“Love is the Resistance” with Ashley Abercrombie

 
 
 

Shownotes

We live in a reactive, anxious culture both in person and online. When we hold onto pride, we are resistant to change and resistant to vulnerability. Though God understands the reasons we’re angry and the frustrations we deal with, God has a merciful heart towards the offender and the offended. How can we offer a gracious public witness as Christians in the midst of all of this polarization? Why do we resist the act of peacemaking as demonstrated by Jesus?

Chris and Eddie are joined by Ashley Abercrombie, author of Love is the Resistance. In this book, Abercrombie describes love as a habit and practice, not just a feeling. Bent toward compassion and deep hope, she teaches us what healthy, normal conflict looks like in a Christian community. They talk about the danger of echo chambers, the definition of what love is and what love is not, and the power of expanding our imagination as an inspiration to hope.

 

Resources

Order Love is the Resistance here:

https://www.ashabercrombie.org/book 

Listen to our other episode with Ashley Abercrombie here:

The Weight - Ashley Abercrombie - From Womb to Tomb

Check out Ashley’s podcast “Why Tho” here:

https://www.ashabercrombie.org/podcast 

Follow Ashley Abercrombie on social media:

https://www.facebook.com/ashleyabercrombienyc

https://www.instagram.com/ashabercrombie/

https://twitter.com/ashabercrombie

 

Full Transcript

Chris McAlilly 0:00

I'm Chris McAlilly.

Eddie Rester 0:01

and I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 0:04

The Weight podcast.

Eddie Rester 0:06

Today, we're talking with Ashley Abercrombie. She was one of our favorite guests in the first season. I think she's gonna make the list of one of our favorites. All of our guests are my favorite, but she's written a new book, "Love Is the Resistance," came out this fall. And it really deals with the polarization of our country, polarization of Christians and our response, and it's a hard book in a lot of ways.

Chris McAlilly 0:37

Yeah. So this is a series about about how polarized things are. And then what does it mean to be to offer a public Christian witness in the midst of it, but it's not just about a public witness, it's also about the conflicts and disagreements that we face in our personal, individual lives. It's hard to be in relationship with other people. You know, I'm over here struggling every day with Eddie.

Eddie Rester 1:00

I know.

Chris McAlilly 1:00

It's real hard.

Eddie Rester 1:01

I get it.

Chris McAlilly 1:01

And, you know, Ashley has, I think she has a lot of wisdom. And I think that she has a way of thinking about love as a habit or practice, not just a feeling or an attitude or an emotion. And then she's framing it up in a way that I think can maybe give you some starting points. Throughout the conversation, I'm thinking of particular individuals, faces, names, and hard situations that I'm struggling with, and I'm trying to deal with and trying to figure out how do I love in the midst of conflict. And I bet that will be the case for you as well, as you listen.

Eddie Rester 1:41

One of the questions that I keep coming back to is, we talked a little bit about it in the episode. Why do we resist peacemaking? And I think for me, as I think about my own life, and how I want to call people to live, maybe that's the one of the conversations we should have, at some point. Why do we all actively resist the work of peacemaking, the work of Jesus Christ? So, enjoy the episode. Share it. Let us know what you think about it, and we hope you enjoy.

Chris McAlilly 2:11

[INTRO] We started this podcast out of frustration with the tone of American Christianity.

Eddie Rester 2:18

There are some topics too heavy for sermons and sound bites.

Chris McAlilly 2:21

We wanted to create a space with a bit more recognition of the difficulty, nuance, and complexity of cultural issues.

Eddie Rester 2:28

If you've given up on the church, we want to give you a place to encounter a fresh perspective on the wisdom of the Christian tradition, in our conversations about politics, race, sexuality, art, and mental health.

Chris McAlilly 2:41

If you're a Christian seeking a better way to talk about the important issues of the day, with more humility, charity, and intellectual honesty, that grapples with Scripture and the church's tradition in a way that doesn't dismiss people out of hand, you're in the right place.

Eddie Rester 2:56

Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO]

Eddie Rester 2:59

Well, we're very excited today to have Ashley Abercrombie with us today.

Chris McAlilly 3:02

Woo hoo!

Eddie Rester 3:04

Ashley, we just appreciate you being back on the podcast. You were gracious, a gracious guest about a year ago. We had a great conversation then. And a lot has changed in your life over the last year since we talked to you last.

Ashley Abercrombie 3:20

It's so true. And I'm so happy to be back with you guys. I absolutely loved my conversation with you last time. And I look forward to it today.

Eddie Rester 3:28

Excellent. So you have written a book recently "Love Is the Resistance." And so tell us a little bit about what made you decide that this was the book you wanted to write now, write right now?

