How do you connect with people in the world who don't know Jesus and don't want to hear about Jesus? Daniel Strange gives us some magnetic points that provide us with the means by which people can and will want to know more about Jesus.

Daniel Strange is director of Crosslands Forum and the vice president of The Southgate Fellowship. He is one of the inaugural fellows of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and is the author of Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions (Zondervan, 2015), Plugged In (The Good Book Company, 2019), and Making Faith Magnetic (The Good Book Company, 2021) (the book we are talking about today!) He is a contributing editor for Themelios and an elder of Hope Community Church, Gateshead, U.K., which is part of the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches (FIEC).

It's a fantastic, fun, and faith-filled conversation that can help you build a bridge with unbelievers so that they too can know Jesus. This is a must-listen!

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Paul makes the connection. Christ crucified is a stumbling block to Jews and Greeks, but to those who have been saved, to both Jews and Greeks, here's how he finishes it.

Isn't it Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God? Now we think, is this a felt needs gospel? You mean Jews are looking for power and Christ is power. Greeks are looking for wisdom and Christ is wisdom?

Yes, in precisely the opposite subversive way that they thought power and wisdom would be displayed. A crucified Messiah is not powerful. A crucified Messiah is not wise. And yet Paul still makes the connection.

So again, going back to that passage in Acts 17, Paul wanders around the objects of worship.

So subversive fulfillment is saying there will always be a confrontational aspect as we ask people to proclaim to people to turn from idols to the living God.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollo's Watered a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming, and I am your host. And today in our show, we're having another one of our deep conversations.

When you look at people, do you notice how much they're similar to you or different? I'm willing to bet that if you're like me, you notice the differences more than you do the similarities. Unless we're wearing the exact same clothes.

But let me ask you this question. Do you think that you have more in common with someone on the other side of the earth or with your next door neighbor? I mean, think about it.

You probably would say, oh, of course, my next door neighbor. And yet when you look at your next door neighbor, you might focus on the differences rather than the similarities.

I mean, let's imagine here for a moment that you are in Laos and you encounter this taxi driver and you notice that there are so many differences, but as you get to know them, you try to work through the language barriers, the culture, all of the different things that you discover as you're traveling and you find that they are believers in Jesus. And now you notice the similarities, especially when it comes to your faith.

Now, truth be told, I found more in common with Christians in India than I have with my next door neighbor, even though my next door neighbor and I might share the same language, observe the same holidays, might go to the similar places to shop and same schools. But when you get into matters of faith, we see a huge difference that just seems to separate us.

And that difference, while it might be small in one level, is actually quite large. And those other cultural differences that I see with that cab driver Lynn Laos might seem really big then.

But when we have faith, we find that we're actually a lot closer together.

We have to ask ourselves the question, have our neighbors become so separated from us that we are so much just withdrawn, living our lives online, that we don't interact with our neighbors anymore, even though we know that we're supposed to and share Jesus with them? But we really don't know how because we know about our differences.

And it's really hard to work through that with the neighbor next door than it is with the person on the other side of the planet. And that's where today's guest comes in. Today is part one of my conversation with Dr. Daniel Strange.

We're talking about his book Making Faith Magnetic. Now, I know Dr. Strange, right? Well, it's not the Marvel character.

And this conversation, I have to say, is one of my most favorite conversations over the past several months, maybe ever, that we've done here. Daniel Strange is probably someone that you've never heard of.

He has taught at a seminary in the uk, written a few books, and directs lacrosslands for him, among other things. And we are privileged to have him here today.

And I am so excited to introduce him to you because he shows us that there are actually connection points that connect us all.

No matter what our backgrounds may be, no matter how big the differences, there are these overarching universal questions that are embedded within each one of us that enable us actually to build a bridge to Jesus. Today we're discussing his book Making Faith Magnetic.

It's a really good book, and it gives you tangible ways of connection to the people in the front row of your life that might seem different than you, that you may have a hard time talking about things with, but when you see the connection point, you're able to be able to do so. Daniel is a thinker and a kindred spirit, completely in line with what God has called us to do at Apollo sw.

We are locked arm in arm in making Christ's name known around the world. It's amazing and a sobering ministry that he has called us to. And that's why I think we feel this kindred spirit when we're together.

And in that same vein, we invite you to partner with us to make Christ's name known all over the world.

God has grown this ministry in incredible ways in such a short amount of time, and we believe that there is so much more that He Desires to do so, many more people to talk to, many more saints to equip and spiritual forces that need to be unmasked. Won't you join with us? Simply click the link in your show notes and be a partner with something that God is doing around the world.

Now let's get to my conversation with Daniel Strange. Happy listening.

Daniel Strange, welcome to Apollo's Watered.

