“It’s sort of strange to think about beauty and horrible circumstances together. But I try, probably clumsily at times, to bring beauty to a thing that's really horrible. … But in terms of covering executions, there is just a void there. The main character always dies.” (Elizabeth Bruenig, from the episode)

Despite sin, there remains an inherent beauty and goodness throughout creation … including humanity.

And even in the most divisive circumstances, when we appeal to the beauty and horror in our shared human condition, we might be able to find common ground for mutual understanding and collaboration. And sometimes, in the best circumstances, we might even find a beautiful and life-giving encounter with the other.

In this episode, celebrated journalist and self-described “avid partisan of humankind” Elizabeth Bruenig (staff writer for The Atlantic, and formerly the New York Times, Washington Post, and The New Republic) joins Mark Labberton to talk about journalism, her journey toward Catholicism, the complex moral and emotional lives of human beings, capital punishment and violence, and the prospects for introducing beauty into polarized politics and horrifying evil.

About Elizabeth Bruenig

Elizabeth Bruenig is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She was previously an opinion writer for the New York Times and the Washington Post, where she was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing. She has also been a staff writer at The New Republic and a contributor to the Left, Right & Center radio show. She currently hosts a podcast, The Bruenigs, with her husband, Matt Bruenig. Elizabeth holds a master of philosophy in Christian theology from the University of Cambridge. At The Atlantic, she writes about theology and politics.

Show Notes

• Elizabeth Bruenig shares about her religious and philosophical background
• Bruenig shares about her journey toward Roman Catholicism
• The Eucharist and embodied experience of God
• The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist
• “I don't need to be studying and getting degrees, I need to just be living my life radically as a Christian.”
• Journalism, paying attention, and compassionate
• “I'm very interested in people and people's moral lives. Things like honor and shame, guilt—you know, very complex emotions—interest me a lot, and I think everyone has them all the time. People have these spiritual, ethical, moral struggles going on inside them. And so everybody is a little universe unto themselves.”
• What it means to be a Staff Writer
• Journalism with narrative, story, opinions, and arguments
• “I have found that to be a very successful way of garnering stories. It's just to listen to people.”
• “The first execution I ever witnessed, I witnessed for the New York Times, it was during Trump's spree of federal executions. I think they executed something like 13 people in six months, really unprecedented. I wanted to report on that.”
• Media witnesses as
• The Executions of Alfred Bourgeois, David Neal Cox, James Barber, Kenny Smith, and Alan Miller
• “I have had the opportunity to speak with men who were about to die.”
• “The Man I Saw Them Kill”
• “The idea of execution promises catharsis. The reality of it delivers the opposite, a nauseating sense of shame and regret. Alfred Bourgeois was going to die behind bars one way or another, and the only meaning in hastening it, as far as I could tell, was inflicting the terror and the torment of knowing that the end was coming early. I felt defiled by witnessing that particular bit of pageantry, all of that brutality cloaked in sterile procedure. So much time and effort goes into making executions seem like exercises of justice, not just power. Extreme measures are taken at each juncture to convince the public, and perhaps the executioners themselves, that the process is a fair, dispassionate, rational one. It isn't. There was no sense in it, and I can't make any out of it. Nothing was restored, nothing was gained. There isn't any justice in it, nor satisfaction, nor reason. There was nothing, nothing there.”
• Faith, the void of execution
• “I find that reading great essays summons language in me.”
• On Beauty and Being Just by Elaine Scarry
• “Beauty inspires reproduction”
• “It's sort of strange to think about beauty and horrible circumstances together. But I try, probably clumsily at times, to bring beauty to a thing that's really horrible. … But in terms of covering executions, there is just a void there. The main character always dies.”
• “I had a religious conviction going into the first execution that I was at that executions were wrong and it wasn't really based on anything that I could point to. I just had the, you know, very simple notion that killing people is wrong and that it's wrong in, in all cases, even if the person is a very bad person.”
• Two executions in the New Testament: the one Jesus halts, and the one that kills Jesus
• Execution as a subhuman act
• The logic of criminal justice system and capital punishment
• The difficulty of introducing beauty into polarized politics
• “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 8)
• Groaning beauty
• “All of creation groans under the weight of sin.”
• “The holiness of creation, the goodness of it, is so strong that it can't be, I don't think, entirely blotted out by sin. I just don't think that humans have the power to rob of beauty that which was made beautiful.”
• Finding beauty in visual culture, pop culture, museums, essay writing, and art
• On Beauty, Eula Biss— “… her prose, you know, glitters to me. I think it's fantastic. Not too melodramatic, restrained. And elegant.”
• Marilynne Robinson, imagination and beauty
• The political landscape
• Fears
• “I think when what's up for debate is like the rule of law, then I'm going to go with the candidate who whatever other faults is actually in favor of the rule of law. I think that's very important.”
• Assisted Suicide and Physician Assisted Suicide
• “I don't think I can write without bringing in theology, because it's so much a part of what I consider to be true. And so to give readers an honest view into what I'm thinking I have to provide the theological Issues that I'm thinking through.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“We have to go back to the very basic thing of understanding our shared humanity. And we’ve departed a long way from that—even the best of us, I’m afraid. It is just stunning. I mean, we are such a danger to everything we value.” (Marilynne Robinson, from the episode)

