Transcript
WEBVTT
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Pull up a chair across the counter.
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Your one-stop shop for a variety of perspectives around Jesus and Christianity.
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I'm Grant Lockridge and I'm here with Logan Rice and Michael Gungor.
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He is the lead singer of a little band called Gungor and a huge band in the Christian space.
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I listen to them a whole whole bunch in high school now and Logan go ahead and ask the first question over here.
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Yeah well first of all, very excited for you to join us and thank you for your willingness.
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I did a Google search Just Google Michael Gunga Quick Goog, if you will and it's always really fascinating because one of the first things that popped up is what happened to Michael Gungor, and it's three or four Christian apologetics, folks or whoever it may be, that's saying what happened and that's an interesting thing.
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I can't imagine what that's like to have your name Googled and that's the first thing that popped up is what happened to you.
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So I want to open up the platform for this and in your book, also called this, you have kind of the artist or the author statement, if you will, says you, you know, you're reluctant, Christian Grammy nominee and winner.
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And I want to hear, we want to hear from you rather than a swath of other people Like what is your journey?
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Where are you now?
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Where are you?
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Know, the folks that are saying what happened to you?
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What era of your life are they referring to and how did you become to you?
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What era of your life are they referring to and how did you become and where are you today from that journey?
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Yeah, it is an interesting question because you have to, I have to imagine who the people are and where they wanted me on the journey, because, from my vantage point, I've just been walking down the sidewalk and it's like what happened to you and I'm still just walking down the sidewalk.
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What do you mean?
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I'm right here.
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So I mean the people that probably wrote those articles, or the.
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My guess is there was a certain stage or brand of Christianity that tends to put a lot of red tape around.
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What you have to think and believe in order to be part of that community still so like the us there is really defined severely by specific stances, and, interestingly, there's probably multiple for some of those communities.
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It's like when they heard me say something about Genesis that I read Genesis metaphorically they were like, well, that's beyond the pale, that's past.
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Where you can go to stay part of our community and other people.
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It was hearing us talk about gay people or whatever the thing is, or how I think about the.
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So, whatever it was was like they perceived me within the realms of what's acceptable to think in their community, and then they heard something that I said that was outside of that tape.
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It's like, oh, you're gone.
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So what happened to you People?
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From what my experience is, they assume that there must have been some tremendous pain or rebellion or something they kind of project out of what it would take for them maybe to make those leaps.
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From my perspective again, though, I've just been walking down the sidewalk and walking towards what seems true and lovely and beautiful to me.
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It is a six-day creation and if you think anything other than that, not a Christian.
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That's where I'm at.
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Not a Christian Good.
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Well, I'm just kidding.
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Add your comments to the articles.
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Dude, if you don't believe that it's literal 24-hour days, not a Christian, add your comments to the articles.
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Sure kind of situation.
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And there's a billboard going out of south carolina that basically said the earth was created in six days and like that's.
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There was the whole billboard and it was just like somebody paid to put that up there.
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They believe that so hard that they were like that is worth paying the money monthly to put on a billboard that kind of crazy, yeah, I mean it's.
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The thing, though, is that kind of thinking whether, like, it's easy to point out the extremes and you know, um, that is an extreme for most of us but that line gets extended and it doesn't.
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It's.
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It's in christianity, but it's not just in christianity here in I live in LA, and that line gets extended the other way.
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It's like you could be my friend, but if I found out you voted for Donald Trump, then you're out.
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Most of us, our communities, are built on some sort of red tape like what defines who's in and who's out, and who's out and uh, when, when, those when that red tape is like way beyond what I think is reasonable.
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Then it's easy to laugh at, but for some people it's real, and for some people that's uh scary.
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Those questioning genesis really does feel.
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It's almost like existential for them.
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So I I I'm one hand, can laugh about it, but on the other hand, I I can also have compassion that's true for for the people that feel like that is an important issue, to die on that hill, not one of those extremes, just to, you know, not be an extreme, but know that other people would like say that that's the biggest issue, the six day creation or whatever it is.
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It is, you know, super empathetic to to to look at that from their point of view.
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So I would definitely say that that's super valid and important to do so.
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You said, like this red tape thing, right, I'm curious because you do have some sort of version of a community gathering and I'm curious what that kind of looks like for you in your specific community.
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Do you not have any red tape, Is it like?
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I'm just curious how that looks.
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Yeah, it's an interesting, interesting, it's a great question like, um, how do you, how do you build community without some sort of red tape?
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And it does seem for me it's, it's a kind of an alive question that keeps always adjusting.
