And Sons

What do we do when, not if, we face criticism? Often the critique has truth in it, but the internal messages that go along with it aren't the most accurate. Our culture has become a dehumanizing and critical one, but even when the criticism is nothing more than a difficult conversation, there are ways we can learn to navigate well.

An elegant tool, from a more civilized time. Wait, that's not right. A simple tool, for a cluttered time? Better. Pursuing joy and life can feel like uphill and difficult choices in every direction. But what if joy isn't as far away as we think?

Dreams (and we mean aspirations) are difficult. They are, on the one hand, a way God tells you about your future. They are, on the other, vulnerable, sabotaged, and often unrealized. In this episode, Sam and Blaine unpack dreams. What does it mean to share part of God’s heart for creation? What does it mean to see an unrealized potential in the world no one else sees? Because dreaming is, in fact, meant to show God’s heart to the world. But, because we live in this story and not another, dreams are usually intertwined with deep pain. Sam and Blaine explore dream-care as soul-care, whole-heartedness, and the loving act that is making your dreams available to God.

FRAMING THE SEASON 1. What are you doing, Jesus, in me in this season? 2. What’s the theme of this season? 3. What do I need to know about my role in your larger mission for this season? 4. What prophetic words, images, or instructions do you want to call to mind to frame this season? 5. What are you doing in my (area of concern: work, marriage, house search, job search, etc) in particular? UNDERSTANDING THE OPPOSITION 1. What warfare is set against me in this season? What strategies is the enemy employing in an attempt to undermine your work, Jesus? 2. Who’s in charge (the ranking foul spirit)? 3. What is set against my marriage (or area of concern from above), in particular? 4. What in my flesh is vulnerable, or in the way of what you’d like to do? 5. What in the World is particularly opposed to your work in this season? TAKING HOLD OF THE PROVISION 1. What is your provision in this season? What is it in you, Jesus, and in your kingdom and work, that overwhelms and envelops the opposition as I take hold of it? 2. Provision for the warfare? 3. Provision for the opposition of my flesh? 4. Provision for the opposition of the world? 5. What personal instructions to you have for me to help my alignment with you in this season? 6. Anything else?

Referenced in the show: Space, Time, and Incarnation Thomas F. Torrance Deus Caritas Est by Pope Benedict Fill These Hearts by Christopher West For Sigmund Freud, nephew Edward Bernays, and marketing, PR! - A Social History of Spin by Stewart Ewan Nephesh by the Bible Project Ruach by the Bible Project

Merry Christmas from And Sons by And Sons

In an effort to fight the creeping, medicating, overextended presence of our smartphones, the And Sons team and four Ransomed Heart team members gave up their smartphones for a month to see what would happen. The goal was to see if technology is really the enemy, or if we use other forms of medication in its place. It's an And Sons experiment.

The season of advent is evoking a lot of longing for us this year. It seems you can't say the word hope without feeling the pain of all the things not yet realized. There's joy to be sure, but the longing for Jesus to come again is getting to feel more like a cry for relief than any joyful carol.

"You will know them by their fruits" Matt 7:16 It's a litmus test Jesus gave us for false prophets, and yet it extends deeper than just teachings. The fruit of an action, the fruit of a train of thought, the fruit of an experience... they all tell us about the Good of the thing producing them. Can we use the fruit and work backwards, though? When we experience inner death, sorrow, grief... can we use those as breadcrumbs to find a deeper root that is producing them, and if so, can we change what's going on beneath the surface?

Friendships are one of the deepest places of pain for just about everyone these days, it seems. How do we become the kind of men who have friendships going back 30 years? What are the rhythms that sustain and invite such things?

Put on your Hebrew hat, it’s time to tackle one of the most productive concepts in the Bible. The Image of God. No single podcast can capture all that’s intended by that phrase, so in this episode, we focus on one dimension: the role. We are, in a word, tselem. Images. Idols. We are endowed with God’s authority to rule, and we affirm God’s ultimate right to rule his creation. Sam and Blaine dive in to our human ability to draw out potentials in creation that would not be realized without our intervention, and then explore the limitations put on our authority. It’s a view of humans that is both lower and higher than our everyday western view. And it’s a view that raises that stakes: the world needs you. Wherever you rule, you are able to raise the world to its highest potential, or else deeply destroy it.

