“How Far To The Promised Land” with Esau McCaulley

Shownotes:

Esau McCaulley returns to The Weight for a discussion about his newest book, "How Far to the Promised Land.” This is a joyful conversation that covers some heavy topics, like reconciling yourself to your history while charting your own path and creating your own story. And sometimes, finding your place in the story means finding your place with God and allowing God’s grace to emerge in unexpected ways.

Esau is an author and associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College in Wheaton, IL, with a Ph.D. from the University of St. Andrews. He is the author of Reading While Black as well as articles for the New York Times.

Resources:

Listen to Esau’s previous episode on The Weight

Order Esau’s books: Reading While Black: African American Biblical Interpretation as an Exercise in Hope and How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South.

Read Esau’s articles in The New York Times here: https://www.nytimes.com/by/esau-mccaulley 

Follow Esau on the web: https://esaumccaulley.com 

Follow Esau on social media: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram

Transcript:

Eddie Rester 00:00 I'm Eddie Rester.

Chris McAlilly 00:01
I'm Chris McAlilly. Welcome to The Weight. Today we're talking to Dr. Esau McCaulley. He's an author and associate professor of New Testament at Wheaton College.

Eddie Rester 00:12

He wrote a book that we... We invited him on, I think three years, maybe our first or second season, "Reading While Black," which was a best seller. People loved it. He's recently released a new book, "How Far to the Promised Land: One Black Family's Story of Hope and Survival in the American South." And I've got to tell you, it's one of the best books I've read in a while. It's a memoir, so he tells his story, but not just his story. He tells his family's story, going back generations. Chris, what did you think of the book? What do you think of our conversation with Esau?

Chris McAlilly 00:47

The book is incredible. Esau is an amazing writer. He's also an incisive theological thinker, a biblical thinker. And so even though this isn't explicitly biblical or theological work, what you hear in it is really one individual's attempt to really mine their family narrative and their family narrative as a narrative of... It's an American story really, for how the family was broken by circumstances, by dysfunction, by the pain, both that came at them from the outside and some of the things that emerge from the inside, but also where the questions and the resources are within the story that give rise to hope. And, you know, the conversation is funny. Esau is just a joyful human being and so delightful conversation partner. But also the book is just phenomenal. It's really, really well written. I think he gets better every book he writes.

Eddie Rester 01:59

You know, there's several things we didn't get to talk to him about. His football career, one of those things we didn't get to talk to him about. But the theme, the thread of grace, we could have talked, I think, an hour just about that piece of it, how grace has unfolded, in his story at unexpected moments, in unexpected ways. Even when I think sometimes people did not expect to see grace emerge in people's lives at all.

Chris McAlilly 02:29
Yeah, I don't think we need to talk about the episode, we just need to let you guys listen to it.

Eddie Rester 02:33 Enjoy it.

Chris McAlilly 02:34

It was so good. And I hope that you guys enjoy it as much as we did. And if you do, find someone to share it with. Share it on social media. leave a review and let folks know what you think about the podcast. Go back and listen to the backlog. You can go back and find the previous episode that we did with Esau and other conversations about faith and race in the American South. There are a lot of episodes that we've done, kind of on those topics and themes. So again, we're so grateful that you're a part of the conversation with us on The Weight, and we look forward to hearing from you. [INTRO] Life can be heavy. So heavy, in fact that the way we carry can sometimes cause us to lose hope.

Eddie Rester 03:21
But we've all come across those people in life who seem to be experiencing the same world we live in, except they maintain a great depth of joy and hope.

Chris McAlilly 03:30
A former generation called this gravitas. It was their description of a soul that had gained enough weightiness to be attractive, like all things with a gravitational pull.

Eddie Rester 03:41

Those are the people we want to talk to. On this podcast, we talk to pastors, entrepreneurs, artists, mental health experts, and many others.

Chris McAlilly 03:50

We'll create space for heavy topics. But we'll be listening for quality of soul that could be called gravitas. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO] We're here today with Dr. Esau. McCauley. Esau, thanks for coming back on the podcast.

Esau McCaulley 04:06

Thank you so much for having me back. This is one of the few second rounds that I've done for "Reading While Black" and "How Far to the Promised Land," so thank you for not kicking me off the list the last time.

Chris McAlilly 04:16

Hey, man, we love the previous episode with you and are excited to get back in touch. Tell us a little bit about what you're doing now professionally, maybe compared to what you're doing then. It may be the same stuff.

Esau McCaulley 04:32
I'm currently not doing anything because I'm on sabbatical.

Chris McAlilly 04:34 Come on. That's awesome.

Esau McCaulley 04:38

So I'm on sabbatical, but I still teach at Wheaton College. I'm assuming I had... Oh, I had to be teaching at Wheaton College when I wrote. So I was an assistant professor at the time. Now I'm an associate professor. I have been promoted and I have tenure. So I've been tenured. But beyond that, I'm doing the same thing. Still trying to be a decent husband and a father and teach a little bit.

Eddie Rester 04:56
And you're writing a little bit. Still writing a little bit for the New Yorker.

Esau McCaulley 04:59
Yeah, so I write a column, supposedly, every three or four weeks for the New York Times. So I'm working on two pieces right now that you all will see eventually.

