A Faith that Leaves Room for Questions: Andy Stanley

Starting here. So forever for sure, but definitely over the last few years, it’s kind of been a weird time to be alive. It’s a weird time to just be a Christian in America. It’s strange. And so it feels like people of faith are deeply thinking right now and discussing and arguing about what it means to actually be a follower of Jesus and how that informs what it is that we believe, how it informs what our values are, how it informs who we stand with—which, for a lot of us, may be different than the way we grew up. What is our contribution to the world right now as believers?

And so I want to talk about that, and then I want to mention that so many people are choosing right now—and of course you and I both know this as church leaders—to practice their faith outside of a church community. That is the trend. So one of the things that you talk about in Irresistible is the notion that church can and has been a very powerful force for good. And so I’d like to hear you talk about both things: this sense of what does it mean to be a follower of Jesus in the world right now? And does church have any meaningful part in that still? How would you deal with people who have nothing except for negative, harmful, even abusive associations with the church?

Andy: That’s a lot of questions, Jen.

Jen: I know. Just pick one. Just pick a thread.

Andy: Well, it is irrefutable historically that the church has not . . . I mean, there’s no case to be made that the church has not made major contributions to the world and continues to. And outward facing evangelical churches and even outward facing non-evangelical churches continue every single day, every single week to make extraordinary good things for the world. Every year we raise several million dollars to give to nonprofits in our local communities and faith-based and non-faith based. Every outward facing church does this. So there’s no real case to be made that, “Oh, the church is just a blind . . . It’s just sucking tax dollars. It does no good.” I mean, a person can have a bad church experience and look for evidence to support their conclusions. But that’s just not true.

In terms of what it means to follow Jesus . . . well, to go to the church question, where two or three or more gather in Jesus name, you’re at church. So there’s that. So the church isn’t going anywhere. Of course, we think in terms of the Westernized church, but in the New Testament times, first century, second, third century times, there were people meeting in gardens, and in homes, and backyards, and wherever they could gather safely or somewhat safely. And the same is true all over the world today, as you know.  So the church, as you said earlier, you know, it’s going to continue.

My second favorite Bible prophecy is Jesus standing in Caesarea Philippi saying to His 12 apostles, “Hey, I’m going to start a new movement and the Gates of Hades, or basically death, isn’t going to stop it. And on this statement that “I’m the Christ the Son of the living God, I’m going to build my ecclesia.” And they’re looking at each other like, “Well, do we need a new movement? We have the nation of Israel.” Jesus is like, “Okay, it’s going to be bigger than that.” It’s going to be international, multi generational and here we are. So the church is going to be fine. And to your point earlier as well, leaders are going to continue to adapt and adopt and every generation is going to have new innovative, creative things. And there’s always going to be a core.

And I just think at the end of the day, the spirit of God inhabits His people, that the body of Christ is a walking, talking temple–each of us as individuals, to some extent, are as well. So I don’t worry about that. What I worry about is that local churches are not outward facing. They become inward facing. And that’s when the trouble begins. Because an outward facing Christian community, they don’t argue over stupid things. They don’t fight over stupid things. They generally have enough money to get the things that need to get done done. You just don’t have the silliness that often takes place when Christians are no longer outward facing, they’re just holding hands and looking inward. So my encouragement to pastors is always, “Look, don’t just have a cool church, and a hip church, and a modern church, have an outward facing church with a mission that is about not who’s there, but who’s not there.” And that’s going to solve—you’re going to have the right kinds of problems when you make that decision.

Jen: So first of all I’d like to point out to everybody listening that when I speak to a pastor, sometimes he says things like, “My second favorite biblical prophecy is . . . ” That’s just a pastor thing to say, so everybody relax.  The second one is. . .

Andy: You want to know what my first one is?

Jen: Of course.

