Lisa Fields: Hello. Welcome to the Jude three Project podcast. I’m your host, Lisa Fields. I’m the founder of the Jude three Project. Well, thank you for watching another episode of the g three project podcast. As always, I’m your host, Lisa Fields, the founder of the g three project, and we’re doing a special series on my book, When Heroes Fall. Yes. It’s coming out June 16. And by the time you see this, it might already be out. But if not, preorder it. Order for your friends, your neighbors, your aunties, your cousins. Order for everybody. Yes. Alright. Go ahead. And so this is a very personal story for me navigating a hero that fall. I don’t as as you will read in my office, no. I don’t name the hero. And so for the book, I just call it the hero Bruce. And so for, for today, I’m gonna have a conversation with my friend, doctor Esau Macaulay Yeah. A PhD in New Testament. Yeah. I’ll let him introduce himself.
Dr. Esau McCaulley: Oh, man. I’m I’m Esau Macaulay. I’m a teacher I’m a professor at Wheaton College. I’m a pastor, of All Saints Church in Naperville, and I’ve written a couple of books. I’ll do the short version of this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things I talk about in the book is
Lisa Fields: telling the complete truth about our heroes. Yeah. And one of the things I pull from it, and I called you when I was thinking about this when I was writing it, in in in Matthew, in the genealogy, how Matthew talks about David. Yeah. But he talks about, like, is this great king, but then he talks about Bathsheba, the wife of Uriah Yeah. As if to say, hey. We can’t talk about David without talking about the fact that there’s more to David than just him being this great king. Yeah. It’s telling to me the genealogy gives us some tools on how to talk about fallen heroes Yeah. That we could talk about all the things they did and not just, the good or bad they did. Yeah. What is the what is the intentionality in that Matthew genealogy
Dr. Esau McCaulley: to teach us? Well, I don’t think it’s just the Matthew genealogy. I think it’s the entire of the Old Testament. Yes. The old testament, I heard someone describe it. The old testament is a series of catastrophes, prevented by the intervention of the grace of God.
Lisa Fields: That’s a great one. And so
Dr. Esau McCaulley: what you see in these stories is, you know, sometimes and, like, even in the story of David, sometimes the narrative itself is the commentary Mhmm. That you see the the story just tells you what happens. Mhmm. But as you see what happens, you see the brokenness and the fallenness of people. And so in the story of David and Bathsheba, you see him see a woman who was married to someone else, who he wanted, and he took he he he took advantage of her. We would call, like, she was unable to resist him. She was unable to give consent. We would call us get sexual assault. Yeah. So David sinned. And I think that, what that story is recorded in scripture to say is just because you did something great for God, it does and it doesn’t mean that you’re incapable of doing something also really wicked. And what David does there has cascading impacts on, like, the rest of of of Israelite history. Mhmm. And so I think that you do see that sometimes we want to assume that a gifting means that that gifted person is somehow morally it’s like a morally perfect. But there’s a difference between having a gift and having the character that and having the character that can sustain the gift. Mhmm. And we see a lot of people who are gifted, but who lack the character to sustain. I have this thing that I say all of the time. One of my major goals, at least I hope for this I’m completely serious is when I die, I just wanna be gone. Like, I don’t want I don’t wanna die, and then people are waiting. How long have you gotta wait before he tells the truth? I’m going die. I’m gonna die, and that’s just now whatever, like, random stuff that I did, I was imperfect. I made mistakes. That’s not what I’m saying. But I don’t want You don’t want to scandalize me. I want to I want to get out of this thing with my integrity intact. Yes. I want to keep the vow I will keep the vows I made to my wife and my kids and, I think that’s important because I think that I think that we don’t have in the current church a lack of gifted people. I don’t think we’re saying, man, there’s not enough gifted people in the world. I think we lack people with whose integrity can sustain their gifting. Mhmm.
Lisa Fields: And you’re addressing that in your book. Yeah. Yeah. And and so when I use David, with the way in which I talk about David in this book is different than I feel like how people talk about David Yeah. And his failures in the world. Some people use David as a scapegoat.
Dr. Esau McCaulley: Oh.
Lisa Fields: Talk about the ways in which because I think when people talk about David and his failure, they use it as a scapegoat, and that’s oversimplification.