Great, great to be with you from the uk Travis. Lovely to be with your audience.

Oh, I am so excited for this conversation. I already told you this in the pre show walkthrough because I love this book. I love your book. But before we do that, are you ready for the fast five?

I'm ready.

The best world footballer right now is still Messi. I'd say still Messi. Is he your favorite player?

He's not my favorite player, but I think he, I think he's the best. Yeah. Oh no. Well, I mean, and Harland, in terms of striking, he's a freak of nature.

So I figured I had to bring him because you talk a lot in the book about football and of course.

For the audience here, football is soccer, not American football.

Well, that's why I said world football.

I like it. I like the contextualization there. Thank you.

All right, number two, here we go. The one food that you could eat all the time is what?

Pizza.

Just. Is it. Is there a difference between British pizza and American pizza?

Well, all the Americans I know would say that we, we have nothing resembling your pizza, but which actually, given that I've sampled quite a bit of American pizza is probably true. But I do like pizza.

What, What American pizza do you like?

Anything? Pepperoni. I'll go for pepperoni.

I mean, not, not like, I mean.

Like style like New York, Chicago. Have you ever had Chicago deep dish?

No, not probably. No, not properly. So there you go. This is an education for me now. It shows me that I don't know much about pizza.

So thank you for showing me up like that.

That is the pizza. Well, you know, you know, the difference is. You know what the difference is? I mean, because the Chicago style is deep.

I mean, it's, it's an experience. After having lived in Chicago for a long time.

I, I'm a little prejudiced.

Okay, here we go. How about this one? I love being British because. And I'm glad that I'm not an American because.

Oh, okay, well, I'll answer this in the same way.

So I do love the British sense of humor and I've taught a lot with Americans over the years and I interact with a lot of Americans and it takes them a while to get used to the British humor. You have a different sense of humor, which sometimes makes very awkward exchanges.

You have to give me an example. Are we talking like Ricky Gervais kind of.

Oh, no, not that. I kind of. I kind of satire and irony and. Well, I love about the American spirit the kind of. The boldness and the. The.

The sometimes overstatement and loudness. But obviously those things can be a weakness as well. I say. I say in a very understated British way.

There you go again with the British humor. I love it. All right, number four, if you were an artist, okay, an artist, who would you be in while. Or.

Or if you don't want to pick an artist, what style of painting would you be and why?

Oh, very good. Well, actually, there's a. Well, it kind of. There's a. There's an American painter who's a primitive primitivist, a guy called Edward Hicks.

Over his lifetime, he drew the picture from Isaiah about, you know, the. The lamb lying down with the lamb, the leopard and the lamb, and he painted it about 100 times. It's amazing. I've become quite obsessed with his life.

And he was a Quaker, so I think I probably want to be. I'd like to come back. So there you go. That's an American painter, Edward Hicks. If you don't know, if you've never heard of him, go and go Google it.

His paintings kind of get. Go for millions now, but he was a sign writer living in the kind of 18th century, 19th century. So, yeah, I'll go for Edward Hicks.

How did. He was a Quaker.

Yeah, he was a Quaker, but he drew this one picture.

What's interesting is that the pictures are all the same scene, but they're subtly different according to the factions that were going on within the Quaker movement at the time. So it's a fascinating kind of study. I like that. I like that kind of thing.

That just mystifies me. I didn't know there were Quaker artists. That's like saying that there are Amish rappers.

Well, he was. Well, this is the thing. He was a signwriter, but then he was doing more painting and actually he.

He had a lot of criticism because he wanted to do more painting. But there's one picture of that scene from Isaiah he painted over 100 times. There's still about 30 in existence. So there you go.

That's something to go and some homework to go and look at.

Yeah, I'm actually going to check that out. Now let's. How about, how about go to another form of art? Let's go to a movies. If your life were a movie, what would the title of it be and why?

Well, Dr. Strange, obviously I wasn't going to say.

It because I feel like everybody says that to you. I mean, how many times does that send you? All the time. Like even what I saw and I.

Was like, here's the funny thing. Yeah, so I am a Dr. Strange. My middle name is Stephen, which is deep. But here's the, here's the really fun. Well also my wife, she's a doctor.

There's two doctor Stranges. The most amazing thing is, as I'll say in my bio, my dad came from South America, Guyana, the country at the top of South America.

And his name was Prashad. He wasn't, he chose the name Strange when he came to the uk. So that's the weird fact that actually I wasn't my dad's maiden name.

My dad's name was christened. He wasn't Strange at all. So he chose the name Strange, which is itself a strange phenomenon. Beat that facts. There you go.

Your family came from Guyana?

Guyana, yeah, my dad did, yeah.

Wow. Where was your mom from?

