, I mean that it's very understandable why. Why it's difficult to be willing to subject yourself to that. That's not to say it's not admirable, but it's very understandable why it's a difficult endeavor for many.
[00:27:30] Speaker B: Well, and to your point, that's why I think it's up to those of us who do want to create change and help people to see things differently, to create safe spaces where they are allowed to change their mind and they're allowed to ask questions and say like, hey, this is actually what I believed for forever help me understand something different.
[00:27:48] Speaker A: So I think I totally agree. If you, you know, you can't, you can't insult somebody into making positive life changes.
If we could do that, we would just call people that struggle with substance abuse, we'd just be like, you guys are a bunch of lazy losers, and then they would no longer be addicted. Fixed. I no longer struggle with addiction. And I. By the way, I'm not calling people who struggle with addiction lazy losers. I'm just saying, like, if we could just insult people, right, and expect and then they would change again, we'd be looking at a very different course of humanity here.
[00:28:27] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, we see that in faith, where people get shamed, often as children, into, like, their relationship with. With Jesus, and they're like, I'm a Christian because I got shamed and guilted into this. And then people are like, well, what do you mean you're deconstructing? What do you mean? You're asking questions like, well, you didn't actually offer them anything real to begin with. You just scared them into raising their hand at one point.
Yeah, well, we've talked a lot about community, right, and how the things that we believe also, really, it's identity, but it's also belonging. And whether it's, you know, faith, political ideologies, all kinds of, like, deeply personal things.
There is that tie. And so what is the difference, Sharon, between, like, a healthy community versus unhealthy conformity?
[00:29:13] Speaker A: Community obviously, is a. Is a kind of a buzzword right now. You know, we. We've become more aware as. As in the post pandemic era when people went through a tremendous amount of loneliness and when they were forced away from their communities, you know, often through no fault of their own.
Now, in this sort of post pandemic era, we've really realized how.
And I hear from people sometimes who are like, I don't want to hear the word community anymore.
Like, I'm done listening to the word community.
I get it. I need friends. You know, like. Like we've reached a fatigue point with the word community.
Maybe we need to invent another word for it. But. But regardless, the point remains the same. Humans deeply need each other. We are deeply independent, interdependent. We are not designed to be alone.
As much as introverts like me convince ourselves that we don't need to leave the house for eight days at a time, I always feel better when I do, you know, like, when I finally do leave the house, I'm like, you know what?
I should leave the house more often.
You know what?
[00:30:22] Speaker B: That was pretty good, actually.
[00:30:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it was actually nice to see another person.
We, even the introverts like me, who are perfectly happy being alone 90% of the time, we do need other people. We just. That's just how. How it is.
So, you know, healthy communities are not based on coercion. Right. And I think too often people find themselves either in faith spaces or political spaces, even community spaces, finding themselves coerced into remaining.
Because if they, even if there's no intention of coercion, that's how they experience it. Yeah. If I dip a toe over here into exploring this other idea, I will be isolated and rejected from my community that I belong to.
And so that's a form of coercion. If you're going to be isolated and rejected from a community for changing your mind about fill in the blank. That's a form of coercion.
So I, I do understand that faith communities have what they believe are standards and that they need to enforce the standards because they often believe that those standards came from a higher source than themselves. And I am not saying that faith communities cannot have standards and that there are no lines in the sand in which humans should. Which humans should draw. I do think there are lines in the sand. We shouldn't be trafficking children, for example. Amen.
We shouldn't be, you know, like, there's a million ways that we can think of, like, absolutely not. We're not doing that.
[00:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:05] Speaker A: But healthy communities have space for people to learn and grow.
[00:32:12] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: And we have space for questions because that is, that's the human experience. Right. When people are not allowed to ask questions.
That's, that's one way that, you know that you're sort of like dipping into a coercive environment.
If you, you know, just speaking in terms of like a faith space, if the God that you believe in can't handle your questions, then how all powerful are they?
[00:32:46] Speaker B: Right, Right.
[00:32:48] Speaker A: Like if they can't withstand a human not understanding something, like in their finite capacity. And they, and that human is struggling with, like, how to make sense of something, how, how omnipotent is that entity if they cannot withstand humanity's questions.