Chris McAlilly 05:09

Your most recent book is called "How Far to the Promised Land." And this is a different kind of book than "Reading While Black." "Reading While Black" was really a book about how to read the Bible and kind of have a way of thinking about the interpretation of scripture. And it's kind of pitch both, I don't know, I think of it as pitched towards an academic audience, but also towards kind of an intellectual engagement of scripture for the life of the church. This is a different book. This is more of your story, your family story, your personal narrative. You talk a little bit about what motivates your writing, but I wonder if you might expound upon it.

Esau McCaulley 05:57

Yeah, I mean, part of it is, people sometimes put us into boxes. You know, we're academics, or we're pastors, or we're scholarly, or we're popular. And I've always said, none of those boxes--I was not there when they made the boxes. So I don't feel any inclination to follow those rules. And so one way, and part of what it means to me, is I'm always trying to find a way to be myself, and not follow the rules that everyone sets for me. So one reason, in one sense, I wrote a memoir, because I just wanted to write a memoir. Now, in other words, I'm a writer, and writers write. And I felt a strong desire to tell my story. Now, the question as to why I decided to tell my story is, I think that we can sometimes I think there is a lot of ways in which sometimes Christians or people have intellectual questions about who God is. And we need books that help us think through these intellectual problems. But sometimes our problems aren't intellectual. They're personal. They're existential. And we're wrestling with how to make sense of God in the context of an actual life. And although I had written a lot of books about... I've written about theology, and making these theological points about what it means to live the life before God, that's only one part of my story. Like, my story isn't just an intellectual series of decisions that I made. It's a personal life. And the life that I actually live is tied to the people who came before me in the world in which I live and move and breathe. And so "How Far to the Promised Land" I think is the companion piece, right. If "Reading While Black" is an intellectual journey, then "How Far to the Promised Land" is kind of a spiritual journey.

Chris McAlilly 07:41

I wonder the category that... Well, the category of of story, I think, is one that I think is just so powerful. And one of the things that you talk about in the book is your individual story, and maybe particularly in the Black community, you kind of emphasize that an individual is not just an individual, that an individual is a part of a community, it's part of the family. And so to make sense of your story as an individual, or as a person, you have to go back and kind of do this deeper kind of work with the story of the family. I wonder if you could just talk about that. Why is story is such a powerful category?

Esau McCaulley 08:21

You know, I'm glad. I'm glad you asked me that question. Because when we think about theology, we think about what are you doing in theology. We think what the serious theology is like Romans and Galatians. That's where the real scholars are. And the people who like devotional literature, they read the Gospels, right, to kind of get warm and fuzzy feelings about Jesus. One of the things that is actually true about the Bible is that a significant part of the Bible is a narrative. Even what we call the Torah, the law, the majority of the law isn't law. It's actually story. And it seems like one of the central question that we have to ask as human beings, one of the central questions is, what kind of story do I inhabit? Do I inhabit a story with God at the center, or do I inhabit a different story? And so what we think of as theology, propositional arguments in Romans, in Galatians, in Ephesians, and Colossians. Those are important. I do that, too. That's one way. But it seems like God also pointed to people through story. And so for me, "How Far to the Promised Land" is an attempt for me to try to figure out, and for my ancestors across generations to figure out, well, what kind of story do we inhabit? What kind of world do we live in? And I think that one, I think that all of us have to answer that question. What kind of story do we inhabit? And in particular, as it relates to Black people in the South, one of the things that I've said is, one of the things about being poor and Black and Southern, is that all of American history is kind of dumped in your lap. What I mean by that is that money can sometimes function as a buffer. If there are things that you don't want to see, you can just move to where those things don't exist. Or the ugly parts to segregation and discrimination, you can kind of remove yourself from it. But when you tell my family story, and we're poor and Black in the South, then Jim Crow lands right into the middle of my family story. Right? Like the idea of the things we read in the newspapers or in the history books about tenant farmers and the economic exploitation of Black labor, that's in my family story. The civil rights movement, and what the civil rights movement does and doesn't accomplish, it's right in the middle of my family story. The so called War on Drugs and the stereotypes that arose around Black people during the 80s and the 90s, that's my story. And so, if you follow a Black family without the resources to protect themselves from the vicissitudes of history, then you see it. And so I couldn't simply tell my story, without telling the rest of my family story, in the same way that if you just opened--and I'm not saying that we're the Bible, right. But if you just open up Solomon's story, you don't understand unless you understand David's story. And if you don't, in other words, if you just read about Israel in exile, you have no idea how they got there. And so I think that any truly human story has to back up and give people perspective on the whole.

Eddie Rester 11:16

In that, you do an incredible job of digging through family history and presenting family history. And, I can't remember it was in the epilogue, or somewhere, you talked about how difficult it was to actually piece some of that together, because for Black families in the South, that's not something that's maintained, saved. How did you? It seems like it was probably a family telling.

Esau McCaulley 11:41

So. So this is this is probably what I would say. There are parts of the book, for which significant portions, I'm not even alive yet.

Esau McCaulley 11:51

But that my father isn't alive. It goes back to my great-grandmother. And for those there are people who are still alive who knew her and who knew about our story, and I interviewed them. One of them has, I mean, she might not admit that she has dementia, but she might have a bit of a dementia. She comes and goes. And so sitting down and talk with her, and some of my other relatives, that's how I got some of the older narratives. And some of them are ultimately my family's version of events. And so if there's... And I try to do as much historical research that I could to figure it out, but, like, the records weren't there. And so what this is, is the stories that shaped my family's imagination, but they're innacurate in places, but as best as I can discern, everything that is depicted in that story is true. Some of them are the small things that people and I care about as readers, but for example, one of my relatives who's quite elderly, they speak with a slight speech impediment. And so I could not discern some of the names they were describing. And they couldn't spell them for me. So there's a doctor in the story named Dr. McCandlish. And I couldn't find any doctor named McCandlish, but I also couldn't understand exactly what my relative was saying. So a doctor's name may be a little bit inaccurate, right? Because like trying to pronounce like, through the lens of an aged southern drawl. Y'all from the South. Y'all get this.

