MENTIONS
Books – https://www.ivpress.com/steven-garber
Václav Havel – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A1clav_Havel
Trippin’ Billies – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQN_eiTAdrs
Terrence Malick, A Hidden Life – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Hidden_Life_(2019_film)
J.R.R. Tolkien, Leaf by Niggle – http://www.ae-lib.org.ua/texts-c/tolkien__leaf_by_niggle__en.htm
Elevation Burger – https://www.elevationburger.com/
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
John Van Sloten – https://curreyblandford.com/john-toward-a-theology-of-hustle/
Jake Meador – https://curreyblandford.com/jake-meador/
TRANSCRIPT
Currey (Intro) – What is going on? Everybody, welcome to a theology of hustler. I’m your host Currey Blandford. And today I’m talking to Steve Garber. So, uh, Steve is the, uh, professor of marketplace theology and the director of the program in leadership, theology and society at Regent college in Vancouver, BC, which sounds awesome. Like those are some great titles, but, uh, but Steve is just like the most down to earth guy that I’ve talked to in like a long time. He just, he’s the sort of just this calming presence. And you, you feel that in this interview, uh, Steve has been thinking about and working on this theology of vocation for such a long time. And this interview is so just packed full of just amazing insight into this topic. This is, this is the interview where we really just like, we delve into the, I don’t know, the, the intangible parts of this whole discussion and we just, we just talk in depth about what this means. But like, practically, not unlike a really heady way, but just in real practical terms. And so I think you’re gonna love this episode. Uh, the reason I got him is because he has this book called the seamless life. And it’s, it’s about all these things where there’s no, you know, seems, there’s no, uh, different parts of you, I guess you could say. And so this book though, uh, is written in a very different format. It’s, it’s sort of like shorter essays all brought together and just like, I thought I would sort of tear through it. Like it’s sort of a small book and it took me so long to get through this book cause each essay just sorta needed to be digested and just like worked through. And so I highly encourage you to, to pick it up. It’s one that you can kinda, you can read, you know, for five or 10 minutes and just have like a lot of processing time off of that. , he also has a, a couple of other books, one’s called visions of vocation. And I just encourage you to check all of those books out, especially on this topic. I mean, Steve has done some serious work, some serious, uh, processing, some serious contemplation. He, yeah, he’s talked to a lot of people about this topic. So I just encourage you to check his stuff out. Uh, if you want to make sure and stay up to date with theology of hustle, make sure you’re following me on Instagram and Facebook at theology of hustle and on Twitter at Currey Blandford you can keep up with the, the happenings with the, the podcast and uh, yeah, I hope you’re staying safe out there. I hope you enjoy, uh, maybe share this episode with some of your friends just so they can, you know, check out theology of hustle. Especially right now we have a little extra time on our hands with the pandemic and all, so, uh, feel free to, to share away and maybe encourage somebody else in their vocation. Thank you through the vocation, even in a, in a time like this. I think it’s a good time to be thinking through some of that stuff. And so I hope you enjoy this episode with Steve.
Currey – All right, well, Steve, I can’t say thanks enough for making some time for me to come on the podcast and chat a little bit.
Steven Garber – It’s a good gift to be with you Currey. Thank you.
Currey – I love it. Uh, let’s just, uh, jp off here to start off and just have you sort of introduce yourself to everybody. So my name is Steven Garber and I’m married to Meg, who’s a good woman. She still loves me and that’s the great gift of my life. , we have five adult children and about 10 grandchildren and they’re scattered across the U S I was born in Colorado, in the mountains of Colorado and grew up in California and thought that the West was the world for the first 20 years of my life. I didn’t really want any other world. I didn’t imagine the other world. All the movies and TV and my growing up years were sentenced, I think California and look normal to me. , and uh, and I first had my experience with pointed the East and thinking I don’t like hidity at all. Really. , I like to be cold like that either, you know, and, and that kind of way. But we lived in Virginia for 30 years and I’ve been teaching for my whole life in different cancers, capacities. Speaker 3 04:16 And uh, along the way I got involved with the Lilly endowments, , after many years working for the council for Christian colleges and universities, first as a professor and then as scholar and residence. Uh, so in some ways getting involved, involved with, I know you’re a Wheaton grad and , being involved with Wieden’s, speaking to the faculty there several times, the students going all the way across the country from Gordon college to Viola, best months point Loma Nazarene and redone Calvin and covenant and Geneva and all the schools in between actually did that for a long time. In many ways, I had this sort of deeper sense of calling to give myself to rethinking how learning ought to be seen in the world. The law, the endowment will be into a wonderful project, a great generous grant they created called the programs in the theological exploration of vocation. And in some ways that was there a turning point in my own lives. They said, we see your name on how this money is being used. I gave $2 million grants to 90 schools across the country, all with ecclesial, uh, histories. So Baylor, the good Baptist school got $2 million. And so the Calvin, the good reforms still got too many dollars in Notre Dame. The Catholic swept too many dollars and Davidson and Duke and wake forest and 90 schools all across the country go within Wesleyan Calvinist, Anabaptist Catholic traditions. What does vocation mean that in the light of your own tradition? I asked them why I should get involved. They said, well, we see your name on how the money’s being used. I began to in some ways become more self conscious or what I had been doing. I, they said, we think about you as a public teacher with a, somebody who has a classroom across the country. And I began kind of thinking, is that what I’ve been doing? Then the last several years of my life. Wow. And you know, I began to write about these things and people began to come back to me with what they were reading. And what I’ve been writing about it. And, , I would say if there’s a deeper, longer sense of vocation in the work I’ve done, Korea has been, uh, the concern to understand what, what is it that is required to sustain a sense of location over the course of a lifetime. Yeah. My PhD work was about that many years ago. And , and then things are written in the years since then. Have all been some ways sort of has, it hasn’t once, you know, said so wisely. Kevin see children in Narnia is further up and further in. , and so I think in many ways my life has been a further up and further in to that question for a long time. Wow. The visions of vocation book, you know, which, , against the, of Wheaton kind of a guy. And it was chosen by Wheaton as a book to be read by all the students a few years ago. And I didn’t realize that. That’s cool. I love that. But the question of the book was, can you know the world and still loves the world? And what I had come to think about it was that people who actually keep on keeping on are always people who in some ways grow up enough in the world to see that through the eyes of their hearts that it’s a messy, broken, wounded world, you know, and, and living long enough in that you get when did your self actually, yeah. And then what are you going to do with that? And my argent in the book was that historically going back literally thousands of years, han beings are decided either to be cynics on the one hand or Stoics on the other hand, and both are ways to mint and they’re different kinds of ways to suppress what you know to be true in Romans one language. Because you don’t want to have to deal with the meaning of what, you know, the weight of what you know. But if we are to imitate Christ in our own vocations, we have to figure out to be a way to be like God himself. How do you know the world still love the world? Whether it’s in the world of politics or the arts or education or economics or business or you know, on and on and on. How do you actually know what’s going on in the world, honestly, and still choose to enter the end with the vocation God has given you. Wow. Yeah. So those are the things I think about all the time already. All the time actually. And for the last few years I’ve been teaching at Regent college in Vancouver, BC, a professor of marketplace theology. And I also direct a master’s program in leadership, theology and society.