In this episode, Blaine and And Sons team member Justin Lukasavige explore our idea environment as part of a continuing conversation on human nature. The team first unpacks what it means for an idea to be accurate in its essence, explores representationalism and Aristotelian hylomorphism, and finally begins to unpack the dominant views of human nature in the west. Because most people hold one of two assumptions: either human beings are rational free agents, with a mind that is separate from the body, or human beings are products of their environment, socially constrained, in which case society is the most real thing. The team explores the limitations of both paradigms, and prepares space for an alternative vision of humanity, centered in Jesus, that accommodates the insights of the two.

131 | Worldview 101 - Learning to See, Anthropology, and the Centrality of Human Nature (Pt. 1) by And Sons

This one feels like the title is the description. So, there you go.

It's too easy to focus on the damage of our story. Too easy to focus on what needs healing, or whats been stolen. We all have an innate glory in the image of God that we bare, which on its own should be enough to get our attention. But there's more: we bare a unique glory all our own, and we are called to witness the glory in the lives around us.

It's a common experience: we have a breakthrough moment with God, we see miracles, we get a taste of the life we wanted, and the next week, it's gone. In this episode, Sam and Blaine unpack practices that anchor your heart to the reality of the epic. From contemplation to the ancient practice of "tending," journaling tactics to cultures of remembering, this is an episode to keep the past present.

Inside the covers of the print magazine are things that we believe are important and somehow connected to the masculine journey, if sometimes loosely. The books inside Volume 2 are a little more obvious in that aim. They also demand a little unpacking.

We're betting you are lonely. It's something we can assume is the case for pretty much everyone on the planet, but even more so for someone trying to walk with maturity in their 20's. What do we do with it? What does community look like, and even more so, what is community for?

"Do Not Be Ashamed" by Wendell Berry You will be walking some night in the comfortable dark of your yard and suddenly a great light will shine round about you, and behind you will be a wall you never saw before. It will be clear to you suddenly that you were about to escape, and that you are guilty: you misread the complex instructions, you are not a member, you lost your card or never had one. And you will know that they have been there all along, their eyes on your letters and books, their hands in your pockets, their ears wired to your bed. Though you have done nothing shameful, they will want you to be ashamed. They will want you to kneel and weep and say you should have been like them. And once you say you are ashamed, reading the page they hold out to you, then such light as you have made in your history will leave you. They will no longer need to pursue you. You will pursue them, begging forgiveness. They will not forgive you. There is no power against them. It is only candor that is aloof from them, only an inward clarity, unashamed, that they cannot reach. Be ready. When their light has picked you out and their questions are asked, say to them: "I am not ashamed." A sure horizon will come around you. The heron will begin his evening flight from the hilltop.

Back in the studio, Blaine and Sam talk about soul care these days. What are we doing to care for ourselves, and what do we think about to orient our story?

123 | Why We're Back Next Week by And Sons

Nathan Clarkson has spent his 20's in the world of Hollywood and has a few things to say about it. As an actor, director, and published author, Clarkson lives in the worlds of the creative and story, so we thought we'd pick his brain on what it takes and what advice he might give to a younger version of himself.

In the pursuit of inner growth we can slip into a way of thinking that justifies all pain and disappointment as initiation. And while some of the time that is just fine, the Bible is filled with examples of great men and women taking their pain, fear, frustration, and all manner of lament to God. He is not surprised by our inner lives, and he is not disappointed with our lament. What does it look like to take our pain to him, rather than trying to hold onto it for the sake of misplaced growth?

Dave Small has spent several years in the jungles of Burma and Thailand in cooperation with the Free Burma Rangers, a group dedicated to training young men in Burma to be first responders in the continuing civil war that plagues the country. With so much exposure to danger, trauma, and true adventure, we asked Dave to talk about how such work is sustainable and what the Father is teaching him.

Leaving a town, a job, a small group can feel like freedom or failure depending on the circumstances. It'd feel a lot easier if we knew God was calling us into a new season and out from the one we've been in. What are the factors in hearing, though? How do we know when it's time to Jump Ship and when is it time to buckle down?

