Show Notes
On this episode of Nuance, Case is joined by Dr. Steven Garber, author, professor, and founder of Wedgwood Circle. Together they discuss the concept of the public square as a microcosm of the proximate, where individual lives, community responsibilities, and shared values intersect. Garber emphasizes the importance of the public square as a space for ethical and moral development, as well as the pursuit of the common good. He also shares his experiences in Central Europe after the fall of communism and the ongoing struggles faced by the people there. Dr. Garber invites all of us intentionally pursue community and vocation with Christ, opening ourselves to his leading for the sake of the Kingdom and the good of our neighbors.
Episode Resources:
Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0830836667
The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1514006073/
Nuance is a podcast of The Collaborative where we wrestle together about living our Christian faith in the public square. Nuance invites Christians to pursue the cultural and economic renewal by living out faith through work every facet of public life, including work, political engagement, the arts, philanthropy, and more.
Each episode, Dr. Case Thorp hosts conversations with Christian thinkers and leaders at the forefront of some of today’s most pressing issues around living a public faith.
Our hope is that Nuance will equip our viewers with knowledge and wisdom to engage our co-workers, neighbors, and the public square in a way that reflects the beauty and grace of the Gospel.
Learn more about The Collaborative:
Website: https://collaborativeorlando.com/
Get to know Case: https://collaborativeorlando.com/team/
Episode Transcript
Case Thorp
Drawing on Steven Garber’s work, a public square can be seen as a microcosm of the proximate, a space where the intersection of individual lives, community responsibilities and shared values unfold in tangible ways. In this sacred space, the proximity of diverse people and perspectives creates opportunities for engagement, where the weight of everyday decisions and the pursuit of the common good converge. Here, the abstract ideals of justice, compassion, and truth are made concrete through the actions and interactions of those who inhabit the Square, reflecting Garber’s belief that it’s in these proximate immediate contexts that our deepest convictions are tested and lived out. The Public Square, therefore, becomes not just a place of gathering, but a crucible for ethical and moral development where ordinary meets the extraordinary and the pursuit of life well lived. And friends, that is our guest today. Steven Garber. Steven, thank you for being here. I appreciate you giving us your time.
Steven Garber
It’s a wonderful gift to see you again, Case, and to talk about things that matter to you and to me and I think to all of us.
Case Thorp
Well, I enjoyed your postings on Facebook of your summer adventures. Have you been able to get to the Vancouver area this summer? You’re a creature of out west.
Steven Garber
We were there for about a week in the spring. I was speaking for the annual global retreat for the Institute for Marketplace Transformation. Good people came from Canada and the US and Hong Kong and Manila and Singapore and Taipei and Seoul.
Case Thorp
Wow. Well, I am, you know, I’ve told you before your book, Visions of Vocation is one of my top five books. And I teach it in our Gotham fellowship to our Orlando fellows. And I always build it up as I rub it on my cheek and I say, warm brown sugar, warm brown sugar. And I don’t say that to demean the work. I lift it up as a warm, beautiful experience with great theological depth. Well, I want to encourage everybody: Visions of Vocation. We’re going to talk about some more of his work. Let me tell you about Steven. He’s a senior fellow for vocation and the common good for the Murdoch Charitable Trust. A teacher of many people in many places, he’s recently served as professor of marketplace theology and director of the Masters in Leadership Theology and Society at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia. He’s the author of many books. And like I said, this one is one of my favorites, Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good. His most recent is The Seamless Life: A Tapestry of Love and Learning, Worship and Work.
He is one of the founders of the Wedgwood Circle. For many years, he was the principal of the Washington Institute for Faith Vocation and Culture, and he continues to serve as a consultant to colleges and corporations, facilitating both individual and institutional vocation. He’s a husband, a father, and a grandfather, and long lived in the Washington, D.C. area. So, Steven, tell me, The Wedgwood Circle. I trust this is not about Wedgwood China?
Steven Garber
Well, actually it is, and then it isn’t my case. But the short story about Wedgwood Circle is that about 15 years ago, a handful of my friends, before Zoom existed and we had to talk on the telephone, of all things, spent about a year and a half talking in planned telephone calls about this reality that we’d come to believe that the culture is upstream from politics.