Currey – So yeah, so you do a couple things. Uh, you have, , okay, so I don’t even know where to start, eh, you even in that, you said so many good things. , let’s start here in your book. I found it very interesting, uh, the seamless life, which we are w we’ll talk about sort of throughout this interview. You talk about, uh, are you have a firm distinction between vocation and occupation that you come back to over and over again. Can you talk a little bit about
Steven Garber – just given who I am and of course it’s distinct and unique to me I suppose, but in some ways I think it’s a pretty han question for all of us. Everywhere, you know, whether they’re 23 year olds or 48 year olds or even older than that, people come to me Dave after day in some ways wrestling with the question, what am I going to do with my life? Right. And, , and I would say that over time I’ve, you know, began thinking through the relationship of the words, vocation, occupation, but then they’re deep. They’re deep differences too. Hmm. They sound a lot of like in some ways. And they are, they overlap each other I would say. But there are different words. Vocation to me is the longer, deeper story of my life. Your life, everyone’s life. It’s who I am that makes me distinct in the world and unique in the world. Speaker 3 10:03 It’s who I am and why I am. And , and it’s what makes me different than my brothers and my best friends and my wife. And that we can be close to each other by blood or by you know, heart, you know, we are different people feeling and that we’re distinct people. , things that I was truly when I was four were true or when I was 10, and we’re even true when I was 16 and we came true in a different way when I got to be 30. And, and that’s the story of me really. That wasn’t true of my big brother and my little brothers isn’t true of my sons and my daughters or my wife either. Really. , occupation is the word in my mind, which actually is best understood by seeing it in relation to the word occupy. So that over the course of life we occupy different relationships and responsibilities which can change. And most of us do change. We’re not, we’re no longer living in medieval Europe or medieval anywhere. Actually. We’re in some ways you were, you know, the son of or the daughter of and at age 14, 15, you were already in what you were going to be back fresh the rest of your life. Really. , and we don’t imagine the road that way anymore. And so for most of us, we imagine, well, I’ll be in grammar school and then high school and you know, then college or not and you know, and then beyond college and the rest of my life and then it may be in the next two or three, you know, 10 years I changed two or three different times doing where I live and what I’m doing and hopefully why you get to be more in the 30 something years you begin to settle in and sort out to clarify. And you know, maybe you’re going to be doing that for the next years of your life early, but you’re occupying in some ways a different set of relationships and responsibilities that grow out of the deepening clarifying sense of vocation. So that the challenge and the hope we have, I think is for continuity in our lives so that over time the vocation deepens. There’s a sense of this is actually, this is who I am actually and realizing an a now, but not yet world. None of us, none of us ever have a complete overlap between vocation, occupation, cause there’s always a dissonance. There’s always attention. And so for me, when I sitting at a Starbucks of the world with a napkin in front of me, you know, I’m drawing two circles, actually, one with the V in it, one with an O in it, and I’m overlapping them. But then I scribble between them and say, but you see there’s always some tension for everybody. Sometimes by grace there’s less tension, but everybody has some conflict, every suit as some sense of dissonance, I would say. And so for me, talking to people, I’m always trying to reassure them that you’re not alone in the tension you feel. Yeah.
Currey – Yeah. I think that’s a, it’s a profound thought. And I mean, makes me feel better about my life, honestly. You know, it’s like, yeah, they’re, yeah, I mean all that sort of really makes sense. So then I didn’t, I didn’t notice it in this book particularly, but then do you distinguish or what would you say about the word calling then? Top of all of that? Right.
Steven Garber – Good question. Korean, we could have a longer discussion about it someday, but literally the word, vocation and calling are the same words when I was a Greek word, when is a Latin word? So they’re really the very same words and it’s helpful, like most good words to ask about the etymology. Where did this word come from? You know, so for us to think about, you know, the word vocation, we realized that it’s related to the word Vox, which made it the word voice, right? And so the assption metaphysically, you know, in terms of the deepest beliefs we have about the universe is that there’s somebody speaking, you know, and that we had actually had the ability to respond to here. That voice being, that voice that’s being, you know, speaking out to us in the world. Hmm. So vocation is born out of Vox, uh, voice calling. Of course, even if you think about it, just like I’m be somebody, the word calling asses a color. So in some ways for, you know, the modern secularists just use the word calling some ways that are borrowing from a world that already believe in, right? Which is some ways has its own, you know, heartaches I suppose because in some way you want like everyone to have some sense of meaning and purpose to your life. One of my teachers has been pots, love hovel, the check to politician and playwright and he said he quite soberly, you know, in the years he was writing about these things in the modern world, would we lose God? We lose access to meaning and purpose and accountability and responsibility. And you can see if we take those words together, it really is what we might asse and want a vocation or a calling to be all about meaning purpose, accountability, responsibility. But Havo says not as a Christian really, but as I would say, more honest to me being saying, we say this, we argue for this. You see we have to give up talking about meaning, purpose, accountability, responsibility. So that’s a stark line in the sand, I would say.