Ashley Abercrombie 3:43

Yeah. So I had finished up my first book and kind of ended on a couple of themes. And when I finished that, I thought like, gosh, I think I'm going to keep going with these ideas around a few justice issues. And what I realized, especially in the last couple of years of what we've been dealing with, last four or five years especially, I realized, man, you know what I love to do is talk to an echo chamber. And I didn't mean to get this way. But I realized that's what was happening. And I realized that I was starting to make an enemy of people who were different than me, and I was starting to demonize people who disagree with me. And this idea of love is the resistance really came to mind. It was a phrase I couldn't let go of. And I kept thinking about how the love of Jesus compels us to be a different kind of person and how he commands us not just to love but to love even our enemy. And I was so deeply challenged by God's mercy and the way that I realized and recognized and began to implement into my life the fact that God loves the other side.

Ashley Abercrombie 4:41

And as I looked across the body of Christ, it felt like we were fractioning off into our corners. It felt like we were pushing into echo chambers. It felt like we were doing exactly the things I've already described: demonizing the other side, villainizing people who don't agree with us, you know, saying who loves Jesus and who doesn't love Jesus based on what their politics are or the denomination they came up in or their family background or even the country that they come from. And I was like, What are we doing? So this idea of love is the resistance really was birthed out of a desire for us to, as believers, to better understand God's mercy, to better understand his love for humanity and to deeper internalize grace. And so it's not an easy book. I think it's a challenging read for believers.

Eddie Rester 5:26

It really is.

Ashley Abercrombie 5:27

But yeah, but I believe the outcome of challenge can lead to repentance and mercy. And that's my hope and desire for this book.

Chris McAlilly 5:35

The word "love" is one of those squishy words that mean a lot of things, you know, in a lot of different contexts or to a lot of different people. How do you define love? What is love to you? And then what is love not?

Ashley Abercrombie 5:50

What a beautiful question, and you're right, it sort of is one of those things that's out there somewhere, or maybe it's romantic love, or you know, what you see in a Disney movie or on TV, but I really define love as faithfulness and steadfastness and rich, vulnerable, reciprocal connection. So when I think about love, I imagine that there is a level ground, a space where people meet one another and accept each other where they are on the way to who they're becoming. And I think that that is borne out of my recovery journey, you know, being 18 years sober this year and recognizing, man, we're all broken people, and we all have this deep desire to be loved, but not the fluffy kind, or the easy kind or the kind that keeps the peace but won't say the truth or the kind that shows up in relationship and is passive aggressive or overly aggressive and just unwilling to be vulnerable and connected.

Ashley Abercrombie 6:42

And I think real love is faithful to honesty, it's faithful to integrity, it's faithful to show up and be present and be available in the moment where we are. And what love isn't, you know, the one word I always think of here is pride. I really do think the very opposite of this kind of love is pride, because pride is resistant to change. And pride says I'm right and you're wrong. And pride says I'm unwilling to pull my mask down and be vulnerable with you. And pride says I'm too hurt and I'm gonna see you through the lens of all the things that have happened to me. And I will not be vulnerable. I will not connect. I will not have reciprocity. I will not hold fast to integrity. And so I think pride is the main thing that really hinders love and really hinders relationships from flourishing and people from connecting in a way that's meaningful and honest and real.

Eddie Rester 7:37

One of the things you just said, "on the way to who they're becoming," I think it's so easy in our world, and I think this is part of the role of social media, is that we see people as snapshots or caricatures, or we see them as one moment in history, and they can never be anything different.

Chris McAlilly 7:58

Yeah, it's not a 360 individual. Right, you know.

Eddie Rester 8:01

It's a real flat picture.

Chris McAlilly 8:03

Yeah, I mean, not even just flat. I mean, it's a picture. It's also like, I don't know, this happens, it's not just social media,.I see this, even my interactions with family members, you know, you'll get into one particular skirmish around one particular issue, and that's the thing that you get kind of locked in that dynamic. And this happened with the closest of people, not just people that are out there on the internet. And I do think it's, I mean, navigating what it means to disagree well, or to have conflict productively, or to have difficult conversations. They don't teach you that stuff in seminary, really. I mean, you know what I mean?

Eddie Rester 8:47

Or anywhere.

Ashley Abercrombie 8:48

Or anywhere.

Chris McAlilly 8:50

Yeah, a lot of people have a hard time learning it in their family, in their family of origin. I hear you talk about kind of the recovery communities being one of those places where you've learned what love looks like in practice. For folks who maybe don't know what that looks like, I wonder if you could maybe flesh out what does love look like in the recovery community?

Ashley Abercrombie 9:10

Yeah, so, you know, I have a variety of things that I am recovering from, but when I went back to recovery after dealing with all of my addictions, I no longer had the addictions that I was dealing with. But then when I went back, I really felt prompted by God to name the specific things that I was dealing with. So I remember the first night sitting back in a step study, which is like an 18-month journey in celebrate recovery with a group of 18 women and what came out of my mouth most naturally was, "Hi, my name is Ashley, a grateful believer in Jesus Christ, who struggles with pride, anger, and control." And, you know, that was how I decided to name the next phase of my recovery journey because I realized I had already healed from the external symptoms of the things that were going on inside of me and I needed to name very clearly the things that were happening internally. And I think that that really helped me better understand it--who I am and who I am in the world and the things that I've struggled with, and the reasons my relationships were hindered.