Today on the show, Mark Labberton welcomes the celebrated novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson to discuss her most recent book, Reading Genesis. Known for novels such as Housekeeping, Gilead, Home, and Lila, she offers a unique perspective on ancient scripture in her latest work of nonfiction.

In this enriching and expansive conversation, they discuss the theological, historical, and literary value in the Book of Genesis; the meaning of our shared humanity; fear and reverence; how to free people from the view of God as threatening; the complicated and enigmatic nature of human freedom; the amazing love, mercy, and long-suffering of God on display in the unfolding drama of the Genesis narrative; and overall: “The beautiful ordinariness of a God-fashioned creature in ordinary communion with one another.”

About Marilynne Robinson

Marilynne Robinson is an award-winning American novelist and essayist. Her fictional and non-fictional work includes recurring themes of Christian spirituality and American political life. In a 2008 interview with the Paris Review, Robinson said, "Religion is a framing mechanism. It is a language of orientation that presents itself as a series of questions. It talks about the arc of life and the quality of experience in ways that I've found fruitful to think about."

Her novels include Housekeeping (1980, Hemingway Foundation/Pen Award, Pulitzer Prize finalist), Gilead (2004, Pulitzer Prize), Home (2008, National Book Award Finalist), Lila (2014, National Book Award Finalist), and most recently, Jack (2020). Robinson's non-fiction works include Mother Country: Britain, the Welfare State, and Nuclear Pollution (1989), The Death of Adam: Essays on Modern Thought (1998), Absence of Mind: The Dispelling of Inwardness from the Modern Myth of the Self (2010), When I was a Child I Read Books: Essays (2012), The Givenness of Things: Essays (2015), and What Are We Doing Here?: Essays (2018). Her latest book is Reading Genesis (2024).

Marilynne Robinson received a B.A., magna cum laude, from Brown University in 1966 and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 1977. She has served as a writer-in-residence or visiting professor at a variety of universities, including Yale Divinity School in Spring 2020. She currently teaches at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa. She has served as a deacon for the Congregational United Church of Christ. Robinson was born and raised in Sandpoint, Idaho and now lives in Iowa City.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of Reading Genesis by Marilynne Robinson
• Mark introduces Marilynne Robinson and her most recent foray into biblical interpretation
• Overarching narrative of God’s time vs. Human time
• Theological, biblical, historical, and literary categories
• Why Genesis? Why biblical commentary?
• “Genesis is the foundational text, and God’s self-revelation is the work of Genesis.”
• The expansiveness of the creation narrative from the beginning of everything to two people hoeing in a garden.
• Elohim and the universal God-name
• Monotheism and the enormously cosmic assertion of the nature of God
• From cosmology to granular human existence
• Amazement and the Book of Genesis
• “God saw the intentions of our heart and they were only evil always.”
• Conjuring the idea of a vindictive God—as opposed to a merciful, long-suffering, and loving God
• “It's hard to wiggle people free from the idea that God is primarily threatening.”
• The role of fear in sin, temptation, and evil
• “I think the fall is a sort of realization of a fuller aspect of our nature, which is painful to us and painful to God. But it's our humanity.”
• From the book: “The narrative of scripture has moved with astonishing speed from let there be light to this intimate scene of shared grief and haplessness. There is no incongruity in this. Human beings are at the center of it all. Love and grief are, in this infinite creation, things of the kind we share with God. The fact that they have their being in the deepest reaches of our extensionless and undiscoverable souls only makes them more astonishing. Over and against the roaring cosmos, that they exist at all can only be proof of a tender solicitude.”
• Ancient Near Eastern mythology
• “Meaning cannot leak out of this. It’s absolutely meaningful.”
• Genesis is a “particular series of stories that are stories of the tumbling, bumbling, faithful, faithless, violent, peaceable, loyal, disloyal agency of human beings.”
• Mystery
• Theology as a vision, a revelation
• “The beautiful ordinariness of a God-fashioned creature in ordinary communion with one another.”
• The impact of Genesis in the history of our understanding of humanity, freedom, relationships, and so much more.
• Law as a liberation of one another: it limits your behavior and is emancipating to everyone around you.
• God’s patience with human freedom and the ability to go wrong
• The enigma of freedom
• “From the very beginning, the Bible seems aware that we are our enemy and that we are our apocalyptic beast.”
• “Our freedom is very costly. It’s costly to us. It’s costly to God.”
• Imagination and the dynamics of freedom
• “An enhanced reverence for oneself has to be rooted in a reverence for God.”
• “The idea of the sacredness of God and the sacredness of the self.”
• Fear and reverence
• “You are holding in your imagination … and helping us to see, feel, and hear the voices and see the actions of ordinary human beings, who are both (like Psalm 8), ‘a little lower than the angels,’ and at the same time, ‘we are dust and to dust you will return.’”
• Paying attention
• Marilynne Robinson’s upbringing, access to nature, access to books, and plenty of solitude
• Joseph and the ending of the Genesis narrative: How might the story of Joseph speak to our time?
• “We have to go back to the very basic thing of understanding our shared humanity. And we've departed a long way from that—even the best of us, I'm afraid. It is just stunning. I mean, we are such a danger to everything we value. We are a danger to everything we value. And the fact that we can persist in doing that or tolerating it … there we are, you know? … We've always been strange, we human beings.”
• The perplexity of freedom
• “The way that Joseph understands his history is a comment on the idea of divine time.”
• “Joseph did enslave the Egyptians.”
• “There is no bow to tie around anything. There's simply whatever it yields in terms of meaning and beauty and so on.”
• Matthew 28 and the Great Commission
• “Christianity sliding into empire”
• The value of resolution and the open-ended nature of the Genesis narrative

