The dominant story isn’t working. In this bold conversation, Ben McBride challenges Christians to confront power, discomfort, and exclusion—and reimagine a faith big enough for belonging. Learn why he says we must be hard on systems, soft on people, and always building a bigger table.

00:25Iintro

01:34 Leaning into discomfort

06:10 Self-compassion, or hope that’s larger than our fears

09:24 Jer remembers similar experience with his dad

11:20 The need for a new story

15:28 The perceived righteousness of the dominant Christian story

17:52 Gospel of a dead Jesus

22:00 Personal Suffering and America’s Decline

26:22 Relationship with the powerful

36:00 Relationship with the suffering

38:42 The pace of transformation

42:51 Relationship with people in pain

45:25 Challenges engaging all sides at once

48:02 End

Mentioned in this episode:

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Navigating Deep Disagreements with Loved Ones (Everyday Peacemaking Podcast)

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I mean, I've been studying a Bible for over 40 years and I'm just not sure

that the Christian story, as it's been understood in the United States, can help

us in a moment right now where it actually has been married with the dominant story

of imperialism and dominance, but how do we answer the challenge of othering in

our world with a story about othering?

I just don't know how we get there.

Welcome to the Mending Divides Podcast, your source for unfiltered conversations

about conflict and how to deal with it.

I'm your host, Jer Swigart, and today's conversation is with

my dear friend Ben McBride.

He's the founder of the Empower Initiative, an expert in

helping organizations forge a culture of radical belonging.

And the author of a book that talks about it all called Troubling the

Water, which I want you to get 'cause it belongs in all of our libraries.

In this conversation, we talk about discomfort as guide, and

different approaches to dealing with conflict according to a

person's proximity to power.

Ben emphasizes the need to humanize those with authority.

and he encourages us all in this time to be hard on systems, but soft on people.

Our conversation gets especially provocative when Ben critiques the

dominant Christian American story as too small to handle the world's

suffering and as incongruent with Jesus in that it promotes othering

and endorses the exclusion of enemies, both of which we don't need right now.

So with that, here's my raw and fiery and unfiltered conversation with Ben McBride.

And so I wanna jump in Ben with you straight away connected to

your book, Troubling the Water.

And one of the things that I was struck by right away, as you wrote, is the

relationship you have with discomfort.

And you invite us to actually step into the discomfort order to pursue

justice, in order to pursue belonging.

And I'm finding that we live in this moment in time where too many of us

experience discomfort or understand discomfort as something wrong is happening

rather than something, maybe right is happening that we actually need to lean

into the discomfort, um, if we're gonna see a world of mutual flourishing.

And so I'm curious, Ben, from your point of view, what has your relationship

with discomfort been in the work of mending divides or bridging differences?

And can you think of a time where you really had to confront

discomfort for the sake of justice, for the sake of belonging?

And what was that like for you?

Yeah.

Well, you know, I think the relationship with discomfort is a counterintuitive one.

I think it's important to hold that up.

I think the notion that we try to get away from discomfort isn't something

that we should judge within ourselves.

I'm learning more and more not to judge it within myself because it's

just a function of our amygdala.

So, you know, we are wired as mammals to try to stay away from discomfort,

which is why the work of mending divides and bridging differences is really

a spiritual practice because it's actually moving against the way that

we are physiologically wired, right?

So I think it's important for us to note that, so that somehow if we're feeling

some resistance around the notion of leaning into discomfort, we don't judge

ourselves too harshly and think that somehow maybe there's something wrong

with my character or I don't really care about the world, or something like that.

I think it's more to just recognize this is how I'm wired.

My aspiration of wanting to resist how I'm wired is actually something that I should

appreciate because it actually speaks to the spiritual nature of me seeking

to live beyond just my raw instinct.

And I think we can use that as a starting point to think about,

you know, how we move forward and how we create a better world.

When I think about it within my own life, I mean there's so many places that I

could go with it, but I mean, thinking about the notion of mending divides with

interpersonal relationships, I actually think about my relationship with a guy

that, you know, Bill, who came in my life at a time where I was highly distrustful

of particularly white evangelical men who were in a leadership position because I

had some scars that I was just recovering from over the last five to six years,

along with some of the stories that I had from my childhood that made it

difficult for me to, to silence that tension that I was feeling inside myself.

And yet, there's so much that came out of our relationship over the last 15 years

that we've been on this deep brotherhood journey together, stepping into things

that we care about in the world.

But when I think about the beginning of that.

It was really difficult for me because everything inside me was saying, this is

just going to be like everything else.

He's just going to show up like everyone else who's hurt you or harmed you.

He's gonna misunderstand you.