Ashley Abercrombie 10:05

And so what I love about recovery communities is that you start with brokenness. And I love, always one of the phrases people hear me say a lot is "integrity over image." And I think too often in our world, whether it's social media, or it's at the dinner table with extended relatives at the holidays, or it's at your job, we show up with this image, and we put forward our ideal self. And some of that is good, right, because you want to be safe, and you want to show up and be professional, and you want to do a good job, and you want to be your best self with your family or your dating relationships, or in school, or wherever you are. So some of that is okay. And then some of that is covering our brokenness, covering this gap from who we really are and who we pretend to be. And so I think this idea of image over integrity hinders us from really opening up about our brokenness, and that hinders our connection. So that's what I love about recovery is that you start with your brokenness, like, "Hey, here's the things that I'm struggling with. Here are here are the reasons why I'm struggling with them."

Ashley Abercrombie 11:02

And to your point earlier, Chris, you know, you're talking about the way that love can shape us, the way we're shaped in our family of origin. And Eddie, you were talking about not being able to really...We don't learn this anywhere. We don't learn it in seminary. We don't learn in our families of origin. And that's part of what recovery does is that we look and examine how we were shaped, how we were wired, what did our family of origin teach us? How did we learn to deal with conflict or not deal with it? How did we learn who we are and who we're not? How do we learn our value? Or where we're not valuable to people? How do we learn to pretend and perform?

Ashley Abercrombie 11:34

All of this comes up in our family of origins, the school, the education story that we have, and very often the faith communities that we're a part of. Love is always shaping us. And so I think what I love about the brokenness piece is that you're showing up not to pretend but to heal. And I wonder how much better our relationships were if we viewed them as a place where we could be our full self, where we didn't have to hide the things that we think are ugly, or hide the things that we're recovering from or hide the ideas that could be harmful right now, or the habits that are hurting us right now and things that we're looking to really heal from. I wonder if our relationships would be a place where people could open up and be honest and be real. And I think that's important, and it's critical to love.

Chris McAlilly 12:19

Yeah, I guess one of the things that I've learned from friends of mine here in the recovery community is that that space is really a place where you can practice love, you know. It's a place where it's possible to receive, in the best context, of course, unconditional love. And you can be honest about brokenness, or the ways in which you screwed it up within the context of that unconditional love, knowing that you're not going to be abandoned, or you're not going to be rejected or whatever, and that you're going to fail. I mean, you're gonna fall back, you're gonna fall short, you're gonna make a mistake. But the work of... I guess love is resistance was also a practice that has to be learned in community with other people as they kind of help you navigate these things.

Chris McAlilly 13:05

I think what I appreciate about what you're saying is that there's something that can be learned in those spaces, not just the recovery community, but that's one of the places where love can be practice. And then that needs to be turned outward to the broader culture in a way that that's, it's almost like a public witness. You talk about a range of things, political enmeshment, or canceled culture, I guess how would you diagnose what needs to be resisted? You know, what's your diagnosis of some of the problems? I mean, you mentioned this a little bit before, but what's the book there about kind of the problems you see in the culture that love can be a resistance to?

Ashley Abercrombie 13:47

Yes, love that question. So I think that, you know, one of the things I've already mentioned, which is pride. When we are able to be in relationship with others, and we can put our pride down where we don't have to be right, we don't have to be perfect. We don't have to pretend and perform in order to earn our way to love. We don't have to achieve and knock success tickers off of our little ladder that we're climbing in order to be loved or accepted. You know, this is pride. All these things can be rooted in pride. And the idea that I'm better than you are; my way of practicing faith is better than yours. All of these things are rooted in pride and we need to resist it. We need to walk in the humble way of Jesus and learn how to be faithful to the ordinary day that we're living in.

Ashley Abercrombie 14:34

We often, I think, humans are very often pretending to be bigger than we are. It's a real wake up call when you realize, whoa, wait a minute, I'm really not that special. The whole world actually doesn't revolve around me. My ideas may not be the highest and the best just because someone told me they were or I watched a pundit or a politician say that they are. You know, we have to really realize I might be wrong about a few things. So pride is one thing we need to resist.

Ashley Abercrombie 15:02

The other thing I would encourage people to resist, if I'm looking at the broader culture, is anxiety. You know, I think that there is this pervasive fear in our culture, and it's been building for a long time. But the fact that we're on our phones all the time, we have studies now that show us that it increases anxiety. It increases depression. It increases things like loneliness and isolation. And it just puts us on edge. And I think people on edge are more prone to just react and more prone to do things they wouldn't normally do when they're more patient or relaxed or well, so this anxious culture, I think, pushes us and drives us to do things that we wouldn't normally do if we were in a position or a posture of rest.

Ashley Abercrombie 15:44

And the other thing I would say, and it's deeply connected, is the sense of hurry. I don't know very many people, I mean, maybe you guys do because you feel so peaceful to me, in all my interactions with you...