So that's, I mean, that's how I view it. Being, being able to learn and grow and have a healthy space to ask questions. I think is those are important parts of any healthy community.
[00:33:20] Speaker B: And I even think the ability to disagree has begotten, has become more and more important, at least for me, when it comes to community. Being able to say, like, that's the antidote to conformity. Right. Is we can be in the same space, we can be in the same family without agreeing on everything. Like, we have to work on the relationships. But it's, it's not impossible. And I think it's when we are taught that it is or we're slowly, you know, pushed to believe that everybody has to be exactly the same. Same talking point, same everything else.
I think it's. I've never even like considered this until right now. So I don't know what even what the right words are. It's like you, you get to belong in the club, but there's not actually the community there. Do you know what I'm saying? It's like, okay, well if you check all the right things and you can be in this group.
But I feel like true actual connection is probably lacking.
[00:34:14] Speaker A: Yeah, I know, I know what you're saying. That like membership is not belonging in all, in all cases.
There's a really wonderful book that came out earlier this year, I believe by a woman named Jennifer Wallace, who. It's called Belonging.
And it's about like the deep seated, like all humans have a need to belong and one of the, one of the components of, of true belonging, not like fake belonging. True belonging includes being needed by other people and feeling as though you are making a positive contribution to, in other people's lives. It is not just about membership. Yes, because membership can be like bot membership. You can just check some boxes and be like, I showed up, I'm a member, I wrote the check.
That's not true belonging. True belonging is feeling needed. It's actually important for humans to feel needed.
It's part of one reason people find parenthood rewarding, because they feel needed.
People with whom we have closed ties that we, with whom we feel like we matter are people that we feel need us not. Not in an unhealthy, you know, excessive kind of way. Like, not in a codependent kind of way. But the people with whom we have the closest ties are people who we feel needed by and who we need, you know, in a human community kind of way. So belonging is more than just membership, for sure. Very, very different.
[00:35:55] Speaker B: Sharon, I want to ask you, I know a lot of people listening are concerned with the way that we're seeing faith used as a political tool.
And so historically, tell us what happens when religion becomes tied too closely to political power.
[00:36:10] Speaker A: I love this question because I cannot think of a single example of where it has ended well.
[00:36:17] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:36:18] Speaker A: Yes.
Can't think of a single example of a theocracy that has ended well.
It turns out that power corrupts even people who say they believe, believe in God. You know, like the ruler of a country that is like this country will now be Protestant. This country will now be Catholic. You know, snip snap, snip snap. Back and forth.
Everybody must adhere to the belief of the monarch.
[00:36:46] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:36:46] Speaker A: But, you know, not just using European examples, there are many other examples from all around the world.
It has never result in true freedom for its citizens. And what we're seeing right now in the United States is a disturbing move toward the co opting of the symbols of the Christian faith.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:37:05] Speaker A: For political power.
[00:37:07] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:37:08] Speaker A: And I. I want people to understand that there is a difference between actually rel. People who are actual adherents of their religion, taking those values and help. Having those values, helping to inform how they engage in politics. That is different than what I'm talking about. You should take your values and use them to inform how you engage in politics. You should. That's. That's an excellent thing to do.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: Kind of the point of having them. Yes, right, exactly.
[00:37:40] Speaker A: What we shouldn't do, though, is co opt these symbols of one faith and claim that they are intertwined with the power of government and then use that as a cudgel against our own citizens, which is exactly what is happening in the United States right now.
I think Christian nationalism, particularly white Christian nationalism, because we are talking almost exclusively about white Christians when we're talking about. This is a very, very dangerous slope to begin down.
There has not been one example from history in which Christian nationalism has. Has not led to wars, death and destruction. And I'm not saying that hyperbolically. I'm not saying that hyperbolically in the slightest. Go back to the Crusades, Go back to Nazi Germany. There has not been a time where it has led humanity somewhere worth going.