What happens in Washington, D.C. happens, and it has consequences, of course, for not only America, but for the rest of the world. And that’s not small, it is weighty. But actually what happened in Washington, D.C. happened in Orlando first, and happened in New Orleans, happened in Denver, and happened in Seattle, and Boise, and all over the country, actually. The debates, the questions, the ideas, the issues, pushing and shoving over time, if it happened long enough and hard enough, eventually those make their way to the capital city, and they find either a way forward or they are closed down in Washington for blessing or for curse. And we came to believe that the culture is upstream from politics.
We were impressed and instructed actually by a group of serious Christian people from 225 years ago in England, in London, who called themselves the Clapham Circle, the Clapham Society, or sometimes the Clapham Sect. The best known of those would be the man William Wilberforce.
Case Thorp
Who wrote Amazing Grace.
Steven Garber
We know the short story of his life, of coming into the parliament in his early 20s, being impressed by conversation by his mentor John Newton, saying, Will, you need to stay in politics; don’t become a pastor, politics, here are these great objects for you to take up, but you need to really work your tail off for the abolition of the slave trade. And Wilberforce took it up for the next 10 years making bills to propose the abolition of the slave trade, which, you know, in the weighty political moment of the time was the economic engine of the British Empire, when the British Empire ran the world. The sun never set on the British Empire in those days. And the slave trade was its economic engine. So if we just think it through kind of clearly, whether the debates happening in Florida or Washington, D.C. or London, the politicians are never, ever, ever, ever going to drive a stake into the heart of what keeps the economy going.
Wilberforce was up against that for those first ten years and was laughed out of the parliament year after year. After ten years, they decided to rethink what they were doing and how they were doing it. And one of his friends was a man named Josiah Wedgwood, and he was an owner of an heir to a china company making fine dinnerware, he decided that he could create, his company would create a plate, a Wedgwood blue plate with a cameo of a slave in chains on the plate, and the words, am I not a man and a brother over the top? And they said it would not be philanthropy, would not be charity in that sense, it would be actually a sellable product, people would want to buy it. And they guessed well, and people did buy it, and there were scores of other things that went on in the next 25 years, but we were inspired by Wedgwood’s contribution and decided, well, what if we took the same idea that the culture is upstream from politics, brought it into America in the 21st century, and said, how would we understand that Washington matters, but so does New York City, and so does LA, so does Nashville, these three chief storytelling cities in America right now, and began to engage filmmakers and playwrights and painters and musicians and beginning to rethink the stories we tell to ourselves and the stories we tell to the rest of the world. Not as an effort to make Christian product for Christian people. That wouldn’t be a bad thing to do, could people do things like that. But we wanted actually to create the best work on Broadway, the best work in Hollywood, the best work in Nashville. People in this, I use this language early on and still in some ways runs its way through our project. Could you learn to sing songs shaped by the truest truths of the universe in language the whole world could understand?
So we wanted to compete on the Grammy level, compete at the Oscar level, compete where, so everybody was aching to get in because they wanted to listen to see, to say, could we actually create art so beautiful, so true, so good that actually would compete for public space?
Case Thorp
And Wedgwood certainly has done that standing the test of time.
Steven Garber
I think we’re doing that. It’s about 12 years into it now, and I think we are.
Case Thorp
I’d love to have one of those plates. I wonder if any still exist.
Steven Garber
I have one in my office actually. And you can find them if you look hard enough on the eBay’s of the world, you can find versions of it.
Case Thorp
Yeah, yeah. Wow. Well, you’ve joined us today to talk about the new book that is stirring inside of you and getting more and more outside of you. I understand it’s to be published by the end of this year. And you’ve really been exploring the idea of the proximate. The proximate. What do you mean by the proximate and how does it shape our daily lives?
Steven Garber
Well, that’s obviously a good question. How much time do we have? Three four or five hours right now?
Case Thorp
You know, if our listeners are willing, I’m willing.
Steven Garber
Well, how about if we start right here? My father was a research scientist for the University of California. I grew up in the American West. People who don’t know the West very well, maybe who don’t know Florida very well might think, all of Florida, isn’t that kind of Miami and Disney world? But you only have to drive from where you live down through the state to realize that an awful lot of Florida is farming and ranching. Lots of stuff is grown. Oranges are grown, cattle is grown.
Case Thorp
For sure. Yeah. Celery is a big thing here. I didn’t know that.
Steven Garber
That’s true in California, of course, too. And people who don’t know California think, well, must be some Grand Magopolis of LA and San Francisco. California produces half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables and fibers. And we don’t think about California like that. But my father was a plant pathologist for the University of California. I thought I would be too until I didn’t like biology in high school.