He's going to make mistakes, and he did a couple of those things that

I just named along the journey.

Yeah.

I, what I've learned in that relationship was by disrupting my mistrust of that

fuel by my own pain and trauma, there was actually a gift there, as well.

Something that I needed, not just for like professional life and other things,

something I actually needed for me.

And you know, it, for me to say as this big black dude that like, I love this guy

in the same way or the most similar way that I love my biological brothers and

sisters is a deeply profound journey to go from deep distrust to a deep feeling

of sibling ness and affection and love.

Like I, I would say that I'm in love with this dude.

Obviously not in a romantic way, but in a deep way that I would

give my life for this dude and believe he would do the same.

That's a journey, but I only got there through being willing to

confront one of the things that really bothered me and I had fear about.

yeah.

Yeah.

The, a couple things that I hear, Ben, I wanna explore with you.

One is this sense of self-compassion, like a generosity that you have

with yourself in that work.

I'd love for you to reflect on, how has self-compassion, especially like

the way that you even demonstrated a monologue around here's some of the

questions, the concerns, the cautions that were going on inside of me.

How are you gentle with yourself in those?

second question is, where did you go with those questions?

Like eventually, did you voice those questions?

To Bill and invite Bill into that, or, you know what I'm saying?

Like

Yeah.

how did those questions lose their power, lose their volume so that you

could actually press in and work toward a new reality in this relationship.

Well, because I come from a starting point of a lot of codependency

and some of my own baggage, right?

There was a lot of conversations that I first had to have about

that relationship with myself.

Like I had to ask myself, is this relationship I. valuable enough

the potential of it for me to even explore that with him in person.

Or is this something that I'm just gonna be a throwaway and actually say, no, I'm

gonna let this relationship just stay in a transactional place and not really think

about it being in a transformative place.

So that was one of the things I had to think about.

The notion of like self-compassion.

I can see it now that it was there.

I don't know that it was really present with me at the time

that's what I was having.

In a practical way, I think I was trying to find a way how to

wade through the waters of that relationship and what I was feeling.

I think what kept me moving was a couple things.

Like one, there was some professional opportunities in that relationship.

We wanted to do some good work together, so there was a

carrot hanging from that stick.

But then the other thing was I was really feeling deeply connected to

this guy and I was recognizing that I wanted that connection, even though I

was afraid of that connection going bad.

So I don't know if it was self-compassion.

There's a part of me that wonders if it was just really wanting to

believe that my fears weren't the most authentic truth of my life, that that

there was actually something else.

I think that's continued to be a part of my journey too, and I think a lot

of us, it's like we don't want to believe that the things that keep us

up at night in a bad way, that scare us, that make it hard to breathe.

We don't wanna believe that those are the most powerful things in the universe.

Like our souls, our hearts want to find a way to that better way.

And I think over time what, you know, he and i's relationship has taught me it,

it's built some belief now that actually helps me do that with others because I

have some evidence now in, in my life.

And that's what we all need.

I think the evidence helps us build more belief and like where that's difficult.

You know, sometimes for me, like this is where the self-compassion,

the reorienting for me, particularly somebody who grew up and was very

vested in the Christian way is the whole value for me was actually about faith

being the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Like I wasn't supposed to look for evidence, I was supposed

to ya, you know, move forward.

But I realized, no, I need some evidence.

and it's okay to need evidence.

It's okay to move slow enough to get some evidence.

But in order to get some, we also gotta take some risks.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, I'm hearkening back to a story.

I think I told a few episodes back as it relates to a journey I took with my dad.

And I'm not sure that going into some of the hard work that we did in the

twilight of his life, I'm not sure that I had evidence to actually believe that

you could be in an intimate co-creating relationship with somebody in this case,

with somebody with whom you disagreed on some pretty major things, you know?

and so I'm resonating with this idea that once we actually name the

cautions, identify some of the fears.

You know, find the courage to press into those and actually take some

risks to move toward that person.

like the story as it unfolds, the evidence,

it built a belief in me that this kind of bridging is actually possible.

and that I'm better off, like my dad didn't come around

to think like I thought.

I didn't necessarily come around to think, but like I was better because

of the journey that I took with him.

Such that, and this is the second thing I wanted to ask you about.

Like the chemicals that flooded my body as it related to my

dad were no longer animosity.

It was affection.

I wonder if that's some of the physiological evidence.

This is what starts to happen in us as we dare to bridge across difference or

we bridge divides or whatever it is, like suddenly when the chemicals that flood

my body are the chemicals of affection toward that other, that irritant,

maybe even that constructed enemy.

Now something is actually changing.

I'm transforming, you know?