Chris McAlilly 15:55

Well, that's exactly who we are.

Ashley Abercrombie 15:59

[LAUGHTER]

Eddie Rester 15:59

All the time. Nothing that runs us from one end of the town to the other.

Chris McAlilly 16:04

Happy little rainbows.

Eddie Rester 16:05

A lot of unicorns in our lives.

Chris McAlilly 16:07

Bob Ross.

Ashley Abercrombie 16:07

[LAUGHTER] Bob Ross! Oh, and unicorns, it's beautiful. Yeah, but hurry really hinders us from the way of Jesus. And hurry is pushing us always to the next thing, instead of being able to be content in our ordinary lives. And of course, social media hurts us in this way. But even before social media was like this, there were all those phrases, "Keeping up with the Joneses," and, you know, we're always trying to do bigger, better more. And whenever you are looking for bigger, better, more, you can't really connect with the thing that's right in front of you. And it's very difficult to be content in your ordinary life.

Ashley Abercrombie 16:47

I think about raising babies, you know. We've got three kids under seven.

Chris McAlilly 16:51

Bless your heart.

Ashley Abercrombie 16:53

Yeah, exactly, including a little 11 month old. And there are many days where I have to just pause and do a little bit of work, whether I get down on my knees, or I go outside and stand in my grass and just ask God to help me be content in my life. Because I lost a lot of margin having babies, and so did my husband. We lost a lot of autonomy. Our life really doesn't belong to us.

Chris McAlilly 17:16

Preach.

Ashley Abercrombie 17:16

But I try, right. And so I'm trying to let that be a lesson, a way of God teaching me to be content in the ordinary moments of life, instead of despising them and hurrying to something else, or being anxious about the future, or wishing I was somewhere that I wasn't, wishing I was someone that I'm not. I think that pride, hurry, and anxiety are really the big three things that I see in our culture that are hindering us from loving one another.

Eddie Rester 17:41

One of the chapters in your book talks about cancel culture. And that's a big topic in a world right now. And I would connect it to those three things, to pride, fear, and hurry. Because when we assume that we're right, yet also fearful of what another brings into our lives. And we're just trying to hurry through life, we're going to... This practice of canceling someone becomes a reality. We see it online, but it also happens in our neighborhood groups, or it happens in our family groups. I remember, I'm raised in the 1980s. And I remember when Amy Grant put out her first secular album, and immediately Christians cancelled her. I mean, it was throw away all your Amy Grant albums, she's gone. She's gone to the devil now. It's over. So this isn't new in the church, it's not new in the culture. It's just kind of had a revival right now. What's so dangerous about it? Or why are we so attracted to it right now?

Ashley Abercrombie 18:47

Gosh, well, we don't do nuance well, do we? We do not allow for the complexity of other humans for life. And I also don't think that we do differentiation very well. And differentiation is that thing that creates space between people or ideas. And it says, "Hey, I know what I want, think, need, and feel. I'm capable of communicating that and I'm able to tolerate other people doing this thing." And I think that we really struggle to do that. We struggle to hold paradox that two things could both be true. We also struggle to allow room for other people to think differently. And I think it's very easy for Christians to say, "Well, that's not right. So let's figure out a way to get rid of that." Or, "That person is wrong. So let's figure out a way to make them disappear forever."

Ashley Abercrombie 19:34

And I think that we just really would rather not deal with God's mercy and God saying, across the Bible, "I love even the people you disagree with. I love even the people you hate." Across from Old Testament to New, we see that that's God's posture towards people. And I think the difficulty with cancel culture in our day, is that, you know, when I write about all these different complexities... You know, I think about Nicholas Sandman. He was the young man who was protesting at a pro-life rally in Washington DC and the clip that we saw on CNN and another news networks showed a Native American elder beating a drum in front of him, and it looks like he was yelling at the elder. But when we pulled back and saw the longer video, it was him and a group of students yelling at another group who was there, and the Native American elder was beating the drum in front of them.

Ashley Abercrombie 20:26

So what ends up happening is that Nicholas Sandman and probably his parents decided to sue these two networks that release that, because he was, you know, quote, unquote, cancelled. And he walked away with half a billion dollars, because of that situation. So the networks each paid him out $250 million, and he walked away with half a billion dollars for being cancelled. So I think about that. And then I think about, you know, someone on a job right now, who's working and probably spoke up in a meeting and said something and was asked to never come back to the meeting, you know, was canceled for being a voice of dissent, was canceled and pushed out of the team or pushed out of the organization because they were raising a real issue that needed to be raised needed to be spoken about.

Ashley Abercrombie 21:10

So I think there's these strange ways that we think about cancel culture in our current culture that are wrong and inaccurate. And I for one am grateful that people like Harvey Weinstein or R. Kelly are getting canceled. I'm very grateful that people decided to use their voices and raise the flag and say, "Hey, this type of abuse of power is no longer okay for us." So I think cancel culture is a bit broader. To your point, it's not new, you know, from Amy Grant, to Martin Luther King, Jr. to Dolores Huerta, Jen Hatmaker, Lecrae. And we could point to so many examples in the past, where Christians have cancelled something they either didn't understand or didn't agree with.