She was from the uk.

Okay.

Yeah. So my grand, grand.

I mean we'll get into this but my grandparents were my, on my dad's side were both Hindu believers which would have been indentures, work indentured workers from India brought up by the British to Guyana because it was a British republic until the middle of the 20th century.

Well then that's a perfect segue into. Let's hear your biography.

I've seen it up for you brother. You now hit it.

So your grandparents were Hindu?

Yeah, yeah, on my dad's side, yeah, yeah. So yeah, so my dad came from Guyana, one of 10. And they all left the country over the years.

In fact quite a few of them ended up in Toronto, some in New York. My dad came to the uk, wasn't, wasn't a believer. Met my mum and my mum was kind of, you know, she is, she's a kind of high church Anglican.

Got married, wasn't a church that had any kids, work. So we ended up going to the local Baptist church about an hour southeast of London. That's where I come from. You probably tell by my accent.

Got converted through the church there and then wanted to, was very interested in studying theology. So I did a. I was a missionary volunteer for a year in Italy but then I went to a secular kind of mainstream university.

And did a very liberal theology and religious studies degree as, as a, as an evangelical. I knew what that was then and it was, yeah, it was a terrible kind of very difficult for an evangelical to be studying there.

Lots of liberalism and it was, it was very hard. And we had some famous pluralist theologians who believe that all religions lead to God.

And yeah, it was a great kind of training ground, but hard and then, But I love studying so I stayed on to do a PhD there on what happens to people who never hear the gospel. That, that was my PhD. I'm looking at a particular evangelical guy called Clark Pinnock who some of you may have heard of.

He was in the 80s and 90s and the openness of God debate, but he was writing a lot on other religions.

So I did my PhD there with a guy, a Roman Catholic supervisor who, Gavin da Costa, who's probably, he's probably still the, the world authority on kind of Christian approaches to other religions. So I did that and then I did five years just working with theology students for the equivalent of InterVarsity in the UK.

So I'd go up and down the country and try and encourage evangelicals who had chosen to study theology in a, a kind of a less biblical environment.

And then, yeah, I got a call to go and teach at Oak Hill Theological College, which is a mixed denomination Reformed seminary in a small seminary in, in London. So I was there for 16 years as a lecturer in culture and religion and public theology.

And then I, and then I was, I basically was involved in more and more leadership. So I became the director there.

And then a couple of years ago at Oak Hill we started an in context theological training provider provision with apps 29 called Crossland. So now I'm the director of something called Crossland Forum, which is a center for cultural engagement and innovation.

I mean, a bit like a Polish water really.

I've been there for 18 months and we've moved now to the north of the country and we do all kinds of kind of study, study groups, reading groups, research, short courses. I'm on the faculty at Southeastern Seminary in the States. I'm a fellow for the Keller Center. That's been in the news a little bit recently.

Yeah, and other things as well. So yeah, it's a more kind of. It's a more dispersed ministry now.

Yeah, Married to Ellie, we've got seven kids and a little foster daughter and I'm an elder, a little evangelical church in the north of England. So there you go. There's a potted history then.

How old is Your oldest child?

My oldest is 26 and my, my youngest, my, my youngest is 9. And then we have a 2 year old who we've been looking after for 6 months.

And what's, what's your wife's doctorate in?

She's a psychologist. So yeah, I mean, again, you know, the jokes can come with a psychologist. Dr. Strange. It's amazing how she didn't get much business. No. Yeah. So, yeah.

So, yeah. So we, we've made a big transition from kind of more seminary leadership and teaching through to doing more of this kind of engaging churches.

So Crosslands exists to kind of help churches think theologically and culturally about the situation they're in from discipleship through to PhD. So, yeah, enjoying that new ministry. And one of the benefits is being able to do things like this.

Well, that's one of the benefits of what we're doing, is to interact with people like you.

And now I'm going to write down that I'm going to come and visit because I want to learn more about what you're doing because I think it's awesome and that's why I loved your book.

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Our friends at the Good Book Publishing Company told us about the book, said, hey, I have a book I want to send you. I'd not heard of you. I had just kind of taken the book because I get a lot of books and I put it on the shelf and then something came up.

I Don't remember what it was. And I went, I need to read this book just recently. And I started to read it and I went, I want to talk to you because I love this book.

I mean, there's some books that I get a hold of that I enjoy. And we have a lot of authors on this show, but I don't think this book probably more than any other book that we've interacted with, and my.

Editor'S going to kill me for saying.

This, but connects to a lot what we're trying to do as a ministry. So you actually provided a path forward. But talk about the book for a moment.

Let's talk about how did this book or why did this book need to be written? I have my own reasons why I think it needed to be written, but I want to hear your reasons why you wanted to write this book.