And so say a little bit more about the spiritual side, like the spiritual.

Physiological fusion, you know,

to go against the natural biology to resist and stay

away for the sake of survival.

But what is the juice that actually moves us forward anyway?

And how do we tap into that better?

Yeah.

Well, this is where I think I've really been inspired by Harari's

work, the author of Sapiens and Homo Deus and a couple other books.

Because what I like that he talks about is this notion that as homo sapiens, right?

As people, the way we've always understood ourselves and organized ourselves was

both through organizing ourselves into clans and groups like, so the connection

with the other and story, the story we told about ourselves, and often the

gossip and the stories that we told about whoever reconstructed as the other, right?

And so I think, you know, there's that muscle memory.

That we all have.

The spirituality to me, that he talks about and Dr. Powell,

others talk about is new stories.

What's the legends and lore that have oftentimes given people the

ability to transcend that base story that just comes from their clan?

and I feel like we're in a moment right now, like I feel like I am personally

to just keep it all the way a buck.

Like I'm in a moment right now where I am really wondering and thirsty

for a new story that actually has the potential to help me, the people that

I love, the people that I'm not sure love me and that I'm challenged to love.

I, I feel like we need a new story that can help us figure out how.

Yeah.

We can be connected and aspire for a different kind of spiritual connection

to each other because it does feel to me that the stories that we've had over

time and I say it respectfully to all of us that are still rooted in some

of these stories, there's a part of me as somebody who's birthed from those

stories, particularly the Christian story, that's wondering whether the

story has anything left to offer us for the moment that we're actually in.

Hmm.

Say more man.

Give us more on that.

'cause I'm with you in that it feels that the dominant story is that

we get the world we want through force rather than friendship.

I, I think so.

And you know, this is just two friends talking, right.

And all the rest of y'all listening.

Right.

So if we're gonna root this conversation in like our Christian religion, right?

It's based a lot, regardless as to what expression you have

on othering and supremacy.

At the heart of the story, it's about being chosen as God's people.

It's about there being, for most expressions of the tradition,

one way for someone to relate, transcend, connect with the divine.

It's about a very particular prescriptive process by which you can do that.

That has a lot of different iterations, confession, baptism,

et cetera, but it operates from this notion that there is one way.

It is the only way, and those who don't are othered in sometimes more

overt or sometimes covert ways.

I don't know that story can actually help us in a moment right now where even

here within the United States, we are dealing with a mass ideology of othering.

Yeah.

So how do you actually respond to the othering with a story of othering?

Oh, come on, man.

Un unless you're gonna significantly change that story.

Right.

and I'm just don't know because of all the money that's invested in the

story, all the history that's invested in the story, that folks are really

willing to try to change that story

Mm-hmm.

But I'm just not sure that I can be compelled as somebody that

born and raised on the pulpit floor went to Christian school.

I mean, I've been studying a Bible for over 40 years and I'm just not sure

that the Christian story, as it's been understood in the United States, can

help us in a moment right now where it actually has been married with

the dominant story of imperialism and dominance, and we could throw hot lines

about who Jesus was and how he was.

I get all of that.

But how do we answer the challenge of othering in our

world with a story about othering?

I just don't know how we get there.

man, I was in a conversation this morning over coffee with a couple of

friends about this very notion, this idea that the Christian story that

many of us have been socialized into is one that is actually a story of power

over, of conquering of domination.

And which I actually think is pretty antithetical to the cross wearing God,

I think that we might see in Jesus, you know, but fascinating to me, and this

is where the conversation went, is how the story of othering or the story of

domination is perceived as righteous.

You know, so I'm with you in the, how do we flip the script?

How do we tell a better story?

I think it's especially hard when the story that we've been socialized

into, we're not just convinced of it being like, intellectually superior.

It's righteous, so therefore I'm not sure that we're in this moment

where we can spar intellectually with one another about a better story.

I think we actually have to put on display a better story,

trusting that it may be contagious.

So here's my, deepest concern right now, Ben, is so many of us who have

been socialized into an American form of Christianity have developed

muscles for self preservation, right?

We don't have any muscle as it relates to sacrifice, especially sacrificing

for the sake of another's good.

And self preservation is actually seen as righteous, right?

Because we all knew that if we prayed a particular prayer, we'll build some power

and some safety and some and all the things, and then we'll go to be in heaven

with people just like us when we die.

Like self preservation's fine, right?

and it's righteous.

And what makes me really nervous right now as I watch people continue to surround

themselves with people who think just like them and reinforce the perceived

righteousness of their viewpoint.

things continue to heat up in our country, and as people who have

been dehumanized and denigrated for a long time, suffer even more.