But I watched my father, from his PhD work onward, take up one question, which was the plague of verticillium wilt on plants. If a plant got afflicted by verticillium wilt, which is really soil -borne, wasn’t anything came from bugs in the outside or actually came out of the soil, if it wasn’t addressed in a proper way, if seed wasn’t protected, the…let’s pick a plant. The cotton plant, of course, the seed wouldn’t grow into a healthy plant seven months later to be harvested and sent out front off to the world.
My father was really good at what he did. His work was replicated around the world. He’s traveled around the world speaking about it. People, his peers thought he was as good as anybody in the world on these questions of verticillium wilt and cotton disease in the world. And yet, when he died, there still was a disease called verticillium wilt.
And I remember asking the question to myself of my dad, who I loved and I honored and watched the world honor him in its own way, thinking, okay, there still was a disease, Dad, when you died. And you gave 45 years of your life to this disease. How do I judge your life? Did you fail? Was it all a flop when all of it’s said and done? Because what you gave yourself to from your studies on through the end of your life, it all didn’t happen. There still was a disease. We called that.
Well, I think as I began to ponder and think and read and ponder some more, I began to realize that now my father had given his life to trying to push back against the, I’ll use a theologically weighted image here, the effects of the fall. And he had, you know, learned an awful lot. People made huge decisions on the basis of his research, had consequences for people who grew cotton all over the world. And they did better. And their cotton was more healthy. And they weren’t as afflicted by the disease as they had been before he started his work, really.
And I think that the idea of, you know, is it worth doing something that has consequence, something that matters? Is it worth it if all good things still don’t happen when you’re done? Sometimes people will say, what are you saying, see, by approximate? I’ve just said, well, you’re married, aren’t you? I think people would be, often they will say, yes, I am. I say, let me just ask you, you know, is it worth trying to be an awfully good husband? A faithful husband, an attentive husband, a graceful husband, you know. Is it worth that even if at the end of the day you and your wife still don’t have a perfect marriage? Or does a good marriage have to be a perfect marriage? Could it be healthy? Could it be holy? Could it be good? Even if it isn’t perfect. And then really the battle is, wherever it is, is it worth doing things that are important for God and for God’s world even if we don’t get everything done that might be done?
Case Thorp
I’m reminded of a concept in Reformed theology of structure versus direction. That structure is how God intends for a thing to be a marriage, a person’s choices, the cotton that you mentioned, but then the direction of where those things can lead in this broken world. But you give me that added insight of is there value even still in following the path of structure and measuring it against direction? For it’s in that that God speaks and shows up.
Steven Garber
And I would say that’s exactly what I’m talking about.
Case Thorp
So what do you mean then by the word proximate? How close those two are structure, direction, idealism and reality?
Steven Garber
Yeah. Well, I hope this is a fair answer to your question, Case. Probably 15 years ago, I was asked by a journal in Canada, in Toronto, if I would write an essay. They said, you’ve been watching Washington, D.C. for a long time, Steven Garber. Is there a vocation in the political world? And I thought about it for whole summer, actually, before I turned in an essay called Making Peace with Proximate Justice. And what I argued in the essay was that, you know, if you’re going to stay in a messy place like Washington for very long, you’re going to have to give up any romanticism you might have had coming into the city. That somehow, I’m so smart, I’m so well-resourced, I know all the right people, my vision is from my party, from God, I know what ought to be done and I’ll get it done. If you come in and insist on that, whether it’s in immigration reform, U.S.-Asia relationships, you can pick your question, and think, well, I’ll get it done and it’ll be all right when I’m done with it actually. Because you know, I’m so good at what I do. I’m such an important person in this world actually. Whatever it is, how you describe yourself. I said you won’t stay because you’ll leave eventually. You go home because you realize that you were tilting at a windmill that simply was not going to be responsive to you. But if you’re willing actually to dig your heels in, and before the face of God and in a community with other people who are trying to do a good thing too, to give yourself to doing something that’s more honest and more true and more right. Well then there might be some way, in fact, the work you do here in this city, as tough as it will be for you, that there will be some movement towards some justice, a proximate justice. Proximate is, like most good words, it has a history. It’s from a Latin, a couple Latin words, proximae or proximatus. St. Augustine used the image, actually. And it means closer to or a neighbor to. So it’s to say, well, I’m moving in my life towards something like it ought to be.