This is a long. So I did a more academic book for Zondervan about eight or nine years ago called their Rocky's not as Our Rock, A Christian Theology of Religion.

So what does. How does Christianity understand what might be called other religions?

And the model that I use there for in cultural engagement is we'll probably talk about it a bit later on is this idea of subversive fulfillment. So the idea that the gospel both confronts and connects with culture at the same time.

And a lot of that was in that area was in missiology, dealing with world religions. How does Christianity engage with Hindu, Islam, Buddhism, etc, etc?

So I've done a lot of work there and then increasingly at seminary, I was trying to teach culture and apologetics to a kind of a Western, post Christendom kind of context where we are. And I just realized that the same theology, the same anthropology that I.

That we were engaging other religions is exactly the same theology and anthropology that we need to be engaging with all human beings in the west and that we need that kind of missionary mindset, cross cultural mindset. And so the tools, some of the. I mean, I'm sitting on this book. I'm sitting on the shoulders of one giant in particular, who's a guy called J.H.

bavink. So you might have heard of the theologian Herman Bavink, who was a very famous kind of systematician. Well, this is his nephew J.H.

I mean, in terms of just a prophetic way of having the Bible in one hand, understanding the culture in the other hand. And so Making faith magnetic is really a kind of a recontextualization of Babinck's tools called the magnetic points. And the purpose is to try.

How do we get traction in the west, especially increasingly, with people who not just are offended by our faith, but actually can't be bothered? They're just living their lives. They're just. They're not. They wouldn't call themselves religious.

They're the religious nuns, I suppose you'd call them, which increasingly is how American Christianity, but much more in the uk, is defining itself. But so the book is trying to lay a biblical framework to say there's always a point of contact.

And these magnetic points, which we can talk about, are a framework for us to get traction, to be able to show how Jesus is the subversive fulfillment of their hopes and desires in a way that is evangelistic, apologetic, culturally critiquing, but also being constructive as well.

So originally the book was courses that I was teaching on evangelism and apologetics, although I hope you realize at the end of the book, there's a big point on discipleship there, about how our evangelism needs to flow from our discipleship. But it's all about how do we understand the world through the Word? And this is a particular framework for doing that.

So that's how the book came to be.

I'm laughing because I don't think I've ever had someone. You just crawled around and answered all my. Like, asked all the questions. Like, I was like. I had Bavink in there.

I had the framework, the mental idea. I mean, even the subversive fulfillment.

Yeah, it's fine. I can inflate more on all of these things.

No, no, no, no, no. I mean, I want you to. But again, I am. I'm so excited.

Maybe I've had too much caffeine, but when you talk about subversive fulfillment, one of the things that we've talked about is that the Gospel affirms something in.

Every culture and it confronts something in every culture.

And we. I never heard that term, though, subversive fulfillment. So this shows my. So explain that.

Yeah, so I suppose the good thing for me in some ways is that Tim Keller's picked it up and talks about it a lot in terms of a model for cultural engagement. So the actual. The term is a mind. So there's a.

But maybe Hinduism and Buddhism, maybe they're kind of, maybe Jesus fulfills those other religions. And Hendrik Kramer says, look, I don't like this term fulfillment. Jesus presents something completely different.

But if you want to talk about fulfillment, you might call Christ as the subversive fulfillment of every culture or every religion. And I think that it's a very helpful way. And again, in the book that the key passage, I think, if it's.

If it's worth explaining this just for a minute, Travis, is 1 Corinthians 1, where the recognition that the gospel at some level always caused it is an offense. What we think is wise, God thinks is foolish and vice versa. So there's always a confrontational Jesus.

You know, the cross of Christ, Christ crucified is a big that no to the world's ways of doing things. And I think that that's really important. There's always a line of pain we have to cross when we're calling people to repentance and faith.

But in that passage in 1 Corinthians 1, Paul still talks about two different ethnic groups, Jews and Greeks. Both of those groups have their own hopes, dreams, desires. Jews look for power. Greeks look for wisdom.

Now, it could be that Paul could have just said, we preach Christ crucified. And I don't care what anyone else thinks. Who cares what Jews think? Who cares that we listen to the culture? Who cares what Greeks think?

But Paul makes the connection. So in that passage, Christ crucified is a stumbling block to Jews and Greeks, but to those who have been saved, to both Jews and Greeks.

Here's how he finishes it. Isn't it Christ, the power of God and the wisdom of God. Now we think, wow, this is a kind. Is this a felt needs gospel?

You mean Jews are looking for power and Christ is power. Greeks are looking for wisdom and Christ is wisdom?

Yes, in precisely the opposite subversive way that they thought power and wisdom would be displayed. A crucified Messiah is not powerful. A crucified Messiah is not wise. And yet Paul still makes the connection.