Currey – Yeah, that’s good stuff. Speaking of hovel, uh, I didn’t, I had never heard of him until I, I read about him in the book. Can you explain, cause you talk about yourself being a student of his and you know for a long period of time and what’s that? Yeah. Can you explain about him a little bit? Sure. I can. So I mean I’ve always, I’ve always been drawn Clarita to people who don’t confess, you know, faith the gospel to be their own, the heart of their own commitments. But to who I would say more honestly, maybe more perceptively and willing to talk about it openly is easy in some ways, which we shouldn’t not stop. It shouldn’t stop doing to quit a Wheaton college professor who believes that God is God. And you know, that’s true to an important too. Of course, it is really, you know, it’s important that the, you know, the editor of IVP but actually believes God is there in the world. Speaker 3 15:58 I mean, on the streets in Chicago, here’s a little reference point for everybody, but you know, it’s different. And of course, when you think about somebody like hobble, who was celebrated globally for his political vision but didn’t do so, you know, because he was a notable Christian or because even so, I’m so basic Christian. , but he grew up in, you know, in Czechoslovakia, which was born out of heartache and political terror throughout the 20th century in 1938. , you know, basically the West gave Czechoslovakia to Hitler, uh, in a terrible, terrible, terrible move where Chamberlain flew back to England with these, you know, empty, you know, hollow words, peace in our time. But a year later, of course, Hitler had said, nananana, you know, with, with, with horror and as part, instead of taking the world actually. , and they began to try to do that. We call it world war II. And, , Czechoslovakia was really the innocent lamb, you know, given away by the West. And, uh, Pablo was born into that world. And, , people like Kafka, you know, a writer, you know, known for kind of hard to read books because it just sort of sort of fanciful and farcical and like absurd was the word, the absurdist literature. Hmm. , and people like kava grew up into that world and we’re trying to make sense of what it could be mean to be han being in that world. I could tell a lot more about him but, now in the 1960s, he was beginning to write plays, pushing back against the totalitarian weight of other, of communism having to come in and basically said, we’re going to rewrite your textbooks. Liter — — ally, you know, what you’ve thought about yourself. No longer will be, we’re going to rewrite the textbooks for Czechoslovakia in children and a handle for a moment in the sun. There was a called the problem spraying and 68, but then the tanks came in and you know, it all became burdensome and we raced them all over again and how those plays were going to push back against that in the 70s. And finally, was banned from Prague and, and put into prison eventually in the 80s. And I’m just summarizing the history very quickly here, but 89, when the communist dream began to implode globally, , Paavo was one of the leading voices in Czechoslovakia and was literally taken from prison and in a month became the president of this newly emerging Czechoslovakia and uh, and began giving speeches all over the world, Korea, which are astounding and amazing, huh? I was in the us Capitol, you know, in September, just walking through one evening. And I saw, you know, everywhere in every little corner there’s a U S he’s a politician of some sort be remembered. And in one surprising corner in a very visible place is a bust of hovel almost, you know, inexplicably because why all the people in the world where we choose to have in the U S Capitol building a lot of stuff, hovel in a designated place of honor, you know, in a, in our Capitol, except he began to give speeches all over the world and the U S Capitol essentially asking this question, what are the political conditions, what are the conditions required for han beings to be able to act responsibly in industry? And I have been while I walked through the streets of Prague on different occasions and just wanting to look at the balconies you spoke from and having a sense to breathe the air he breathed. And , I’ve been to Czechoslovakia several times to speak and was there again in the fall and the question entries, listen this past fall from check us out now Slovakian and check people cause they’ve broken apart us as a country. But the question was, you’ve been listening to us very carefully over the years. You watched us when you’ve been here before, you’ve talked as if you actually know our poets and playwrights and take an art history. Seriously, come back. This was an invitation last spring, but come back in the fall cause it’ll be the 30th anniversary of the velvet revolution, as I called it, velvet mean. And there were no tanks and machine guns this time. Communism really just, you know, gasped and then, you know, died. Uh, and, but 30 years later, our question is, what does vocation mean for the common good of our part of the world? Right? So I spent a few days this past fall with them again and being taken in one more time by the, their history and by their own hopes and wanting to say something meaningful to them and loving them more deeply and identifying with them in a strange way, in a way which has come to be a deeper part of my life. So that’s a little bit about Hovel.
Currey – That’s, that’s fascinating. I, yeah, again, there’s all these things that you know, in history and, uh, this amazing people that you just like don’t really know, uh, are out there, you know, so that’s cool. That’s awesome. Okay. , so in the, so when we, when you’ve introduced yourself and you were talking about, our interaction with the world, uh, as I’ve like done this podcast is, I’ve talked to people is that as I’ve learned more, , I’ve realized that for a lot of Christians, there’s a disconnect between, , the way that they, most of us interact with the world and then like the reality of, of what’s there in, in that, I mean that there’s this sense from a lot of Christians that sort of, it’s all gonna be burn, that the world is just, uh, evil in, in, in a lot of ways. And, , it colors the, our view of vocation as being sort of like, Mmm. Just trying to get to the end end times or whatever. Right. And just trying to get a get to the end, but uh, but you would put, would you push back on that sort of, of vision of, of what the world is all about?