Andy: Yes. My favorite one is in the Synoptic Gospels. Jesus predicts in extraordinary detail the destruction of Jerusalem. I spent a lot of time on this in Irresistible. This is the most overlooked, amazing thing in the Bible to me because you can visit Jerusalem today and see the stones that were scraped off the top of the Temple Mount when Titus with the 10th Legion finally got through that second curtain wall and destroyed the city and sacked the city of Jerusalem and destroyed the temple. And Jesus predicts this with extraordinary detail. It’s unbelievable.

Unfortunately, the evangelical community took that prediction and made it all about Revelation–end times–and have missed this . . . I mean it, it is the primary reason why non-conservative theologians have to have Matthew, Mark, and Luke specifically written after 70 A.D. because if those gospels were written earlier, then everybody needs to stand up and pay attention because Jesus is the Son of God to have made that kind of prediction. It is extraordinary. So that’s my favorite biblical prophecy.

Jen: Okay, I appreciate that.

So I want to go back to something you were just saying about building outward facing churches, which is completely the way that we are wired here too in Austin New Church.

Let me ask you this because one thing that we hear . . . now, we’ve built a church that tends to attract—I don’t know, I’m just going to pick a term, none of them are perfect—but a little bit more of a church outlier, if you will. And so we end up pastoring a lot of people who either have no meaningful church experience in their life or they had a really bad one. So that tends to be the majority of our community.

And so one thing that we hear often, not just from them, but also from just the greater community that we lead is that folks feel conflicted and disappointed, maybe discouraged when they see a church—and I’m just saying “church” sort of at large in this point—who is silent on so many injustices that are just swirling around us in our culture right now. We can’t even escape a single one of them. They’re so constant and ubiquitous.

So what do you think about this or do you believe that the church is to have a meaningful voice when it comes to injustice, when it comes to white supremacy, when it comes to violence and exploitation against women, when it sort of comes to the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees? I’m just picking some of the ones that we are flooded with. What do you find the church’s role to be there? Because what we see is that the church’s silence in that, which of course is under the umbrella as people say as “not being political,”  leaves people on the margins out cold. I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this.

I guess maybe the question I’m asking you is underneath it. Do you think—as a pastor of a lot of people—do you think the church and its leadership primarily, it’s pastors, its teachers, its preachers, do we have a responsibility to speak into these things?

Andy: Yes, absolutely. We have a responsibility to speak into the issues. Where I think we should be careful . . . and I get criticized for this— because when President Obama was president, people said “Andy, why didn’t you say anything?” When President Trump’s president, “Why didn’t you say anything?” And I always say, “Look, I don’t say anything negative about anybody because I hope that body shows up at our church. I’m going to preach and teach as if they’re sitting there. I’m not going to take shots at anybody by name ever with a microphone on, standing on a platform, ever. That’s just my personal decision.” Now with a group of three or four leaders with a group of a dozen leaders, people want to have a conversation, of course there’s a time and a place. But if people make assumptions about the stance of a church or even a pastor just based on Sunday morning platform time, that’s just unfair.

And there are many people in our churches who left their previous churches because they got tired of that. It was the current events church. And the issue is not what we say, as you know, the issue is what are we doing. And churches must be seen doing good. Churches must be seen doing good in such a way that the church gets the credit for doing good in the community and addressing issues in the community. And there’s a way to do that without turning the church into the current event church every Sunday you show up. Because, I mean, in the city of Atlanta, I’m telling you, every other Sunday we could spend 20 minutes talking about what just happened in our city and this is true with everybody in a large city, right? So, yes, we should address issues. I think we should address them with our time, our volunteering and our money because if you put your money where your complaints are, then people take you seriously.

So absolutely. But I’m like you, it’s a little frustrating sometimes when, “Well, the church . . . and the church . . . and the church never . . . and the church always . . . ” I’m like, “Wait a minute. There are churches that are hip deep into those issues every single day of the week to the point where it’s hard for them to get back to the church stuff because they’re so socially active.” So it just depends on where you stand that determines what you see a little bit. But that’s one person’s perspective.