So again, going back to that passage in Acts 17, Paul wanders around the objects of worship.

So subversive fulfillment is saying, there will always be a confrontational aspect as we ask people to proclaim to people to turn from idols to the living God. 1 Thessalonians.

But there's always a connection point where we have to engage the Culture, listen to the culture, understand its hopes, dreams, fears, and engage at that level. And I think 1 Corinthians 1 and Acts 17 give a great model.

And again, the book, the little book I did previously to Making Faith Magnetic, called Plugged in, talks about that kind of framework, a little bit more about the importance of that. So that's what subversive fulfillment is.

It's saying that the gospel connects with culture or religion in a way that both confronts and connects at the same time. And you will know. And this is generalized. But it's true of American evangelicalism and the same as UK Evangelicalism.

Some groups are great at the confrontation and not very good at the connection. Some groups are great at the connection, but they're not very good at the confrontation.

And that's where that model that I think we see modeled throughout Scripture in terms of subversion and fulfillment is that model that I'm kind of trying to explore in that phrase, subversive fulfillment.

Okay, we said then the magnetic points, even the fact that you call them magnetic points, let's start with that. Why did you call them magnetic points?

Yeah. So J.H. bavink is a missionary in Indonesia. He's dealing with all kinds of faiths.

And he says, look, other religions are saying different things, but there seems to be a commonality. People seem to ask the same kinds of questions or they wrestle with the same kinds of issues. And he calls them magnetic points.

He says that they're points to which all humans are drawn. It's not that they consciously think about them, but the way they live their lives are expressions of answering those points. And he.

And what's interesting is he ties these magnetic points back to Romans 1:20, where Paul says, God has revealed his invisible qualities, his eternal power and divine nature. And Bhavik kind of expounds that and says there's a sense in which before the fall, we all knew that we were dependent upon God.

We all knew that we were accountable to God. After the fall, we still know at some level we are creatures dependent upon something or someone, or that we are accountable to something or someone.

But it. So that religiosity, as Paul says in Acts, you know, I see you're very religious, has to come out somewhere.

And my argument is it doesn't simply come out in what we would traditionally call religion. It comes out in just in our humanity, even for people who don't call themselves religious.

So the magnetic point, what I tried to do, making faith magnetic is babinc applies these magnetic points and we'll come to what they actually are in a minute.

I just kind of transposed them or translated them to deal with your average secular western person to say they're as religious, they're answering the magnetic points in very non traditional religious ways, but they're still answering the points. And that's our point of contact. They are as religious as we are, as anyone is.

And so the magnetic points are these perspectives, these questions, five questions that all human beings have to deal with that they live out in their lives.

Well, let's get to the questions then. And if I remember correctly, I want to make sure I get these right.

You have totality, a way to connect norm, a way to live, deliverance, a way out, destiny, a way to control and a higher power away beyond. So you give this illustration though, that.

Kind of sets the stage for this.

Which I actually thought was really interesting. When you talk about the film of the climber.

Oh yeah, yeah. So Alex Honnold, an American climber who did this amazing film called Free Solo where he climbs El Capitan in Yosemite park without anything.

He's an amazing guy.

I don't know if amazing is the word I would use.

I didn't know anything about climbing, but I made my faculty and then all my family watch it about three times. But in every climb, as you make people name, there's pitch. So climb's made up of pitches, different stages of the climb.

And there's this bit in of El Capitan called Freebalast where it looks literally as if Alex Honnold climbing glass. And it's only as the camera zooms in that you see these tiny little cracks and nubs that he's holding onto creatively to climb up.

And my point is that I think it feels at the moment for many of us in the west, as we try to talk to people about Christ, it feels as if we're just slipping down glass. Where do we get a hold of something, where do we get purchase?

And I think the Alex Honnold thing is interesting because he's able to get traction creatively.

But the problem, and this is where the analogy kind of works and doesn't work, is that free climbing, there's A bit in the film where basically a number of his friends have died because they've just fallen down. So what we're looking to do as Christians is to get traction. But we want to be tethered, we need to be tethered.

And of course, for those of us who are, you know, evangelical Christians, that has to be tethered by God's Word. I mean, there's no point in getting traction if we're. If we're not secured by what is. What does, what does the Word say about human beings?

What does the Word say about how we connect all of these things? So there's a. As a theologian, there's great method in starting with, well, what does the Bible say about human beings?

And actually that's amazingly relevant because, you know, the analysis of Bavink is, let's go to those passages in Romans 1, which shows that everyone, people do know God. They suppress the truth, they substitute it. But that religiosity has to come out somewhere in everyone.