Steven Garber – Well, of course I would, but in some ways I would never say it’s a cheap thing to do. So, because I would say all of us, many ways we stake our lives on a certain set of beliefs about the way the world is. I was teaching a class last night and was under underscoring, that’s in both the book of Isaiah and the letter to the Corinthians. We have the writers of those days listening to their own cultural moments and quoting for eternity, almost at least coating for the ages. Why not then just eat, drink and be Merry for tomorrow we die. Right. It’s interesting to hear the biblical, you know, writers quoting these words from their own moment in history. I realize as I would say it already, that, you know, in hovels terms or Nietzsche’s terms before him, if God is gone, let’s stop talking about meaning and morality. Wow. That was Nietzsche’s conclusion. , so here’s, you know, somehow and you know, thousands of years ago when Isaiah was listening to his own moment and speaking prophetically into it, into it, he’s quoting for us, you know, thousands of years later, why not then just eat, drink and be Merry for tomorrow. We die. Right. And have you Paul, you know, right into their church in Corinth and saying the same thing. Actually same thing actually. And I showed a little bit of trip and Billy’s by Dave Matthews band, I love it. He has exactly the same words. You know, if these, this is true about the world, then why not then just eat, drink, keep in mind for tomorrow we die. And I was playing out last night in class in relation to the ideas of meta-narrative and narrative and particularly I was sort of looking at through these films by Terrence Malick, the American filmmaker who’s some ways his films never make it to them long runs with the Cineplex is of the world because they required too much of us. I would say probably. Sure. We are amusing ourselves to death and heartache ways and America. And the world and his films just asked too much of us to be long runs at the local Cineplex. But most recently, the film I hadn’t, life is a story about one man and Austrian Alps and world war II years and Nazi-ism creeping in to dominate Europe and Austria. And he basically says, how could I ever Heil Hitler? I cannot do that. I don’t believe that his neighbors, his lawyer, his priest all say to him, come on, you know, nobody would ever know. All you’ll do of just say the words. And he says, I cannot do that. And the whole drama of the story is hinged on what he believes, what men meaning he has for his life. It’s a three hour story and actually Malik, you know, allows this man’s zone, this Austrian farmers’ own deeply held Christian convictions to be the heart of this protest. Fascinatingly, seven years ago, Malik produced a film called the tree of life. , and again, it’s, you know, it’s a story most of us probably wouldn’t give the time to because it isn’t very fond or no, it’s, it’s not about things that, excuse me, that we, uh, that we can even imagine. Speaker 3 24:44 But it’s really a story of the history of the universe. It’s a meta-narrative about the nature of the cosmos and Augustinian terms. It is the story of creation, fall, redemption and consummation. Now. Now it never names those as that, you know, if it gives you need for guidelines or footnotes to say, well here’s creation and here’s fall and here’s redemption, here’s conservation. But that’s a story he tells over the course of three hours. So what I was looking at last night was this relationship between meta-narrative and narrative and how whether we’re Hindus or Muslims or evolution, materialists or Christians, whatever we believe to be most true about the nature of the world. It shapes in some ways how we live in the world, right? And of course it’s obviously true. The other side as well, how we live in the world shapes the way we see the world. So they play back and forth on each other. So for me, this question of no, can we just say, well, the world is, you know, going to hell and it had back had a pen basket and you know, hold on. , uh, I just don’t see it that way. Uh, could say a thousand things. You’re cribbing maybe I would simply, you know, offer you the words of another teacher beyond hollow. But this is John Stott. You know, who said in my hearing and hearing that many people all over the world, you know, years ago, why would you blame the world for being in the world? Why wouldn’t you ask, why weren’t you the salt of the earth? Why weren’t you the light of the world? So why would you walk into a dark room and Kirsten for being dark? Why would you curse rotting meat for Rodney? Why haven’t you asked? So why wasn’t this the light — — turned on here? Why wasn’t this meat salted? Actually, how dare you? How dare the church blame the world for being in the world? We’ll start our argent and I’m not sure what else to think beyond that in some ways, but it’s held my heart together for a long time. Yeah. John’s dad always had a way of sort of striking at the heart of, of, of everything, didn’t he? Okay. Sure. Yeah.
Currey – That’s good stuff. So, so, uh, I love in a seamless life how much you sort of talk about your story and your background in your family history in Oh, that, can you talk just a little bit about where your view of, of vocations sort of come from comes from?
Steven Garber – All right, good. Well, because you referenced the book, the very first essay is my, my grandfather’s saddle blanket and the book of course there’s a new effort for me and for university press because it was a book with both essays and photos together. So I did my best to take a really interesting photo of the saddle blankets and that’s the morning light coming in through the windows. And I think it turned out pretty well. Actually. Some of the photos weren’t as good as I would’ve wanted, but , but that one turned out very well. And, uh, anybody who asks me, Corey, you included, of course, why do I think about vocation like I do? I probably would begin with my grandfather. And there are two essays in the book about that actually about learning about vocation from my grandfather and the best of Benedictine terms, you know, call these lovers of God in the fifth century of Italy to follow him, to create a community committed to aura, a liberal aura to praying and, and to working. My grandfather embodied that for me as a, as a, as a boy over the years of my boyhood, I knew he would lead us as a family literally on our knees at night praying night after night after night after night and my smertime business to my grandparents but, then I also realized, you know, that when he went off to work the next day, cause he was, uh, a cattle buyer in Colorado, , that I began to realize that it was really good at what he did and his peers. Some is really good at what he did and the language I didn’t have when I was 10 years old. I began to realize that both character and competence marked his life and the work that he did. Wow. And people around him sort of took his word as the best word, the truest word, the most important word, the word to make judgments on the basis of. Mmm. And I realized in some ways that was born out of, you know, the night by night on my knees praying for God and his kingdom to come. , and uh, I can say more about all that. I think my father in a different kind of a way. , he was a research scientist for the university of California and uh, I remember along the way of my adolescence, him beginning to explain more about his life. And one of the things which intrigued me in a different way than my grandfather, but he talked to me about walking into the laboratory day by day and praying for insight into his work to understand the connections between ideas between what he worked on a year ago and three years ago with what he’d been working on this year to be able to see into the meaning of his work. And so on the one hand when he retired, the secretaries at the research center talked about how nice amount he was and how kindy was and how much he was so interested their families and how he was a trustworthy man to work with. And they all honored him with affection for, you know, you’ll see years of labor like that in an interpersonal way, which matters to all of us. Of course it does matter, but it also matters that the work itself be seen as important. And not only that, I am a Christian and my, you know, countenance and then my, you know, my behavior and the words I offered to, you know, the people I work with, which matters a lot. But somehow the work itself matters. There’s, there’s an intrinsic value and quality to the work and that for my father, you know, I’ve come to use the language. My father didn’t give this to me, but he would have believed this, that we need to see our own work in the world as common grace for the common good. And for it to be that way. I think that we need to be people of honest insight and to see into what we’re doing and why it matters and how it actually is a way to serve the world in and through the work we do. So I can say more about my grandmother and my mother. You know, those are obviously key people in my life, but I would say probably in the book at least I’ve written about both my grandfather and my father.