When this group of folk who have been socialized into this religion, when

they watch this happen, their inertia is already towards self-preservation.

It's not towards sacrifice.

And so like, how do we live the hopeful alternative?

What is

mm.

alternative story?

Yeah.

And how do we live it in a way that it's contagious, Ben?

That, that is a phenomenal question.

I'm not sure.

What comes up for me, and I'm gonna say something that might sound a little

provocative, but as you were talking, I was like, I think for Christians

we need a gospel of a dead Jesus.

I.

what, I mean by that is the sacrifice that you were just talking about

to me is the end of the story.

That was the original Q gospel that we know for those of us that like to do a

lot of theology in Mark that just had the women coming to the tomb, the stone was

rolled away and they ran away terrified.

Yeah.

in that story.

There's the hope of a resurrection.

Nobody's seen Jesus.

There's been no proclamations.

There's wonder, you know, is he alive?

But what is known is that he gave up his life and as he was dying, he was

extending mercy to someone else who was dying beside him and offering forgiveness

to the one who was oppressing him.

The dead Jesus gospel is the one who actually could help us, I think in this

moment that, like James Cohen used to talk about in his, you know, liberation

theology is the one who doesn't succeed.

Like it's the one who, who actually fails.

And I think that is good news for this moment for us to

not be seeking resurrection.

But actually to be seeking the death on the cross for the sake of forgiveness

for the other one who is suffering and also forgiveness for the one

who is oppressing, like just trip.

If that was the message that we were preaching that it was actually about

being reconciled to the suffering and the oppress or the oppressor, and

that you're dying in that process.

But in that process, you're able to offer words to John the beloved, standing

next to your mother to help the story of sacrifice live on, like that's a

different story than the story about.

You know, you rising with all power and within 40 days you have

all control, not just, you got all control over power and earth.

You're floating up to the sky.

You've now gone from 12 disciples to 500.

That to me somewhat lives into some of the story of our success and what

we're longing for, what I hear you speaking to and if we're really gonna

mend divides with the suffering and the people who are oppressing, we are going

to have to become different people that

Hmm.

are seeing our lives as vehicles to help serve that.

And I'm not calling for some kind of martyrdom like, bro,

I want to enjoy my life.

I want to enjoy Janelle, my wife, I want to enjoy my daughters.

Like I want to have a good life.

But I also don't want to miss the opportunities to put some stuff on

the line for the relationships, the people and the moments that matter.

yeah, man, I like that.

I'm not alone right now in the heart pound of what you just shared, because

as people who adhere to Easter Sunday and resurrection, I don't know, man,

that also plays to this, our fixation, our addiction of the happy ending.

Yeah, man.

I just love how, what my question was, what is the alternative story?

What's a better story?

And you actually pointed to suffering

Mm.

and what happened in the midst of the suffering, the mercy, the

forgiveness, the offering of belonging.

I mean, I don't know that I've ever consi like yeah, the

cross, the power of the cross.

Unbelievable.

God's declaration of unthinkable love uhhuh, and a story played out there.

That is a model for us in this time, that in the midst of suffering for the

sake of others, what does it mean to offer forgiveness, mercy and belonging?

You know, Ben, that's...

well, and you and I, you know, have had this conversation about grief.

And you were talking about your dad, and you know, I'm living in a moment

right now where my sister who loved God passed away the day after Christmas.

And I'm still trying to resolve within myself that grief and the aspirations

that she would be well, and the notions of all the people who I love

deeply, who love God deeply, who all had words from God that she was

gonna be healed and she wasn't then.

Then kind of how we have to then move the goalpost and say, well,

now she's healed in heaven.

and just the inability for us to embrace an unhappy ending and get

a new story that might still hold sadness and pain and mystery.

But like the hope to me of my sister's passing is while she was

fighting cancer and dying, I was able to offer my home to house her.

I was able to serve her and make her organic meals and love on her.

We had conversations in the three months of her journey to fight cancer

that we had not had in 40 years.

The opportunity to pick her up off the floor when she was throwing up, trying to

deal with chemo, like there was a lot of sacredness and sacrifice, the work that

I said no to so that I could say yes in the moment to be present with my sister.

I think there are ways that we could find redemptive life and even resurrecting

moments without trying to find our way to the happy ending because I think

in the real world that we have right now, authoritarianism is on the rise.

America as a nation is on the decline.

and I am not actively trying to figure out, well, how do we make

sure America can stay on top?

Now I think it's on the decline, and most empires don't last beyond 300 years.

So why are we surprised?

The version of America that we were born into is dying.

the way that we learned how to relate to each other within that imperial system is

struggling because we've operated within this kind of, you know, shining city on

a hill and that version of it is dying.