I’ve come to think of the image of a signpost as being a particular image. That it’s worth my life to create a signpost of a healthy marriage, of a healthy life, of healthy work. A signpost is a, it points towards the way things ought to be, but it’s not there yet.
Case Thorp
I find the same over my 25 years in church leadership amongst some staff who come onto the staff of a church thinking it’s going to be church camp.
And over time, we’re real people in a real place and we sin, we hurt one another, we do things incorrectly. And I find those that make it or feel called and enjoy it long-term are ones who recognize we’re living in the proximate.
This is not the perfect work environment, but I do when I compare to maybe a law firm or another work environment, at least here at the church we have an assumption of the tools of repentance and restoration that to me helps, but we’re not perfect.
Steven Garber
Yeah, right. So your question about spectrum and direction, I mean, just to say one more thing about it. If we were to say about the marriage business, the arena of life called marriage, I mean, you and I could both say, you know, I have hoped and I’ve prayed and I’ve worked. I’ve wanted to be a good husband to my wife. At the end of the day, you know, as I do that, you know, we go to bed at night and we have to say, God in heaven, be merciful to me, a sinner.
I suppose the question is, if we, day after day have to pray this prayer of, be merciful to me, a sinner, does it mean that if that, to try to have an honest, holy marriage isn’t worth your time? And we give up on the structure because we didn’t do it right, because it just didn’t turn out how we thought it was going to turn out.
For me, it’s really, you’re right, you’re insightful actually in a way which is impressive to me, to bring in this imagery from a thoughtful tradition of structure and direction, because that’s really what we’re talking about exactly.
Case Thorp
Well, Tim Keller in his book on marriage that he wrote with his wife Kathy, mentions how marriage is a sanctification factory. It’s not just for the purpose of building society or taking care of one another or bearing children. It does all that. But how do we look at it as a place to refine oneself and to grow closer to God because very few environments do what marriage does, puts you in the immediate and the long term where you get a lot of feedback on your growing edges.
Now you’ve also written how beneficial deep and authentic community is when seeking to live with the proximate. Could you share more about that?
Steven Garber
Well, my wife and I have been married this month actually for 48 years. And from our first decision about where we would live when we were first married, we were informed by a credo actually from these Clapham Christians, Wilberforce and his friends, to choose a neighbor before you choose a house. Now, I would say pretty clearly, it is not the 11th commandment of God. It is not like that. I wouldn’t put it on that scale.
But I would say there’s a lot of wisdom in what Wilberforce and his friends realized, who decided to live in a neighborhood called Clapham. Today we would say, well, it’s kind of like where Wimbledon is in Greater London now, about two miles away from the Thames and from Westminster and all of that. It was countryside almost at the time. But they decided to buy houses near each other, to worship together, to eat meals together, to pray together about the work of their lives. They were bankers, they were educators, they were business people, they were politicians, clergy. And again, it is not the 11th commandment of God.
My wife and I have lived that way for our life together. For over 30 years, we’ve had a group of neighbors in the Washington, D.C. area who were there because they’re friends and committed to the same things we are. We don’t share the same toothbrushes. That’s not the point of this. We don’t have the same work. We don’t do the same work at all. But week by week, we meet together, we talk together, we pray together, we know each other’s children, write recommendations for each other’s children to go to college. We go to each other’s children’s weddings. We gather together to bless new children getting married to a new person, coming into life together.
And I would say, you know, it has to be frail, you know, it has to be hopeful. It’s both those things all the time, Case. But I would say that without some sense of a deepened community, it’s very hard to keep your own heart alive, which is for me the deeper issue.
Because there’s too much of the world and the flesh and the devil all day long for all of us that somehow kind of weighs down slowly, slowly begins to erode our ability to think again this day, it’ll be faith and hope and love for me this day again. Really. It’s just too much goes on in the world. It’s too broken. It’s too wounded. So for us, I think we have decided, well, we need people in the metropolis that Washington, DC is not because we share toothbrushes because we don’t, but to live close enough to us to have some sense of we’re doing, we have a deeper, wider sense of vocation together to care about the world. And even though our work is different, we live in different houses, you know, our children have different names, I mean, we’re not the same people, you know. And yet, and yet I think there’s a sense that we want to live a life where we are bound up together because we think to not live like that in some way, it makes us too vulnerable to all that goes on around us that wants to in some ways erode those deepest commitments and loves.