But in terms of addressing issues, we can’t not address the issues because Jesus models this for us. I mean, He brought such extraordinary dignity to men, but primarily women, and children, and slaves, and free men. And so both in our actions and in our teaching and what we raise to the surface or raise to the top level of our values, all of that is super important.

Jen: Agreed.

Here’s another thing you said in the book that I was really struck by. You said, “I’ve yet to hear a story from anyone who abandoned Christianity based on anything directly related to Christianity— at least the original version, anyway.” And I appreciate that clause at the end because that’s worth mentioning. Can you talk a little bit more about that and why essentially Jesus is irresistible?

Andy: Well, the reason I say that is I love deconversion stories, not because people deconvert, I’m just so fascinated. I read books, articles, blogs, rants, the Life After God Podcast—I’m a fan of that because it’s just story after story of people who’ve deconverted and as strange as that sounds, it’s true that when I hear people tell their story, I’m thinking, “Wait a minute. I’m not doubting your experience or I’m not even saying I wouldn’t have done the same thing, but you just need to know what you left, that’s just a bad version of Christianity.”

My son Andrew is an Auburn grad, had a great job, decided he wanted to do standup comedy full time, left his great job, and is in the world of standup comedy. It was the curveball of our parenting, but we’re super proud of him.

But the other day when he was at home, we were having this conversation and he does lots of comedy clubs all over the country. It’s interesting. So he’s in this dark network of comedy club people. Here’s what he said. He said, “Dad, most of my friends and most of these men and women I meet, they all are ex-church people. They’re all ex-church. And when I hear their stories, if I had grown up in one of those kinds of churches, I probably wouldn’t be in church either.”

So again, it’s not the gospel. Think of this, the opening line, the headline was “good news of great joy for all people.” So if your version of Christianity is not “good news of great joy for all the people,” you may not have the right version. And so again, I understand why people—

Jen: It’s a great distillation.

Andy: Well, it’s right there in the gospel.

Jen: There it is, plain.

Andy: So again, trying to help people step back into that beginning era of our faith, it’s fantastic. It was good news. And the more oppressed, the better the news. The less opportunity, the better the news, the more disenfranchised from the religious system, the better the news. So when we can clear away the clutter and put that out on the top shelf, people lean. And I say all the time, I believe people if they understood the gospel, they would want it to be true before they believe it’s true. And they may never believe it’s true, but they would think to themselves, “But if only that were true, that would be good news.”

Jen: That’s great. I love that. I find that a spiritual path in my own life, just the longer that I go and now I’m able to more correctly discern some of the wheat from the chaff, and I understand what is some just sort of human contribution and then what really is, what’s at its core. The longer I go, Jesus keeps me coming back. That’s what I got. That’s what I can tell you. The good news is actually good and I deeply believe that if He’s worth His salt . . .

By the way, I met your son last year at Orange. I was speaking in Orange and he was doing some comedy. He’s hilarious. And so I’m cheering him on as he goes out there and chases down that dream. And good for you for releasing him into the wild with your blessing because you probably didn’t see that one coming.
Andy: No, he says, “It’s the second best thing to being a preacher, at least I’m on stage with a microphone.”  I’m like, “Yeah, you’re close.” No points, no screens, no scripture, no application. Just a man and a microphone.

Jen: That’s so great.

Jen:  Here’s something else you said in the book that I was intrigued by. I think this is incredibly timely. This is timeless, but it’s also timely right now. You wrote, “Jesus liked people who weren’t like Him,” which is pretty plain on its face, but right now it just seems like we have lost that thread. Absolutely lost it. It’s just disintegrated in front of our eyes. If you do not agree with me on every single point, then you are against me and I am against you. That’s sort of the ethos in our world right now.

And so I would love to hear from you, your thoughts on how we actually like people who are different than us in their opinions, their beliefs, maybe their customs, their demeanor even. This isn’t just a miracle for Jesus to perform. This is possible for His people too, right?