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

“When we pursue excellence it doesn’t have to come at the cost of our emotional and relational health.” (Ben Houltberg)

How do we form an identity and sense of self? Do we define ourselves based on the fragile glass shelter of what we achieve or how well we perform? If so, how does that affect our sense of meaning and purpose in life?

With the 2024 Paris Olympics underway, it’s easy to imagine how an elite athlete at the top of her game might form an identity based on her athletic or competitive performance.

In this episode, Mark Labberton welcomes developmental scientist Ben Houltberg to reflect on the pursuit of achievement and excellence, exploring what’s at stake for our psychological and spiritual health when we find our identity and life’s meaning in our performance.

Together they discuss: the glass shelter of athletic achievement and the opportunity that emerges when it inevitably shatters; the various performance contexts of family, relationships, education, sports, career, and religion; the dangers of conditional acceptance based on performance; the performance-enhancing impact of healthy coaching and mentoring relationships; the transformative effects of unconditional love; and ultimately, how to be free from a performance-based identity.

About Ben Houltberg

Benjamin Houltberg is a developmental scientist, experienced marriage and family therapist, and president and CEO of Search Institute. He is associate research professor at the University of Southern California, and was previously associate professor of human development at Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Psychology. Follow him @benhoultberg, and learn more about Search Institute online.

Show Notes

About Ben Houltberg: developmental scientist, licensed marriage and family therapist, and CEO of Search Institute

About “performance-based identity”

Olympics and athletic performance-based identity

“When we pursue excellence it doesn't have to come at the cost of our emotional and relational health.”

“What is my purpose?”

Olympic athlete Simone Biles’ public breakdown and dominant return to gymnastics

“If you think about the natural trajectory of an elite athlete, it is towards a performance-based identity.”

How elite athletes form their identity in their athletic performance.

“A Glass Shelter” of athletic achievement: what happens when that glass shelter breaks?

When the glass shelter breaks, it becomes a transformative opportunity.

“Whether it was youth sports and training for a marathon, or whether it was in elite athletes or whether it was in different large organizations and their staff employees … the profile emerges that it is in some ways a human condition: that performance-based identity can really trap us into an approach to life and an approach to relationships and approach to competition that is undermining us and will eventually lead to a shattered sense of self.”