Yeah. So I really, I. This is not an encouragement for people to not use their faith to inform their politics, but it is a warning against people who are attempting to usurp the symbols of your faith and bastardize them. Yes. In the pursuit of political power, that is a dangerous place to head.
[00:39:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I agree with you 100%.
What are.
I mean, I feel like this is a very obvious question, but I'm going to ask you anyway. Just for the people, like I said, we're going to give them new and better information.
What are some warning signs, Sharon, that maybe we're crossing that line of religion and politics, Christian nationalism especially, you know, being pushed too far.
[00:39:28] Speaker A: One of them is insulting and dehumanizing adherents of other faiths.
[00:39:35] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:39:36] Speaker A: Right.
Correct me if you understand this differently, but my understanding is not that Jesus ever demanded that people followed him. Correct. He never said, use my teachings and form a government in which people will be forced to obey what your interpretation of my teachings yeah. Like, that is. I don't. I've never seen that in the scriptures, Right? Nope. So the. So the dehumanization of people who belong to other faiths is something that is a very dangerous road to head down. Because as you mentioned earlier, dehumanization is one of the tools that we have historically used. And by we, I mean humanity. Humanity uses dehumanization to make it easier to oppress and kill people.
[00:40:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:40:30] Speaker A: If we don't believe that a group of Muslims, if we don't believe that a group of brown Catholics from Central America is equal to white Christians in the United States, and even if we're not willing to verbalize that, many people are not willing to verbalize that. That is the attitude that is pervading underneath the policies and the rhetoric.
If we don't believe that those people are equally as valuable in the eyes of the God that we worship, then we are. Again, we're pointing our ship in a very, very dangerous, very dangerous path. You know, this notion of scriptures telling us, of course, to love God, but also to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Unfortunately, your neighbor is your enemy. Your enemy is your neighbor. Unfortunately, it would be much better if we were only commanded to love people that we like so much easier.
[00:41:36] Speaker B: Right.
[00:41:37] Speaker A: Like, I don't like Bob, and so I will not treat him as a neighbor.
It would be so much more simple. And the reason every single one of the world's major religious and moral traditions, every single one, has some version of the concept of love your neighbor is because it's really hard for humans to do.
[00:41:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:41:59] Speaker A: If it was easy for us to do, we wouldn't need to be commanded to do it. Right. We don't need to be commanded to eat Twizzlers. That's easy.
Right.
We don't need to be commanded to do things we enjoy. Yeah.
So there's not a single religious or moral tradition in the world that does not recognize the importance of caring for your neighbor and thus prioritizes it.
And the Christian scriptures do not delineate. Again, correct me if you understand this differently. Do not delineate between.
Your neighbor is somebody with whom you agree. Your neighbor is somebody who belongs to the same denomination. Your neighbor is somebody who is the same ethnic background. Your neighbor is somebody who follows the same faith. Yeah.
There is. There are not a higher. There's not a hierarchy of persons.
So that's just, you know, like, one thing that I keep coming back to is, like, when we begin to dehumanize groups with. With whom we do not Agree politically, that is always a very, very dangerous. And I, I'm.
I don't use the word dangerous lightly here. That is a dangerous place to be politically. And if the group that you belong to is asking you to dehumanize other people, it might be time to reconsider your membership instead.
[00:43:36] Speaker B: Yes.
Yeah. And I think it's, you know, underlying a lot of what you've said. I feel like people are using different things to, like, turn a blind eye. Right. I don't want to see this so I can justify my own beliefs and justify my own behaviors and whatever. And so I feel like what people need to do and maybe a warning sign is when people, if they take their beliefs and then they look at what are these leaders actually doing. Like, I think so many people, which would should be another warning sign that we're crossing the line of political power and religion, are all of a sudden okay with things that they would have never been okay with before because of
[00:44:13] Speaker A: who's doing it a hundred percent.
[00:44:15] Speaker B: And that should not be the case at all.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: That's right.
If you. Again, I know a lot of people listening to this are, you know, people of some type of faith. Right. Whatever that is for somebody in this moment. Most people believe in some kind of moral standards. Yeah. They believe in these. You know, if I were to say, are there moral lines that you do not think should be crossed or that if they are crossed, it's wrong for somebody to do. Is it wrong for somebody to cheat on their spouse? Most people would say, yes, that is morally wrong.