Case Thorp
Well, one of the reasons why I love your book, Visions of Vocation, are the three or four dinner parties you describe. And I once said to my wife, I don’t want to go out to a fancy restaurant for my birthday. I want to have a Steven Garber dinner. And these are where you bring out the finest china and crystal and you decorate or fill out the most beautiful dining room table and you intentionally bring together spiritually deep and intellectually sharp individuals for rich conversation over an incredible feast. And it’s kind of hard at our point with kids and sports activities and such. We love to host in many other ways. Sometimes we’ll get close to that. But one day when I’ve got a little more space in my life, I want to have Steven Garber dinners.
Steven Garber
Close to that’s pretty good.
I would just say, with a smile on my face, my friend, in case, that “close to that’s” pretty good. It’s proximate.
Case Thorp
You hit on some of these topics in Visions of Vocation, Proximant, Signpost. Would you say this next book is a sequel of sorts? Or perhaps clicking on a hyperlink and exploring further?
Steven Garber
It’s a further up and further in to use Aslan’s wonderful imagery in the last battle of the Chronicles of Narnia. It’s a further up and further in is to say, well, the last chapter of the Visions book is about the proximate. The last essay in the Seamless Life book is about the proximate. This is really a deepened dive into that question and to ask, you know, let’s try to really explore this together. Can I tell you how it started?
Case Thorp
Yes, tell me.
Steven Garber
Well, in the last year we were living in Vancouver, I was invited to come again at my probably third or fourth, fifth time to be invited by a group of serious good people in Central Europe. And you don’t have to be an expert in Central European history or politics to have some sense that for most of the 20th century, it was afflicted by the plagues of Nazism and communism and totalitarian ideology and, you know, and terror, afflicted ordinary people in all these places for a long time, way too long actually. Well, there was a moment of, the sun came up in 1989 and no longer was Czechoslovakia going to be actually under the heel of communism. What would it be like then, of course? I’ve written a lot about that, I’ve read a lot about that, I’ve studied a lot about it, I’ve been there several times just walking the streets of Prague and beyond.
But several times I’ve been invited, and in fact, this fall of 2019, I was invited by some good, good, good people in Bratislava, Slovakia. So in 1991, Czechoslovakia, which only existed actually for the 20th century, it wasn’t a nation state before that, but it was divided into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, because that was their history and their native, you know, identifications as tribes and tongues.
But these people in Bratislava said, would you come again, but this time speak to us, 30 years after the Belovot Revolution, which was the spring of in Bratislava, or fall of 89. And, but this come talk to us about what is the challenge of vocation for the common good 30 years later. Because we had hopes that everything would be changed in Czechoslovakia. Everything would be different now.
Case Thorp
Yeah, the end of time.
Steven Garber
Thirty years later, that’s not happened actually. And as the wisest man in Vladislava, Milan Chechev put it to me. He said, Steven, what did you think? He said, on Friday afternoon the communists ran the trains. On Monday morning they did too.
And so 30 years later, they were still living with the ongoing burden and weight and consequence of the decades and generations of totalitarianism in ways which they hadn’t expected. And their question to me was, please come speak to us about the challenge of vocation for the common good 30 years later. And that began for me this process of thinking, I want to think more deeply about the proximate, because that’s what I talked to them about.
Case Thorp
What was the feedback you received while there?
Steven Garber
Well, I’ve come to love these people very much, Case. They’re dear, dear, good people, really. I didn’t know that some years ago, but now I do. I don’t think about my own life without thinking about their lives.
Steven Garber
But I would say, you know, it’s honest to say to you that in the world of the arts, in the world of education, the world of business, both local economic development and global economic development, they have stepped in and tried to do honest, things, faithful things, imaginative things, creative things, visionary things. One of my closest friends really is a cellist, an internationally gifted cellist named Joseph Loupetocque. And someday he’d be a great person to bring in to Orlando, I’ll just say that to you. But he just, when he puts his arms around his cello, I’ve often thought, Joseph, you wrap your soul around your cello, don’t you? It’s just such beautiful music that he creates. But 20 years ago he decided to create a festival for the whole of Slovakia. He called it Konvergence, K -O -N, Vergence, Konvergence Day. It’s our word, Konvergence. And he said it was not going to be…though he’s a person of deep, deep faith, deeply born of the gospel of the kingdom. But he says, I want a festival for everyone in Slovakia. It won’t be a parochial festival in the sense this is born of me and my church and my people. I want to bring the best musicians I can find in Europe together for a month in Slovakia. We’re going to have actually the Konvergence is the name. You’d have to have ears to hear, Case. But it really is a window, a signpost of the convergence of heaven and earth.