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But for me, I think I'm more interested in the living, um, practical sort of this sort of behavior is not welcome in the community.
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More than, like, these sort of thoughts aren't welcome to me.
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Thoughts are very ephemeral and they're always changing and the beliefs would be in that line of things.
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But like we can't have people come in and just, you know, be touching everybody non-consensually.
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It's not welcome.
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You can't be here and be violating everyone else's space like that and their bodies, that's red tape.
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For when I'm, if I'm, a facilitator of some sort of communal space, you know, but finding, like, what is what are appropriate beliefs, I'm trying, I personally strive, to not put any red tape up with my interactions with people, my love for people.
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Um, again, insofar as what, what happening in them, like their beliefs, their feelings.
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But sometimes boundaries are necessary with people that don't know how to keep those things inside themselves, that don't know how to keep their feelings, you can be angry.
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But if you're going around in your anger and hitting everybody.
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We need some boundaries to keep you away, keep people safe.
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But the internal boundaries I strive to, not I don't have those.
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I have love for everyone and seek to recognize what we share in our existence, in our humanity and in our divinity.
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In my view, and does that answer the question at all?
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It's a little ambiguous, but it's.
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It's more behavioral and practical than, like you, you have to think a certain way yeah, I, I understand.
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Um, so the red tape is more, you know, boundaries, of trying to keep people not doing anything like physical or it really it sounds like anything hateful in general, like it seems like you want to, you know, encourage love and put boundaries around anything that would be hateful I mean I could, even somebody I could I could even perceive someone's attitudes, be and and thoughts and views as hateful, and that's still fine, I just can.
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You, can you own your own space, like and that's it is physical, but it's also you know, somebody's shouting with a bullhorn in the middle of a, of a service or a group, or like you're still not honoring everybody else's space in a way.
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So it's like, can you own your own experience in a way, and your own thoughts and perspectives enough to be part of a conversation?
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You can have any, any perspective, any feelings, including hate.
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You can be hateful, as we want, towards all of us, that's fine.
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But, um, can you operate with boundaries that allow everybody to have their own experience as well?
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So that's what's important to me okay, yeah, yeah.
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What was the?
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I guess a question I would have is you know, assuming that you're you're leading these spaces or or serving as kind of the chief facilitator of these spaces, have you personally, you know, going back to the sidewalk metaphor of you know what happened?
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I'm just, I'm just going for a walk and I'm walking, and I'm still walking, and where I was, you know, 20 blocks ago might be different than where I am, but for me it's still a sidewalk.
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Has it always been that way or has there been an unpacking process of the community gatherings that you're leading now and the music that you're writing now as an artist and what you're putting out?
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Have there been shifts internally within you that maybe 20 blocks ago you'd never imagined?
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You are where you are now, but hey, now you're here.
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Yeah for sure.
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The scenery has definitely changed through the journey and and even the way that I walk has changed, um.
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So it's, it's not.
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It doesn't feel like the same block, it doesn't feel like this.
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Sometimes, it doesn't feel like the same universe, frankly, um, but it's um.
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But I can look back and see how important every step of it was.
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So so, yeah, there's, there's things, if I, I imagine if myself, 20 years ago, met myself now, I'd be terrified on some level, like, oh my, what, how, how did you get there?
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Um.
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But but I can look back and see how I needed to feel that way at that point, because that's what I had experienced up to that point and what I needed then to try to make myself safe and feel loved and whatever I was looking for at the time.
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What else could it have been?
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It was like every step needed to be exactly as it was.
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I feel like that's a really like.
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To me, that's a fresh and intriguing perspective, because oftentimes, um, I don't know, at least from my vantage point in hearing, um, you know, there's this it you even alluded to it where people are kind of seeking for this pivotal moment or this intense trauma or pain that led to, why result?
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But in hearing your response, it's interesting to hear how and correct me if I'm wrong in saying this you're not just saying, hey, it's always been this way and I just faked it for a period of time.
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It genuinely was a journey and a path where where you were at, call it, 10 years ago was genuinely where you were at 10 years ago, and where you're at now is genuinely where you're at versus 10 years ago.
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You're like man, I would love to be here, but because I'm in X and Y space, I can't.
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So I'm going to, you know, entrap myself in this and then maybe one day I can break free.
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That's.
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That's a refreshing perspective for me.
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Am I hearing what you're saying correctly in that?
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Yeah, I think that's one thing.
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It's hard to accept people's change sometimes and it's like, well, were you lying to me when I thought you were different?
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No, I was different.