With the next print of And Sons in the works, Sam and Blaine reflect on the process as it's happening.

Jan Meyers Proett has spent her life listening to others tell their stories. Over the years she has learned practices that make such work sustainable, powerful, and hopeful. We may not all be counselors, but we could all benefit from such postures.

"I know everybody says Money can't buy happiness But it could buy me a boat, it could buy me a truck to pull it It could buy me a Yeti 110 iced down with some silver bullets Yeah, and I know what they say Money can't buy everything Well, maybe so, But it could buy me a boat" -Chris Janson

Today's episode was born out of a conversation with a young man. We found the conversation was lingering on a few questions that we've asked ourselves as well: When have we done enough healing? When have we come far enough to take a rest, to build an Ebenezer, to appreciate what God and we have done? Are we always stuck in the "next thing" when it comes to our inner world? And how do we tell the difference between good work and tinkering?

Josh Imhoff is the founder of YWAM Emerge, an organization that builds food systems around the world to reduce poverty. What that means is that Josh and his team have figured out how to build aquaponics systems in harsh environments, thereby providing food and revenue for folks in rough places. Thing is, Josh isn’t a farmer. Or a fish expert. He’s figured it out by walking with God and taking risks most people would run from. This is an episode on making a difference by growing in union with the only One who does.

We say the Holy Spirit is our teacher. If that’s the case, it should radically inform our practices. Unfortunately, we live in a culture that trains us to react: answer the question, make a fast decision, buy, subscribe, like. Problem is, it’s hard to discern in that environment. In this episode, we explore an alternative: a question-driven relational mode. What if you didn’t have to be a pro question asker to draw out someone's heart? What if you just had to believe you didn’t know the answer? It’d be a huge relief. Sure, there are skills to refine. But at the end of the day, all we do is create an environment where the Holy Spirit can point out what he’s up to.

It started with an email: how did you guys learn to engage ancient languages and texts? That set us off on a treasure hunt. From OT to Hebrew scholars, pastors and our own lives, this is a toolkit on reading, framing, and understanding the Bible. Special thanks to Dr. Tremper Longman, Scott Morin and Mandy Nelson of Empowering Ranch, and Tim Thornton.

Want to like your life more? Here’s a guidebook to prayer, fasting, and self-denial. James Baxter is the Executive Director of Exodus 90, an organization that instructs men in a lifestyle that leads to life. Specifically, James has led (tens of) thousands of men through a 90-day ascetic practice, introducing them to fasting, deep communion with God, and brotherhood unto restoration. It’s a movement that’s revolutionizing the way men engage spirituality, and there’s more than a little here that might just revolutionize your life.

It's said painters like painting, and writers like having written. That tends to be true. From Zadie Smith to Flannery O'Connor, Steven Pressfield to John Gardner, Annie Dillard et alia, writers know the writing life is difficult. And, it can be broken down into actionable steps. Steps writers have used for centuries to get work done. In this episode we talk those steps: being a student of language, loving your medium, overcoming distraction, subduing your own fractious mind, building a process, surrendering the outcome. Quote from Suzanne Buffam. Mentioned in the podcast: Books: Annie Dillard: The Writing Life Flannery O’Connor: Mystery and Manners Steven Pressfield: The War of Art Podcasts: Neil Gaiman - The Interview I’ve Waited 20 Years to Do (The Tim Ferriss Show #366) Zadie Smith - How to Be Free (Touré Show)

There’s no scientific consensus as to what emotions are. Depending on who you ask, there could be 8 basic emotions (Dr. Robert Plutchik), 6 (Dr. Paul Ekman) or more than 127 (Dr. Tiffany Watt Smith). It’s true that different cultures acknowledge unique emotions. But it’s also true that different cultures cultivate different concepts of self, personhood, and purpose. In this episode we bulk up on emotion words, talk about the history of emotions (the concept as such isn’t old - it goes back to 1830), and explore the composition of the heart as it feels in the world.

Chris Skaggs and John Bergquist have been collaborators for more than a decade. They've built companies, led folks into the heart, and built culture. With Soma games, they've started a video game company on a foundation of beauty and rest. That was more than intriguing to us, so we sat down to ask, how, exactly, do you build a counter-culture that makes great art?

