In All Things Podcast

ENGAGING Artificial Intelligence with Jason Thacker (ep. 43)

On this episode of the podcast, we talk with ethicist Jason Thacker about engaging artificial intelligence. The explosion of AI tools like ChatGPT, has led to both grand visions and grave concerns about the future, including the future of education and the future of work. In this conversation we seek to define the terms and seek biblical direction for our anxieties, hopes, and tech practices. Among the questions we discuss:

• How AI was already present in our everyday experience prior to the new tools
• A range of definitions and distinctions: narrow AI vs. general AI, superintelligence vs. the singularity
• The structure and direction of AI, and how the image of God can guide our engagement
• What we should and shouldn't worry about and what we should and shouldn't celebrate
• Counsel for students and teachers when it comes to AI

Follow Jason Thacker: https://jasonthacker.com/

Included music on this episode is "Mother Mary" from the Ruralists album Trying. Find lyrics and more here: https://www.fullyruralized.com/  

LOCATING Human Uniqueness with Mary Vanden Berg (ep. 42)

On this episode of the podcast, we talk with Dr. Mary Vanden Berg about her book Aquinas, Science, and Human Uniqueness: An Integrated Approach to What Makes Us Human. The conversation considers what makes humans unique in the face of a scientific culture (that tends to treat humans as mere animals) and technological advancement (that appears to reproduce intelligence artificially). Among the questions we discuss:

• Are humans nothing more than advanced animals?
• Is human intelligence of the same sort as the artificial intelligence we find in computers?
• Can we base human uniqueness in "intellect" without diminishing those cognitive disabilities?
• What does it mean to say that humans are a "body-soul complex"? Can we speak about a "soul" without diminishing the body?
• What is the practical or pastoral significance of discussing human uniqueness?

Get the book: https://wipfandstock.com/9781725267770/aquinas-science-and-human-uniqueness/

Included music on this episode is "Strange Machines" from the Ruralists album Trying. Find lyrics and more here: https://www.fullyruralized.com/ 

EXAMINING the Evangelical Imagination with Karen Swallow Prior (ep. 41)

On this episode of the podcast, we talk with Dr. Karen Swallow Prior about her new book, The Evangelical Imagination. It’s a conversation about the stories, images, and metaphors that have shaped evangelical Christianity. Whether or not you consider yourself part of that movement/brand/space, you're invited to join us in examining what stories and images are shaping us. Among the topics we discuss:

• Why the imagination matters and what it means to speak of "the evangelical imagination" and why the cover of the book is "kitschy"
• How the evangelical desire to engage culture (shared by some varieties of Reformed Christianity) has meant that faith is captive to cultural currents
• Why the metaphor of being "born again" has such purchase on the American evangelical imagination, for good and ill
• What it means to engage in "examination as an act of love" not just a work of criticism or deconstruction
• How we might discern the difference between building faithful institutions and building empires
• Counsel for those who teach as well as for those who find themselves discouraged by the state of things

Get the book: https://bakerbookhouse.com/products/492150

Follow Dr. Prior: https://karenswallowprior.com/ 

Included music on this episode is "(dis)appear" from the Ruralists album Trying. Find lyrics and more here: https://www.fullyruralized.com/ 

TRYING to Get it Right with the Ruralists (ep. 40)

On this episode of the podcast, I talk with two members of the band The Ruralists, Luke Hawley and Laremy Devries, about their new album, Trying. You may recognize the name and their music from the intro and the outro of this podcast. This was the 40^th episode of the podcast, and we recorded it live on the stage of the B.J. Haan auditorium at Dordt University, with a small studio audience. They play three songs off the new album (lyrics below) and we discuss, along the following topics:

• The story of the band, the name of the band, and the name of the album
• What "ruralism" is and what it means to celebrate and advocate rural life
• How teaching and spending time with college students shapes the songs
• What it means to use faith as "a lens and not a hammer"
• What it means to say that song is a "Dooyeweerdian" song
• What it means to say that songs should be more like sermons and less like prayers, and the relationship is between making claims and exploring possibilities

Get the album: https://fullyruralized.bandcamp.com/album/trying

Listen to the album: https://www.fullyruralized.com/trying 

More on the band: https://www.fullyruralized.com 

 

***Special thanks to Alex Priore, Jack Underwood, and the production arts team who made the event happen with excellent quality and stellar style.***

 

Lyrics to "Murmur"

You’re a murmur of starlings

Darling

All your ever-shifting parts

A work of modern art

That I cannot understand

And I can’t look away

Or convey

All my slip-sliding thoughts

All twisted up in knots

Explaining how I feel

 

So I’ll keep writing you all these love songs

All my life long

Trying to get it right

And you’ll keep asking me

Why I do it

Why I can’t quit

But I just don’t know how

It’s just like breathing now

 

I’m an old tv set

Trying to get

The picture to come in

With strips of kitchen tin

Wrapped around my ears

But it’s mostly just snow

Even though I’m giving it my best

I just haven’t got it yet

As clear as it can be

 