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And so I mean, of course there are people that live in a lie and live in a way that they're trying to just make everybody think they're a certain way, and then the truth comes out and while I can say there are definitely times that I was afraid of speaking, I think probably almost the whole time, almost the whole time there's always been some.
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Whatever the leading edge of the growth is, whatever the leading edge of the curiosity where am I going from here always feels a little scary to just like air publicly, like I don't know where I'm going to end up.
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A past from some of that lag of like.
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When I was interviewed about Genesis, when they asked me the question about Genesis, there was something.
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There was an earlier time when I was really wrestling with it that I probably would have spoken more carefully or more like measured and like tried to honor both perspectives or something, but it had been so long since I even have been thinking about that, but I just kind of casually dismissed my old view, which made people that had that view feel slighted and offended, like well, you're just dismissing us out of hand, like so sometimes the lag in in the real time processing of like what am I wrestling with right now, what don't I know right now, versus like oh, I was doing that five years ago.
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I was thinking about that and I kind of came to this conclusion.
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Sometimes that lag has made me communicate in ways that people felt was dismissive or something, and I do feel sad about those times because I do want to honor everybody else's journey too.
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So one final thing on that and along the honoring other people's journeys, as well as you genuinely being where you were in those times and now you genuinely being where you are now versus gosh 10, 12 years ago, I was writing songs that I didn't believe in, or saying things that I truly didn't believe, but I felt like I had to say that For worship leaders, but church members, whatever it may be, that listen to the songs, these songs right, I mean the songs were like, hey, this is it, knowing where you are now versus where you are then.
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I've always wanted to ask this question.
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I don't even have a thought of what the answer would be, I'm just excited I get to ask.
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It Is how do you feel in your heart, or how does it feel in general, for folks to be singing those songs, genuinely believing and professing God, christ, saving all of that in those songs, and then where you are today, where maybe you feel differently about those things, and there's been an unpacking or, to use the buzzword, a deconstructing, if you will, of those beliefs that were, that were held like.
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What is your posture on that personally?
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As you know the songwriter and the artist yeah, well, first of all, the, the.
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Thank you for the question, the, the.
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Um, I haven't recorded a song.
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I'm combing through my memory banks but other than maybe battle cry.
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Battle cry was a little on the edge of like this feels a little like faking it.
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Uh, for the sake of the the event was called battle cry.
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That wasn't, that wasn't a really authentic expression.
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I was kind of like trying to lend myself to that.
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But aside, aside from that song, I can't think of any songs that I've recorded that weren't a very authentic heart expression at the time and for that reason I've always loved the music that I'm in.
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But for also that reason, there was usually a lag of a handful of years that you know, it was like the songs.
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Five years ago I was like I don't want to sing, sing that anymore.
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But then it got to a stage in the journey.
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Um, we're not where I'm at now is.
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I really do sincerely love all of all of it.
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So people being able to sing any of them, even battle cry, I have to feel about, I have to feel into battle cry a little bit, I'm not sure, but uh, we're putting that in the intro, by the way.
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Yeah, the rest of them, yeah, if people can find and interestingly I could a lot of it's come full circle where I think I can sing all those words myself and I might mean I might have different implications for, like, some of what that might mean to me now than what it meant then or what it might mean to the average person who's singing it in church.
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Um, but I can sing it sincerely.
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Um, almost all of them.
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I'm not.
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There's a couple songs that I wouldn't sing, probably now, just cause it'd be harder to do the translation of how I see things now.
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But most of them fit pretty cleanly into how I, how I see things now.
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It's just, it's a, it's almost up an octave or something.
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It's like it includes and transcends what I thought I meant at the time.
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All right, I really cool.
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I've got to know where you are at now.
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So you know you're in this journey and where are you at now as far as, like, who is Jesus to you?
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What is kind of your spiritual direction, kind of course?
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Like, where did you end up?
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Yeah, kind of course, like where did you end up?
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Yeah, when I look through christianity's history I see like kind of it's this huge tree right, like there's all these branches that have always branched off from the orthodox and the catholic and then the protestants and then the evangelicals and everybody, um, but through the whole tree I can see a mystical strain that I personally place in Jesus' teachings directly.
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I think that goes through certain like there are saints throughts, there's elements of like the Quakers and different streams who have had sort of this view of God that wasn't so fundamentally other.
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And I can find it in the scriptures and you find it in, especially in the Gospel of John.
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That mystical thread kind of stands out particularly brightly to me, particularly brightly to me, and essentially it's that Jesus recognized his shared divinity with the Father, and the Father being the ultimate, unnameable, infinite.