But maybe there's an opportunity, and maybe it starts with not a new story that

we necessarily tell, but one we actually live out with each other, that we start

figuring out how to sit in those hard places, how to suffer with each other.

That suffering for some of us that identify more as progressive or liberal

might be how do I learn how to not get the things that I wish I was getting

politically and yet not demonize the people that are active in doing it.

This is hard stuff, right?

but I found that in my life, bro.

And you know, I have, because I had to humanize loved ones who

were shooting other loved ones that looked like me in the community.

they weren't just changing policies, they weren't using tough rhetoric.

They were killing people.

Let's just say what it was.

Mm-hmm.

And I had to learn how to sit with them.

and think about what it meant to offer them mercy also trying to think

about how to sit at the table with the police officer and offer forgiveness

for a criminal justice system that has failed while also sitting with

the mother who was losing her son.

Now, I just described again the cross with the theif or insurrectionist,

whatever story you buy into, and the centurion at the bottom with Mary

and John in a modern day story in Oakland, California, and it that's.

and

Come on man.

Come on.

and that meant that I had to learn how not to have a transactional relationship

with some police officers, but actually how to have a transformative one.

Mm-hmm.

was really invested in their lives, curious about their flourishing, also

having deep pain and sometimes anger about the job that they were doing every day.

Yeah.

So let's take this real life story like this is some of the front lines

of mending divides in your life.

not all of us are gonna be at the intersection of high volume shooters,

mothers who have lost their sons and police officers, but like this mercy

forgiveness, belonging, we have to grow in our capacity for this right now.

So let's, dive into that for a moment.

Hmm.

Let's maybe do this in three different ways.

Let's talk about the police first.

What did it mean for you?

What did it require of you?

What did

Mm

it look like to be in a transforming relationship within this case?

I say the representative of the power broker, this person had the authority.

They had the state backing them, right.

so for us who are listening in this is the person who holds authority.

What does it mean to be in a transforming relationship with that person rather

than a transactional one, Ben.

And then I want to play it out with the high volume shooter.

Then I wanna play it out with the mother because it looks

Hmm.

Yeah, I would say for the person with most authority in my language, I call

it the powerful, you're talking about the person with authority, right?

I would say it looked like humanizing the person and separating them from

their authority within my mind and heart.

So, I mean, I had to have a bigger story so I could be, as John

Powell says, hard on the system.

But soft on the person.

If I were to boil that all the way down inside a family structure,

right, there's like the system of how a family might get down in

terms of all of its familial roles.

I might deeply disagree with how our family is functioning.

But how do I at the same time humanize the person in that family system, recognizing

they didn't create it on their own.

It's been created by environment, things that have been passed

down over generations.

And maybe you're contending for a new way that this family functions where

you or other people are not being othered, but it's being able to actually

understand the family system and even the thoughts that could come from the

person as separate from the person.

Mm mm

And you have, you've gotta become in or that

that's my follow up right now, like your ability to do that is

like hours of tilling, hours of

for sure.

Spiritual work.

yes.

So what did that work look like in order to be able to humanize the powerful

Wow.

I think at that time.

And I'm saying at that time, because now it would probably be a little

different for me at that time, it was my Christian ethic that I reached into.

It was the tenets of my Christian faith that helped inform for me,

like this notion that everybody is redeemable and because I believed that.

I had to tap into this notion to see the person as so many of the

stories that inspired me and still do, inspire me of Jesus seeing

beyond the person's authority,

Yeah.

Come

it's the centurion at the cross, or whether it's the soldier that he

runs into and recognizes his faith while he's complicit within a system

of oppression, whether it's the tax collector who's robbing and fleecing

the people, you know , I saw it in him, and so I felt inspired around that.

And because I aspired to be like Jesus, I was inspired to try to

find a way to show up in those ways.

Now, because I feel like I'm a little bit more of a mystic now that still loves

Jesus a lot, but I don't know so much whether the church is the place for me.

But now it's being more inspired and rooted in the aspiration of who

I want to be in the world and how I want to finish my story as a human

and the legacy that I want to leave.

And so that informs for me to try to slow down and separate people.

And I think still in that gumbo pot, inside me is my Christianity.

Yeah.

my dad and my mother's values.

it's all the stuff that I've learned.

But yeah, I mean, I think that's what it was for me then.

And that's why like I was in Michigan with some folks yesterday and you know,

I was telling them, you know, if it's your Christian ness, dig deep for that.

If it's your Buddhist- ness, your muslim-ness, your Jewish-ness, your

agnostic ness your human-ness, your ancestor-ness, I don't... whatever

that power source is, that divinity source, pull from that place, use

those resources and find a way to separate people from the system.