So I’ll keep writing you all these love songs

All my life long

Trying to get it right

And you’ll keep asking me

Why I do it

Why I can’t quit

But I just don’t know how

It’s just like breathing now

 

There’s a word that I learned

From a friend

About saying what you’ve got

By saying what it’s not

Possible to say

So then all that I know

I suppose

Of language and of rhyme

Of being and of time

Means nothing without you

 

Lyrics to "Mother Mary"

I keep trying to see the face

Of mother mary full of grace

In an apple core

In a sticky bun

In a stretch of clouds

In the setting sun

 

But all that’s there is just the flesh and peel

Just the carmeled crust and the pink and teal of harvest dust

 

I keep trying to tell you how

I have always loved you like I love you now

But my tongue gets thick and my brain brain goes slack

And all these words come out bric-a-brac

 

And all that’s there is just the metaphor

It’s not the whole of you 

It’s not the crux and core

It’s not the through and through

 

I keep trying to understand

How a dram of atoms makes the man

And the woman too

Is that the whole of us?

Just a clump of dirt?

Just a cloud of dust?

And that’s there is just some chemistry

The arithmetic of you and me

And the human heart is just a fine machine

Not a work of art filled with kerosene

Not a mystery of colossal scope

Not a duffel bag of fear and hope

Not a megaphone of love and hate

Not a talisman to keep us safe

Not a rattletrap always breaking down

Not a spiderweb 

Not a shantytown

Not a creaking bridge

Not a tank brigade

Not an oracle

Not a masquerade

Just a thing that bangs and beats and pounds

And throbs and churns and wails and sounds

And maybe all we are is dust

Maybe that’s the whole of us

 

But maybe we are magic too

Impossible and completely true

Through and through

 

Lyrics to "People are People Too"

People are people too

Just like me and you

From the tops of our heads

To the foot of our beds

People are people too

 

You seem to think they’re not

You seem to think they’re not

You treat them like things

And not human beings

But people are people too

 

Of course it’s the same for me

Of course it’s the same for me

It’s hard to admit

But I often forget

That people are people too

 

So then what can be done

So then what can be done

Just what do we need

For us to agree

That people are people too

 

People are people too

Just like me and you

From the buds of our tongues

To the air in our lungs

People are people too

 

People are really strange

People are really strange

We do what we won’t

And believe what we don’t

But people are people too

 

Sometimes they drive you nuts

Sometimes they drive you nuts

So we try to negate

With our labels and hate

But people are people too

 

Time here is really short

Time here is really short

So let’s make up a plan

To be as kind as we can

Because people are people too

 

DEMYSTIFYING Critical Race Theory with Jeff Liou (ep. 39)

On this episode of the podcast, I talk with Dr. Jeff Liou about his new book Christianity and Critical Race Theory. There are few topics more contentious than CRT, but in this conversation, we simply seek to demystify the discourse, to understand CRT, and to ask where there might be openings and oppositions for Christian discipleship as we seek to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with our God. Among the topics we discuss:

• What is CRT, and why has it become such a lightning rod? How can we demystify it to engage it in a meaningful way?
• How does the CRT concept of "community cultural wealth" connect with a Christian account of creative diversity?
• How does the CRT claim that "racism is ordinary" connect with the Christian doctrine of pervasive sin?
• What should we make of the criticisms of CRT that it redefines the terms of racism to see racism in everyone and everything, that it is nebulous and totalizing, and that it creates a new sort of fundamentalism that is light on grace?
• What are the greatest points of tension between Christianity and CRT?
• How might this conversation connect for Reformed Christians, specifically?
• How do we learn to see power, without power becoming the only thing we see?

Get the book: https://bakeracademic.com/p/Christianity-and-Critical-Race-Theory-Robert-Chao-Romero/436007

 

GETTING Out of Bed with Alan Noble (ep. 38)

On this episode of the podcast, I talk with Dr. Alan Noble about his new book, On Getting Out of Bed: The Burden and Gift of Living. Getting out of bed may seem like a simple thing to do, but for many who struggle with mental affliction, getting out of bed is an act of faith and defiance against despair, a testimony to that fact that life is worth facing. Among the topics we discuss:

• The difference between the categories of "mental suffering" and "mental illness" and why there might be a danger in over-relying on the category of mental illness
• Why the younger generation in particular seems to struggle to get out of bed, and what might give them courage to do so.
• How literature, especially The Road by Cormac McCarthy offers us an embodied answer to the question of getting out of bed.
• Counsel for those who walk with loved ones who struggle with more debilitating mental illness
• Hope for those who struggle to believe that the grace of Christ (rather than suffering) is the deepest reality

We hope that whether this is your testimony, or whether you walk with those who struggle to get out of bed, that you find this conversation helpful.