Dr. Esau McCaulley: Right? So, yeah, they say something like David was a man at the God’s own heart. Yeah. And David wrote so many Psalms, and David led Israel despite his sinfulness. And the idea being that that made David’s sinfulness not that bad or that they could continue in ministry while doing the same stuff that David did. Mhmm. Well, first of all, David’s sin had consequences. Severe consequences. Severe consequences, eventually, to the division of the empire. Mhmm. That, like, basically, the kingdom was only united under David and Solomon in part because of all of the things that David put into place during this moment. And you can often even see, like, some of Solomon’s own trauma around how he understands and disrespects women, probably got it from his daddy. And so you see even, like, some generational dysfunction that comes from this. And so the idea that David was able to conduct his ministry without a fallout is not true. And so if you’re looking at David and saying David is my model for ministry, then what you probably should say is that my sin is gonna have a tremendous impact on my legacy. Right? Because we do look at David differently. And so I think that people think something like David’s sinned, therefore, my sin is less serious. And I think the lesson that we we are supposed to learn from David is he could have been so much more. How is David’s story different if there was no Bathsheba? And so I think that, you know, Paul talks about this in I forget where’s it somewhere in first Corinthians. He talked about the Old Testament. He said, these things are written for our instruction. We’re supposed to learn from them. That’s what I want people to kind of think through is, do you really believe that the point of the David story is to say, be like David in that way? That was actually happening. Right? When when when they when they when they put the Mariah, the Uriah Hittites in the Matthew genealogy, the purpose of that to say, yeah, stealing somebody’s wife ain’t that bad. God can still use you. Now, I do think there is this thing, and this is kind of a little bit more complicated, actually with kingship, that because people will say, I don’t want to sound like I’m some kind of like legalist. I mean, it’s not that legalist to say don’t assault people, but I’m talking about, grace, that our sins aren’t the end of our story. That David is someone who who repents and who, has a genuine change of heart. I think one thing that we could learn from David’s story is our failures don’t have to be the end and that God can restore us. So I would say there’s three things that I would take from the David story that might be important for Christian leaders today. One, our sin has real consequences. Mhmm. That that really can damage who we are. Two, you know, the forgiveness that is available to all of us are available to us as, like, Christians. Right? And three, that you can be deeply in love with God and still be liable to temptation. And so that means we should have some real humility about us thinking that our gifts are gonna protect us from catastrophe. So I think that’s kind of what’s going on with the David story, not necessarily a normalization of, of brokenness.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. Yeah. In in the book, I look at David from various angles Okay. And seasons of his life. So one of the things when we talk talk about God’s use of a person and his approval, I think one of the things that it confuses people is that God uses people, and he can empower people not for their own sake, but for the sake of others. Yes. And I use that I so I use David from a different angle when he’s being chased by Saul. And there’s this interesting thing in in in Samuel. The Holy Spirit overshadowed Saul, and he begins to prophesy day and night. Yeah. And first, it’s so it doesn’t even just overshadow Saul. It it overshadows his men first. Yeah. I remember. And then he’s like, okay. Let me go. And it overshadows him, and he begins to prophesy day and night. Even the onlookers are like, it’s all a prophet? Yeah. Because they’re like, he’s prophesying. And he must the the if the spirit is present, the the prophecy is accurate. Yeah. And one would say, oh, the spirit of God is on him. So a must equal b. Yeah. Which and that’s not. It’s there to save David. And I think it’s a sobering text because it highlights that God’s spirit can fall on you to help somebody else without it actually being
Dr. Esau McCaulley: a signifier that God is with you. Yeah. I think that once again, we talk about sustainability. Mhmm. So the spirit of God was on him. Mhmm. He prophesied, but then he went back to being who he was. Yes. And so I think that’s what I mean when I say the thing that makes ministry viable is the link between gift and character. Mhmm. That the gift can you people can and this is what I think is this is what’s so difficult about when when when heroes fall. You can be so enraptured by the gift Mhmm. That the person has and the change that is brought in you, you don’t even want to believe that they’re capable of failing because it makes it feel like what does that mean this experience that I had wasn’t real through their ministry? And I think that what you can say is, like, what I experienced with God was real even if that person was fake. Mhmm. And you don’t have to actually protect the person. It’s one of the things that actually like, don’t don’t touch the Lord’s anointed. First of all, that’s about a king. That ain’t about all of us. Mhmm.