Eddie Rester 13:25 We get that. Yeah.

Esau McCaulley 13:26
But those kinds of things were interesting. But I did the best that I could.

Chris McAlilly 13:31

I think that there's an element of the book that's wrestling with the scripts that were given to live into. And, you know, you're wrestling with the scripts that, you know, for instance, for example, kind of college admissions counselors, and high school admissions counselors, or high school counselors, are encouraging you to kind of present your narrative in a particular kind of way. And you both do that as a part of the admissions process. And then there's this wrestling with, do I tell my story? Do I not tell my story? What are the terms or with what script am I telling my story? I wonder if you might just speak a little bit about kind of some of the ways in which you're wrestling with that, that idea of a script.

Esau McCaulley 14:21

My sister was the first person in my family to graduate from college. She was two years older than me. I had a cousin who started college a little before he doesn't graduate. But he went on an athletic scholarship. And so when I get to the place of applying for school, this is something you don't think about. Like, I don't know anybody around me. Nobody in my family had ever applied for university except my sister, and so there wasn't... I didn't know how to do it. Like, what do you put in the essay? How do you get someone to let you into the school? And so I'm talking to the guidance counselor, and he's like, tell them the sad story, that you grew up in this place. You have this opportunity to be more. Let them feel like they have a chance to pluck up a piece of wood from the burning fires of poverty. Sorry, this, I can say this because you guys are Methodist. The original line in that line was a "brand plucked from the burning."

Eddie Rester 15:14
Yeah. When I read that in the book, I was like, oh, he knows his Wesley.

Esau McCaulley 15:17
And so here's the thing. I think I had to change the language. It doesn't say a brand plucked from the burning, does it?

Eddie Rester 15:22 No, no.

Esau McCaulley 15:23

They said nobody would get it. And I said, "There'll be five Methodist who get this line. And it'll be amazing for them." But my editor said, "Well forget those five Methodists. We've got to sell this to the rest of the world." So anyways, I was thinking about John Wesley anyways, because I even talked about later, my mom having the world as her parish, there's some Wesleyan hints in there. Anyways, the idea is, there's a story that you're conditioned to tell. But that story doesn't capture the entirety of that community.

Chris McAlilly 15:36 [LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 15:54 Right.

Esau McCaulley 15:54

And that story puts me as the star, or whoever this is as the star, who has overcome that community. They've escaped it. But what I'm gonna say is that we don't actually escape it.

We're part of it. We're marked by it. And it's not just the things... My community is more than the bad things you need to hear to let me in a college. And in some sense, I've thought about this almost similar to what you do when you do a book tour. Because you have to tell people about the book. What you want to say is--this is not being arrogant--"I think I wrote a good book. Why don't you just read it?" Right? That's right. But part of the process is you have to explain these things to people, which is fine. People need to know before they purchase things. But what I wanted to say is, I don't want to have to gain my admittance to university by diminishing the place in which I came. And finding a way to tell a better and fuller story, it's this sense of unease that goes throughout the book. And ultimately, "How Far to the Promised Land" is my attempt to tell a better story. Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in roles that aren't dishonest in what they say. They're dishonest what they omit.

Chris McAlilly 17:08

Yeah, I think that one of the ways that you wrestle with trying to tell a better story is as you wrestle with the story of your father. And so one of the lines... I mean, you come to a place where your family is looking to you to eulogize your father, on the other side of his death. And one of the lines that I just found very striking at the end of the introduction, is just, "I set off down that path, the path of a process of forgiveness. But I had not yet learned to regard him with much tenderness. To eulogize him, I would need to see him clearly, as someone whose story deserved to be treated with care." That line was really, really powerful to me, just that you would have an opportunity. You know, I mean, one of the things that happens when you're a pastor, you become a pastor to your family, and you end up eulogizing people in your family story. And it's always a tricky thing to do. And I've done it with multiple grandparents at this point. And you're always trying to figure out how do I tell the story truthfully, see them clearly, but to tell the story with great care? And... I don't know that I have a profound question to ask. But I just, I was just incredibly struck by that line. As I think about how I see... I guess part of it is just how you articulate and tell. You're now in a position to tell a story of a person who can no longer tell their story. That's part of the... And that changes the way that you interface with a story if you're now in the position of power to tell the story.

Esau McCaulley 18:58

Yeah, I think that there's a couple of things. As you were speaking about that, I was thinking about how, in some sense, writing the eulogy and then later, writing this book, gave me more empathy and tenderness towards my father than I ever had during his life. I was thinking about that, as you just asked me this question. I was like, I think I feel more possibly about him now than I did even when I wrote the eulogy, because it was so fresh. I think that one of the things that the eulogy still... One of the... I mean writing that eulogy changed my life. It changed it. It's because what--and I knew we'd... because I'd done for the clergy space, but I didn't have to think theologically about it as much as I did for my father. What are we doing when we do a eulogy? We're trying to tell a person's story, but because you're clergy, you have to put that story in the context of the wider purposes of God.