Get the book: https://www.ivpress.com/on-getting-out-of-bed

About Alan Noble: https://www.oalannoble.com/ 

EMBODYING Praise with David Taylor (ep. 37)

On this episode of the podcast I talk with Dr. David Taylor about his new book, A Body of Praise: Understanding the Role of Our Physical Bodies in Worship. For those of us who tend to think about worship as primarily a matter of the mind or heart, it’s a reminder about the role our physical bodies play in worship. It's an essential conversation, not least after the the upheavals and bodily deprivations of Covid. Among the topics we discuss:

• Why worship is just as much a matter of the body as the head or the heart.
• What it means to worship God "in Spirit and in Truth" (John 4)
• The idea of "body knowledge" and how it shapes us over time
• Surprises from church history about body postures in worship
• How to navigate debates over "originalism" and "the regulative principle" in light of cultural difference in the way we use our bodies in worship.
• Counsel for worship planners to engage the body in an authentic way
• Why it seems like worship doesn't always seem to work.
• How technological shifts towards online services shape the way we think of our bodies in worship

Get the book: https://bakeracademic.com/p/A-Body-of-Praise-W-David-O-Taylor/466164

More about David Taylor: https://www.wdavidotaylor.com/ 

DRAMATIZING the Greatest Story with Kathryn Wehr (ep. 36)

On this episode of the podcast, we are speaking with Dr. Kathryn Wehr, about her new annotated edition of Dorothy Sayers’s The Man Born to Be King, a series of 12 radio plays broadcast and published 80 years ago during the Second World War. It is a fascinating conversation of the unique complexities and tensions of adapting the gospels for dramatic production. Among the topics we discuss:

• Who was Dorothy Sayers? What are some of her works that we should know?
• The controversy that surrounded the original production of the radio plays and how it drove publicity and affected the final forms of the plays.
• Which characters were the most challenging to depict and which creative decisions were most successful
• How Sayers sought to write plays with ecumenical appeal, for the whole church rather than merely for a particular denomination.
• What Sayers might have to say to creative artists today.

We hope the conversation will encourage everyone to pick up a copy of the plays for themselves, or at least to allow this conversation to lift the film of familiarity from the great and true story that is the gospel.

Get the Wade Annotated Edition: https://www.ivpress.com/the-man-born-to-be-king

Listen to the plays: https://www.amazon.com/Man-Born-Be-King-Collection/dp/B09HSM8FJ9 

 

Other works by Dorothy Sayers mentioned in the conversation

Lord Peter Wimsey series (15 book series)

Introduction and Translation of Dante's Divine Comedy (Penguin classic)

The Zeal of Thy House

"The Mind of the Maker"

"The Lost Tools of Learning"

 

Other authors and books and authors mentioned in the conversation:

Gina Dalfanzo, Dorothy and Jack: The Transforming Friendship of Dorothy L. Sayers and C. S. Lewis 

Ronald Gurner, We Crucify!

 

FINDING Messiah with Jennifer Rosner (ep. 35)

On this episode of the podcast, we are speaking with the Dr. Jennifer Rosner, about her book Finding Messiah: A Journey into the Jewishness of the Gospel. Dr. Rosner is a Jewish believer in Jesus Christ, and in this episode, she tells us her story, as well as the story of how these two deeply intertwined religious traditions have been torn apart, and what it might mean to weave them back together. Among the topics we discuss:

• Dr. Rosner's story about finding Jesus and rediscovering her Jewish roots
• The sad history of Jewish and Christian relations
• How we can remember the Jewishness of the New Testament
• Some of the ways that well-meaning Christians perpetuate negative stereotypes about Judaism
• How Judaism can help us resist dualism through rediscovering the embodied character of faith and worship
• Some of the more encouraging developments in Jewish-Christian scholarship

For more about Dr. Rosner: https://www.jenrosner.com/

Get the book: https://www.ivpress.com/finding-messiah

 

Resources mentioned in this podcast:

Mark S. Kinzer, Jerusalem Crucified Jerusalem Risen

Dallas Willard, The Spirit of the Disciplines

NT Wright, Surprised by Hope

 

STRETCHING the Poetic Imagination with Drew Jackson (ep. 34)

On this episode of the podcast, we interview poet Drew Jackson about his recently published collection of poems (God Speaks Through Wombs and Touch the Earth) in conversation with the gospel of Luke. Among the topics we discuss:

• The role of imagination as a pastor and as a poet
• How the Christian faith requires all of us to develop poetic imagination
• The process of writing poetry based on the biblical text
• Honoring the poetic voices that formed us in writing new poetry
• The process of writing poetry for sound and playing with structure
• The relationship of poetry and prayer

A highlight of this episode is when Drew reads two of his poems so that we can hear them in his voice. 

Get the new collection: https://www.ivpress.com/touch-the-earth

Get the previous collection: https://www.ivpress.com/god-speaks-through-wombs

Other poets and authors mentioned in the podcast:

Rainer Maria Rilke

Langston Hughes

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Kiese Lamon

Paul Louis Dunbar

Mary Oliver

Margaret Atwood

Barbara Holmes

Howard Thurman

Tony Hoagland

Sharon Old

Joey Graham

Jericho Brown

Mary Oliver

Elizabeth Alexander

Cheryl Sanders