Andy: Yup. It’s more important than a miracle. Right? Miracles have been there, it’s over, and we go to the next thing. Going back to something you said earlier, Jen. Again, because of my view of theology and the Bible, it is easy for me to be curious.

And I actually tell this embarrassing story in the book about how God had to basically stamp out of me and stomp out of me my judgmental spirit that I carried for way too long, once He took me to the woodshed. When I meet people who aren’t like me and who I think might not like me or just so different, I’m just so curious because here’s the thing, and for your listeners, if we could just remember this: everything everybody does makes perfect sense to them. So when somebody does something that doesn’t make sense to me, I’m the one who needs to learn something and everything everybody says and everything everybody believes makes perfect sense to them.

So if I don’t understand why they would say that or believe that, then it’s on me. I don’t understand. So if we can just carry that into relationships and conversations and just be curious. Because everybody’s worldview makes perfect sense to them. Perfect sense to them. And again, you follow Jesus and He was drawn—the word, “He liked people who were nothing like Him,” but the word like is my word. But in terms of the gospels, He was drawn to people who were nothing like Him. And the best part about it is people who are nothing like Him, were drawn to Jesus.

In the book of Mark, the word “crowd” shows up in every single chapter but two. Everywhere He went, there were crowds of people. It wasn’t just the healing and the free food, right? It was, they crowded to hear him teach. No one taught with such authority. So here’s God in a body surrounded by sick, uneducated, illiterate people and they just couldn’t get enough. What if the church had a little bit more of that? It would be remarkable. And those of us in church leadership are hopefully trying to lead in that direction.

Jen: Same.

I heard you mention in an interview that over the past few years when you teach, that you’ve largely switched from saying “the Bible says” or “what God’s Word says is” . . . to–instead you say things like “Jesus taught” or “Moses wrote.” Can you talk about that? Why did you make that shift? What does that mean to you?

Andy: Well, you sent me these questions ahead of time and I was so grateful. And you’re going to think I’m making this up, but as I’m looking at the questions earlier–actually that day–I was on Twitter and I ran across this tweet, so I’m going to read it to you. This is from one of the most famous evangelical leaders in the world. Everybody in the world would know this guy’s name. And here’s what he tweeted. He said, “The Bible says, ‘Do not be overcome by evil but overcome evil with good.'” The first reply is this, “The Bible also condones slavery, genocide, rape, and incest. That’s pretty evil.”

So the reason I changed my language is once upon a time, nobody knew what the Bible said, except people with a Bible who actually read it. Now everybody has an all access pass to what else the Bible says—and think about this—without ever picking one up or ever reading one, thanks to the internet.

So the gig is up. We can no longer hide behind, “If the Bible says it, you’ve got to believe it.” Because those days have been over . . . that’s been over for a long time. So what I’ve said to communicators is, “I’m not asking you to change your view of the Bible, but if you would like to peel back one layer of resistance, don’t say, ‘The Bible says.’ Just say, ‘Jesus said, Paul wrote, Moses said.'” Just go to the source. Because first of all, it’s true. Secondly, it’s more accurate because-

Jen: More specific.

Andy: . . . this gets me in trouble. The term the Bible, T-H-E B-I-B-L-E is a title. This sounds terrible. That’s all. That’s what that is. That is a title that someone in the fourth century put on this collection of Hebrew and Christian scripture. So the Bible–that title–is not the authority. Well, Jesus is clear. He said, “All authority in heaven and earth has been given to Me.” So Jesus is our authority.

So by simply making this little change, you tune down the resistance in a world that as soon as you say, “The Bible says . . . ” I’m telling you, you know this, there are a gazillion people out there, they say, “Yeah, but let me tell you what else the Bible says.” But that’s different than when you say Jesus said, or the apostle Paul wrote. Some of your listeners are Fox News fans. If I began this way saying, “Hey, today I heard on CNN.” They’re  like, “Well, yes, CNN.” It’s over. They’re not going to take it or the other way around. “Hey, today I heard on Fox News . . . “Oh, Fox News.” Again, this isn’t a change in belief. This is a change in approach. I made this change about 10 years ago and again, I’m just trying to create on-ramps for people to get them to take a step to follow Jesus.