Ashley Abercrombie 21:10

So I think there's times where we named things wrong--it's not cancel culture, it's accountability. And I think that there's also times where cancel culture gets ridiculous on all sides of the fence. I mean, did he really need half a billion dollars? I don't know that I'll ever be able to let that one go. What?! And then I think that we overlook the ordinary waves that people are pushed out and not allowed to speak and discouraged from saying the thing that needed to be said in their workplace or in their family. And so I think that cancel culture is a lot broader and a lot more complex than we've made it.

Eddie Rester 22:19

One of the questions in that chapter that I just kept coming back to, it's so profound. Why do we resist peacemaking? Why do we resist peacemaking? And that for me, it just captures me, because I don't see, and maybe it's just the COVID year and the election, that Christians are pursuing peacemaking.

Chris McAlilly 22:44

I think we gave up hope.

Eddie Rester 22:46

You think it's a giving up of hope?

Chris McAlilly 22:47

Yeah, I think that it's hard to have an imagination for peace sometimes. I mean, I guess I'm thinking as someone who was born in the 80s, and you watch kind of the broader, like, world historical kind of peace and war and violence. So it's on that level, and then you also have the sense that, like, people just get so entrenched in different positions and have decided that they don't want to sojourn with one another in community. I think you do a good job of kind of raising, you know, maybe there are times where there is the necessity to break relationship, and to go different directions. And that's important and could be the healthiest thing for both parties. But also, I think that...

Eddie Rester 23:47

The hard work.

Chris McAlilly 23:48

I don't know, yeah, there is, at the heart of peace, you know, the possibility of peace, I think, is a kind of hope that the world could be set right, you know, or that there is the possibility of some kind of communion available. And I just think oftentimes, I guess the older I get, the harder it is to imagine that in certain circumstances.

Ashley Abercrombie 24:11

Yeah, gosh, I agree. I said to my husband a couple of weeks ago, I just said, "Babe, how are we supposed to do 40 more years of this?" Like, how? And I was listening to a webinar that I was a part of on a panel with a group of people and one of the women who spoke shared that one of the ways that she stays engaged with hope is to practice imagining. So she thinks about imagination all the time, and she reimagines in situations that she's in, or the world as it is, or her faith community as it is, and she spends meditative time sitting and thinking about what could be, and that inspires her to hope. And I thought that was so beautiful, and a powerful reminder that used to come more naturally and more easy to me, but over the last couple of years has felt profoundly different: to sit and imagine peace, to sit and imagine mercy, to sit and imagine our world being different.

Ashley Abercrombie 25:07

But that is part of the unction of the Holy Spirit, is this prophetic imagination of this subversive narrative of, "Hey, here's all the plastic that's happening in the world. Here's the reality of what's happening in the world. And here's what it could be." And I think I spent a lot of time between calling out the gap between the plastic of the world and the reality of the world. And I've realized recently that I need to direct more of my time and attention to reimagining what the world could be. And I think that there is this great gap between--maybe you guys have experienced this--but there's a gap for me between what I see from Christians in my day-to-day life and what I see as the public witness of the church.

Ashley Abercrombie 25:07

And I think, like, my people are people who show up. They'll come over at three o'clock in the morning. They bring food if somebody dies. If you need a ride to the hospital, you got one. If you need someone to come watch your kids, people are available. We show up for each other. We are making a difference in the local spaces where we are. We're on the phone calling the superintendent if we need to, or acting locally in our city. We're doing all these things. And then when I look at the public witness, I'm like, wow, that gross gap between how we look in the news and the media and what I know to be true of the generous, sacrificial Christians that I know.

Chris McAlilly 26:22

That's right.

Ashley Abercrombie 26:22

I think that it's important to direct our focus to what's true. And the truth is, there are incredible Christians doing the work daily, and it doesn't fit in a Twitter soundbite. And it does not fit on a Instagram square. And it doesn't always play well on Facebook. But these are the people who are doing the work of ministry, and they are loving people well in their city, in their community, and their family. And they are not canceling off their enemies. They are making space for mercy. And I think that that's the truth. And so I have to constantly redirect my attention to that, so that I don't get overwhelmed and feel very helpless and hopeless by all the things that are happening in the world and in the church that I personally have no control or influence over.

Chris McAlilly 27:10

Yeah, there was an episode that we did earlier this year with James K. Smith, and the episode was called "Healing the Imagination." And I think, you know, the difference between the public witness that you see in the news media and then the lived reality of ordinary lives that don't often make it up into the the level of people's attention. Perhaps one thing that you can do, if you want to take another look is to engage in real, embodied community. And there are those people in every town I've ever lived in, there's some people that are that are doing the thing. But I also think that artists have a role here, you know, in helping us to reimagine what the world could be, and have a hope for peacemaking or the possibility that the world could be a different place.