Eddie Rester 19:55 Right.

Esau McCaulley 19:56

You have to ask the question what was God doing in this life? And you have to... You can't lie, right? Because then you're lying about what God is up to. Like you're bounded by your integrity as a clergy person until the truth, and so the search for beauty has to be genuine, but it has to be a search. And so sometimes the grace that emerges is refracted and broken and complicated, but sometimes it's still there. And so when I got to that point in the eulogy, when I said, Yeah, like, the things that are barely hopeful, right, are still somewhat useful. You know, we think about--maybe I'm gonna say, I don't know, maybe I'll sound Methodist or I'll sound reform. I don't know what this is gonna sound like. We think about grace, right? We think about grace as this comforting doctrine that kind of allows the people who are pursuing holiness to kind of have an emotional fallback plan. Basically we kind of were like, 80 or 90% holy, and we needed the 10% grace to make us feel good about ourselves, right? But like, what makes grace gracious in the biblical narrative is its shocking impact in the lives of broken people who are made broken, right? The people on the cross literally at the last minute, right. And so when I said my father made these half hearted turns, some people might be tempted to say, well, that's not enough. And I said that's actually where grace becomes most effective, where God is reaching out his arm as far as he can to grab the person who he can bring back into his family. And so for me, it helped me to understand how to find beauty in difficult places without normalizing the difficulty. And so it helped me to realize in other people, that no one's story is over. And that the victories... There's a line that I really like that, although they're... It says, although the victories are fleeting, that doesn't make them any less glorious, right? And so I think that writing that story allowed me to say, here is where God is in this person's story. And here's what you can learn about what God is up to in their story. And one of the things about the Bible is, and this is true, every human life is instructed, both in what you should do and what you shouldn't do. And the biblical narrative unfolds all of these characters, and both their mistakes and their successes are caught up in the divine story.

Eddie Rester 22:30 Right.

Esau McCaulley 22:31

I was trying to tell the story that displayed the same kind of complexity. And so even though there's very little Bible quoted in the book, I think there's like, obviously, there's the text from the eulogy. But I don't think in the body of the text there's any Bible at all.

Eddie Rester 22:53
Talk about the Esau story, later in the book.

Esau McCaulley 22:59

Oh, yeah, I forgot the Esau story. You're right. That's an exposition. I've been waiting. I've been waiting my entire life... You know, there are certain things you've been waiting. I've been waiting my entire life... You know, there are certain things you've been waiting. I've been

Eddie Rester 23:16 Yeah.

Esau McCaulley 23:17

But I can't give it. I can't give away to the reader, to the listener, in case they actually buy the book. But I will just say, father to son to visited. And the Esau and Jacob story is kind of like, it's the emotional center of the book. And one of the things, I broke a rule. I'll say, I broke a rule. You all will know this about preaching, right. In preaching, there's two ways, there's a bunch of ways to structure a sermon. One of the ways to structure a sermon is saying, I'm going to do this. Then you say, these are my three points, and you get the three points in your mind and three points at the end. And so everyone knows the entire time, this is where you going. Then there's the dangerous version of the sermon that has a crescendo that you hope to carry the reader along. And the sermon's denouement, like the very end of it, is where the whole thing kind of comes together. And the way that this story is written, it's written to climax at that story. And so if you don't give up--and that's the hard part--like you don't give a the heart of the book is at the end.

Eddie Rester 24:20

And I'll say this without giving too much away to the folks who need to buy this book. That story, the story of Jacob and Esau is a story I use when I talk about how God works through broken and dysfunctional families. God uses--not accidentally, but intentionally--God uses broken and dysfunctional families to advance the story of the kingdom. And you see that. The other thing that I couldn't help but think, as I read this book, is that a lot of times when I work with couples coming to get married, we'll talk about we live in the ruts that other people have dug for us.

Esau McCaulley 25:00 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 25:01

And so much of your telling of your family story from both sides reveals that. Your dad's dad. You becoming a preacher. There's so much. Did you know that going into writing all this? Or was that a discovery for you as well, that there are these ruts that are going to be lived in across the generations?

Esau McCaulley 25:25

It's funny, there are motifs that emerge in the writing of the book that you didn't know. So well, the eulogy and the book are kind of related in the sense that there are parts of the book that are discovered, in part, during the writing of the eulogy. I talk about them in the same sense. But no, when I sat down and heard about my father's own father, who had left him, just like he left me, it did seem... It made me feel a greater sense of weight and responsibility to be the person who charted a different path in my family's life. But the question is, how do you tell a different story? If I'm going to tell a different story is to face the story of the past. It's always fun... At this point, one of the ways I entertain myself is to remind myself of all the alternative titles. But the, I think it was the... There was an original version of that, where I told the stories of the parents, so the father who left me and his father who left him. Here's a deep cut for the people who are, like, 90s contemporary music people. The initial title for that chat was called "A Long Line of Leavers" from the Caedmon's Call album. And so anyway... But I did see the ways in which like their past paid for us, and one of the things that we have to do is, by God's grace chart, a different story. And so I didn't know that when I began to write the book. There's also, for example, when I open the book, and I'm talking about my father... The book opens with a trip between me and my son. We're going on a trip to UNC. And the precipitate... It reminds me of a trip that I took with my father. But then, like, the motif that's going on over the entire book is a road trip. Right? My father dies on a journey back to his family. And then the language of promise land, which evokes the language of journey. And so when I was writing the book, I was conscious of that, how much of, and there's tons of times in the book where I'm talking. I talk about going on a road trip, dealing with police violence, right, when I'm traveling from one place to the other, and I get pulled over. And so in the writing of the book, you began to realize the ways in which life stacks on top of each other, and that we find ourselves these opportunities to chart a different path. And so I didn't know that those kinds of things were going to emerge when I planned it, when I started writing the book. Books take a life of their own.