But when we begin to tolerate things from some groups of people that we would. What? That we would be knocking over lamps if somebody with whom we already disagree was doing it, Like, I can't believe they would do that.
What we're at, what we're afraid to admit is that we actually have double standards, that we actually do not have standards. What we have are political preferences that we want to see upheld, that we do not have objective standards. It's wrong for person A to cheat on their spouse. It's also wrong for person B to cheat on their spouse.
And I do understand that in the political United States political system, we. We do have a binary in which we often have to choose between what we feel is the lesser of two evils. That does not mean, though, that we give the person that we may have voted for, that we give them a pass on their bad behavior.
[00:45:43] Speaker B: Correct.
[00:45:43] Speaker A: That we say, well, I voted for them and I think they're better than Bob. So, you know what the Fact that they're a cheater or a liar or whatever it is is probably fine because they're better than Bob. Actually. That's not how morals work.
[00:45:57] Speaker B: Right, right.
[00:45:58] Speaker A: Right. If somebody, you know, steals, you know, a diamond ring, it doesn't. And somebody else murders somebody, it doesn't make the stealing okay, because somebody did a bigger crime.
[00:46:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:46:15] Speaker A: They can both be wrong.
They can both be immoral acts. And it's wrong for us to say, well, you know, Bob murdered somebody, so it makes the fact that Kevin is a thief fine. That's actually not how morals work. Right, right.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: Yep. Yes. We have to take what we believe and we have to hold them people accountable. And if we don't, then we, I. We don't actually believe it. You're right. It's not actually a value.
[00:46:40] Speaker A: That's. That's exactly right. We're. We are what we have. Our political preferences.
[00:46:44] Speaker B: Yes.
Well, I think one of the reasons that faith especially gets weaponized is because people were taught to just kind of blindly believe. Right. The pastor said it, the Bible said it, the dad said it, whoever. And so instead of developing discernment, people just go, okay, I'm just going to adopt whatever you tell me.
So Sharon, in your, you know, your, all of your platforms, you're always trying to give people new information.
How do you encourage them to think critically instead of, you know, creating, like Sharon says, so disciples that just follow along with whatever you say.
[00:47:15] Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's a great question too, because most teachers that I know would actually rather have a student that arrives at a different conclusion to them, but who really carefully thought it out. Yes. Who like has this other. My paper is about X, and here are. Is all of my research that leads me to this conclusion. We would actually rather have a student that does that than just parrots back our talking points. You said in class one time that the following things are true.
I would much rather have student A than student B any old day.
[00:47:51] Speaker B: The understanding is not there when it's just.
[00:47:53] Speaker A: That's right. The critical evaluation of information is, is not there if you're just parroting something.
So I think we have to understand two, two things here. First, thinking critically does not mean criticizing.
We, we believe that those are the same thing. And so consequently, if, if our belief is that it's wrong to criticize somebody, that we shouldn't be so critical. We, we have. We stop engaging in, in critical thought because some people have conflated criticism with critical thinking. And those are not the same thing in the sense in Critical thinking asks us to evaluate information on its merits.
That's what critical means in that context, an evaluation of information.
It does not mean look for ways to criticize it. Now when you're evaluating something, you may have criticisms of that, of whatever it is you're evaluating and you may find positive attributes of what you are evaluating. But that is what critical thinking is. One of the other things that I think people are forgetting today is that in order to think critically, we must be confronted with information we disagree with.
That is a requirement of critical thinking. And I think sometimes faith spaces, sometimes parents have a knee jerk reaction of wanting to protect people from what they view as negative outside influences. Yeah. And I'm not saying that parents should not try to protect their children. Like of course we shouldn't let our kids read the Epstein files when they're six years old. Of course it's our job to protect them, but it's not necessarily our job to protect children from ideas that they are. We can teach them to critically evaluate.