Actor vs performer in the world (Action vs. Performance)

Influenced by what other people think we are

How to understand “performance context” across domains of sports, education, career, relationships, family, morality, and society at large

The dangers of limiting our identities to performance

Conditional acceptance based on performance

Human relationships, connectivity, and collectivism as performance enhancing

Coaching and mentoring to deal with the stress of performing

NCAA sports

Helping young people find “the spark”—their passion and potential and purpose

How the Search Institute studies performance-based identity

Christian faith and unconditional love

How to be free from a performance-based identity

Finding our identity in beauty, connection, and commonality

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Phil Armstrong, project manager of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Centennial Commission, speaks about the Tulsa Massacre—its historical context, the trauma and silencing that followed, and the current work of commemoration and education being done surrounding it.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Robert Chao Romero, professor of Chicana/o studies and Asian American studies at UCLA, shares about the long history of the Latina/o church and the necessity of a holistic gospel, which prioritizes both evangelism and social justice.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio

Broderick Leaks (PhD ’19), director of counseling and mental health at USC Student Health, describes the increasing mental health needs of emerging adults and the work of providing them meaningful support in the university context.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Brenda Salter McNeil, speaker, author, and professor, talks about the long work of reconciliation, the need to speak truth, and the ongoing process of repentance, forgiveness, and justice guided by God’s Spirit.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio

Jennifer Wiseman, astrophysicist and astronomer, delves into the complexity and beauty of the universe and explains how being scientifically informed relates to the flourishing and improvement of life.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Walter Brueggemann, renowned author and Old Testament scholar, speaks about engaging the Biblical text with an artistic interpretive lens that resists universal generalizations, then participates in a Q&A with the Fuller community.

This audio was recorded during the 2015 Fuller Forum.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Kerry Morrison, program director for Heart Forward LA, shares about her work on mental health with the homeless communities in LA and for her innovative and experimental approaches to taking on the broken systems.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Vince Bantu, assistant professor of church history and Black Church studies, talks about the varied dynamics and histories of African American communities around the United States, Black experience in the American church, and his own journey of reclaiming identity through African history and Christianity.

(As Dr. Labberton and Dr. Bantu speak briefly about Juneteenth, FULLER studio has chosen to release this episode outside of its regular schedule, for this very significant day.)

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Cedric Williams (PhD ’19), founder and CEO of Legacy Consulting & Research Group, talks about his layered experiences of the military, ministry, and psychology, and about his current work of walking alongside others in the process of meaning-making.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Andre Henry (MAT ’16), writer, singer-songwriter, and activist, shares his personal journey of learning about systemic racism and explains the active and prophetic work he’s taken up against it.

This conversation was recorded on May 7, 2020.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

People have been given so many reasons to despise Christianity. What would it be to communicate with and for the “cultured despisers of the faith”? This was the audience Friedrich Schleiermacher wrote to in his seminal work, The Christian Faith, and it is the audience Mark Labberton sought to speak to when preaching at First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California.

In this Conversing Short, Mark considers the importance of communicating the gospel in its fullness to a culture that understandably despises Christianity, rather than domesticating it as the ecclesiastical industrial complex has.

About Conversing Shorts

“In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

19th-century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher

"Cultured despisers of the faith” (introduced in The Christian Faith and On Religion: Speeches to Its Cultured Despisers)

Darwin, Freud, and Nietzsche

“If you were a cultured person, you would have abandoned the faith.”

“People's life circumstances have, for understandable reasons, left them in a position to despise the faith.”

Reflecting Jesus or reflecting the “ecclesiastical industrial complex”?

Christian questions about what really matters

“The gospel itself, by God's revelation in Christ, if that's true, is a shocking surprise to the world.”

How the Gospel has been domesticated by the Church

Annie Dillard: if we understood the power of what we’re dealing with, we’d hand out crash helmets and seatbelts in church.

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Dwight Radcliff, assistant provost for the William E. Pannell Center for African American Church Studies, speaks about the systems of oppression and generational trauma that plague Black communities and challenges the church to own a theology that responds rightly to suffering rather than dismissing it.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Tony Amoury Alkhoury, PhD student in practical theology, shares about his experience of growing up with anxiety and what he’s learned about living in the tension between fear and the reality of God’s presence.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Greg Cootsona, author, co-director of Science for the Church, and lecturer in religious studies and humanities at CSU Chico, discusses the relationship between faith and science and explores how a church’s approach to science shapes its work and witness.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Scott Derrickson, director and screenwriter of The Exorcism of Emily Rose and Doctor Strange, reflects on his journey as a filmmaker, the value of the horror genre, and the significance of reckoning with our fears.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Andy Crouch, author and Fuller trustee, discusses the dramatic changes the world is undergoing during this time of pandemic, focusing on how communities of trust help us navigate grief and the reconfiguration of our lives. The article mentioned in this episode can be read here.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Daniel D. Lee, assistant provost for the Center for Asian American Theology and Ministry, speaks about the history of racism against Asian Americans and the racism Asian American communities are currently experiencing during this ongoing pandemic.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Beth Moore, author, speaker, and founder of Living Proof Ministries, considers the biblical imagery of the vineyard and what it can teach us about how we grow over time and through seasons of change and trial.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Andrew Root, professor and Carrie Olson Baalson Chair of Youth and Family Ministry at Luther Seminary, talks about what ministry, worship, and encountering transcendence looks like in contemporary secular contexts.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Peter Wehner, author and senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, discusses the intersections of faith and politics and considers how to pursue truth and justice in a broken and divided world.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio

Sonja Dawson, head pastor of New Mt. Calvary Church, shares about her experiences doing restorative justice work—both during her years as a prosecutor and during her present calling as a pastor.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio

“Out of the greatest misery and the most devastating loss can come unimagined growth, and, in some cases, joy and happiness.”

Mark Labberton welcomes pioneering social entrepreneur Mawi Asgedom, an award-winning innovator, author, and advocate for social-emotional learning (SEL). Sharing his story of struggle, resilience, and redemption, Mawi describes his extraordinary journey from war-torn Ethiopia to a Sudanese refugee camp, to a childhood on welfare in an affluent American suburb, to Harvard graduate, to sharing a stage with Oprah Winfrey, to reimagining educational technology to improve youth mental health and thriving.

Together they discuss the essential life lessons Mawi has learned and taught through his remarkable personal history, including the difficult cultural transition as an Ethiopian refugee in the Chicago suburbs, the pain of losing his brother followed by the pain of losing his faith, the power of positivity and mature Christian faith, and his vision for helping children develop social-emotional skills to navigate life.

About Mawi Asgedom

Mawi Asgedom is an award-winning innovator, author, and advocate for social-emotional learning (SEL). He has spent over 20 years helping youth unlock their potential, training millions of educators and students, and collaborating with leading youth development organizations. His book, Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy’s Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard, is a survival story of overcoming war, famine, suffering, and countless obstacles. He is the creator of Inner Heroes Universe, and his work has been featured by various media outlets, including Oprah Winfrey, who named her interview with Mawi one of her top 20 moments. A father of four school-aged kids, Mawi can often be found coaching youth sports on the weekends.

Show notes

Read Mawi Asgedom’s book: Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy's Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard

A story of challenge, struggle, pain and suffering; but also a story of God's faithfulness, and Mawi’s resilience, joy, devotion, love, intelligence, and hard work

Mawi’s childhood and origin story

Life in Tigray, Ethiopia

Civil War that led to the establishment of Eritrea

Mawi’s mother’s incredible journey from Ethiopia to Sudan, facing the dangers of hyenas, rebel forces, and homelessness with her three children

The normalcy of suffering

Describing the refugee camp in Sudan

How Mawi understands his personal history and life experience

A Nail Through the Finger: how parents in dire circumstances teach children to survive

“Where I come from, people expect a lot of bad things to happen. It's just part of how life is. In the States, people get really upset if any bad things happen.”

Mawi’s experience of cultural assimilation

His family’s relocation to Wheaton, Illinois, outside of Chicago, through World Relief

“Sweetness passed us by before we called it sweet.”

The cultural shock of moving to the U.S. and being the only Ethiopian family.

Challenges of isolation, language barriers, and racism

"Facing bullying and discrimination tested my resilience."

“That took me quite a long time to be able to step into who I really was and be like, ‘I got nothing to be ashamed of. I am proud of my mom and dad. I'm proud of my background. I'm proud of every part of who I am.’ It took me a long time to be able to feel that and say that. I think that was probably the invisible kind of scar from that experience.”

“On the rise to become an exceptional achiever…”

The greatest poverty is a poverty of relationship: “I spoke one time at a correctional facility outside of Chicago … and he said, ‘I'd rather be a refugee and go through stuff you went through with a family that I was close to who loved me than be in this country by myself.’ And I thought about it and I was like, this student is correct. The greatest poverty really is a poverty relationship. It's when you have no one.”

Mawi’s relationship with his brother

Mawi’s friend, Mark Linz, missionary to Ethiopia

Philippians 4:13: “I can do all things through Christ Jesus who gives me strength.”

“I believe that Mark. I believe there's something I could do. I don't have to worry about the fact that I live in a Section 8 housing. I don't have to worry about the fact that my father is unemployed, but these other kids in my school, their parents have great jobs. I believe that the creator of the universe loves me.”

The terror and grief of losing his brother in a drunk driving accident

Maintaining positive momentum through horrific, unimaginable, devastating challenges

“Out of the greatest misery and the most devastating loss can come unimagined growth, and, in some cases, joy and happiness.”