And he says this, I wanted the Slovakian people to remember that there was still beauty left in the world. So his festival of music, wonderful, beautiful music, is really meant to be a window into, a signpost of, the promise he believes that there’s still beauty left after all these generations of ugliness, forced political, economic, social ugliness, forced upon us from the outside.
Now I want to say to ourselves, but yes, after all that, there is still beauty left in the world. Pretty good.
Case Thorp
And so needed. So needed. Would you agree it takes a degree of maturity to learn to live with the proximate? I wonder as I watch young people move into the workforce, is it somewhere in their 30s or 40s that the smart ones are the ones who are with it recognize things aren’t going to be perfect. The question is, can I live with the proximate? I once had a colleague though, who used the word should and could so many times in every sentence, it was painful that she was always disappointed with those around her. In fact, it caused a great deal of tension because other staff felt like I just never can do well enough for this person. And learning to live with proximate takes maturity, you would agree?
Steven Garber
I think it takes a profound maturity which is born of a holy wisdom, Case. Again, we could go out into the far reaches of the cosmos in our conversation, but without getting too maudlin or too much you and too much me, I think we can all say about our marriages, that’s true, isn’t it?
I mean, if you didn’t have a life together tomorrow, you know, and then on, you know, Saturday and Sunday and next week and, you know, the month beyond that, you know by now that, you know, as full of hope and promise and exuberance and longing as you were on that wedding day, you know, 20 years ago or whenever it was, you know that after a week or two or three or five, you begin to think, this is harder than I thought it was going to be.
Well, will you do then?
Case Thorp
Yeah. I had a counselor once very adroitly say to me, did you marry the image of your wife or did you marry your wife? And that was a season of introspection and prayer where I fell in love with her in many ways all over again. As I died to that image that was really based on what I wanted for me or for my career, and realized, Lord, you blessed me with her and all of her beauty and growing edges.
Steven Garber
And if you think that that’s just because you are Case Thorp living in Orlando, Florida in 21st century, then of course, you and I both would probably be better off if we would take a few moments to think. But in Exodus chapter 20, God has chosen to underscore one temptation twice. Of all the laws that he gives, the 10 laws, the 10 words.
There’s one word, one law, which he in some ways puts in boldface or italicizes and says, this one will be especially hard. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife. And to realize in this pre-modern Mount Sinai moment in all of history, to realize that in a very far, far, far away world from 21st century political, pluralizing, globalizing America. These are the same questions, the same challenges that we as sons of Adam have always wrestled with.
Case Thorp
What do you hope to accomplish with this particular book? Who do you hope to reach?
Steven Garber
Well, I would say that in some ways, Case, you have become a friend of mine, so you know more about my thinking on so many things.
Steven Garber
If my father’s work, which was not going to be my work, was trying to help farmers keep their cotton plants alive, growing well through the growing season, harvestable, know, it came time to be harvested seven months later, and that did not turn out to be me in my life, I think it maybe was, 15, 20 years into the work of my life when I began to realize, well, I’m not my father and that’s okay.
But my interest began to be, how do we keep our souls alive over time? How do we keep a sense of honest, clarified, true vocation deepened, clarified, sustained over the course of a life? So the first book I wrote, Fabric of Faithfulness, is all about that. The Visions of Vocation book is really about that. Differently done, know, vignettes as they are more, the Seamless Life book.
They’re about that. So in some ways, this book takes up its place in that line of things I’ve been thinking about and working on for all of my life. I want it to be a gift for people who find that they want to live a life for God and for God’s world. After years of labor at that, laborers of love as they always are, they find, in fact, that it’s hard to keep going.
Because in some ways, the world and the flesh and the devil began to press so heavily upon all of us, to discourage us, to make us feel like it isn’t probably worth it, because, look, I didn’t get it done, or it isn’t going to get done. But how is it possible to keep living a life for the good word that it is, for an honest signpost of more faith, of more hope, of more love in this world?
Case Thorp
That’s the challenge, and the opportunity.
Steven Garber
How do you keep your heart alive?
Case Thorp
You answer questions and you write in stories. And it is a sign of genius, I think, or the best of the wisdom givers, as Jesus did, to share truth in and through story. Tell us about that more and how do you collect and hang on and shape your stories?