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This, that is the ground of being, and that infinite ocean, if you will found itself particularly manifested as a wave, as Jesus, and the ocean recognized itself in that wave, and I think the work and message of Jesus, the mystical part of it anyway, was calling to that ocean.
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That is in all of us, that is the essence of being itself, and so what?
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I think I am this body, this mind, this thought, this feeling, this perception, this story.
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I see that now, as waves, they're just temporary little waves that are in the ocean, and that the ocean really is what is real, if you will, that God is kind of the only true reality and that all of this is just sort of an appearing wave within God, and that, as we remember that, that's what allows us to not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow takes care of itself.
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Or to just listen to the bird look at the birds they're taking care of, and it's what allows us to love our enemies as ourselves, because they are the same ocean.
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Underneath all the waves, it's the same ocean.
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So God doesn't have a name.
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So you would say old Testament, yahweh, you know it's more than that kind of thing.
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God can have any name.
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God has all the names.
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You can call the ocean whatever you will.
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Infinity, by nature, can't be boxed in, because if you can box in infinity and go, this is what infinity is.
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You're talking about something finite, so you can what you're.
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The box is included in infinity.
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You can't.
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It's so to say what is the infinite name.
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I mean, call it whatever you want, but it's not a.
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It's not an it that can fit inside your head, or a name, otherwise it's, by nature, an idol which is still part of the ocean, it's still part of god.
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It's just a part, it's not the totality have you ever seen the, the movie interstellar?
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you know that end scene that's absolutely bonkers, where it's like you know, basically future humans made this thing, that like this realm that was physical for them now, so that they could actually like see it and understand it.
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That kind of feels very similar to me of what God kind of does for us in the sense of like he does not have a box, at least that you know I'm talking about.
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You know God of the Bible, like no box, infinite, completely, all powerful, all that stuff.
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But we'll never be able to understand all of God, right, like we're humans, we Like we're humans, we're creation, we're the created.
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So we will never be able to understand the depth, like everything, of God.
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There's no way, right.
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But the thing of like God doesn't have a specific name that we could know to be able to know him.
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I believe that we have a knowable God and the only reason I'm saying my belief is because you were like before we recorded.
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It was kind of funny.
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You were like you guys can try to convert me, give it the best you got.
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That prize was thrown out there, yeah.
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So usually I wouldn't be like, hey, this is what I, what I got going on, but you, you opened it up.
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So I'm a, I'm gonna open it up.
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But I'm very curious, because if we don't have like a knowable God, like a relational knowable God, what does that, what does that do for you?
00:24:42.830 --> 00:25:06.380
No-transcript.
00:25:07.299 --> 00:25:09.586
Yeah, well, okay, thank you.
00:25:09.586 --> 00:25:10.630
Multiple questions in there.
00:25:10.630 --> 00:25:14.403
I think I'll try to maybe start with that last one.
00:25:14.403 --> 00:25:15.929
It wasn't that Jesus was a big wave.
00:25:15.929 --> 00:25:22.252
It's that literally the ocean knew itself in the small wave that we called Jesus.
00:25:22.252 --> 00:25:24.346
Jesus the body.
00:25:24.346 --> 00:25:39.424
What are we talking about when we're talking about Jesus like a mammal right, like with hair and skin and bone, like that's just temporary, who lived 33 years as that body, like that's a wisp of vapor, it's just a tiny little splash.
00:25:39.424 --> 00:25:41.290
But it wasn't just a splash.
00:25:41.290 --> 00:25:47.665
It was the ocean knowing itself in that splash, and so it wasn't a big wave.
00:25:47.665 --> 00:25:49.109
That was like I'm bigger than the rest of you.
00:25:49.109 --> 00:25:53.652
It was like the ocean knowing itself in any tiny drop.
00:25:55.960 --> 00:25:58.084
So knowable is an interesting because it's not.
00:25:58.084 --> 00:26:04.694
If the duality, the two-ness, maintains itself, the metaphor breaks down quickly.
00:26:04.694 --> 00:26:07.183
Duality, the two-ness maintains itself, the metaphor breaks down quickly.
00:26:07.183 --> 00:26:16.828
Because if it's like I'm the ant and I'm walking on this huge globe and it's impersonal and it feels like, oh well, that feels kind of like what does that do for you?
00:26:16.828 --> 00:26:30.904
Just walking on a big globe, like you can't even know this globe, but that metaphor is infinitely falls short of the distance globe, but that metaphor is infinitely falls short of the distance between a finite person and the infinite God.