Lisa Fields: And I don’t I don’t I don’t think that was even as I reread that text, that’s some that’s his personal conviction. That’s not a divine
Dr. Esau McCaulley: command. Do you would you say would you say that? Am I am I reading that right? No. What I’m saying? Okay. Who who is the lord who is the lord’s anointed in that in that text? He’s talking about Saul. Okay then. Yeah. Who who is who is the clamp what is Saul? Saul is the king of Israel. Yeah. Who’s the who is the ultimate king of Israel? Jesus. Jesus. Yeah. So, like, the sorry. All of these, don’t make it into the Bible. All of these, like, passages were are read to the Lord’s anointed. It’s like they’re respecting the office of kingship. Right? That climaxes in the person of Jesus, who is himself actually harmed and killed and murdered on our behalf. And then Paul says that or, you know, Jesus, you know, whoever wants to follow me is take up his cross and follow me. That means that he even says to Peter, they’re gonna lay hands on you and take you where you don’t wanna go. Mhmm. And so this idea that a a non king is the Lord’s anointed, in which to judge them or to criticize them, is to somehow go against the will of God is simply a distortion of these texts. Yeah. I think yeah. So it’s just like first of all, it ain’t about us. Mhmm. It’s about a king. We ain’t kings. The king is Jesus. So it’s not talking about don’t criticize. Here’s the thing. You see, and like when he said do not touch the Lord, he actually means like kill him. Yes. He doesn’t mean criticize. He means kill him. Right? So you have, though, in the Bible, tons of people who criticize vehemently kings of Israel. Yes. The prophets. The prophets. There’s this one where I was just reading it. It’s Amos. And Amos is prophesying. And the king says, Amos, go prophesy somewhere else. I get the land can’t bear your preaching. And Amos goes, man, I was minding my own business. I’m not a prophet nor the son of the prophet. I was addressed I used to tend the sycamore trees. And the Lord sent me here to tell y’all y’all was foul. So here’s some more. Here’s another one. And so I think that this idea that a clergy person, and I’m clergy, that we are some kind of, like, untouchable class is just not true of the vocation.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm. Yeah. And I I I love that you brought out that it’s talking about murder. Yeah. Not criticism. Yes. Because I think that’s what we miss. Like Yeah. We’re supposed to hold one another accountable. You don’t reach a place Yeah. In your authority where you can’t be held accountable. Yeah.
Dr. Esau McCaulley: And were you about to say something? Yeah. I was thinking about, like so, like, your book, When Heroes Fall, there’s, like, these two opposite dangers. You’re dealing with with leaders who have significant moral failings that are themselves disqualifying for ministry. And when that happens, that needs to be dealt with. I think that the reason why pastors sometimes talk about stuff like David and stuff like that. There’s this other thing that pastors aren’t allowed to be human. I’m not talking now being human don’t mean like cheating on you. I’m talking about like that a pastor is also a Christian who also fails in sins. And so sometimes there can be even this, like, sanctification of of pastors being broke. They’re like, we can’t, you know, we can’t take care of our families. And so I think that we have to balance between, one, holding people accountable when there are these grievous errors that that, disqualifies for ministry. Mhmm. But it’s also we are trying to lead while also trying to be Christians, and we do that imperfectly. And in the case of a non major scandal, can a pastor, like, be a person? And sometimes I do think that there can be a kind of, hyper criticism of clergy, not for the people who do something you’re talking about in this book, but that’s what I think clergy are trying to get at. Like, how do I have space to be an imperfect Christian? Because perfect can’t be the standard of usefulness because there is the case that god uses broken people to accomplish his purposes. Mhmm. Yeah. In the book, I kinda talk about,
Lisa Fields: Miller Echterton in his book, Christian Theology Yeah. Has a line from Leon Morris, in which he he talks about what it means to be human. And oftentimes, we define humanity by brokenness. Yeah. And that is falling humanity. But to define humanity by brokenness, Morris is arguing is a misunderstanding of humanity because Jesus is fully human. Yeah. And so he’s saying we our humanity is defined by the fact that we’re image bearers, not the fact that we’re imperfect. Yeah. That’s because of the Adam sinned that we we fall sinned. So I’m kinda reframing that for people so they don’t define their humanness by brokenness. Yeah. But they define their humanness by god’s image. That’s fair. In light of that, how do you think we talk about humanity?
