We are streaming this timely Gushee-Grimm video below
Why is this Timely? Because bestselling Christian ethicist Dr. David Gushee is writing about the timeless values of Jesus that call into question a lot of the political claims being made in the 2024 election year. Dr. Gushee began addressing these issues in his late-2023 book, Defending Democracy from its Christian Enemies. Now, he is following up on that book with an overview of what Dr. Gushee describes as Jesus’s “radical” teachings about our moral priorities.
Why is he talking with Jonathan Grimm? Because Jonathan Grimm—as you will learn in the video below—is a former student who credits Dr. Gushee with helping to form his moral conscience many years ago. Now, Grimm is a leading financial expert whose upcoming book, The Future Poor, raises many of the same questions about the fairness of our economic and social systems that are described in Dr. Gushee’s book.
What will I learn if I watch this video? First, you will hear these two remarkable authors talk about how far Jesus’s original moral message has been distorted in our current era.
In Grimm’s own work nationally—trying to help Americans prepare for their retirement years by helping to form compassionate communities—he has found this same confusion about Jesus’s original teachings that Dr. Gushee identifies in his new book.
In the video, below, Grimm says at one point, “I feel like many Christians have very little familiarity with the actual teachings of Jesus about the moral life.”
Then, as the two discuss these issues, you will find useful—and very “quotable”—insights.
For example, at one point, Jonathan argues that one reason millions of self-identified “Christians” seem to be ignoring some of Jesus’s core teachings.
Dr. Gushee agrees and says that’s because: “We don’t want Jesus to set the agenda for our lives. … He is radical. My book’s subtitle is Radical Instruction in the Will of God—and Jesus is very radical and very challenging—which is the reason that we’d rather focus on the story that Jesus came as a baby and he died on the cross for our sins and he rose from the dead so we can go to heaven when we die.”
Dr. Gushee continues: “Jesus came preaching a Kingdom that has never been fulfilled in human life and cannot be reduced to anybody’s political or ideological agenda, left or right.”
In other words, the video below is something that you’ll likely want to share with friends (just use the social-media sharing buttons with this column) and that you may want to “quote from” in coming weeks.
Here’s one more example of a key exchange:
In Grimm’s research on the looming American retirement crisis, which forms the core of his upcoming book The Future Poor, he found that one reason so many American families are likely to wind up below the poverty level in the future is that our priorities have become so aggressively competitive, focused on individual success.
Dr. Gushee agrees. In the middle of this video, he says:
Ours is a culture that’s about branding oneself—making a name, building a following—all the things one must do to be competitive in the marketplace. But Jesus was remarkably uninterested in any status games whatsoever—and that challenges everybody. We like wealth and ostentatious displays of wealth all across our culture—and Jesus warns against wealth in a way that should make either liberal or conservative wealthy enclaves uncomfortable.
So, please, sit down for a bit with your favorite beverage and listen to these two prophetic authors explore the moral values that Jesus taught as an alternative to the troubled world in which we find ourselves in 2024 …
Care to learn more?
If you have read this far, then you’ll definitely be interested in two of Dr. Gushee’s classics:
Plus, you’ll want to sign up for Jonathan Grimm’s free, newsy updates, which he describes in this week’s Front Edge Publishing column, headlined: Care about your financial future and that of your loved ones?