Currey – Yeah, I appreciated you sharing those stories. It’s amazing how the P those people affect us in profound ways, you know, throughout life. And uh, go back to those stories again and again. Uh, pretty awesome. Uh, what are the issues? One of the difficult parts and thinking about some of this for me has been over the last couple of years, seeing your work is mattering into the, the new world, right? The idea that you know, new heavens and new earth are going to come and you know, the, the, the earth is going to be renewed and God will be present and see. So the idea is that we see our work as, as like pushing towards that new creation into the kingdom. How do you talk to people about what that kinda looks like or how to like tangibly, uh, think about those sorts of things.
Steven Garber – We should take a long walk Currey and kind of work this out together. I think about it and you think about it, everyone else does too in some ways. But, uh, when I was a university dropout, you know, a long, long time ago, I dropped out, uh, asked other questions about my life, that other one that the college university world was, are prepared to be give room to ask about. But I met a man who was a professor of philosophy in Phoenix, Arizona and he was an Indian India background. , and come to the States and you know, very articulate, very bright and very willing to talk and talk and talk with me about things that I was thinking about. And, and uh, he persuaded me that that expectation affects program was where you put it expectation fix program. You said it’s true. Hindus he had background was going to do because it’s true of everybody actually. , that eschatological expectation, what we believe to be true about the future of the world, whether we’re Marcus or malice or you know, Muslims or Jews or Christians or evolution, materialists or whatever we are, that our eschatological expectation affects program. So if God is gone and there is nothing about the world that is true, you know, in terms of before and after part of the story, if it’s just a bang and it would whimper at the end, why wouldn’t you eat, drink, be Merry for tomorrow we die? Why wouldn’t you focus the most sense real, , uh, and uh, but if you believe that somehow there is a new heaven and new earth, you know, sometimes sometime we long for in the future, we pray every day with longing. Oh Jesus, Oh Maranatha, come please come Lord Jesus, you pray your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Those are the prayers of our hearts, you know, then we are somehow expecting some continuity. It’d be arrogant for you to necessarily, it’ll be just like this. I know it’ll be just like this really, right. But I expect continuity. So one of my best dreams, Korea is this one. Okay, you learn a lot about me and this one. Okay. But I would say I imagine walking down some beautifully imagined street, no beautifully imagined construction of houses. And you just think, wow, that was very nicely done. Not because it’s grand necessarily, but just beautifully imagined as a place for human beings to dwell. And then you just kind of turn a little corner in the street and you see a little opening in front of you in front of you and maybe like an opening to what, maybe a park or a square or some sort you, you to hear tunes, you know, coming through this opening, you know, ahead of you and you walk into this beautiful park and there’s Bach and bono riffing together, you know, and you think I always wanted to be here actually. Speaker 3 34:29 You know, so my day out, Gloria Johann Sebastian Bach and Bono himself and they’re playing music together and that’s the world I long for actually, where there’s continuity somehow. And of course, it’s token who not surprisingly gives us one of the best windows into this with his delightful, profound story called leaf by niggle. And, and it’s, uh, you know, it’s a story we all can understand even if we’re not Catholics and believe in purgatory that we can understand somehow, you know, the, the work we do, the labor, we do, the frustrations we have, the disappointments, we have, the sorrows and the weight and burden we live with all day long and through the years of our lives. Hmm. And I’m just summing up the story and I won’t ruin it for anybody, but there’s a surprising way that talking to imagines the continuity between this life and the next. And I think it’s an obvious good at windows we have into what that might look like as anybody. Literature is done.
Currey – So yeah, I forgot about leaf by niggle. I read it in grad school, I remember. And I, I have not come back to it in a decade or more. So that’s, that’s great stuff.
Steven Garber – Very, with these questions about work and your podcast, I think it’d be fascinating to, to dwell on it.
Currey – I think you’re right about that. I think that’s a, that’s a great a point actually. I took a class from the director of the Wade center who where you visited, uh, recently on a theological imagination basically. And we went through all these, you know, literature literary works and, uh, my background in sort of theology and Bible didn’t lend itself to, uh, imagination all the time. You know, it was a very, it’s always systematic theology and you’re sort of like probing the depths of scriptures. But, reading with the literary imagination I think is like a, is a, uh, it’s a muscle. We don’t often exercise, but it’s a, it’s a beautiful, it’s a beautiful thing to do, to be doing. Steve Garber – So who was the director when you took that course?
Currey – I cannot remember, uh, off the top of my head. I would have to look it up. He passed away a couple of years ago.
Steven Garber – Dr. Mitchell.
Currey – Yes. That’s it. Yes, that’s it. Yeah. He was an amazing man.
Steven Garber – Wonderful, wonderful man. Very close friends. Last years, really, his wife told me in a very tender note, I hope this is okay to say out loud, when he died unexpectedly, it was just, they were on vacation, right. He actually was reading divisions of vocation. Tinder. Yep. Give it to me and is even more deeply drawn me into their life and his life. Very great sorrow when he died. Hmm.
Currey – Yeah. So, uh, our best friends, uh, uh, she, the, the woman of the couple was mentored by Dr. Mitchell’s wife for like her entire life, basically. And they’re very, very close family friends and, , yeah. Uh, w we’re an adoptive family and he had adopted children and, uh, his words, even in that class 10 years ago still sort of ring through my, my head. It’s, yeah, it’s a legacy that he’ll never know that he sort of left, uh, that imprint on me. So that’s pretty cool. Uh, yeah, that’s good stuff. That’s a really good stuff. Sorry.