'cause The reality is if we really want to keep it all the way above, we're

all complicit in some kind of a system

Yeah.

Yeah.

on who's viewing the story.

Yeah.

let's linger with the powerful just a little bit more, and then let's move on.

I would imagine as I approach those with power, chances are good

there's a conversation I want to have with them about the way that

their use of power is causing harm.

Mm-hmm.

Talk to us about how humanizing them, being pro-human in that moment

with them, is one piece of it.

But then how do you also tell the truth with the kind of

kindness that invites shift.

So one, I'm a firm believer and have been for years that you have to earn

the right to speak into people's lives.

So it's one thing to critique the system that someone is a part of.

It's another thing if you're actually trying to speak to the person about

their participation.Within the system.

Got

I think as it relates to unjust systems that are harming people,

it's not about humanizing folks or being in relationship to speak

about the injustice within a system.

You can do that.

We should do that.

But if you're going to try to engage with the person, then you have to

humanize, build relationship to the point where you can, instead of calling

them out, call them in, to a new kind of relationship with the system.

But in order to do that, you have to actually bridge with that person, which

means you're not just trying to convert them to your point of view, like in, in

bridging you have to really be honest about, are you really interested in

entering into a journey with the story of somebody else with some margin

that you don't know everything about the story that you deeply care about.

Woo.

Come on, Ben.

and it's fair to say, no, I'm not.

I'm, that's not my jam.

I think that's cool.

and like I'm gonna boil it down right now to a super hot issue.

It's totally fair for someone to say, when I look about the violence that is

happening in Gaza, I am not interested in being in a conversation with someone

who is complicit within a system of causing that violence to happen.

I'm actually not curious about understanding why

and et cetera, et cetera.

We should just be honest about that and not pretend that we're

trying to be in a transformative relationship where we're not.

You might say, I'm just not interested in that.

There might be others that might say, well, I am interested.

I do want to figure out how to hear what is happening for that person

in relationship to that military or that government or whatever.

These are personal choices we get to make.

I don't think we should shame ourselves or anybody else about our willingness or the

emotional availability to engage in that.

Everything is not for everyone, but I think we should be clear that if we're

seeking a bridge, particularly with the human inside that authoritative system.

Then we've gotta ask ourself, am I really willing to see this person?

And if I'm not, don't waste your time or theirs.

It's just going to create more harm.

Come on, bro.

Like it's, yeah, this notion that I can enter into this and convince you of the

superiority of my idea and that you'll convert to my, that's just a power game.

That's, that's, that's the broken story,

Absolutely.

And that's us living with the kind of self-righteousness that says, my

viewpoint is better than your viewpoint, and now I'm gonna convince you of it.

the other thing that I carry in, and this is just low hanging fruit friends,

for those of us who are listening in, is I'm moving toward those with power.

What's helpful for me is the mindset that I'm never fully

right and always partially wrong.

Hmm.

My perspective is not 20-20, so there's a gift to be offered and received

in this transaction, and what that does, it just keeps me generous.

It keeps me curious.

It keeps me present in, in

Yeah.

in, in your words, Ben, it gives the relationship a

chance to be transformational rather than transactional.

Mm-hmm.

If I'm able to be present and curious, chances are there's a

next conversation that will be had.

Chances are the

For sure.

Yeah.

will grow enough for them to say there's something about this guy I don't know

yet, but let's have another chat,

Yeah, and I think what the goal that we should be after is there a way,

and this might feel controversial or provocative, is there a way for

me to work my way towards love?

With the person that I'm actually bridging with, like I'm starting to use the word

love a lot more because I think if we can find a way to harness the materials

that are in the ground to get a rocket into the stratosphere, then we gotta use

our same minds and hearts to figure out how to harness some spiritual technology

to harness the renewable energy of love.

Because any of us that are involved in families or different dynamics, love will

make you do some counterintuitive things.

And so I think, instead of trying to find our way towards,

how can I get this person to begin to do the things I want them to

do that serve the goals that I had before I engage this person?

It's how do I bridge with this person because of their authority?

I really am curious about learning more about their story,

to see how we can work together

Yes.

to decrease some of the harm and the violence that I'm seeing that's happening.

And I also want to grow in my love for them as a human being.

Yeah.

So again, a mindset piece is I am the project to be undone and

remade in this relationship.

Yes, sir.

like, Ah

let's talk about the high volume shooter.

What does bridging toward that person, what did that look like, and how was

it different than with the powerful?