Part of our role as parents or as faith leaders or as teachers is as, as appropriate when we're talking about children we do have, we have to add in developmental, appropriate, developmentally appropriate concepts is to help them to move them from a position of protection and help them grow in their ability to guide themselves over time. Right. We have to move from protection to preparation.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:50:19] Speaker A: So that we, we're not just kicking an 18 year old out of the house who has no idea how to use a toaster. Like we have to prepare them for life in the real world. And that involves critically evaluating information and helping prepare our children. The people that we that attend our churches, the people we work with, et cetera, helping to prepare them for what it might look like outside of the confines of these walls if all they have ever been prepared with is a list of talking points.
That is when things fall apart in the real world. Yeah. And I bet you have experienced this in the faith spaces where people, all they have is talking points.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: Right.
[00:51:02] Speaker A: And then when they get out into the real world, those talking points fall apart because they do not actually understand what is underpinning the talking points. Right. Why do we believe that?
[00:51:14] Speaker B: Right.
[00:51:15] Speaker A: Yeah. What does that even mean? Yes.
[00:51:17] Speaker B: All of a sudden everything that I built, the foundation that I put my faith and my identity and my beliefs in is not holding up in the real world. And so I guess it's worthless or useless. Right?
[00:51:28] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. Then it's all a lie.
[00:51:31] Speaker B: Yeah. Yes.
[00:51:31] Speaker A: And it's all a lie. It's very Easy to just, like, throw the whole baby out with the bath water.
[00:51:36] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: And that it's understandable. People feel, like, indignant that they have been. They. They feel like they've been lied to.
They feel like I was. I, you know, like none of this was real, when in reality, some of it might have been real. You just were never prepared for any. For the real questions that you would someday be confronted with. We were not ever prepared for. How to wrestle with questions. Yeah. How to engage with questions. And we were also never prepared. I think this is often true in faith spaces. We were never prepared for a lack of certainty.
Often faith spaces highly value certainty, and that feels very disorienting to people when they're confronted with uncertainty. They feel like that feeling of uncertainty is so uncomfortable and the seeking of certainty is so.
It feels like. Like a safe harbor for them.
[00:52:34] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:52:35] Speaker A: That sitting with uncertainty is something that must be avoided at all costs. For some people, there's can be no uncertainty when in reality, the world is full of uncertainty.
Yes. And we. We actually might really benefit from learning how to be uncertain and moving forward through uncertainty without clinging to, you know, this, like, rickety raft of certainty that falls apart in a storm.
[00:53:04] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm. I giggled and then I got emotional because you have no idea that my first book that's coming out is called the Other side of Certainty. That is all about literally everything that you just said. Sharon and I, like, did not know that.
[00:53:19] Speaker A: Yep. Okay.
[00:53:20] Speaker B: Yes, yes, yes, and yes to everything you just said.
There is another way, and it is not being rooted in certainty.
[00:53:28] Speaker A: So tell, tell. Give us a. Give us like one. One point from the book or one way to rethink about uncertainty.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: I would love getting comfortable being uncomfortable and being okay with not having all the answers and not having our. Our faith, our beliefs, our foundation, being in knowing and acknowledge.
But in like, faith by definition means believing in something that you can't prove.
So actually, then that's uncertain into that. Correct. That's uncertainty.
[00:53:58] Speaker A: So it's so funny. I mean, even. Even scientists are very uncomfortable with uncertainty. As much as we would like to be, like, gravity is real and, you know, science did. The experiment proves all. All professional scientists will tell you. There's so much we don't know. We don't know why you have hives.
You know, like, we don't know.
You know, there's some causes, and if we rule those out, we don't know. We don't know the answer to that. It's uncertain.
There's all kinds of things in science that we don't know the answer to. And if, if we required certainty to make any kind of scientific advancements, we would be, we'd still be believing that you, you know, die of, of tuberculosis because you weren't writing enough poetry. You know, like our beliefs about the world have been improved by our understanding of science. Science is full of uncertainty. So other people, and I'm not saying you can't be both a faith based person and a scientist. There are many people who are both sure can. In other words, fields and certainty is embraced and the pursuit of improvement, the improvement of scientific knowledge is what is sought, not perfect certainty.