Steven Garber – Ah, some things are worth having tears about.
Currey – Yeah. Yeah. I think it’s, uh, yeah. That’s good. , okay, so let’s talk a, what should we talk about now? I feel like I could just probe the depths with you for, uh, ever on this, on this sort of thing. Mmm. What does it mean to, uh, work for the common good. In your mind, and we may have covered this to some extent, but when you even say those words, I don’t think those are common things that we as, as Christians sort of talk about or think about. Can you explain sort of what that is?
Steven Garber – Sure. I can try to do that again. I mean, that’s a question which I work at all all, all the time. Great. It was explicitly the question of last fall going to central Europe. Did you come back and talk with us about what would a wow a renewal of vocation mean for them? Renewal of our society. What does vocation mean for the common good of the former Czechoslovakia 30 years after the velvet revolution? Mmm, differently done. You know, a few years ago, one of the essays in the book is about being in Birmingham, Alabama few years ago, and at the 16th street Baptist church, which is like holistically, tragically remembered as the site of the bombings, which killed a little girls in Sunday school, then their worship service one one morning. And I was asked by some good people in Birmingham, if I would come and speak at the first ever prayer breakfast for the city, held at the Burma at the 62 Baptist church. And, uh, and the question was, what would the renewal of a recovery, the idea of vocation mean for the renewal of our city? You’re in Birmingham, you know, it’s of course the place where you remember maybe most of all today for bull Connor and for Martin Luther King’s letter to the Berman from Birmingham jail. And, , but you know, 50, 60 years later people are trying to work things out and, and uh, , but the question was, you know, thinking about the relation of — — vocation to the meaning of who we are, how we live together in the city of Birmingham, not unlike of course the question from broadest lava and then from Prague, uh, in central Europe. , and, uh, so common good in my mind, I didn’t in the biblical terms is best seen through the lens of the admonition of Jeremiah to the exiles and Pampa Babylon this most iconically terrible city in the history of the world. Babylon, we almost spit it out of our mouths. Babylon. But the course Jeremiah is saying to the people like Daniel and me, Shaq and shag back in bed and go seek the flourishing of your city. Now a Babylon is name of, but that’s where they’re all living. Babylon pray for it. If it doesn’t flourish, you went through, she says, quite plain plainly. Yeah, the houses and pantries and get married and have children and settle in and commit yourself to, it’s to it’s welfare. Seek the welfare. Seek the flourishing of seek the common good of, you know, a Babylon. Uh, and of course when you think about someone like Daniel whose story we know best of all in some ways, , you know, he became the chief political counselor to three different rulers we could use were tyrants or dictators cause they all were that, you know, over the course of generations. But he was the chosen to be the, the wisest man, the chief counselor to the political leaders leadership of, of first Irfan. And then Iraq as a nation could have changed, you know, uh, identities over the course of Daniel’s life, and, uh, but the ask, what did he do? What does, what, what a political cancer’s do? Well, they weigh in on water resources and building highways and military strength, agricultural, you know, that’s what political counselors are always doing. So he was seen as somebody who was actually, you know, weigh in and on the stuff of life for the Babylonian people. And, uh, it’d be a foolish, you know, I think a flawed, we had to read Daniel’s life to say, Oh, Daniel, he was creating space for the Jews to live, you know, cause he was a religious advisor at F. how can they be? Not that, you know, but somebody you don’t live long, you don’t probably have a little long enough. And the Washington DC’s of the world to realize that political counselors get involved in just the stuff of everyday life for everybody actually. Cause that’s what they’re doing. , so Daniel was committed himself to that actually. , and uh, it’s really one of the few books in the Bible. It’s not one of the only books in the Bible where you have a, it’s really a whole book about a man’s vocation somewhere. His vocation being worked out over the course of his life. Hmm. It’s in a strange way, Currey that, you know, I’ve read and read and read the book over the years of my years. And you know, the very last words in the whole book about Daniel, are these, and Daniel was perplexed. Hmm. , and I don’t think that as, as a bad word, you know, somehow, uh, why didn’t he end in some kind of moment of great glory, you know? , but after all of the things we know best about bad, of course the first half of the book is about all the stories we grew up hearing about lions dens and fiery furnaces and, you know, dreams. And then of course, the last half of the book is about Daniel’s own mysterious streams with his own name on these dreams. God himself speaking to Daniel San Daniel. It’ll be like this. And every dream he gets, it’s another story of literally the text puts it this way. And Jay, I know, couldn’t sleep that night. Daniel’s face became flushed. And finally the very last words in the old book are, and Daniel was perplexed. Hmm. I take that as in a strange way, as a strange comfort to me. Yeah. Because I realized that I have to live in a now, but not yet world. And I see things but through a glass darkly. And I understand, but I don’t understand. I know, but I don’t know and, so for me, when I think about what it means to, you know, workout a vocation for the sake of the comment, go ahead. Speaker 3 43:46 And we do our best. We do our darnedest in some ways. , I have latched onto the imagery of, of a signpost actually cause the sound blase, it seems to me like it makes sense of the best we do a signpost cause we never get it all done, never get it all right. You know, and our best efforts, you know, you know that’s good, that’s worked for tax reform, you know, cause that ne — — eds to happen, you know, you know, and then you do that and you do your best and you are politically able and strategic enough to get the right votes, the right time and the right place and something important happens. But you realize what all of a sudden done. But everything happened. It didn’t all happen. Right. That’s a signpost perhaps is some justice being done. Some mercy being shown in these, in the history of the world now for a moment in time, it’s kind of like your marriage and my marriage. I suppose you still speak about my marriage. I mean, my wife loves me, which is a great gift of my life, you know, and we’ve been married for awhile together and I take my delight in her. I love to love my wife, but at best our marriage is a signpost of what could be and someday will. , I worked for the Mars corporation a little bit of my life and Mars makes a lot of stuff M&Ms included. , I’m uh, a fellow for their think tank of the Marsh corporation. I would never ever say that all anybody should eat all day long or