The agony of loss and the healing and learning that came from the experience of grace

Mawi’s Harvard experience

Losing Christian faith at Harvard: “I still remember one of the most shocking moments in my life. It was so shocking to me, Mark. I woke up, I think it was my second day of my sophomore year in my room. And I realized something: I didn't believe in God anymore. And it was a shocking existential moment. One way to think about it is: Losing Jesus was a different version of losing my brother. … When you're a true follower of Christ and you are connected to Christ and you pray every day, read the word every day and you put your faith in him. It's not a small loss. It's a massive loss.”

Depression and hopelessness

Maturing past a faith that had no room for doubt: “My faith now is rooted in doubt. It's rooted in the idea that there's so much I don't know, and, and yet I choose to have faith in Jesus.”

Social-emotional learning

Mawi’s entrepreneurial mindset

Mawi’s adolescent struggle with confidence and self-esteem

Mawi’s foray into working with children

“One of the most important things I learned, Mark, is the best way to help kids is to help the adults in their lives.”

Mawi’s new venture: Inner Heroes Universe, inspired by Pixar’s Inside Out

Using metaphors to make the abstract concrete: “an incredible inner world”

“I believe to reach the next generation, it's not going to work to try to convince them to do less media and to do things the way we had, the old way. We have to go to where they are and create rich media.”

“Imagine if you could only communicate positive psychology using art and storytelling. And you couldn't be didactic and you had to use imagination and creativity.”

Seeing through Mawi’s eyes and background: “a great instance of harvesting pain, of harvesting joy, of harvesting deep cultural difference, of harvesting challenging childhood experiences…”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Bobette Buster, writer and producer, who has consulted for Disney, Pixar, and Sony, among other major studios, discusses sound design in the film industry and the powerful role sound plays in storytelling.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Mary Glenn, affiliate professor with the School of Intercultural Studies, discusses her work as a law enforcement chaplain, her non-profit, Cities Together, and how she helps individuals process grief.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Keri Tombazian, actress, producer, and voice actress, discusses the journey of her famed career and how she ultimately found her voice.

Norma Ramírez, with Dr. Lisseth Rojas-Flores and Pastor Sonia Luginbuhl, talks about growing up undocumented and about her experience as a Fuller PhD student under the DACA policy (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals).

Pamela Ebstyne King, Peter L. Benson Associate Professor of Applied Developmental Science, discusses how community and purpose contribute to human development and flourishing.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Nick Vujicic, evangelist and author, speaks about his life without limbs, his early struggles of finding hope in God, and his understanding of faith and ministry today.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Pastors Delonte Gholston (MDiv ’15) and Justin Fung (DMin ’19) speak about pastoring in Washington DC and on peacemaking amid the realities of sociopolitical violence.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio

Phil Chen, decentralized chief officer at HTC, explores the intersections of theology and emerging digital technology—covering topics like cryptocurrency, virtual reality, and data privacy.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Bethany Hanke Hoang and Kristen Deede Johnson, coauthors of The Justice Calling: Where Passion Meets Perseverance, talk about living a sustainable life of working toward justice over the long term.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Jemar Tisby, author of The Color of Compromise: The Truth About the American Church’s Complicity in Racism, discusses the history of racial inequality in the United States and in the American church.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Imagine preaching in front of a crowd of protesters holding a banner: “HOW DARE YOU?” That’s what Mark Labberton did every Sunday preaching in the clear, glass-walled sanctuary of First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, California.

In this Conversing Short, Mark reflects on this foundational, animating question that defined his public leadership during his sixteen years as senior pastor of First Pres.

About Conversing Shorts: “In between my longer conversations with people who fascinate and inspire and challenge me, I share a short personal reflection, a focused episode that brings you the ideas, stories, questions, ponderings, and perspectives that animate Conversing and give voice to the purpose and heart of the show. Thanks for listening with me.”

About Mark Labberton

Mark Labberton is the Clifford L. Penner Presidential Chair Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of Preaching at Fuller Seminary. He served as Fuller’s fifth president from 2013 to 2022. He’s the host of Conversing.