Chris McAlilly 28:08

I do think you talk about these moments, there are pivotal moments in stories where the story in a personal story, or family story can take a different path. On page I guess, like 129, you say, "we don't know who we are until we are forced to decide on the pressure of life and death situations. These moments as much as any statement of belief reveal the role that God plays in our lives." You had had a similar, you recount a story of a person. Was it your grandmother, great grandmother, Sophia?

Esau McCaulley 28:50

So I'll tell you what was going on in that point in the story is, I find myself in a neighborhood I had no business in. And these people come up to me and they say, like, Where you from? And where I grew up, when people ask you where you from, you're supposed to represent a neighborhood. You're supposed to say where you're from, regardless of the consequences, that represent where you are. But they had a gun that particular day. And it wasn't any, like, show. It wasn't any intentional manifestation of piety. It wasn't fear. I just found myself saying, I'm a Christian. And when I said it, at first, I was embarrassed. We had this phrase growing up, if you scared, go to church. And church is the place for cowards, right? So they laughed at me and they walked away. And I want to say no, no, this is not about fear. It was about this realization about who I actually was and what I was actually trying to do with my life. In other words, when I was fully pressed, when it was time to decide who I was, the words that came--not the words that I thought. The words that came out of my mouth, ultimately came from God. And the point of that is that sermon, those sermons and all those things they did the church that I thought weren't doing their work kind of erupted out of me in that moment. And one of the things that I realized, I'm not saying that God causes us to suffer to make these things happen. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is suffering, suffering is revelatory. In that moment, when pressed, I discovered who I was. And I realized that that truth exists in life. Right? We will, if
you live long enough, life will knock you over. And when you are knocked over, you will find out who you are. I had, I was at... I teach at Wheaton College. They had me in class with pastors. And they were like, what advice do you have for people who want to know what church is going to be in 20 years. That whole, like, prognostication stuff. And that, I just kind of push that to the side. I have no idea what's coming. Like I didn't see the pandemic coming. I didn't see any of that coming, snuck up on me. If you had asked me 10 years ago, I wouldn't have told you to get ready for a pandemic. What I would have told you is if you live long enough, you're gonna suffer. And when you suffer, you'll find out who you are. And I will say like, you think that you know, but you don't. And, and that may seem like a dark thing. And I have people who, this is not a judgment on them. It's not. I have people who I started off in ministry with when I was in seminary, 20 years ago, who aren't involved in the church anymore. And I said, 20 years ago, we couldn't have pointed out between, you know, 10 of us, who was going to be where. But they found out who they were, when life came for them. And so that basic truth that I found myself, when it no longer benefited me to be a Christian. That's also true about the human experience. We find ourselves in the context of suffering. And the same thing happened with my grandmother, my great grandmother, when she found herself in a similar story. And my mother when she found herself in a similar story. These moments of divine clarity. And you just got to figure out maybe I don't want to say... We got to figure out whether or not we're on Jesus's team. And the sense of suffering makes that clear. And you say, when it would be easier to do something else, that decision to stay does something to us that solidifies these convictions into these unshakable foundations.

Chris McAlilly 32:36

I do think one of the other places in the story that I was struck by, you got to find out if you're on Jesus's team, was when you were in college. You were at Swanee. And this was striking to me because I'm a pastor in a college town and pastor a lot of college student. And so, you know, the sense of you come to college, you're given a series of convictions and you think that you're the most enlightened person in the room after you finish your freshman year. And then you lay aside your family narrative. I just think that's very much a part of how I think college... I don't know. It's this sense of, alright, now I'm going to lay aside the family story. And I'm going to take on board these ideas, these philosophies, you know, these...

Eddie Rester 33:25 They feel like better story.

Chris McAlilly 33:26

Yeah, yeah, that's right. They feel like, oh, in college, at this school, at this university, the story that I need to be living into is now the one that is being presented to me. And you kind of that I need to be living into is now the one that is being presented to me. And you kind of wrestle with that. And there's bits of it, where you really discover some tools that help you kind of critique some of the things that are going on. But it wasn't, you know, ultimately, you get to a point where you say, you know, "I had set aside the hope passed down to me through the generation. It was time to take it up again." It's a powerful line. But I wonder if you would just kind of talk through that moment in your story.

Esau McCaulley 34:05

It really, that was like the hardest chapter to write. Because it can be like one of those bad versions, like God is not dead kind of Christianity that kind of ... them up in higher education, but I teach in higher education.

Eddie Rester 34:19 Yeah.