M&Ms yeah, it’s not true of course. No, it is also true that almost anybody in the world at about three o’clock in the afternoon would love a few M and. M’s I think. Really? Sure. I like, I want a whole bag, but I’d love to have four or five. Thank you. That’d be wonderful. It’s a little bit of a delight in the world. Look at us, smile to our faces. Really? No. Now is it everything? No, but it’s a little remembering. Maybe it’s a signpost actually of some good gift in the world that in the midst of all the things that don’t go very right all day long, you know, I did get some M and M’s at three o’clock in the afternoon. Thank you. All right. You know, and I can press out that more fully. The project I’m a part of with Mars is not born of Christian commitments, but it’s called economics of mutuality. Hmm. Tried to rethink the way business is done all over the face of the earth. Actually, I have a different way to understand what bottom lines actually do mean. In reality, we’re more complex. Bottom line is required if you want to keep making money over time. Speaker 3 46:07 Right. And uh, so it’s calling into question actually, given that you’re Chicago based there, the Chicago school of economics, Milton Friedman model and saying this just doesn’t ask enough questions, frankly. Hmm. If all we require businesses to maximize shareholder profit. It isn’t a big enough question to ask actually, do you want to keep making money? At least you have to ask other questions. I took the Mars executives to meet Wendell Berry some years ago down in Kentucky and as foreign and very end of the day said to us memorable words, they’re etched into my heart now. So do you know if you want to make money for a year, you have to ask certain questions. Do you want make money for a hundred years? You have to ask other questions. I would say most probably most times when we get to questions about the common good, it’s more of those hundred year questions because in some ways it’s the longer good, it’s the more satisfying, important questions that have to be asked. You know, we’ll be married for a year, you have to ask certain questions. We ride for 10 years and 40 years. You have to ask other questions actually. Hmm. So common, good to my mind, always has to do with a longer sense of flourishing, not just that I’ve sort of flamed and got all that I wanted, you know, and then I’m done. Right. No years into it, you know, is there steel still the deeply into light deepening sense of, you know, this is me, what a made to do with my life. This is actually a good gift to the world. It’s really a way to love my neighbor. So I love myself and not only personally but institution corporately. So common good is about that.
Currey – Hm. Yeah. That is a yes. Uh, that’s a great answer. Uh, I’m still processing it, uh, in a lot of ways. , even like taking the Mars corporation down to hang out with Wendell Berry, I mean, that’s like a, it’s really cool. Mmm. Okay. If we could, I’d love to go back to what we were, we were talking about the, the new creation and what sort of life looks like. And I think about my role as a pastor in the new creation, right. And, uh, and as a pastor, I sort of, my job is to point people to Jesus, right? And in the new creation, you know, Jesus, like literally exist with us. And so as my job still going to be sort of — — like, Hey, there’s Jesus over there. And everybody’s like, yeah, I know. I know. Cause Jesus is like with us, you know, like what is the role of a pastor look like in the new creation? I guess I think about some, , I, I think about that because I wonder as pastors, if we are doing enough to show people how they should be equipping people for going about doing good work in the world or we just sort of building our worlds, our church world as it were. Uh, how, how do you suggest that churches go about, , sort of better equipping their people too, be working for the common good?
Steven Garber – It’s a wonderful question, Currey, well I would go back to my, you know, my time out of, out of school when I was 20 for a couple of years and hitchhiking around and living in communes and asking questions about things. And hearing these words, expectation affects program. But I would say that, you know, in a pastors role, a lot of it is in my mind, is to help people learn to live in the world faithfully and creatively and steadfastly. Uh, and how do you be the salt of the earth, the light of the world? That seems to me to be pretty central to what the work of the pastor is. , and I had a business leader call me some years ago and say, I didn’t know anybody said, I heard I can, I talk to about work. And I said, yeah, so I already have some questions for you. And it turned out to be, as you put it this way, said, he’s put my life on wall street. I’ve led corporations and we’ve done worked all over the world. And well, I’ve been part of churches too in my life and I’ve never ever heard a sermon where I thought that the pastor thought about somebody like me. Hmm. It wasn’t, I was looking for some cheap exegesis of a backpack and saying, well, on Wednesday when you go to Germany for this multinational deal, you’re making, you know, do it this way. Cause Habakkuk speaks to you. I just wanted the sense that maybe the pasture wrestled with the text in light of somebody like me. He said to me this way, these are haunting words to make. Currey said, he sees me in church. I think he thinks I live here too. I don’t actually. , and uh, <inaudible> that’d be a very, you know, concrete window into all this. Speaker 3 50:32 But one of my best friends is a man who is very entrepreneurial by nature, just thinks entrepreneurially all the time. He’s got some pretty good ideas that has served the world and made good money. And one of them was to create the first fleet of taxis in America that were, you know, uh, with uh, environmentally responsible cars. Bought a whole fleet of Prius’s, actually served as sort of Washington DC, what the Prius’s called, called and viral cab, you know, and then Seattle picked up the idea and then LA did. And the app listed. Denver did. And he was the first person to imagine this actually we all to a company called elevation burger and elevation burgers. Tagline was, , you know, , burgers the way they’re meant to be. So as burgers where they’re meant to be were burgers that were made out of uh, you know, good beef, actually healthy beef, they were actually from cows, had been fed good food, you know, and, and, uh, French Fridays, French fries and olive oil rather than other kinds of oil because it just works better in your stomach after all of a sudden done. Right. I came to conclusion some years ago Currey that I could never eat McDonald’s or five guys anymore in my life cause I would just get sick in my stomach. I just, it’ll settle in my stomach. You couldn’t have enough Thomas to deal with. It just was going to continue to Royal through until it got all done. But I realized when I ate with my friend Hans Hesse’s hamburgers with him, , and his fries that my stomach didn’t even blink. Really didn’t even, you know, basic question just was like, yeah, good for you Steve know good for you today. You know, this food just goes right on where it’s supposed to go really. And in some ways, my theology is pretty intuitively formed after