Jen: I want to talk a little bit more about what you just said. Can you discuss further, and we’ve talked a little bit about this, but I just would like to hear more about how you perceive the Bible. How do you think we resist the urge, and I think it’s well intentioned, to hold up the Bible as this infallible guidebook? “This is our guidebook and it has the answer to every single thing.” It’s a template. It is formulaic, if you will, or we only we point to it for answers, that’s the thing that we’re doing typically to be fair, maybe to be right, if I could, but more charitably—sometimes just because we’re looking for answers.

What do you think about that? And do you believe that we are cheating, if you will, on God when we find answers in another faith practice, or a tradition, or interpretation that might not be rooted in Western Christianity?

Andy: Well, I think everybody would agree that all truth is God’s truth. So, wherever it comes from, I mean the multiplication tables are assumed in the Bible, but you don’t find them in there. The fact that we’re reading an English text, we’re leveraging so much work, so much work, but the work that got us from a Greek text to an English text, that work is not in the Bible, but it’s based on what’s true.

So again, this goes back to a worldview, this goes back to what I said earlier about God accommodates to our capacity. So we have an ancient book that was revealed, and  the contents were revealed to ancient people, but clearly progressive revelation is a reality. And I know people get kind of freaked out about that because that carries a lot of baggage.

But goodness gracious, one of the greatest gifts that God has given the human race, unlike any other part of creation, is the ability to document information and pass it along to the next generation that that builds on it and passes it along to the next generation that builds on it. And this is the most extraordinary gift we have. So to think that somehow we have to ignore that extraordinary gift that every single person uses every single day—so anybody’s a hypocrite who doesn’t think that’s a gift of God.  But somehow, when it comes to our theology or understanding of scripture to say, “Well, but this is different. Somehow we can’t build on what previous generations have built on.” That’s just a fallacy. In fact, it’s impossible not to do that. I mean, here I am talking into a piece of plastic to you. We’re not even in the same state.

Again, it’s a matter of being curious. It’s a matter of a worldview that understands just how enormously big God is, and enormously powerful God is. And what a gift that I’m able to pass along information to my kids that I didn’t have when I was their age. And they’re going to build on that information as well. That is part of the human experience. And I think that is the spirit of God. And the image of God in us. So anyway, that’s kind of an answer to that.

Andy: About two years ago I did a series, a four part series called “The Bible for Grownups.” And I did it for our folks because as I was helping them navigate some of the questions that came as a result of Irresistible, I realized there’s always gaps when you write a book or there’s unanswered questions. And so for people who hear a conversation like this and they think, “Oh, I don’t know what to do with this. This created so much tension in me because I do believe the Bible is the infallible word of God, and yet Andy is saying this.” So before you write me off or Jen off, it’s free. It’s on my YouTube channel. It’s just called The Bible for Grownups. And it’s just a simple explanation of how I was taught in Dallas Theological Seminary how we got the Bible.

And this goes back to your previous question a little bit, understanding how we got the Bible removes the Bible or takes away the option that the Bible is just a guidebook because it is so much more and it’s the “so much more” that makes it so extraordinary. And sure it’s full of wisdom, literature. The words of Jesus are full of wisdom. But it’s the narrative. It’s the overarching scope of the story of our salvation that makes the Old and New Testament so phenomenal.

That really is the most remarkable part. But again, because of the way we’re presented with the Bible as children, it’s easy to miss that. So for me, when I really engage that historical leveraging of how we got scripture, to me it always has this immediate effect. It’s feeling like a relief because to your point it takes off some of the weird pressure that I adopted early on in my sort of tradition and my sort of faith upcoming, just put the whole Bible in such a pressure cooker. So to me, it releases the pressure valve and lets it be what it is, which is way more marvelous than just a “how to” book—way more marvelous.