Show Notes

• The clear glass walls of First Presbyterian Church in Berkeley, CA
• “You’re doing everything that you’re doing in public.”
• “I wanted to welcome the outside, inside.”
• Berkeley protestors
• An imaginary poster: “How dare you?”
• Accepting responsibility, being held to account by the City of Berkeley
• Preaching in God’s name
• Mark on the question, “How dare you?”: “And it felt like the question was legitimate. How dare you get this land? Why should it be given over to this purpose? What is it that you're worth? What are you actually bringing to the city? On what grounds can you make such outlandish claims? What are the implications of it? How will it show up that you actually live what you're saying? And therefore, how dare you do this both intrinsically? How dare you do this existentially? How dare you do it theologically? But also, how dare you do it culturally and politically and socially.”
• “What does it mean in this place at this time, surrounded by this community of believers and unbelievers, skeptics and critics of every kind?”
• Preaching to the “Cultured Despisers of the Faith” (a term coined by 19th century theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher in The Christian Faith)
• “Having grown up largely outside the life of the Church … I was one of the cultured despisers.”
• Representing classic Christian faith in an entirely unclassical community like Berkeley
• “I felt like if the Christian faith can't show up and make some kind of intelligent, purposeful, meaningful, transformative difference, then there is no case to be made and I should just walk away.”
• What’s worth giving your life to?

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment Magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Teesha Hadra and John Hambrick, coauthors of Black and White: Disrupting Racism One Friendship at a Time, discuss issues of race and the practices of empathy, humility, and leaving one’s comfort zone.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Tony Hale, Emmy Award-winning actor, chats about his career in the entertainment industry and how the creative process shapes his understanding of humanity and identity.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Roy Goble, author of Junkyard Wisdom and Salvaged, talks about learning from failure, measuring success, and engaging with the gospel in the wider world.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Director of chapel Julie Tai and chapel assistants January Lim and Aaron Dorsey discuss the planning process for chapel services and the significance of diverse representation in worship.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio

David Bailey, founder and executive director of Arrabon, shares about his work in racial reconciliation and the need for the church to repair society’s broken systems. 

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio

Nancy Ortberg, CEO of Transforming the Bay with Christ, talks about courage in leadership and the church’s need to stay engaged in the difficult conversations

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio

David Brooks, cultural commentator and columnist for The New York Times, discusses social transformation and the power of commitment in forming communities.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

John K. Chan, founder of Formation Association and lead architect of Fuller’s new campus, explains how buildings influence and activate the community around them.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Fuller Youth Institute’s Kara Powell and Steve Argue discuss the role of empathy in parenting and the ever-shifting challenges facing young adults in today’s culture

Download a free chapter of Kara Powell and Steve Argue’s new book, Growing With.

Andy Bales, CEO of Union Rescue Mission, reflects on homeless advocacy, what led him to his current work, and serving people living on Skid Row at great personal cost.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

“The Constitution is neither a left-wing or right-wing document. It is ultimately about how to hold a society together.”

American political life today is fractured and splintered, but many still yearn for unity. How can we find social cohesion amid sharply felt differences? Political scientist Yuval Levin wants to bring us back to our founding document: the American Constitution. After all, the Preamble identifies as its primary purposes to “form a more perfect union” and “establish justice.”

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute, where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Currie Chair in Public Policy. His latest book is American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again. He’s founder of National Affairs, senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor of National Review, and contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.

Levin joins Mark Labberton to discuss the US Constitution’s purpose in fostering social cohesion and unity; the malfunction of Congress to build coalitions across disagreement; the values of social order and social justice; the fragility of democracy; the difference between a contract and a covenant; and the American aspiration to live up to the covenantal relationship and mutual belonging implied in “We the people.”

About Yuval Levin

Yuval Levin is the director of Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), where he also holds the Beth and Ravenel Curry Chair in Public Policy. The founder and editor of National Affairs, he is also a senior editor at The New Atlantis, a contributing editor at National Review, and a contributing opinion writer at the New York Times.

At AEI, Levin and scholars in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies research division study the foundations of self-government and the future of law, regulation, and constitutionalism. They also explore the state of American social, political, and civic life, focusing on the preconditions necessary for family, community, and country to flourish.

Levin served as a member of the White House domestic policy staff under President George W. Bush. He was also executive director of the President’s Council on Bioethics and a congressional staffer at the member, committee, and leadership levels.

In addition to being interviewed frequently on radio and television, Levin has published essays and articles in numerous publications, including Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Atlantic, and Commentary. He is the author of several books on political theory and public policy, most recently American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation – and Could Again (Basic Books, 2024).

He holds an MA and PhD from the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago.