all is said and done and realized. And that’s, you know, somehow when you actually care about the food you eat, that it’s healthy and tasty together. Speaker 3 52:23 Yeah. So for a couple of years ago, men’s health magazine did a competition of all the hamburger places in America and my friend Hans, his burgers one, the whole shebang actually serious the whole country. He won the top prize. Tha — — t’s the tastiest healthiest hamburger in America. And we never named as hamburgers, you know, Holy hamburgers. I would tease him off and I said, Hahn’s that you’ve got this kind of burger that’s got a burger. How about for the Christians? You come into the store, a Holy hamburger is, of course they’d like to have it be called a Christian. Wouldn’t they? Because we want Christian, this Christian, that mr Matt. It’s about back at me. And , but what if this hitting him Cray was this about, you know, the continuity of this life and the next, and maybe it’s a good word for pastor to some way have eschatological visions and imaginations to help people understand the meaning of their work. Speaker 3 53:10 I said, ons, no, you’re making eschatological hamburgers, you know? Right. And he would smile at me and I see him when I’m, I’m, I’m sure this con’s, I don’t know about some things, but I’m sure this, that when we eat finally, finally, finally that great, great, great day. The married, separate the lamb. Of course. The interesting thing to note is our first thing together will be a supper. Yeah, great. Set up. Totally separate. Actually. I see everything on the table will be tasty and healthy together. There’d be no trade offs. It will be an end full of apples and full of donuts, you know, it won’t be like that. It was somehow by God’s own cosmic divine imagination, all healthy, all tasting together, all throughout the table actually. So for you to do your best now haunt in this life, to get hamburgers that are healthy and tasty together. You see, it’s a signpost to the kingdom actually. So good for you and good, good for the rest of us.
Currey – If there is more blessed at work out there than creating a hamburger like that, I don’t know what it is because that is a real gift to the world, I think. You know, I love it. That’s good. Mmm. Steve, I could literally just sit here and talk to you all day, but I feel like we probably should, , you know, call it at some point. So are you ready to jp into the final two questions? Sure, yup. Uh, so my first question is, what is the strangest job that you have ever had?
Steven Garber – Hmm. When I was first married, , my wife and I decided we would, uh, focus on being married for awhile rather than anything else and trying to figure it out. How to in the 20, 20th century, do you take these words in the, you know, long ago. So the young men of Israel don’t go off to war the first year, you know, love your wife. , we decided rather than to started to graduate school immediately or to do this immediately, we would just find a way to live together simply as the most of our time together. Just finding patterns and rhythms and habits of heart that would allow us to take pleasure in each other’s company. , so there’s nothing I still, you know, 40 years later, love more than simply just to be with my wife. You know, I’ve traveled a lot in my life and I love to travel with my wife, but sometimes I go other places and people for years and years, I’ve traveled most every week someplace, which I don’t want to keep doing in my life. But I, it was, how do you do this, Steve? I would say, well, I’d give it a Holy adrenaline. I think to do this right now for this season, when I’m done each week I have to come and hug my wife for awhile. In some ways I would say that was born of that decision early on. , what did I do in that year? Then? You asked the strange job I had, I drove a little school bus, a little van, a big van, actually for smart, really smart kids in the city we lived in. We were picked out as seven year olds. There’s like being the smartest kids in the city. And one day a week they would go off to a particular school for a specialized, you know, high level, second grade education for everybody. Smart kids. Really. I pick up a different group each day morning and then take it back in the afternoon. And that made enough on my side of the equation for us to put together our little small paltry salaries to live simply and with pleasure and happiness together for the first year of life and our marriage.
Currey – Wow, that’s a great story. Uh, even behind the job. Good. Good work there. That’s awesome. Uh, okay. So my final question then is, what is one piece of advice you would give to somebody looking to bring God’s kingdom more into their work?
Steven Garber – Hmm, well, a lot of things can be said Korean, but maybe I would, you know, come back to the, the prayer of Jesus. Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it isn’t heaven. It seems to me that if we don’t get that one right, don’t understand that in a way that I think we’re strict. Understand that we were going to miss the meaning of our lives and our labors. Hmm. I think there has to be some kind of embeddedness that God intends us to be about in this world, to stick, to step in and to commit ourselves with love. , I’ve been taken by the question for many years now. How do we learn to see ourselves as responsible for love sake, for the way the world is and isn’t. Yeah. And so it seems to me that biblically speaking from the very words of Jesus himself, that when we pray with hope and with meaning, with desire, with longing, you know that my life has staled or the lives of people that stay all over the face of the earth. We would be this, we would commit ourselves again this day to your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Yeah. I think in some ways, of course, I mean you’d have probably have to push that out and tease that out and think about it even more carefully and more deeply. But I think, you know, it provides parameters for understanding that, you know, what we give ourselves to day by day, what we’re about day by day actually has meaning and the eschatological unfolding of redemptive history, you know, throughout time. Yeah. So I guess I probably would begin there and then push that out a little bit with somebody.
Currey – Yeah, that’s good stuff. That’s good stuff. I can’t say thanks enough for making time for me again and it was a real pleasure to chat with you.
Steven Garber – You’ve been a great gift to me.
Currey (Conclusion) – Well hoped you enjoyed hearing from Steve. I, I was just, I was very encouraged by this episode. You’ve heard me get a little emotional there. And I think just, it’s amazing how God brings things together. And so I hope you felt that encouragement in this episode. I hope you’re encouraged in your job, uh, even even today. , and, and, , yeah, I just ask that you, uh, share away and maybe encourage somebody else in their job, in the way they think about how they do their work. And, uh, I would greatly appreciate that you can also, uh, scroll to the bottom of your, uh, iTunes app right now and leave a rating and review there. It just helps get the word out about the podcast and yeah, I know a hustle’s a little strange right now, but, uh, but until next time, get out there or stay in hustle.