One of the things I say in that series that I use as an example of your very point, is, I say, “Look, the point of the first chapters of Genesis is not how God created the heavens and earth,  it’s that God created the heavens and the earth versus all the other pagan, ancient gods.” This was a polemic. This was an argument against . . . they’d just left Egypt where the Pharaoh claimed to be a god. So I mean, could God really explain to ancient people how He did it? I don’t think God could explain to us how He did it. So God accommodates to our capacity because He’s a good Father.

The creation account, the point is, “Hey, good news. You picked the right God.” His story doesn’t start mid story because there was already something that was in existence that was split in half and became the heavens and the earth. He was there from the very beginning. So anyway, you understand that. But again, that’s the broader context. It helps people, I think, really fall in love with the text as opposed to feel like they have to defend it all the time.

Jen: Couldn’t agree more.

One last question. I find myself these days intentionally in some really interesting communities that are not traditionally Christian or they’re not evangelical. I have been granted leadership space with new people, which is wonderful to me. It’s a gift. It is a joy. I’ve learned immeasurably from people outside this little sort of center of the bullseye in which I grew up in. And so to me, that’s a great and glorious good. However, one thing that I encounter a lot in these spaces with people who have come from wildly different experiences than I have is that sometimes my faith is a sticking point, that it is immediately velcroed to a board that has a lot of other pinned offenses to it historically, recently, all of it. And so it’s very hard sometimes to unravel from some of the, I think, undisputed failings and abuses of the church at its extreme.

But then even just some of these individual experiences that people walk around with, and yet here it is still precious to me, still important, still sort of my entire North star for my life.  A lot of my listeners find themselves in the same place in their workplaces, sometimes in their own families where they are hanging onto this faith that is misunderstood, or it’s reviled, or it’s unwanted, or it is mocked in some way in their environment, sometimes rightly so. Right? With a lot of justification. So can you talk for just a minute about how on earth we can reconcile this gap? How do we relate to the people that we love and that we work with who may pretty quickly discredit us because of that particular label? Do you have any thoughts on that?

Andy: Yes. The unhelpful thought is; every worldview has hickies.

Jen: I love that word. Thank you for bringing that back from the 80s.

Andy: Yeah, I just thought I’d bring that up. Every worldview has a backstory that is embarrassing, every single worldview.

Jen: That’s a great point.

Andy: That’s not helpful. That’s just true. But I don’t think . . . well, the other thing I wrote down is I’ve never met anyone who was anti-Christian because of our checkered history. I’ve met many who have used our checkered history. And once you get past the “you’re right, you’re right, you’re right,” and you hear the story, they generally have their own story. But I’ve yet to meet someone who is a sold out, spirit filled, and chasing-Jesus-Christian and found out about witch trials and found out about abuses, and went, “Oh my gosh, I just can’t be a Christian anymore.” That’s generally information that comes later and is used to defend someone’s unbelief.

Again, that’s not really helpful saying that, but that’s generally true. But the reason I say it, both of those things, is because number one, I believe that most versions of Christianity that people have abandoned were flawed views to begin with. And number two, if we can just learn to listen and be curious, everybody loves to tell their story and once you hear a person’s story, you always go, Well gosh, that had happened to me. Me too. You’d grown up that way? Me too. If my dad had done that? Me too. I think that’s the only inroad is the stories. We can’t defend what’s indefensible, but generally those aren’t the reasons why. Those are the building blocks they brought to the party afterwards to defend their decision to be anti-Christian. But again, every worldview has a dark side.

Jen: No doubt. I love that. Thank you for saying that. That was a great answer.

Okay, we’re going to wrap this up. These are just like three really quick questions that I’m asking every awesome person in this particular series. Some of my favorite people on earth. Here’s the first one, just kind of whatever top of your head. Who is one, and I won’t say your biggest because it’s hard to pick, but who’s one of your biggest mentors in the faith?