Dr. Esau McCaulley: I mean, I think human humans are complex creatures. I get what Leon Morris is trying to say. Mhmm. But to be human in our context means to embrace what we are on the other side of the fall. Mhmm. That humans are capable and this is what I actually think Fall I I qualified as falling humans. Yeah. Falling humans. This is what I wanna say. And I think this confuses a lot of Christians. Every human bears the image of God. Mhmm. That means every human is capable of doing something that’s good and true and beautiful. Mhmm. That means even that means a non believer can say something that’s good and true and beautiful. Sometimes we expect because of our fallen humanity that the nonbeliever is gonna be utterly wicked all of the time. But there’s a thing called common grace that all of us are capable of truth, goodness, and beauty. We’re also capable of profound evil. Mhmm. And that duality is part of what it makes the human experience. And the same person who’s capable of doing something profoundly good is also capable of doing something that’s profoundly evil, which is why as Christians, we rely upon the grace of God to help us resist the evil and pursue the good. And so for me to be human means to be capable of genuine good and genuine evil. And to be a a redeemed human means that I’m using the power I’m I’m allowing the Holy Spirit to make me into that which God initially intended for me to be.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm. I like that. I think that helps for the next generation who see a hero fall, and then they wanna dismiss every good that that person has done. Yeah. That that to me, we live in such black and white, of our thinking, which is is a is a actual trauma response. Yeah. Help help people. What are moments and you talk about this in your book when you talk about your grandfather. Yeah. You having to nuance and live in the gray, and what did that do for your healing journey? So Talk talk about the Yeah. Grandfather. So Yeah. So yeah. So,
Dr. Esau McCaulley: in my book, Heart brought to the Promised Land, I talked with my grandfather. And for a long time, I judged him because, he was a pastor. And but we also had this, like, gambling den and that they had. So, like, kinda like a speakeasy. Mhmm. And so they’d be upstairs writing like, he’d be upstairs writing a sermon, but downstairs, they’d be like a juke juke like, music, fried fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, greens. They’d be playing, like, they were gambling. And for a long and because of that, people and so I would see people who would go to my grandfather’s church who would come down and gamble, people in the choir, and then I would see them in church on Sunday. And so for a long time, I was like, why did my why did my grandfather do this? How how could he kind of, like, invalidate his ministry? And so for a long time, people thought that the ministry was a hustle, even in my family, when I would say, I’m going into ministry. This is something to do with some kind of hustle. Now it comes to find out when I was older that my grandmother had a gambling addiction. And he was like, it’s better for her to do it here than her to do it out in the streets, and this is the only way that I could figure out how to help her. Now obviously, you could have said there’s different ways to help than allowing the gambling to be in your house, but you could be I began to see like the kinds of the kinds of things that you do when you’re in love. And so now I see my grandfather as a more complicated figure. And it helps me frame his ministry in a different way. I’ll talk about another part of that book that I’m talking about if it’s okay. I talk about my father who, was abusive to me and to my siblings. And for a long time, I, like, really, really hated my father, because of those things. And one of the things that that helped me begin the journey down the road to forgiveness before he actually even repented, he eventually did later in life, was I began to see life from his perspective. Like, it’s kind of sad to be a grown man who’s alienated from your kids. Like if I saw someone and none of their kids would talk to him. And I began to see the tragedy, not just on what his actions had done to me, but what his actions had done to himself. That he could have had a family. He could have, you know, been the faithful father and got a chance to see all of the things happening when I was growing up, but he missed it all. As I began to see his life as a tragedy, not just what he did to me as a tragedy, have any sympathy for the like, what I’m saying is this, it is tragic to have the entirety of your of your of your life and ministry life, that life is tragic. And I wouldn’t want anybody to live a duplicitous life. I would much rather for someone to be the person in private that they are in public And to see all the ways in which whatever it is, even if they thought they were doing something for God, even though they couldn’t control. You see, all of that burned to the ground because of their own sinfulness is tragic both for the victims who suffered under this person. I’m gonna try to downplay that at all. But it’s also tragic as a person. And so I would want that person to fall on their knees before the living God and say, I confess and I repent, and to make genuine restoration as much as they can during their lifetime. That is actually what you would want for a person. You don’t want a person to, like, actually not have to face the form of vacation of their sins either here and in the age to come. And so for me, it is like, I think that there are people whose sin is so grievous that it taints everything that they touched. And I wouldn’t want anybody to do that, to heal or to harm with the same hand. Mhmm. And to me, that is to undo so much good that you could have done. Is to me, like, heartbreaking. Mhmm.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. I appreciate you sharing those stories because of your own life because I think that’s what people are wrestling with. Yeah. Like, they’re trying to weigh those waters. Yeah. And we live in a social media age where everything has to be communicated Yeah. In a tweet or a post or in a thread. And the fact is it is challenging to navigate orders through these kind of waters through little, just sentences and not, like, processing pain. Yeah. Because there’s this thing of, like, as soon as something happens,