Steven Garber
In one sense, of course, it’s conscious, in another sense, it’s not very conscious, but I know in the mystery of my own heart, it’s both of those at the same time. Along the way of my PhD studies, which was really in the philosophy of pedagogy, of why we learn the way we learn as human beings and how we learn.
I spent, you know, even though it wasn’t in a theological setting, I did spend some years, some years really, reading pretty carefully the Gospels, and especially reading the Gospel of John, which had always been kind of a more mysterious book of the four Gospels to me. But I wanted to ask, I was asking myself the question, what do I learn from the Rabbi of all the rabbis? What is it we’re supposed to learn from this man who was the chief rabbi of all the chief rabbis?
He was the Word incarnate. And, you know, I don’t want to make too much of this, and yet I think it’s worth making some of it. You when he’s asked the question, which was recorded in Luke chapter 10, by the expert in the law, he’s identified in the first verse of the chapter, expert in the law as he is, whether it’s resentment, whether whatever some sense of protecting the people, I don’t know, it’s hard to know because it’s, you know, it isn’t said to us there, but on some level he decides to throw questions which are not true questions to Jesus. In fact, as Schaeffer’s good imagery, they weren’t honest questions wanting honest answers. In some ways they were more the worst of the academy, whether it’s the first century or the 21st century. In some ways, where’d you go to school? Who was your teacher? What is your degree after all? And there’s a little back and forth which we in the 21st century would call a little moment of the effort to deconstruct the word neighbor by the expert in the law. Jesus says, I won’t do this with you. I won’t go there with you. I will tell you a story, And of course, we know his response is the story or the parable of the Good Samaritan.
The very first parable of all the parables actually is in the Gospel of Matthew. We hear that Jesus is outside and he’s walking along and somehow, you know, in his own holy, infinite, divine wisdom decides to drop on a very homely example of a farmer who throws his seed out into the ground. It hits here and here and here and here. And then he says, if you have ears to hear, then hear.
I think sometimes we would think, well, Jesus, you are Jesus after all. You are God, aren’t you? Why didn’t you cross the T and dot the I? mean, you just said you told a story and then said, if you have ears to hear, then hear. I think we would probably be better instructed if we actually listened more carefully to Jesus at that point and realized that it’s not always upon us to dot every I and to cross every T. Sometimes, you know, a very good story actually asks a question and we as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve are going to either say, what do you mean by that? I don’t understand that, but I want to understand what you’re saying or we’re going to in some ways decide that’s not for me and walk away. But I would say this idea of the responsibility of hearing, the responsibility of knowing or of knowledge is deeply written into the biblical understanding of what it means to learn, what it means actually to be a holy person in the world.
Case Thorp
When I teach scripture, I’m sure to point out that God’s Word is not a series of essays or philosophical treatises as we see from Aristotle and Socrates and others. Rather, it’s stories within the larger story. And they, I think, are so essential for human understanding. You think perhaps a hundred or more years from now, culture will look back and see that Spielberg and Coppola were our Monets and Shakespeare’s because they took the ability to tell stories to a whole new level. And that shapes so much of people’s perspective on themselves and on life.
Steven Garber
Think about this summer in the movie theaters of America at least and maybe the wider world as well. But there’s any surprise in the box office, it has been Pixar. And the revisiting was Inside Out. We’ll, I mean, without having to play anybody’s cards too openly, but it isn’t a secret either because he’s not secretive about this. But Pete Docter is the head of Pixar these days.
Pete Docter, with good faith and good commitment and good confession, could worship in a good Presbyterian church in Orlando, Florida. He believes that to be true about God and the world. His confession of faith resides within C .S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. He’s not tasked, though, at Pixar, as the head of the studio, to tell parochial stories for parochial people.
In the language which I’ve already used here, he’s tasked with a different question. Can you sing songs shaped by the truest truths of the universe, but in language the whole world can understand? So think about some of the best of the Pixar’s work over the years. Think about Cars.
I mean, what is cars all about? Well, it’s about the biggest issues in the whole world. Is everything about you or not? Does the world begin and end with you or not, actually? And through that kind of funny radiator springs and Mater and all that happens in the course of Lightning McQueen’s life, that last big lap around the grand race in Los Angeles, what do we see?
He takes actually a very profoundly written word from the Lord. Unless you’re willing to lose your life, well, you’re not going to have a life actually. And the very last moment he screeches his brakes and says, what? Well, I know I could win here. But actually, more important now in my life is that this other guy finishes than that I win.