And as I'd like to say, you know, if you're non Christian friends and family, if they're human beings, then they will be expressing these magnetic points, but in very non traditional ways.

So that's where the traction bit comes in, because we should be able to connect with any point of a person's life, however much they say, don't talk to me about God, don't talk to me about Christ, don't talk to me about the Bible, don't, I'm not coming to church. Their lives are expressions. They're answering these magnetic points because they're human beings.

And that's where we have an opportunity to get the traction that we need. I don't know which way I'm heading, but I'm just trying to get back home.

It's been a while since I've been there, but I can still feel the fire As I wrestle through, through these timbers I find my heart darkened.

So let's delve into the different points. And I have to say, I have never seen anyone position or describe this the way that you have. The first point, I even saw it, I went, totality. What.

What is he talking about there? The totality. And then you delved into it and I was like, oh. Then I was getting all excited. My pen went crazy.

Like, I mean, even if you look at it, it's like I've just like, I. It's all the notes. Look at all that.

I mean, I'm just taking notes all over the place because I was sitting there going, I have never had anyone describe it this way, ever. I mean, well, now that I know Babik and you stole everything from him.

I'm going to go.

And again, I think the key thing, Travis, is that, again, this is not a. It's very important for me as a. As a theologian is this is not an alien framework imposed upon culture or the Bible.

I think this naturally comes out of what the Bible teaches about human beings. But it is a. It's a very helpful framework. Yeah.

So totality is this question of connection is this idea that we know at some level that we need to connect with something bigger than ourselves. And when we don't do that, we feel insignificant as human beings. Who are we? We're just specs in the universe.

But when we connect with something, someone, some cause, we suddenly feel significant. And so this. This idea of connection is really important.

And I think when we start thinking about what are the ways in which we look for connection and identity. I suppose another way of putting it in.

In our modern post Christendom context, they're some of the examples that I want to give whether it's finding the one person in a romantic relationship who will complete me in the Jerry Maguire sense or whether it's. I mean, I gave this example in.

So this idea of connection, and in the book, it's just looking at what are the ways in. Think creatively about what are the ways in which people look. Are looking for connection. Where do they find that?

It could be a sports team, it could be a particular group, an LGBTQ community, It could be Comic Con. It could be a family tree. You know, why are we interested in family trees? Because we feel so rootless.

But if we know that we've been rooted to something else, so we're constantly scratch itch, scratching that itch of connection. We're looking for connection. And the question is, you know, am I insignificant or significant? So that's the first magnetic point totality.

Is that why so many people had such a difficult time in the lockdown? Do you think that they couldn't find that connection? And that Transcendence.

Yeah. And. And I think. I think it's interesting.

I think lockdown did recover a little bit the need that we are social animals, even if you put it in a very kind of secular setting. Yeah. And that we are embodied and that we need some kind of connection. And I think those things are very important.

Now the question is, how do we, you know, are the. Are the ways in which we are looking for connection? Do they give us the connection that we're looking for? And again, we'll come on to.

The answer to that is no. But again, it's that reaching out. It's that yearning for connection and significance. The point tries to. To illustrate.

Well, that's the idea again, of the subversive fulfillment. Right. There's this idea that the totality. That's the thing that the Bible would affirm. It wants to offer the totality.

Exactly. So, yeah.

So with all of the points, as you go through, I suppose one of the original bits of the book is taking this subversive fulfillment idea and applying it to the magnetic points to say all of these magnetic points can only be. Are subversively fulfilled in the gospel, in. In. In the person and work of Christ. Do you want me to just say something about the other points as well?

Go for it.

Norm is the second point. And it's this idea that, is there a way to live? We all have rules that we live by. Now, I'm not here just talking about the Ten Commandments.

I'm talking about any kind of rule that we have or norm that tells us there's a standard that we have to meet. So in the book, a friend of mine walked into a shop. The lady asked the shop owner, are your straws paper or plastic? The lady said, paper.

And the person said, oh, I'm so glad I can drink here. So for them, the norm is you need to have paper straws so I can drink here. Why did. Why was there so much confusion or interpretation over whether.

Yeah, when Will Smith slapped Chris Rock, the problem there was everyone disagreed on the norm as to whether that was a good thing, a chivalrous thing, a bad thing, a terrible thing, a wonderful thing? Because the norms are completely different. And even subcultures that try to go against the normal norm have their own rules.

So in the book, I talk about goths. A friend of mine was a goth, and apparently they have their own rules. They have to not conform in the same way. So norm is this idea.

We all have standards, but where do those standards come from? And what happens when we Fail them.

Which then leads on to the third magnetic point, which is deliverance, which is the idea that we know that there's something wrong with the world, but what's the answer to be delivered from it? And again, the problem is people can't agree on what the problem is, let alone what the solution is. And that's just not a looking.