Dr. Esau McCaulley: I gotta communicate about it. And after I communicate about it, I’ve dealt with it. It’s like, no. That that’s not it. That’s not it. I will tell you, your trauma your trauma will sneak up on you when you are not ready for it. Yeah. Trauma doesn’t wait for a good time to traumatize you. Yeah. What I mean by that is there’s the initial thing, but if you don’t deal with that and process it, it comes again and again and again and again. And it comes when it is least beneficial for you because it wants like, the darkness wants to have you. And so I do think that, I used to be way more kind of engaged in, like, arguing about stuff in social media and processing stuff stuff in social media. But I remember and I talked about this before, but maybe people don’t listen to old episodes so I can tell it again. I remember where I was going through something in in my own life, and I was just mad about what’s going on in my actual life. And that anger and that frustration came influenced how I was writing argument, I don’t normally argue back and forth with someone on the Internet. And I’m arguing back and forth with someone on the Internet, and I’m like, am I mad at this person? Am I mad? Am I mad about a trauma from somewhere else? Else? And this is why I’m mad. How do I know that’s not what why they’re mad? And are we both performing our trauma? Are we trauma are we performing our traumas against one another and then traumatizing each other in the process? And so a lot of times, there are things that we and I think that one of the things there there’s, like, communities that can form. Communities can form around pain or communities that can form around healing. Mhmm. And then part of it is this is like the good of social media where you can kinda go, oh, this I thought this is just happening to me. I this happened to other people too. And you can feel like you’re not alone. One of the things that people who abuse and traumatize do is try to isolate you. So understand, oh, no. These things that happen to me happen to other people, and there could be a sense of fellowship there. But sometimes what social media does is it rewards you for displaying your trauma and is not as interested in your healing. One of the things we talked about dealing with this in this book because you’re actually trying to point people towards healing. We there and people don’t always want to be healed. Yes. And I’m not trying to say that in a negative way towards people who are traumatized. I’m saying like the algorithm does not care what garners attention. It it just cares that attention is garnered. And the algorithm is invested in you not being healed. Yes. Because they know rage feeds you to be on the board. You more and more. And so I would say, like, I have learned that none of these companies love me, and none of these companies I Sometimes we text through it instead of tweeting through it. Yeah. And sometimes and I have I have some friends of mine that say, hey. Listen. Can I just be, like, the can I just ask this question how I feel it without, like, policy? Because like everything in on the Internet is like a press release. Mhmm. Because you gotta polish it. You gotta make sure that this group is gonna get mad at you. These people are gonna misunderstand you. I just need to be able to say this is like with a therapist. This is actually what I feel. This is what I’m going through. This is what I’m trying to make sense of. How do I, make sense of the fact that this person I really looked up to? Listen. I know you don’t name any names in your book, but I will say I was in seminary from o two to, like, o five. Right? And the decade of my ministry from, like, the first decade of most every single person who they put in front of me when I was in seminary and say this you look up to, eight out of 10 of them were were have can have, are smoldering ruins in their career. And you can Google them. Who was, who was popping in 2002 to 2010 and look at having those people finish well? And so I’ve had to process a lot of the stuff. And then you begin to find out, like for me, a lot of these scholars that you tried to trust and they’re these great, they end up being white supremacists. You’re just going like, what am I doing? And so I did have to find in my own life, how do I find the real God amidst all of the people who are whose whose lives in ministry distort that message? Mhmm.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. As you were talking, I couldn’t help but think about the fact that, like, when we share on social media, we’re Yeah. We’re we have to ask ourselves, do like, Jesus asked the man, do you wanna be may whole? Like, I think we have to start asking ourselves questions. Like, sometimes we’re more comfortable with the rage than we are with healing because healing is not familiar. And I say that because I always tell people, when you’re healed, you tell the story differently. Yeah. When I I talk about in the book. When when this first dropped about my hero, somebody reached out to me and was like, you should write an article in Christianity Today because, you know, it would be helpful because you celebrated this person publicly. You need to denounce them publicly. And I was like, hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. I’m not about to write a article. I’m not about to say anything because I need to process it first. And I think people if if you’re doing if you’re gonna process something in a healthy way, the first thing you need to do is not run to social to vent all of your emotions Yeah. Especially when it’s something that’s close to you. Now if it’s something distant that you wanna commentate on, that’s something you can communicate with about. But if it’s something that impacts you personally, you don’t have to rush. It’s not a requirement or a commandment that you when something happens to you traumatic that you need to process, the commandment is to go to social media and write a post about it. You need to process it first, and then I can communicate it about in a healthy way that brings healing versus just communicating my feelings in the moment.