00:26:30.904 --> 00:26:32.749
It's not an ant compared to a planet.
00:26:32.749 --> 00:26:35.794
It's infinitely greater than that.
00:26:35.794 --> 00:26:56.671
So it's not like when I say anything that you can know is knowing God, so anything that can be known any name that you could offer it as like a localization of it, like, if you want to feel the ocean, you only can feel a wave.
00:26:56.671 --> 00:27:01.231
You can't touch the ocean without touching a wave.
00:27:01.231 --> 00:27:04.613
That's how you touch the ocean without touching a wave.
00:27:04.613 --> 00:27:18.959
That's how you touch the ocean and in the way God in its, in the we'll call it the infinite or his, however you want to say it it is accessed through, and that's what I love about Christianity, honestly, is this mystical strength?
00:27:18.959 --> 00:27:24.882
It's accessed in the tiniest place.
00:27:24.882 --> 00:27:27.224
It's accessed in a baby, in a manger.
00:27:27.224 --> 00:27:28.446
It's accessed bread and wine.
00:27:28.446 --> 00:27:35.455
It's accessed when you visit me in prison and in the hospitals and in the forgotten corners.
00:27:35.455 --> 00:27:43.067
It's accessed by leaving the 99 and going to the one sheep that was lost.
00:27:43.067 --> 00:27:45.635
It's accessed wherever you think it can't be accessed, it's found.
00:27:45.655 --> 00:27:48.625
It's always incredibly specific and intimate and personal.
00:27:48.625 --> 00:27:50.412
It's not less than personal.
00:27:50.412 --> 00:27:55.567
It includes every bit of personal that you could find in it and it's greater than that.
00:27:55.567 --> 00:28:06.314
It's not just a drop, it's the entire ocean in the drop, it's the entire divinity in every knowing and every personal taste that can be found.
00:28:06.314 --> 00:28:08.446
So call it, yeah, call it Yahweh.
00:28:08.446 --> 00:28:27.944
It's great, it's beautiful, it's a name to call it, but when we separate ourselves from it and we go, I'm the ant and there's a big giant who it can feel on some level like that's being more respectful of God, like I'm not gonna just deep, depersonalize god into an ocean.
00:28:27.944 --> 00:28:41.131
It's like no, can you not see how you're infinitely shrinking god by thinking of, of infinity as just like a big guy that's infinitely shrinking?
00:28:41.131 --> 00:28:42.932
Yeah, I love the big guy.
00:28:42.992 --> 00:28:46.517
It's just like a big dude in the sky.
00:28:46.517 --> 00:28:51.023
That's not infinity, yeah yeah, I'm.
00:28:51.444 --> 00:28:56.692
I'm really intrigued by the, the, the phrase the ocean knowing itself.
00:28:56.692 --> 00:29:03.824
So I'm gonna I'm gonna throw something out here because I'm trying to wrap my mind, and maybe the whole point is that you can't wrap your mind around it, and that's the beauty of it.
00:29:03.824 --> 00:29:07.551
I'm trying to wrap my mind around what you mean by the ocean knowing itself.
00:29:07.551 --> 00:29:09.061
Who's the guy who does the?
00:29:09.061 --> 00:29:10.265
You made it weird podcast.
00:29:10.265 --> 00:29:11.949
He's a comedian, pete holmes.
00:29:11.949 --> 00:29:19.762
Pete holmes, okay, so pete holmes had andy hole of manchester orchestra manchester orchestra as a size, my favorite band of all time had him on the podcast.
00:29:19.863 --> 00:29:47.807
And in this, in this thing, they're talking about songwritingwriting and Pete Holmes referenced a songwriter who in this story I'm only saying all this so that way I can prove that it's a legitimate thing that actually happened, rather than me making it up off the top of my head is he wrote this song about a divorce or a messy breakup, and then performed this song and then at the end of the show, a fan came up and was like hey, man, I really, really love that song about the titanic.
00:29:47.807 --> 00:29:49.511
And.
00:29:49.511 --> 00:29:57.798
And then the artist in this story he's like I had to learn that my best response to that person is thank you like that's.
00:29:57.798 --> 00:29:59.503
That's not what I meant by the song.
00:29:59.503 --> 00:30:05.326
I wrote this song from a voice up here but to the listener, you heard a song about the titanic, so thank you.
00:30:05.326 --> 00:30:06.786
Thank you for appreciating that song.
00:30:07.188 --> 00:30:10.099
Is that, is that close in the realm of what you're talking about?