That's not just looking forward. That's a looking back to a time when in your context, you know, America was better then. It's a kind of. It can be very seen.

Deliverance can be seen in nostalgia. If only we could go back to there.

Then you can talk about deliverance at a big level in terms of we all struggle with the issue of death or what's going to happen when we die. And lots of people, again, Covid brought that up in terms of people talking about that.

But deliverance is also talking about mini deliverances for normal people. You know, how do I get through the day without another drink? How do I get to the end of the week?

And the deliverance for me is partying on the weekend. There's this idea that the world isn't as it should be and what's the way? What's the solution to that? And then the fourth magnetic point is destiny.

And this is my kind of favorite magnetic point. Babin has this great line. He says we both lead our lives and undergo our lives at the same time.

So destiny is this idea that on Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, I think I'm the master of my own destiny. I can do it. No one's going to tell me what to do. I'm free Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday. I'm just a pawn in someone else's chess game.

I'm a puppet on a string. I've got no agency. And Bavik says we kind of like flip flop between these two views.

And again, you can have that at a very philosophical level, but also at a very mundane level. In the book I talk about superstition and people have lots of superstitions because we want to know that there is some kind of control.

But at the same time we still want to do what we want to do. And I mean, recently I think this has come home to me, especially talking with students.

And this has resonated a bit when I've done stuff in the States.

So for example, I spoke to a group of students here, these are very, you know, very secular, non Christian students here and spoke some Christians who were talking about their friends on a university mission.

And the first thing they were dealing with the students, there's this big rage called manifesting, where people literally think they can bring reality into existence by just thinking about it.

So a friend of the friend of this friend had said they wanted a boyfriend that week, and they'd manifested using crystals and a boyfriend had appeared. So it's literally you can determine reality.

But then the students in the campus I was working at were also dealing with this terrible spate of injection spiking. So some students had died, like date rape drugs and all. A lot of the students were boycotting the nightclubs because they were in fear.

So you've got this kind of, you know, we've got no control, but then we're thinking that we can manifest reality. It's that kind of dissonance.

And then I think the third thing, which was really telling, and again, I think the point I'm making here isn't that the big mental illness crisis that we're facing in the uk, especially amongst students, this doesn't completely explain it, but I think it says something a lot of students have said to me. We've been told from an early age that we were the generation that had to change things. You know, the parents got it wrong. This is your chance.

You need to, you know, you need to make things different, whether that's dealing with the environment or social issues or whatever. And they've been told, this is your expectation, you need to change it. You can change it.

And then these students get to university and college and they realize in the first few weeks, we can't change anything. And the kind of the disillusionment and the despondency, I think is really hard because they've been told you can change the world.

And then they realize, I can't even pay for my courses. I've got no agency. The man is in control.

It's interesting though, Travis, I did some of this material in Pittsburgh where I hadn't realized that Pittsburgh has a lot of these kind of high tech, you know, Ivy League people who don't do medical research. And I was talking to a professor at a church there. He said, yeah, I think that's true of a lot of students.

The people, the students that he deals with literally could change the world, but they're paralyzed then just because they could, should they? So it kind of works both ways. And I think different cultures and different countries have different ways of dealing with destiny.

You know, I think in the America, you know, part of the American dream, if I may say, is it is one of the. The frontier. It's pushing Forward. It's. We can. You know, it's the kind of. Almost the Manifest Destiny kind of idea.

Whereas I've spoken in other cultures in context where they're countries that have been often historically occupied by other people. And it's a very different attitude spirit. We're always the last. We're always the little runts. We're always.

And I think those are important apologetically, as we're trying to understand wandering around the objects of worship, what's the psyche of a country? And I think, you know, it's interesting, in England, we've been going through an identity crisis for a long time. What does it mean to be English?

I just wonder in my lifetime, I think America is going through an identity crisis that it hasn't had in my understanding, because 30 years ago, I think people understood what it meant to be an American. And now, because of all the things that have happened, you're starting to question that a bit more, which is where this destiny point comes in.

And then, sorry, the final magnetic point is higher power. And it's not simply, do people believe in God or not?

Because I think in our kind of secular context, it's recognizing that there's been 2,000 years of Christian influence in the west anyway. But it's what I call secularized experience is, you know, was John Lennon right when he said in Imagine above us is only sky?

Or is there something out there, not necessarily God, as we would understand God, but do we believe that there's something beyond?

And so this idea of secularized religious experience or spirituality, I suppose, I mean, in the brilliant book that was written since my book, Farah, Isabella Burton's book called Strange Rights, she talks about this category called the nuns, which a lot of Americans would identify as increasingly, they don't have any, but a lot of those nuns would still say they are spiritual. And they're what she calls their kind of remixed religious who believe in something they're not atheists, but they can't.