Yeah, I mean, I think bridging with someone who's actually suffering usually

is a recognition that you might have a little bit more privilege than they do

Hmm.

because of your awareness of their suffering juxtaposed to your experience.

And what I've learned in that scenario has been to like mend that divide,

it's about just learning to understand, to listen, to be available, and to

offer what you can without overpromising so that you don't under deliver.

Right?

And so it's the notion that what I can do is I can hear you,

I can make time to hear you.

I can make time to try to understand where it is that you're coming

from, and I can do the best that I can with the limited resources I

have to try to offer you something that can aid you in your suffering.

I mean, when I think about Jesus in relationship to this guy, he had

no power to get him off the cross.

Depending on how you see the story, he's like, I'm kind of in

a similar situation that you are.

I'm also deeply troubled by this.

I'm hanging on the cross as well, but I also recognize, you are saying

to me, if I can be with you in Paradise, you're wanting something

and I'm trying to see how I can help.

From this place that we're both at, we both are operating from some

limited resources and opportunities.

But I do want to figure out how I can give you what I can in the middle

of us both experiencing, you know, obviously a not opportune scenario.

So I just think, you know, it's us being available.

I think we gotta get ourselves out of the, I've checked my, you remember

when I was trying to be Batman?

I think we gotta get ourselves out of the superhero jam.

The world's too big.

There are too many problems around it.

And I think what we can do is you know, see those who are suffering

around us, listen and be available,

Yeah.

and do our best.

yeah, yeah.

I mean, I'm

finding that folk, the suffering.

So you would distinguish like from the powerful and the suffering.

My experience is telling me right now that a request or a desire by the

suffering is presence, is companionship, is like authentic relationship.

And yes, absolutely, I don't wanna suffer anymore.

But I think

Hmm.

In, in my relationships, I'm finding that the solutions to what solutions,

I don't even know if that's the right word, Ben, but the solutions to what

oppresses them have been germinating in their souls for a long time.

You know, and so the nearness, the and pace, and I'd like you to speak

to pace there for just a second.

because I too want to break agreement with the hero saviorism.

I'm gonna swoop in and I've got some resources.

I could redeploy some stuff, I could connect you out, we could

get some help, whatever it is.

But there's like a pace to this that is a lot slower than I want it to be.

If I'm actually gonna be in solidarity rather than saviorism,

you know, or saviorhood.

Can you speak to that a little bit in how you hold intention, the urgency for

change with the pace of transformation?

Yeah, I think so.

I think how I have tried and you know, maybe right now am trying

is to hold a bigger story that doesn't cause the suffering that

I'm seeing to be so overwhelming.

Right.

When I was in Johannesburg a couple months ago, I stood at a crater that

a meteorite hit the earth over 200,000 years ago, and the people were asking

us, what would it look like if we told the story of ourselves from this crater?

Rather than starting it wherever it is that somebody starts it to understand

the peace, and if it starts at that 200,000 year with the crater and there's

another 200,000 years coming after us, then maybe our pace needs to be at the

speed of, yeah, this suffering sucks.

It's real.

It does demand response, and yet there's a lot of suffering that

unfortunately is going to keep happening.

Mm-hmm.

I need to figure out where I can make a contribution and realize that in all

the contributions that I make, I am not going to end the violence of human

beings on our journey to figure out how to do this without violence being at

the center, like we're still learning that we need to contribute to that.

I'm not encouraging people to sit out, but I, I am also trying to encourage us to,

you know, drink some water and recognize that even the crises of our current

moment, are not even the only crises happening right now at the current moment.

It's just the one that we're focused on, the one that we see,

however that shows up in our lives.

So we gotta take some deep breaths and try to figure out how to show up and

keep in mind that I think the greatest.

Thing that we need to be trying to win is that war within ourselves and to

try to think about how we can be the most honest responsible, accountable

to the people that are around us.

I'm still a big believer in this notion of charity love, beginning

at home and spreading abroad.

So let me be careful not to step over the unhoused person that I can offer

a candy bar to, or some, a cereal bar to let me not step over that person

to get to my office so that I can rail on social media about something that's

happening thousands of miles away from me.

Yeah.

let me figure out how to root myself in my humanity and realize that

Hmm.

could master this.

across the hall at my house, in my office, if I can master it in the

neighborhood where I go get coffee maybe those are some of the biggest,

areas that I might actually do well with myself and do well

with the world that we're in.

yeah.

I mean, I remember the, the Ben and Jer of 15

Hmm.

sitting in a cafe in Walnut Creek, California, you know, stumbling

over our capes as we had croissants.

You know, and, and,

That's funny.

and I'm like, here we are now.

maybe this is second journey kind of stuff that's

Mm

us, but like maybe believing a little bit more in what our indigenous kin say about

Let's make decisions today for seven generations from now.