I mean, does this really need a description? We all can worry about an anticipated season passing by without all the hoped-for pieces being realized. Sam and Blaine dive into postures that can help.

Roger W Thompson is a writer, surfer, entrepreneur and overall outdoorsman. He’s a dad, and he’s got a mobile office in a van. We reached out to Roger because his writing reveals an unusual intimacy with the American West: byways, fishing spots, bars, all that. We wanted to know: what’s it take to develop an abiding relationship with the wild? What if you don’t live near the ocean or the mountains or a river? Lucky for us, Roger has his own take on adventure. It’s not photo-worthy drama. It’s intimate attention, unto an encounter with a place and with God, and you can try that anywhere.

Well, we saw Avengers Endgame. So this podcast's got spoilers, but it gives us the opportunity to talk about heroes, heroism, and what our cultural moment is doing with the two. Buckle up for archetypes of the hero, the human heart and how to live in view of the formation of virtue. From Faulkner: "The young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat. He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so, he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and, worst of all, without pity or compassion."

Allen Arnold joins Sam and Blaine in the studio this week to talk about the presence of Chaos in our lives, and the ways that God approaches it.

Dr. Tremper Longman III is the man when it comes to ancient Near Eastern studies. Meaning, he’s written more than 30 books on the Old Testament and its world, he’s one of the main translators of the New Living Translation of the Bible, he’s consulted on numerous popular translations, and he’s spent a career helping folks understand what the heck is going on. As in, how do we develop hermeneutics, aka reading strategies? How do we read the Bible for genre? How do we read the Bible as a coherent narrative revealing a single good God? He’s got a new book coming out on the Old Testament (Confronting Old Testament Controversies), diving in to creation accounts, divine violence, history and conquest, and sexuality. We sat down to talk a bit about it.

It’s rankled the And Sons team a while: it seems like VR presents a real threat of escaping reality, in a negative sense, but haven’t folks found ways to escape reality anyway? Sports, books, hobbies, films, dirt bikes, all that? The question is, is there a difference between escaping from reality and escaping into reality, that is, allowing a larger reality to frame your experience? You talk about these things on a Monday morning so we sat down for a realtime conversation on the topic. We’re supposed to live in such a way that we’re not fried, not on empty, not always reaching for last-minute soul-caffeination. We’re supposed to escape. And we do. But is it working? When you ask your friends how they’re doing, do you know anybody who rarely says “Tired”? So. Let’s evaluate practices of medication and soul care. In brief: we’ve got to return to human nature, to fortifying out understanding of what people are for, generally, and how they thrive, usually. And we have to have a good understanding of our season. And we’ve got to ask God - What practice, rhythm, routine would you like me to take up? This isn’t a buzz kill. You’ll like what God’s calling you to. Pardon the obvious but really. You’ll like the life God is leading you into. Because we’re already escaping. But are we escaping in the right way, at the right times, often enough, getting the results we need? Are we experiencing goodness in our lives more often? Also in this conversation: the staging of the Old Testament, the reader’s imagination, uncovering addiction, and some thoughts on the fact everybody medicates. It’s the soul, so it’s a wandering conversation.

Dr. Charles Stone has been a student of the brain for a dog’s age and written on neuroscience across fields. It turns out, understanding human nature, physiology included, outlines a path into practices that promote make your life better. We know: not exactly a surprise but it got us thinking. Anyway, it turns out mindfulness, or being present to God in your moment, is a Christian discipline with roots reaching back millennia. In our conversation, Dr. Stone outlined a mindfulness practice that produces practical relief like happiness, gratitude, an experience of the presence of God, empathy, etc, as well as complex stuff like cognitive reserve, new neurological defaults, and a diminished fear response. One more thing. Get this: in a brain study on nuns, researchers found that nuns experienced Alzheimers and dementia about as often as other people. Surprise surprise. BUT: you wouldn’t know. The nuns didn’t show symptom of either. That’s because they had healthy brains, cultivated through practices like mindfulness and contemplative prayer and statio. When parts of their brains stopped working, other parts took over. It’s called having strong cognitive reserve, and the point is, take care of your brain now, and you’ll thank us later.