Deep, deep, deep truth. It’s in fact deeply biblical, theological truth, actually. And we could walk our way through other films, which are not, and again, Pixar is not trying to make, and it isn’t a hidden away Christian filmmaking company, that’s not the point. But in a pluralizing world, a secularizing world, a globalizing world, how will we tell stories which in fact the whole world might be willing to pay $10 to watch?
And the kids will see and see and see again because of course if you have any five -year -old boys in your life, you know that they’ll watch Cars again and again and again and again day after day. Why? Because the storytelling is so appealing. It’s so compelling. And what is its whole point when all is said and done? Well, that the whole world isn’t about me.
Case Thorp
Well, Steven, as we close, I’d to ask this question. Where do you feel God’s pleasure in your work?
Steven Garber
We answer it two different ways. Because I’m now a grandfather and I have 13 grandchildren, one of the most pleasurable moments of all of my life is having a two and three and four -year -old little persons run up to me, open -faced, open eyes, you know, wonderful smile, and leap into my arms and know that I will love her, I will love him, because it’s as deep a truth as there is in the whole world.
So I take a lot of pleasure in the love and the responsiveness and the ability to see little people that I love, especially tenderly. So that’s pretty deep for me these days. It used to be 10 years ago and it wasn’t 15 years ago.
And I get the opportunity to work on projects that I love to work on much of my life right now. And it wasn’t always that way, but it is more and more that way.
And I would say, I there isn’t a day of my life, really, a week of my life these days, that I’m not trying to work at projects which in some ways go back to the deepest thread in my own thinking, go back to me being 20 years old and beginning to move from being a boy to being a man and being a kid to being an adult.
But I dropped out of college because I was sort plagued by certain things that mattered to me, and I wasn’t sure college was a good place to answer those questions. When I came back, I began to step back into a deeper life, a longer life. And I got interested in the relationship between, to put it in different language here, between one’s worldview and one’s way of life, or to put it in another language, between one’s belief and one’s behavior.
These are the things that matter to me. This is the way I actually live my life. I would say that dynamic interaction between those two has really threaded its way through all the years since that. So the projects I take on that I work at, that I’ve worked on today and tomorrow and yesterday.
There are all these projects in some ways which are one more telling of the tale of how either individually or corporately and institutionally, how would I come along somebody, a more corporate institutional question as well, but help them actually to have more integrity, which is a good word, between what they say matters most to them, what they really want to be about. This is why I get up in the morning.
And actually what it looks like to live life that way, to develop policies and practices that actually move us more towards the end of saying, this is really in fact what we’re trying to do with the work we do. When I feel like that’s what I get a chance to do, when I’m working with good people who are serious about that. I was in a call, a Zoom call last night with two guys in Vancouver, British Columbia, somebody in Seoul, South Korea. And we are pretty serious about a project we’re working on right now.
And in some ways, if we find the talk about it with you at some point if you wanted to. But it’s really taking the most deeply held commitments that we make about everything that really matters most and trying to understand how would we in the corporate push and shove of the marketplace, how would we try to work this into an honest way to rethink the business of business.
I find a lot of pleasure in that.
Case Thorp
Steven, I think you’re the first repeat guest, the first repeat guest we’ve been able to have on Nuance. And I hope this is a regular occurrence. Thank you so very much. Your statement there, one’s worldview versus one’s way of life. Maybe we’ll hit that next time. Thank you.
Steven Garber
Okay. You’re a good man, you’re a good friend, blessings on the labor of your life. Thank you.
Case Thorp
Thank you. Well, friends, let me encourage you to check our show notes and learn more about Steven Garber’s work. The Washington Institute for Faith, Vocation and Culture has wonderful resources and you’ll find his articles there as well as we’ll give you links to his books and I know when the new book comes out we’ll certainly be featuring that.
Well friends, remember to please like, share and subscribe. It really helps us to get the word out. I was with our team today and the numbers look really good on our reach. And so I give you, our listener and viewer credit for that. You can visit collaborativeorlando.com for all sorts of content. Give us your email and I’ll send you a 31 day faith and work prompt journal. It’s a 31 day devotional where you’re prompted in the key ideas of faith and work and culture and can talk to the Lord more about that. You’ll find us also across the social media platforms. Don’t forget we have Nuance Formed for Faithfulness, a weekly 10-minute devotional for the working Christian that follows the Christian liturgical calendar. I want to thank our sponsor for today, Craig and Becky Rohde. I’m Case Thorp, and God’s blessings on you.