Dr. Esau McCaulley: So I was thinking about that because in how far to the promised land, which is my family story, a lot of events happened in the eighties and the nineties. And I think I wrote that book in, like, twenty twenty something. Mhmm. And so that was, like, I guess, thirty years before I could really write about what happened to me. And I think about this a lot, and I mentioned this in, like, the the sermon. Sorry. How I preached about it, because one of the things you you preach your life. And when I first started preaching about my father, he was just a testimony. He was this thing that I survived. Mhmm. And I think that some people when they, when you at this early stage of your trauma and it’s okay to be there, all you can say is that I survived it. Like this horrible thing happened and I’m still alive, right? And for some people, that’s as far as you can ever get. You can never really get to this place of, like beyond, and that’s not, it’s not a failure, just what you are. And then over time, I began to shift the story, and like I said, see him as this tragic figure. Right? I talked about that. By the time you get to, like, the end of this story, I could say, like, what what Joseph says, what people might have meant for evil, God used for good. And I think that, like, the interesting thing about Joseph’s story that Joseph doesn’t say that these things weren’t evil. He was and he didn’t even say that God caused it. He says that in the midst of these things, God was at work. And because of the things that I experienced as a experienced as a child, it made me more sensitive to issues of domestic violence. It made me more sensitive to the way that women are are treated in our society. And I don’t think that that makes me like, I would never wish those experiences on any kid, but it was not without god has been able to turn what someone meant for evil and and use it to create an advocate. And so I think that maybe what we can think about asking ourselves is where are we in the story? Are we just in the store where the only real testimony that we have is that we survived it? Or are we at the point where we can kinda take that story and use that story that the evil that happened to us or the bad that we endured or the disappointment that we experienced and point towards the glory of God in it. And so I think that we don’t always give ourselves time to heal. I think one of the things that I said about press releases, it used to be the case that companies and churches felt necessary to do stuff. Right? The church has to issue a statement. The company maybe the government has to do something. But one of the things that, like, the Internet did is it turned us all into our own individual nonprofits. Then we all gotta release We all gotta release it. Like, basically press releases. We all feel like, what are we doing? Why we all issuing press releases? Because we wanna make sure we’re not guilty by association. I know. What I’m saying to you is, like, who is they? One of the things that is that is really important to realize is that the people who you think had tremendous power over you do not have the power that they used to. That that that it’s imaginary. So it’s like, I remember when I was in high school and these people, like the cool kids in school. And back in the day, you could just graduate high school and just, like, be done with these people. Like, I don’t gotta see you ever again. I can go to another town and just move across it, move to the other side of the neighborhood. And now the social power that they had over me is gone. My need to perform for them was gone. I could actually just be myself somewhere else. Y’all don’t remember this because this you you’ve grown up in the Internet era. Now there’s always someone who is watching you, who you have to perform with. I think I think that we’re in other words, we never graduate high school. Mhmm. In the sense of we’re triangulating between these different pressures. And there’s clicks. There’s clicks on the Internet. There’s cool kids, and there’s clicks that don’t like each other. And you kinda know that they’re kinda beefing, and they’re inhabiting the same social space. And every time every now and then, they kind of clash. And just like in high school, people say passive aggressive stuff. People kinda know, oh, I know who that’s about. And so it ends up being like this whole thing that causes us so much stress when we’re actually grieving. Mhmm. We’re actually grieving. And when we see someone who we respected fall, before you worry about all the other stuff that’s attached to that, You should grieve for yourself, and you should do what you can to care for the survivors. Yeah. Those are the things that I think would be, like, my priority. And what people think about me, because if people weren’t duplicit if they weren’t good at deceiving, then nobody would be deceived. Mhmm. That’s the reason that’s what makes these people so dangerous. They’re good at presenting a facade. That’s how you get an entire platform. Mhmm. And then, like, it’s just like, yes. Once the the kind of, you see it clearly, oh, I saw these signs. But in some cases, like, you know, you didn’t know. Now some people do. Some people know and they protect those people. That’s a different set of circumstances. If you knew and you protected the person, that’s a different kind of complicity than if you had just duped along with everybody else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I I