Esau McCaulley 34:20

And all of my PhDs, all of my degrees were, for the most part in secular schools. And so I didn't want to make it seem like this is the you know, secular academy that has come to destroy all that is good, true, and beautiful. There are a lot of things that I learned at university. And part of what makes the university so intriguing is the intellectual stimulation of being pressed by all of these new ideas. But universities have a kind of goal as to what they wanted to form me into. And what I found out was that the rebellion that I thought that was engaging in was scripted. And so I had to rebel against the rebellion. What I mean by that is there's a lot of tools that I learned that I still use, it comes across in my writing, to analyze and critique culture, to be able to articulate the ways in which oppression and those things work. That's true. But I also knew that stuff before I came to college. Like I knew that from my grandma, because they didn't focus on treating us right because they didn't know how to act across town, right? And so just because they added syllables to those words, and put relative clauses in those sentences, didn't actually make them smarter and more wise than my family. And I read--and this is one of the things that had tremendous impact on me--I read about, especially the historic injustices done to Black people. And I read about how those questions raises issues of theodicy, the existence of the goodness of God, in the context in particular of Black suffering. And I thought, because someone could write that in a way that was compelling, their answer was necessarily more important than the person who actually picked the cotton. And they had to wrestle with that stuff on the ground. In other words, just because they didn't have degrees, it didn't mean their brains weren't working. That's paternalism. And so when they decided, in the context of that suffering, that God was still good, that was not simply religion. That's a coping mechanism, that was potentially a hard one that I needed to take seriously. In other words, these were competing intellectual traditions that had their own way of making sense of the world. And so it wasn't that I could push away all of the things that I had learned in college, and go back to a pietism of a kind of different generation. It was saying that the things that I had to learn in college had to do serious business with the traditions that shaped me. And so I'm not the same person that I was before I went to college. And those things that shaped me are part of me, but so is that other stuff. And those things compete with one another, in a sense of articulating what I see in the world. And what I wanted to say was that I needed space to create that synthesis myself. Because if I don't make that synthesis myself, then what becomes the faith and piety and story of my ancestors becomes this paternalistic thing that we kind of have a nostalgia for, that we don't take intellectually seriously.

Chris McAlilly 37:25 Yeah, and I think...

Esau McCaulley 37:26 I want to say...

Chris McAlilly 37:26 Sorry to interrupt.

Esau McCaulley 37:27

I want to say that was... What I'm saying is, like, you can say that seriously without being anti- intellectual. And what I've been trying to do as a writer and thinker ever since then, was to bring those things together in a creative synthesis.

Chris McAlilly 37:39

There's, it's a beautiful thing that you're doing, because I guess what I see you doing is saying, there was a moment in time where you decide, you do say, "I left the South. I was running away from the South." And yet, both in "Reading While Black" and also in this book, you're saying, in part, that not only that these are my people, but this is my story. And there's a sense in which you're bringing that forward. You, I don't know, it seems conscious and intentional to be the transition person to help bring forward that story in a way that does the integration, and that at the end of the day... That same page, on page 80, you talk about what do you do when you have everything you've ever wanted, but it's not sufficient to bring you joy? Which is such a powerful question for a college student or a 20-year-old or 30-year-old or 40, or 50-year-old to ask.

Esau McCaulley 38:40

No, no, no, no, no, I didn't. I didn't think that. So that, that's the line from my conversion story. So no, I don't give myself that. I don't give myself that line. I am not Pentecostal enough to claim that I hear from God very often, in the sense of not an audible voice, but a clear conviction. But I had this moment when I was in college, where that sentence came to my brain, from where I don't know. But it like etched itself on my soul. What happens when you receive everything you've ever wanted, but not sufficient to bring you joy? That's the question. And it just knocked me over. It was beyond my wisdom to come up with. And the answer to the question is, well, Jesus is the source of lasting joy. Why don't you try him? Instead of pursuing all these other things, why don't you pursue a life with God? And that was the ultimate conclusion, that for all of the good that the universities might offer, and trust me, I teach at a university. I love universities. I wish it was more accessible to more people. But that journey towards joy is not simply a journey towards academic significance. And you're right about this whole thing about... You mentioned the thing about the South. There's like... It's not lost on me that I live in the Midwest and that I lived all over the world. I lived in Japan. I lived in Scotland. I lived in New England. I lived in upstate New York. Now I live in the Midwest. And when it came time to write, I started to write about the South.

Eddie Rester 40:24 Yeah.

Esau McCaulley 40:25

And I think, and I said this before somewhere else. But people often talk about writing, you have to find your voice as a writer. And I kind of got what they knew. But I kind of don't think that was actually the key for me, was finding my voice. I think it was actually finding my place. When I realized that I lived in Scotland, and I lived in Japan, but I was from the South.

Eddie Rester 40:51 Yeah.

Esau McCaulley 40:52

And I could describe it in a way that was three dimensional, because it was my place. And it was my story. Everything else that I wrote was two dimensional, when I was trying to write like a British guy, when I was trying to, you know, pretend like I was N.T. Wright and somebody else. It wasn't until I realized the South has something to say. That my story and my place could be the place from which I did theology. I didn't have to leave to go somewhere else to do theology, because all good theology comes from a place. And who I am, is I'm a Southerner. I'm from Alabama. I might not live there anymore. But Alabama had 18 years and then Tennessee had four. And those 22 years put a stamp on me that I couldn't erase if I wanted to.

Chris McAlilly 41:36

Yeah, I think about two writers from Mississippi. One is Willie Morris, who's from Yazoo. He ended up... Do you know Willie Morris's work, Esau? He was at Harper magazine. Anyway, he was of a previous generation. All the writers, he, the New York literati, knew everybody up there. He went to Texas. He wrote, his memoir is called "North Toward Home." And he was a Mississippian and consciously writing about the South particularly, you know, wrestling with matters of race, as he went to...

Eddie Rester 42:07
"The Courting of Marcus Dupree" was his big book about the recruitment of Marcus Dupree.