[00:55:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:55:15] Speaker A: So uncertainty is part of the human experience. It's part of what makes, makes us human.
[00:55:21] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:55:22] Speaker A: Is we are uncertain and finite.
[00:55:24] Speaker B: Well, and I think what is frustrating to me in the faith space is, you know, you go to a doctor, you don't get an answer. It's frustrating to have the uncertainty, but then you don't go, well, I'm never going to the doctor again. Like, I'm never believing in medicine again.
[00:55:37] Speaker A: Car accident, Handling that at home.
[00:55:39] Speaker B: Yes, yes. But we do that with church space.
[00:55:42] Speaker A: So that's true. We tolerate uncertainty in certain circumstances and in other, other circumstances, if we have uncertainty, then we abandon it. Yeah.
[00:55:54] Speaker B: Well, last, last question for you, Sharon.
The show is called Becoming Church because we believe that the church is less about, you know, what happens in buildings on Sunday mornings and more about how we actually show up in the world.
So maybe what is one small thing that our everyday, ordinary, you know, people listening can do to become the church, the people around them.
[00:56:14] Speaker A: This week, you know, I, I come back to this mantra when I am feeling overwhelmed with the enormity of the world's problems, which is do for one person what you wish you could do for them all. Yeah.
And as much as we. I would love to eliminate childhood poverty. I would love to make it so that no children go to bed hungry like that Is that weighs heavy on my heart. I am a parent. I've worked with children most of my adult life.
I wish that I could fix the problem, but I'm not going to let my inability to solve the entirety of the problem keep me from doing all that I can. Yes. And if that means helping one kid or helping one organization or, you know, doing one small thing each day. There are, you know, billions of people on this planet, and if we are all doing something small each day, that actually makes really substantive change.
So understand that the weight of the world is not on your shoulders.
You you alone are not required to solve all of the world's problems, to solve massive, complex, you know, multinational crises, but neither are you absolved from, from any responsibility at all. So if we reframe it into thinking about. I'm going to do for one person what I wish I could do for everyone.
And I'm going to trust that the seeds that I am planting will grow into something beautiful, even if it doesn't grow into something beautiful in my lifetime or in a way that I can see.
That's, again, that's relying on some of that faith that what I do will matter. And so I need to decide what I will do.
[00:57:55] Speaker B: Yeah, we can control what we can control, and we get to decide. I'm going to do something to make a difference whether I can see it or not. I think that is the challenge often. Right. Then not being able to see it through.
[00:58:07] Speaker A: Yes, that's right. We, we love a payoff. And I get why. Right. Like I. Totally understandable.
But again, the people who've come before us, the people we admire from history, the people we admire in our faith spaces, they had no assurance of their own success.
And we need to again embrace the uncertainty of being immediately rewarded for our actions and the need. Need to see like, the immediate results of I planted the tree and then month later I had apples.
[00:58:44] Speaker B: Right.
[00:58:44] Speaker A: You know, like, we, that's not how it works. And we have to be willing to embrace the idea that we, we may never see the fruits of our labor, but no work for liberty can be lost. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:58:57] Speaker B: That's beautiful. Thank you so much for being here. This has been my pleasure. Truly a delight.
[00:59:02] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:59:03] Speaker B: I will link up the books and everything for everybody else.
[00:59:06] Speaker A: So thank you. Thank you. It was good to see you.
[00:59:11] Speaker B: Well, I did not expect Sharon McMahon to appeal to your need for certainty when it comes to faith. But as we like to jokingly say, sometimes won't he do it?
Uncertainty is part of life and we embrace it in so many areas. I would love to help you let go of easy answers and blind belief so you can embrace uncertainty in your faith as well. My book, the Other side of Certainty is linked up for you in the show notes. It really is a resource for processing how to change your mind in the way you show up in the world.
If you're not already following Sharon on social media, Sharon says so you will be even more challenged and encouraged and educated by all of the good information that she puts out there. So be sure to give her a follow and pick up up. We are mighty for a kid that you want to see grow up with confidence.
Thanks so much for listening. And until next time, keep becoming the church of the people around you.