Ashley Abercrombie 28:02

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with that. You know, music connects us in the most beautiful way, and art and novels, and just the way that people share is so powerful and profound and has a capacity to connect us. That's part of why I still go to church, frankly, is corporate worship. Because when I'm standing next to someone, and we're lifting our hands to praise God, I'm not thinking about their political beliefs, or the way that they do their religion or what's going on in the tertiary things that we might disagree about, but I am thinking about their story and about their life and about the way that they've chosen to turn up even though it's hard. There is something about worship and art and creativity that really does bind us together and connects us in a way that nothing else can. And I'm so thankful for that. I think you're absolutely right.

Eddie Rester 28:59

When you think about the body of Christ, as presented in Scripture, it's this diverse group of people drawn from all over this little area, who probably would have never been in the same space to begin with. And yet they're bound together by Jesus Christ by this trust and this belief in the one who defeated sin and death. And yet Paul spent all of his time writing letters to these little groups of Christians trying to get them to love each other again. And I read a book in seminary, and I only remember the opening line of it, by a guy named Gerard Lofink, but he said, "The issue isn't that Christians don't fight, it's that they don't fight as Christians." And that's always stuck with me. So your book really begins to get how do we begin to show the world a love that endures through conflict? So what do you mean when you talk about truly loving one another, loving our neighbors? What are you pointing us toward as you write?

Ashley Abercrombie 30:12

So I think about, you know, where Jesus sums up all the law and all the commandments when he's asked to. And he says, you know, to love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength and to love your neighbor as yourself. And I've heard preachers say before, most people do love their neighbor as themselves, and that is the problem, when I think about what that looked like to really behold Jesus. And I mean, it takes me to tears because, you know, worship is such, I don't know, it's something I see the body of Christ really forsaking, maybe it's in light of duty or obligation or perhaps it's because, you know, we have lost hope, or we have lost our capacity to live in reverence and awe. But I think about beholding Jesus and the life of the Lord and the way that he would touch the untouchable and the way that he would empower and lift up people that society had discarded, and the way that he spoke truth to the Pharisees when they were oppressing or hurting or wounding people or casting a standard over them that was not God's, and the way that he would call out exploitation and the way that he would stand up in the temple and deliver the truth.

Ashley Abercrombie 31:24

I mean, this God that we serve, when I behold him, and I see his mercy, and I see the way that he loved somebody like Zacchaeus, someone who was filled with greed and pride, the way that he would invite all these people to come and be his disciples, and they were from different backgrounds and classes and cultures. And you know, the way that they were able to connect because of God. I mean, when I behold Jesus, it comes so much easier to love others when I really worship God and I asked him who he is and he shows me himself through scripture by the Holy Spirit. And when I behold the image of God in others, it pushes me. It compels me to love and compassion. It compels me to mercy.

Ashley Abercrombie 32:05

And so I think that we have to spend some time in worship, to spend some time beholding Jesus. And it's difficult to do that in our world, again, because of our pride, our anxiety, and our hurry. You know, worship takes a minute. It takes a minute to thoughtfully say to God, "I love you, I worship you. I want to bless you today. God, what are you asking from me? Lord, how can I show up in my life and be be honest? How can I love my kids today? How can I show up at my job and deal with this difficult co-worker? How do you want me to respond to the influence that you've given me, Lord, and how would you have me steward it?" And of course, none of us are perfect at this. I'm the first I'm, like, chief sinner, like Paul says, for sure. But at the same time, I think that if we behold Jesus, love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your strength, it becomes so much easier to love your neighbor as yourself. And then when I think about what love is, you know, in 1 Corinthians 13, we've heard it a million times, especially if you've been to a wedding. But love is patient.

Eddie Rester 33:05

Which Paul never would have thought of this verse being spoken at weddings ever.

Ashley Abercrombie 33:11

No, never! You're so right. Because it's not fluffy love, right. This is hard to practice. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It does not dishonor others. It is not self-seeking. It is not easily angered--that's very hard for me. keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. And when I think about that, how does that guide my practices? How does it guide my thoughts? How does it guide what I think about public figures that I actually don't know, but maybe they frustrated me? Maybe there are politicians who have made me angry. You know, how does this scripture guide me? How does love guide me? How does mercy guide me, when I think about difficult family members or difficult people at my job? How does this guide my practices? And what would it mean for me to behold Jesus, and to really live out love?

Ashley Abercrombie 34:13

And I think that if we each practice that, if we each got familiar with what love is, just old school memorizing scripture, you know what I mean? Just like actually getting the stuff in you where you know it and can call it to remembrance when love gets hard. And you can hear these passages in your mind when you feel very tempted to react or to be angry or to pop off at someone or to shut down completely and go into an internal cave and withhold love from everyone, you know, whatever it is that you might feel tempted to do.

Eddie Rester 34:42

Respond to that tweet.

Ashley Abercrombie 34:44

Yes. Yes. What would it look like for us to have a response that looks like Jesus, online and in real life?