Show Notes

• Get your copy of Yuval Levin’s American Covenant: How the Constitution Unified Our Nation—and Could Again
• Yuval Levin’s background as a Jewish American and his childhood immigration to the United States from Israel.
• Yuval has “the kind of vision that sometimes immigrants have, which combines a really deep gratitude for this country with a sense of what's unique about it, and what's wonderfully strange about it.”
• Yuval’s religious practice at a Conservative Jewish synagogue in Washington, DC.
• How Torah has shaped Yuval Levin’s life and thought.
• Torah is Hebrew for “law.”
• Annual cycle of reading and immersing oneself in a text.
• “The American Constitution is not divine. It’s the work of a patchwork of compromises, it has a lot of problems, by no means do I think that it’s analogous to the Hebrew Bible.”
• Why write a book about the American Constitution?
• How to understand the constitution as a framework for social cohesion and unity.
• “Even in the private lives of a lot of Americans, I think the sense of isolation, of alienation, breakdown of social cohesion is very powerful in the lives of a lot of people.”
• Constitution is intended to unify, but it’s been used to divide.
• James Madison as a primary figure in Yuval’s new book.
• “Americans tend to approach politics by thinking of other Americans as the problem to be solved.”
• “In any free society, there are always going to be divisions.”
• James Madison in Federalist 10: “He just says, simply: As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he’s at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed. The fact that we disagree is not a failure. It is a reality. And yet, that doesn’t mean that we can’t be unified.”
• Unity doesn’t mean thinking alike, it means acting together.
• “The Constitution compels us into building coalitions with precisely the people we disagree with.”
• Yuval Levin explains the premises behind his book The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left
• Social order versus social justice
• “There are, as a general matter, more or less two ways of thinking about the purpose of a free society like ours. There is a way of seeing it as intended to address the challenge of chaos and disorder, and there is a way of seeing it as intended to address the challenge of inequality and injustice.”
• “… the premise of human fallenness, which says that we begin unready for freedom. And we need to be formed and shaped to be capable of freedom.”
• “I think it’s worth our seeing the Constitution is neither a left-wing or right-wing document. It is ultimately about how to hold a society together, which has these two sides to it. And so it has a lot to offer us.”
• Social order as “patient to a fault” and “prejudicial toward white or elite culture.”
• Ideological extremism.
• “The most dangerous kinds of abuses of the weak happen at the hands of majorities. And therefore, democracy itself has to be constrained by principles of justice that are kept beyond the reach of majorities.”
• The question of “simple majority rule.”
• Populism.
• Two minority parties, rather than a majority party.
• Coalition building is just not being allowed to play out.
• Shared action versus shared ideas.
• Congress is about acting together when you don’t think alike.
• “Clearly there is something broken about Congress… Everybody agrees the institution is dysfunctional. I don't think everybody agrees about what function it isn't performing.”
• “Their job is actually to negotiate with the other party.”
• “I think that's fed a kind of attitude among a lot of prominent politicians in America that says, fighting for my constituents means yelling at the other party, and refusing to give ground, refusing to give an inch. That's actually not what fighting looks like in our kind of democracy. That's what losing looks like. Fighting looks like effectively bargaining and negotiating so as to achieve something of what your voters want or need.
• Partisanship, reactionary politics, and cynicism
• “I've come to think that cynicism about politics is actually very naive.”
• “The people you're dealing with are not cynical Machiavellians. They really believe they're doing good here, and there actually is room to have an argument.”
• How does justice operate in the political approach Yuval Levin advocates?
• The first two purposes of the Constitution: form a more perfect union, and establish justice.
• Who gets to decide what is just?
• Human equality and dignity as the premises for justice
• Why wasn’t slavery abolished in the Constitution itself?
• Native Americans and the abuse of human dignity
• Analogy: relating to our political or religious tradition as analogous to the child–parent relationship
• Seeking a mature relationship with our traditions
• Yuval Levin on the fragility of democracy: “Our democracy is often at risk.”
• Contract (an agreement that can be broken) vs. Covenant (a relationship of belonging)
• “’We the people of the United States.’ That “we” is an aspiration.”
• Yuval Levin’s perspective on the American Church, and how it contributes to the current social crisis
• American evangelicals coming to identify as an “embattled minority” or a “moral minority”
• Judging the success of a religious community by their influence as a political block
• “The particularly Madisonian logic of the Constitution is that everyone is a minority. … And that is not a position of weakness, necessarily, in this society. This is a society that is unusually solicitous of minorities. And when it's at its best, it is especially solicitous of minorities.”

Production Credits

Conversing is produced and distributed in partnership with Comment magazine and Fuller Seminary.

Father Greg Boyle, a Jesuit and beloved founder of Homeboy Industries, reflects on the roles of compassion and relationship in ministry, decades of working with the poor and marginalized of Los Angeles, and widening a circle of compassion beyond the barriers we place between one another.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio.

Mitali Perkins, celebrated children’s author, reflects on her childhood in India, studying political science and public policy, and transitioning to writing stories about characters who navigate cultural difference.

For more resources for a deeply formed spiritual life, visit Fuller.edu/Studio