For our 100th episode and Sam's 30th birthday, we reflect back on what small, daily, choices made in the days can look like over time. And the reverse: to not look at a single moment and miss all the choices that led to it.

What better way to explore the mother heart of God than through the eyes and experience of a mother? Whether you are a mother, had a great mother of your own, or missed everything that was intended, there is mercy for you. And not the "you are excused, we can move on now" mercy that gets slapped around. But deep, affirming, loving mercy from the heart of God.

Our lives are more than just the moment we are living in. They are the accumulation of billions of small moments, they are filled with weeks, months, years, decades. When we live in "the now" and forget about the trajectory of our lives we begin to make random and unhelpful decisions, but if we could see the small choices we make each day as fitting into the trajectory of our year or our decade we might make them differently. Throw in the momentum and direction and story of your community, your town, your country, and most importantly of all... the story of Jesus, then we might make very different decisions day to day. This is an area of maturity and balance. It takes maturity to not get lost in the now and lose the forest for the trees. But it also takes balance to not get swept up into the momentum of the culture all around you and forget that you might be called to live in a different direction.

We've been reading "Beautiful Outlaw" again and it's been surfacing some wonderful things. What is Jesus' personality like? Yes, he is kind and merciful and all those other over-used but totally true things. Is Jesus playful though? And if he is, how does that play out on a personal, relational level? Might we learn something of him that draws us closer in and allows us to see his hand in our daily lives more often?

Aside from the intro, of course. So we’re not going to do a series on drinking, swearing and smoking, but we are interested in talking about right action—how do we decide what to do? The word profanity comes from pro-fanum, Latin, literally meaning “before the temple.” The implications are not sacred, outside the sacred, etc. It’s interesting though that God doesn’t identify as sacred. God is holy. That’s a whole different animal. In this episode, we explore a set of related concepts. First, we talk about the human inclination to destruction as revealed in three Old Testament words: khata, pesha, and avon (not English words, btw). Khata is sin, i.e. moral failure, self deception and the devouring self. Pesha is broken trust. Avon is iniquity, or crookedness, and the consequences of human failure everybody’d live with if Jesus hadn’t come. Then we talk about transformation. Jesus is all about the restoration of the human heart. It’s what Moses predicts in Deuteronomy (30, we need a circumcision of heart), what the Psalms ask for (Psalm 51, for example), the Proverbs enjoin (4:23), and the prophets Ezekiel (36) and Jeremiah (31) and Isaiah (61) and yup, others anticipate God doing. In fact, in one of the passages folks reference in regard to profanity (Eph 4:29), Paul instructs the church not to let any unwholesome/corrupt/useless/un-life-giving talk come out of your mouth. The word is sapros, and it’s the same word Jesus uses when he says that you’ll know a tree by its fruit. “Every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad (sapron) tree bears bad fruit” (Matt 7:17). What you produce comes out of who you are. This is the ultimate lesson of right action: become a transformed person (by receiving what Jesus has done and becoming his disciple) and the fruit of your life with change.

This podcast episode began percolating when we received several emails from different listeners, all of whom were asking the same question: how do you create a family culture that loves reading? Our love begins with enjoyment of story. To be able to enjoy the Gospel, theology, the sciences, the classics... it all begins with our love of story. Our very lives are a story, and we will not see the story unfolding all around us if we have missed learning to love the most simple of stories. Fairy tales may have more to teach us about ourselves and reality than you may have guessed.

We want more of God. More intimacy. More miracles. More clarity. More play. More joy. It turns out Jesus has outlined disciplines as avenues into the life we want. Generosity—regular, radical giving—is one such discipline. In this episode we explore what it takes to become generous. It starts, like so many things, with knowing God as Mother and Father. The Father who tells you your crisis in not a problem. The Mother who tells you your needs are seen, and you will be satisfied. We are made to resource our life in God. When we don’t, generosity is a rough target. From there we move on to the nature of the discipline: the way God intervenes to rescue a person from isolation. That’s what giving is, after all: separating ourselves from our stuff in favor of satisfaction. It includes money, and it’s more than money. Whether your tight fisted, like we’ve been, or the world’s champion tither, there is a path forward into joy, and it’s rich and storied and, it must be said, more than a little nerve-wracking.