Esau McCaulley 42:14 Huh.

Chris McAlilly 42:15

Yeah. So anyway, he actually goes to UT Austin, that factors into the book. He goes to Texas, and he ends up in New York, but he's writing about the South as a Southerner, but in New York, and the whole story is kind of leaving home and coming back home. The other person I think about is is Kiese Laymon, who's from Jackson, Mississippi, wrote a memoir called "Heavy." And he came back to particularly to Oxford where I am now. And he just could... You know, we had him on the podcast. And ultimately just couldn't stay. You know, there was something about home that was too heavy for him. And he ultimately has moved on. And you know, that journey away from the South and back to the South, in both literary writing and in kind of theological reflection is something I've been thinking a lot about, just there is a sense in which, you know, it's a long way yet to the Promised Land, you know... I mean, there's a sense in which...

Esau McCaulley 43:12

I would say that I couldn't live in Huntsville, again, either. I think it'd be really hard. I think there's sometimes when you're really close to something, you can't see it. And it actually took me leaving it to have perspective on it, to be able to describe it. In other words, it was the space that gave me the emotional opportunity to process it. Because one of the things about nostalgia is, nostalgia, it's a knife that cuts as much as it gives joy, right? Because you're a member of a world that no longer exists. And so I was away from the South long enough to see its beauty and to grieve it. And I think that if I came back to Alabama and I lived there, I think the grief might overwhelm me. You know, I think... There's a story that I tell when I... Like the last incident that leads me to believe I need to leave the South. And that was real. When I said, I don't know what this is going to do to me. Everyone gets to this place, we realize I am in emotional danger. That like something is on the verge of happening to my soul that I don't want to happen. There's a wound that I don't know if I can recover from. And we all know that feeling that we have like, Oh, this is not normal pain. This is like break me pain.

Eddie Rester 44:54 Right. Wear me down pain.

Esau McCaulley 44:57

And that's like, you know, it's not just race. But whatever it is, like we get to the place where it feels so heavy. And we feel like if I don't do something, this is going to be too much for me. And feels so heavy. And we feel like if I don't do something, this is going to be too much for me. And I felt like that when I was in Alabama. And when I come back, it's good to be there. But that sense of this place can only wound me so many times is still sitting with me. It makes me a little bit cautious.

Eddie Rester 45:28

There's so many great themes in this book. And we could talk for four or five hours, I think, but part of it is finding the truth of who you are sometimes with the story, but sometimes also breaking free of the story. And I think about when you're talking about becoming a preacher, your first sermon that you had to preach and how terrible it was, which I can relate very much to that.

Chris McAlilly 45:54 Same, same.

Eddie Rester 45:54
Chris is thinking, yeah, we can all relate to a lot of sermons like that, Eddie.

Chris McAlilly 45:58
No, that's not right. But it's hard to be an early preacher.

Eddie Rester 46:02

But then also your relationship with your wife through dating and the disappointment with your in-laws, and in some of the struggle even had in all of that. And I told you this before we started recording. That chapter in the book, "Fools Fall in Love." What's the name? Yeah. It may be one of the... It is my favorite chapter in the book. The one about your father, kind of near the end of the book also great, but there's something that opens in you in that chapter. I don't know how to describe it. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Esau McCaulley 46:45

Yeah, I think that it's funny because I, in different parts of my father's life and our dynamic has come up in our preaching. So now we talk about the things that happen to us, as a part of preachers. You kind of say, oh, I dealt with this, I dealt with that. And truth, I had never written and talking about my marriage anywhere in print at all. Because I felt like I wasn't ready to talk about it. And when I actually sent the draft to the, when I did the proposal for the book, it wasn't a proposed chapter. And I was actually writing the book, and the book wasn't really working. It wasn't coming together. And I was like, well, there's this part that I feel like I need to tell, because the book doesn't work without it. Because there is a sense in which coming to grips with who you are, and living the complexity of who you are, an dealing with disappointment and grace, it doesn't work unless you tell the whole story.

Eddie Rester 47:49 Right.

Esau McCaulley 47:49

And so for me, it was like the first time I'd ever spoken or written about it. And so there was a vulnerability of... And it was also... I knew... This is funny. I knew I wouldn't want to answer a lot of questions about it. So I just said I'm gonna write it as well as I can, and then people would read the chapter and leave me alone. You know what I mean? Like, I was like, okay, my chapter is the comment, right? Because, and once again, this might be a good question. Why do we tell any story at all? Why do we tell any story? Especially if you're someone of faith, right? We want to help people imagine a life with God.

Eddie Rester 48:32 Right.

Esau McCaulley 48:34

And sometimes the life with God comes with unexpected obstacles. And so narrating your story, struggles in marriage and the complex realities of love, right? It does it provide a script for people to enact. But it allows them to imagine how one might live with God in their circumstance. And so, it's a testimony to what is possible, not a prescription of what to do.

Eddie Rester 49:06 Right.

Esau McCaulley 49:06

And so I wanted to say... You know, and part of it was like, there's, and this is not being flippant, but that's a body count in "How Far to the Promised Land." A lot of people will die in "How Far to the Promised Land." It's kind of a sad story in different places. I said, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna drop a love story right in the middle of the book. Yeah, and I was like, there is a sense in which like, yeah, I said, I want to tell the love story.

Eddie Rester 49:40

Esau McCaulley 49:42
It merges, that's why it's in the final section. But I don't know. I just loved it. And also, I love my wife.