Chris McAlilly 34:53

Ashley, you mentioned it, you know, we're supposed to do 40 more years of this stuff. And then we're coming back to 1 Corinthians 13, which was a passage that was not meant for marriages, but then it ends up in that context. It reminded me as we were talking of a tweet that I saw from Beth Moore. It was about marriage. She said, "Love again. Keith and I have not loved each other 43 years straight. We've chosen to love again, over and over and over." Pretty intense thing to say. You know, I want to say I believe that some couples really do love unceasingly, maybe they are more Christ-like more equally yoked, or perhaps not just broken as us. "We're not your poster couple. We won't be writing a book on marriage," she said. "But we can say to you, it's possible to love again." And I love that because I think it just points again to the fact that love is a practice. And that love fails. And that love can be a practice that can be practiced, again, and that can be done over and over. And I do think that's helpful for marriage. But I think beyond that your point, I think, I guess what I hear in the urgency of your book is that that's something that we need to take up, again, quite broadly.

Eddie Rester 36:14

And part of loving each other, there's a whole chapter, chapter nine on conflict. Part of love means that there will be conflict, that we have to deal with, that we have to... that love leads us through that without envy or boasting that allows us to be merciful in that. What does healthy conflict look like between two of God's created?

Chris McAlilly 36:45

You're ready to take it out?

Eddie Rester 36:47

This is going to help me and Chris, very, very much.

Chris McAlilly 36:51

Bring it on.

Eddie Rester 36:52

Whatever you say is gonna have direct impact, probably.

Chris McAlilly 36:55

We're hanging on every word.

Ashley Abercrombie 36:58

No pressure. You know, conflict is so critical to life. There is no way to go about your life and not experienced conflict. And I think too many people are pretending it's not there, or wishing it away or thinking that something's wrong, because there's conflict in a relationship. But the truth is, there will always be conflict in a relationship, because we are different people. None of us are the same. We don't think the same. We weren't raised the same. We have different ideals. We have different practices, and those things clash when you're in relationship. And so it's really important to think about conflict as something that is normal. That is my deepest desire is that we could normalize the idea of conflict because too many people think that it's not normal. And many of us are raised in households where you couldn't have big emotions and there was no real example of dealing with conflict, maybe there was a lot of loud fighting, or perhaps everything got swept under the rug.

Ashley Abercrombie 37:49

But however it you were raised to think about conflict, you can think about it differently now. And that's something we all have to understand is that most of us listening are adults, and we're grown. And we have to figure out how to be mature adults, and how to get the skills that we need in order to have healthy conflict. And I lay out a ton of those in the book, like reasons that we clash, reasons that we are fighting one another, reasons that there's internal conflict and external conflict with others, and then how to deal with them.

Ashley Abercrombie 38:19

And I think that communication is the skill that we learn. You're not born with it. You don't go to school, you know, you learn calculus and algebra and how to read and, you know, how to comprehend things. You don't go to learn about how to deal with difficulty or how to deal with trauma or how to recover from an event that felt like it completely derailed your life or your relationship and how do you deal with that. And so these are all things that you can learn as you grow.

Ashley Abercrombie 38:44

And I have a phrase that I use often "do no harm, but take no mess." And so I think that that's the other piece of this is that sometimes we feel like in order to resolve conflict, we have to stay in relationship with everyone. We have to like everyone, and everyone has to like us. And that's actually not what conflict is. Conflict is just being able to be candid and kind, to be honest and open and to be able to say the thing that needs to be said and do the thing that needs to be done and to arrive at a compromise together or to arrive at, "hey, we don't see this thing the same way. But maybe there's a paradox here, maybe both of these things are true based on how we were raised and how we see things and how we view the world."

Ashley Abercrombie 39:20

I mean, there's so many different ways that conflict can get resolved. But I do think, just stop making it this thing that hangs over your head and just normalize the fact that if you're in a relationship, you're going to be dealing with conflict, period.

Eddie Rester 39:35

One of the, I think, most helpful pieces of this book, the last two or three chapters, you couch that understanding of conflict within love, but also the practical, pragmatic pieces of it. So if you are someone who, you know, my family, what would happen was there would be no conflict, no conflict, no conflict, explosion.

Ashley Abercrombie 39:59

Right.

Eddie Rester 40:00

And so that shaped a lot of how I understood what conflict was about--you just held on to it and then you had your big moment of explosion. Then I married someone who like to address conflict head on. And she has taught me...

Ashley Abercrombie 40:14

Relatable.

Eddie Rester 40:16

But I think those chapters did for me, just a lot of exploration of my own history, but also my own hope in how to deal with conflict and how it can be constructive and not destructive for us.

Ashley Abercrombie 40:34

Right, right. Conflicts can bring us closer. And I think that being able to engage with one another actually provides a level of connectivity and vulnerability that we're all craving. And you get to say the thing that's living inside of you when you address conflict head on. When you're able to say it candidly and kindly, you're able to actually uproot this thing that lives in you. And when you do that, there's connection and there's vulnerability, and that always leads to deeper intimacy. And aren't we all just craving that--this deeper intimacy, this well of love and wisdom that can flow when there's no blockage?