You know, it's some kind of spirituality. And I think the higher power, as we talk about connection and norm and deliverance and destiny, we start to ask those questions.

And I think that's the big difference between our context and Bavinc's context. You know, when Bavik's In Indonesia, everyone believes in a higher power.

The question is, what is the God or gods or pantheon of gods that can give connection, norm, deliverance, destiny? In our context, increasingly, the higher power is the thing that we need to excavate because people aren't thinking about Is there a God?

But the way that they're answering the questions of connection, norm, deliverance and destiny, that gets that always pushes to that question, well, what is it or who is it that connects us? Where do my norms come from? Who can deliver us? Is it going to be someone outside, or is it myself who is in control? Is it fate?

Is there some power that's making me do things, or do I have freedom? And that's where you push in to ask that question of the Way beyond. So all of those magnetic points don't compartmentalize them.

They're all kind of aspects on the one person.

But I think they're helpful as a kind of their tools or a framework or a scaffold, was to try and get this traction with people who ordinarily would say, don't give me your Jesus or Christianity. I'm not interested, I'm not interested.

But we need to help them to see that they are living very religious lives in the way they answer these questions.

Two big ideas that I want you to take away from the first part of this conversation. First two words, subversive fulfillment. Allow me to say that again. Subversive fulfillment. This idea is really, really, really important.

The idea that in Christ, God fulfills our desires and dreams, but never in the way we expect humanly. This is crucial for us to understand. Daniel's First Corinthians, one illustration is absolutely crucial. The Jews wanted power. Why?

Because they didn't have any. The Greeks wanted wisdom. It was a cultural value. This is the land of Plato and Aristotle. But they recognized a lack.

And Paul shows that God answers both desires in one person, but not in a way that either group would have come up with on their own. Daniel talked about the gospel connecting and confronting at the same time. We love that we do.

We talk about this on the show all the time because we believe that the Gospel affirms something in every single culture. That's the bridge that he wants to. To cross. But he also challenges something.

There is a cultural idolatry at work, and it's up to us to figure out what that is within the people that we're talking to. This is really at the heart of subversive fulfillment.

Second, and I guess, sort of third, Daniel got his idea for the magnetic points from a missionary, a guy who went to Indonesia and realized even though the culture was very different, the language, the food, the gods, the things that were valued, at least on the surface, were very different. But there were underlying questions, issues, real life concerns that transcended the difference because we are all human, all created.

Every single person on this earth is created in the image of God. The imago dei. And that missionary mindset is crucial for us today.

Seriously, I think that the church has lost its missionary identity and has become this institutional industrial complex where it's maintain and let's stay in the status quo. And Sunday morning becomes a performance where we all show up and gaze at the stars and then pull back and ask what we got out of the service today.

That is not what God calls us to. He calls us to a missionary identity. We all are called to that, to confront the culture with the reality of the gospel. That's what we're to do.

And I love the fact that he brings this missionary in and that missionary mindset is crucial for us today. That's what Daniel's book ultimately brings to bear. And the five questions we all ask.

Ready?

Here they go. Totality. How do I connect norms? How should I live? Deliverance? What is the way out? Destiny? Can we control our lives? And higher power?

Is there a way beyond? Today's world increasingly doesn't ask these questions, at least not out loud and not in public, for sure.

And it also doesn't realize that these are the things that we are all living for. We just don't talk about it. We just keep going on and take pictures of it and send it to everybody else.

And this is true, unfortunately, even of the Christian church today.

But we start asking them, when we help others see these commonalities, we are opening up the possibility for Christ to subversively fulfill their desires and dreams. Of course, there's a lot more to it than that.

But if you get nothing else out of this episode today, I want you to take that away from this part of the conversation. And I cannot recommend this book enough to you. I mean, there's a lot of books that we recommend on this show, right?

Because I interview authors a lot and many of them have something to them and some have even said, hey, you don't need to buy my book. You don't need to buy my book. But this is a book that I think is easy to read.

It's quick, understandable, and it's something that you can easily grab a hold of. Go get a copy today. It is worth your time.

Next time, we continue the conversation looking at what it means to understand, absorb and ask these questions in the world today. But what questions do you have from this episode? What would you like to hear more about and want to know more about?

Well, don't hesitate to contact us, simply contact me@travispolloswatered.org or connect with us through one of our online platforms, Facebook, Instagram, or our YouTube page, where you can watch this conversation and many of our other conversations. And please be sure to subscribe to it. Why? Because it makes us feel better about ourselves.

I want to thank our Apollos water team for watering the world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollos Watered. Stay watered.

Everybody.

Sa.