Eddie Rester 49:49 Yeah, that comes through.

Esau McCaulley 49:51
So someone said, I don't know. I've not gone back and listened to it. But someone said in the audio book, I read that chapter different than the other chapters.

Chris McAlilly 50:00
That's awesome. That's great.

Eddie Rester 50:01

Well, tell your wife that there's a guy in Mississippi who loves that chapter. Because what it also does, it's another piece of reflection of grace. And I'm not going to give away the story. But the ability to wait for God to move is a gift. And sometimes we want to rush God into action, to force God into action.

Chris McAlilly 50:05 [LAUGHTER]

Esau McCaulley 50:25 Yeah.

Eddie Rester 50:26
I mean that contemplatively.

Esau McCaulley 50:27

Everything merges there...

Esau McCaulley 50:27

This is complicated, because the character I'm going to talk about as a complicated person, but when I was a kid, Bill Cosby was like America's Dad. We know he's something much worse now. But at the time, people... I used to watch The Cosby Show, or, like, Family Matters and all of these stories. And the thing about these sitcoms, I don't know if they still work this way. I don't watch a lot of, much stuff as I used to. It's about what problem was introduced in scene one. By the time we got to scene three or four, dad would sit down, explain to the kids, that problem will be solved. And literally the problem never occurred again. Like, the next episode, totally different problem, 25 minutes, beginning, middle, end. Fine, right. Like, they'd have like the drug episode where like, the kid is hooked on drugs in, like, the first minute, and it's off drug by the episode. If it was a really big deal, they could be continued for like a two episode arc, right. And so I used to have this idea that problems were like that. And all you needed was a dramatic speech to, like, fix the problem. But that's actually not how life works. Like life doesn't have these neat endings. They kind of linger on and on and on and on. And so in a lot of the stories, there's a place. And this is not... It became a literary point. But it was a real point in my life, too, and I didn't realize it until I was writing the book, where I thought it was time to make the speech to fix the problem. Or, A. I couldn't think of what to say, or B. the speech doesn't work. And what does work then? Sometimes the grace of God in the lives of people over time. And that's the only answer there is.

Eddie Rester 52:11
Yep. Going back to the story of Jacob and Esau, 20 years, 20 years. 20 years that Jacob was away. It took 20 years for that story to unfold.

Chris McAlilly 52:24

Yeah. One of the things about the two books "Reading While Black, and also "How Far to the Promised Land" is that the subtitles include the word hope. And obviously, that's intentional. What is it? How do you articulate hope? What is hope, Esau? How would you describe it for somebody who's trying to grasp hold of it and hold on to it in whatever the struggle, the suffering they're in right now?

Esau McCaulley 52:51
I'm glad that you noticed that.

Eddie Rester 52:53
He's smart. Chris is real smart.

Esau McCaulley 52:55

He's a smart guy. I think that I've been... I remember reading somewhere that like someone was a theologian of this or theologian of that, like they kind of have their thing, right. And I realized that the theological question that animates my life with Go, is the question of hope. Because given what has happened to Black people in America, why hope for anything? Why hope for anything to be different than the way that it is? And one of the ways that you have to survive in my community, is when the evidence is to the contrary, to have hope. And so I've always struggled with the question of why try any of this stuff. So I'm trying to write to my own satisfaction and answer. But in order to write that answer towards hope, actually articulate the reason why I think it's hard to be hopeful. And so for me, the reason why I talk about hope in "How Far to the Promised Land" and "Reading While Black" is because I'm trying to give an account that satisfies me, of the hope that is in me. And the hope that you have as a Christian, maybe this is why I like "How Far to the Promised Land" doesn't have all of these neat choices where people end up in these great places. The hope that we have in a Christian is not rooted in an analysis of society in any given moment. It's actually not even about your particular circumstances, your material success or lack thereof. Your hope as a Christian is rooted in the sheer confidence that Jesus has defeated death. That Jesus has defeated death, and whatever it is that you're going through, no matter how dark it is, there is some hope. And so articulating that reality, of the triumph of hope, not of optimism. But I can go forward because God rules and he's the one who will according to what he wants, is this conviction that I have that's always under assault by circumstance. And so every time I write, I'm writing myself back towards hope, right. And so that's the reason why hope is in "How Far to the Promised Land" and it's in "Reading While Black." My next book won't have hope in the title. I don't think. And so we'll see.

Eddie Rester 55:26

Esau, just thank you. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for your sharing in the book. And for folks out there, and you're like, I don't read much, read this one. I'm telling you, the last four chapters, I just... I can't say enough, Esau. The last four chapters, if you have any part of your story that involves broken family, hurts long term wounds, this book is going to help you frame that in a way that is hopeful. And so I'm thankful for that.

Esau McCaulley 56:04

Oh, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. And if you do read the book, I hope you like it. If not, you don't like it, just think of it this way: that guy's got four kids and college is expensive.

Chris McAlilly 56:22 [LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 56:22
[LAUGHTER] That's a great ending right there. That's the sales pitch of the day right there.

Esau McCaulley 56:27

He's got four kids and college is expensive.

Chris McAlilly 56:29
There you go. There you go. Well, thanks, Esau. Thanks for your time, man.

Esau McCaulley 56:32
Alright. Thank you both for having me.

Eddie Rester 56:33
[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.

Chris McAlilly 56:42

If you would like to support this work financially or if you have an idea for a future guest you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]