Eddie Rester 41:14

When I think about Paul's letters, and where he's basically pushing them to, into this conflict, through this conflict, it's always a "so that." So that they can live love with one another, in their communities. You, near the end of the book, you talk a lot about the story of Jonah, and its impact on you and your understanding on all of this. Can you say a little bit about why Jonah is so important, maybe, to how we live love is the resistance?

Ashley Abercrombie 41:47

Yes. You know, I find myself in Jonah. I see myself in him and I see the church as it is in 2021 in Jonah. And as I look at it and think about his story, you know, I was raised in a church where this was a story about obedience, and you know, "you better be listening to your parents or something terrible's gonna happen to you." That's sort of what the story meant. If you disobey God, then the bad things happen. And that's sort of translated into a story about how I need to obey my parents. And as I got older, and begin to better understand the story and could research a little for myself, I realized that what this actually is, is a call to mercy. It's a demonstration of God's mercy and love for all people.

Ashley Abercrombie 42:29

And when he asked Jonah to go to Nineveh, and of course, Jonah refuses, and there's really good reasons for him to refuse because he does not actually believe that the Ninevites should or could be saved. And he actually knows that they are greedy people, that they are full of pride, that they are lustful, that they are the kind of folks who would hurt and oppress others, and, you know, exploit the labor of people, Jonah's people. So I think because of that Jonah's like, "If you want them saved, God, you're going to have to go do it. I'm not going there. I'm not going to do it for you."

Ashley Abercrombie 42:59

And He even talks to God about his mercy, like, "I know who you are, I know what you're gonna do. I know, if you send me there, you are going to do this merciful act." And so he goes to Tarshish. And what happens? He gets swallowed up by the whale, spit out on the shore, and then he, you know, obeys God in anger. You know, he just basically goes up to the Ninevites, and gives like the worst sermon ever, and it sums up, "to repent." And the most crazy thing happens is because they all do. The Ninevites actually repent. And you know, God, as Jonah walks away, God meets Jonah where he is, and Jonah is angry, still. He does not let go of his anger. He's mad at God for being merciful. He's mad at God that he had to go obey him. And he's mad at God that these people repented that they listened to him, because he doesn't believe that they deserve salvation. He doesn't believe that God should help them. He doesn't believe that God should love them.

Ashley Abercrombie 43:50

And as he's sitting there, God asked him, "Who are you to be angry?" It's the most powerful story because God demonstrates through this and through the life of Jonah that he loves Jonah. And he's not asking Jonah to not be angry, but he says, "Who are you to be angry?" But I hear the Father's love and that question, and he never removes his presence from Jonah. He doesn't say, you know, "Jonah, when you stop being mad, I'll come back. I'm gonna let you have your little temper tantrum, and I'll be right back." God stays with him, even in his anger. So that shows me that there's a level of understanding for the pain that we go through, for the offenses that we face, for the hurt and harm that each of us know at an intimate level, that God understands it. He understands the reasons that we're angry. He understands the reasons that we want some parts of the body of Christ to not be in heaven when we get there. God gets it.

Ashley Abercrombie 44:42

But he also has this deep desire to love all people, even the enemy. So God has this merciful heart towards the offender and the offended and towards the the bystander in between. God loves all his creation. He wants them all saved. And I think the powerful part of that is Jonah obeying God, deciding to do it, even in his anger, led to the salvation of people who would have continued to hurt and harm and oppress others had Jonah not done that. And so God did a good thing through the life of Jonah. And the whole story sums up his mercy. And I know that's really long winded, but I think we need to really get this. We need to really understand God's mercy. We need to understand that sometimes God will have us speak to people that we don't like. And sometimes God will have us speak to people that we don't agree with. And sometimes God will have us speak to people that we don't think should be in heaven when we get there. But this is the goodness of God, and that is the mercy of God to save us. I think that that is something that we need today to allow the mercy of God to flow through us.

Chris McAlilly 45:46

Preach, preach. Yeah, towards the end of the book you write, "Kid President," who if you don't know Kid President, he's on YouTube.

Eddie Rester 45:54

Go find Kid President.

Chris McAlilly 45:56

Kid President says, "Give people high fives just for getting out of bed. Being a person is hard sometimes." And that is true. And we wish that we could give you virtual high five over there, to you, Ashley. You're awesome. We love talking to you. Thank you for writing this book. Thanks for being on the podcast today.

Ashley Abercrombie 46:14

Thank you so much for having me. What a pleasure to be with you guys again.

Eddie Rester 46:19

[OUTRO] Thank you for listening to this episode of The Weight.

Chris McAlilly 46:21

If you liked what you heard today, feel free to share the podcast with other people that are in your network. Leave us a review. That's always really helpful. Subscribe, and you can follow us on our social media channels.

Eddie Rester 46:33

If you have any suggestions or guests you'd like us to interview or anything you'd like to share with us, you can send us an email at info@theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]

 
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