And how does that actually, how might that be more helpful than

let's solve the moment, you know?

that's part of what I'm hearing in that.

And, uh, I, I feel.

Oh gosh.

I wanna live my life in such a way that I'm stumbling into people's pain

with them more than I'm stumbling over my own cape because I think that

I'm God's gift to whatever, you know.

Mm-hmm.

speak really briefly, if you would, to to the mother in pain.

And you've hit forgiveness, you've hit mercy, you know.

Now let's talk belonging and what does, what has that looked like for

you, in, to kind of round this out?

Yeah, I would say concisely for me, it's looked like recognizing that I needed

to build a big enough table that was large enough for everyone suffering.

And that was rooted, you know, really with the mother who was

losing her child to violence.

To me, right now, it's the person that's the most vulnerable around us.

The person whose voice is not heard.

Yeah.

how do we build a bigger table?

And I think like when we think about this notion of mending divides.

We need to be building tables that actually can invite people that

normally would not be in relationship or proximity to each other, to

be in proximity to each other.

And some of the work that I think some of us can do is to think about

that instead of just how to build a bridge, how can we be the bridge?

So for some of the mothers, I tried to be the bridge, and sometimes that

meant listening to their lament about the young men and their adulation

about the police and how they wanted the police to go catch the person

that took the life of their child.

Sometimes it was hearing their critique about why I was humanizing the person

who had done some violence, rather than assisting the police and them

being thrown underneath the jail.

It was just learning how to hold space and recognize that I'm never going

to know enough to be of service to everyone the way that I would hope to.

But what I can do is I can find a way to build spaces.

I can become, multilingual in my ability to talk authority, talk mercy,

Mm-hmm.

talk belonging so that I can be in multiple spaces and learning how to carry

the stories of what people need into those spaces while humanizing everybody

in those stories and being a bridge when it's time for the person on the cross

to get to the other person on the cross or the person on the cross to get to the

person standing at the bottom with the nails or standing to the person who's

weeping over, the person who's dying.

If I can become someone who can be used as a bridge to help give hope

to people and bring people together.

That's what I found in my life.

That's what I'm trying to do right now in different ways.

And yeah.

let me ask two final questions for now, Ben.

there's a whole list of other ones for another episode, but I'm just

grateful for the living illustration that you just were able to give us

bridging in three different ways.

I would imagine that you are misunderstood or distrusted by the others while

you're bridging to one of them,

Mm-hmm.

example, that you're bridging to the powerful causes you to maybe be trusted

less by the high volume shooter or the mother who's like, what are you

doing, talking to them when you know or when you talk to them, you know what

I want you to say, and if you don't say it, you're not doing it enough.

You know what I'm saying?

So.

Yeah.

In this work, it's not peaches and cream.

It's not every, everybody's not grateful that you are humanizing all of them.

How do you navigate that?

You know, there were times where I was trying to engage

everyone at the same time.

In this period of my life, I've actually made some choices for my own

self-care and wellbeing to not engage everyone at the same time, but actually

to focus my attention on one group.

And I think that's fine.

I think we should really say to ourselves like, what can I do

and really take care of myself?

And so, you know, I've made a decision to try to actually be engaging right now

in the season of my life with more of the people that have the authority and have

the powerful, and to do more bridging with them and to try to figure out how

I can invite them into their becoming.

and to think about how we could be critical on the system, but really

think about that deep relationship building that happens with them that

can humanize them, helps me know a little bit more about what it means

to be them, so that hopefully I can be a good sibling on the road with them.

So I think one of the important things is everybody to just ask

themself, what time is it for me?

and listen deeply to your heart for that answer.

We shouldn't rush it.

It might take you a month, two months to get that answer back,

but what time is it for you?

and the moment of the emergency doesn't need to be what dictates our answer.

We should listen well to ourselves, to the God of our understanding, as we all

have that, and to make the most faithful response we can with the answer we get.

Man, that sounds like the last word for this conversation.

Ben, thank you.

Thanks for the work that you're doing, man.

It's.

It's really it's amazing to be able to talk with friends like you who

are navigating the front lines of all sorts of different conflicts.

And then to be able to have a conversation like this where you get to pull the

threads and help us as we're navigating the front lines of our own conflicts.

So I'm grateful for you, brother, and be well my friend.

I look forward to the next time we're on.

Sounds great, man.

Love you.

Take care.

The Mending Divides podcast is a production of Global Immersion.

Learn more about our work, companioning Western Christians on a journey from

a religion that dominates to a faith that restores @globalimmerse.org.