Lisa Fields: I I I use the illustration in the book. Like, the Bible tells the whole truth. Like, that’s the reason that points to us reliability. It doesn’t just tell the tell a good story about the heroes of the faith. It tells the whole truth, but it doesn’t tell the truth exactly as it happens. There’s some time between when it’s written and when the events occur. Right? And the authors are not telling the story to vent. They’re telling the story for a purpose. Yeah. And and I think sometimes we’re like, I wanna tell the whole story. That’s fine. I’m I’m arguing in the book. Tell the whole story. But tell it from a healed place and not a broken place with a purpose of you. And I’m talking about so there’s I wanna be clear. Tell the whole story when it’s you being harmed or some and you have control or power and you need to say something. Tell the authorities. Tell you know, expose that. But I’m talking about people at a distance who wanna tell just us and their hurt. It’s like, is this the right place? Like, you could create some distance between the time you communicate about something and the time that something happens, show that the way you communicate it is helpful to those who are hearing it. Yeah. There’s it’s interesting because
Dr. Esau McCaulley: I think that what you’re talking about is a particular strand of biblical text where there is a certain kind of perspective that is available. Mhmm. And you could see they’ve crafted the story in such a way to make a particular point. I think that which I think that you see the other phenomenon also in these biblical text, but it’s closer to something like trauma literature. Mhmm. You see something like Psalm one thirty seven Yeah. Where he talks about blessed if someone takes your head, your baby then dashes against the rocks. Mhmm. And that seems like crazy. Like, how can any that could be in the bible? Well, that’s because this is the story of the Babylonian exile. When the Babylonians came in, they smashed this this this they murdered this person’s family. Yeah. And I’m gonna assume that that song was was was written maybe like somewhere shortly thereafter. And you see in some of the literature, in some of the Psalms and other places, maybe even Lamentations well, Lamentations is a little bit different because I think it’s a little bit it’s been processed a little bit more. Well, the trauma is so fresh. All these people can do is cry out to God. Mhmm. And I think that what you might want to say is, well, you you might have to be aware of what you can and can’t do in the midst of trauma. If you do write something quickly, which is sometimes, like you said, it’s important to do, you’re crying out to God and you’re telling your story,
Lisa Fields: but you might not be able to make sense of it yet. Yeah. And I guess it’s the purpose of the audience. So when you’re when you’re reading the Psalms, to to me, when I’m thinking about the Psalms, it’s a cry to God. Yes. And and the when I’m reading Chronicles of Kings, that is thinking about telling the story
Dr. Esau McCaulley: for Yeah. That’s what I’m saying. Yeah. So you that’s what I’m saying is you’re talking about people going from trauma to narration.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm.
Dr. Esau McCaulley: To be able to be in a place where they can understand what happens to them. And to use that story Mhmm. In such a way that, like, brings justice. Mhmm. So I think that probably what you’re you what I was speaking about in Psalm one thirty seven is is an actual victim. Mhmm. You’re talking about someone who’s looking back on the story and trying to make sense of it. Yeah. And that and that is different types of writing. The people who are trying to say, okay. Like, Matthew. Matthew is writing about the story of David
Lisa Fields: abused power. Yeah. Because he doesn’t know David personally. But But he admires David for as the king king of Israel, which is the readers of my book. Like, they don’t know most of these people that are reading. Yeah. You don’t know the people you look up to usually. Yeah. But, yeah, I would say, yeah, I’d say that Bathsheba would have written a totally different story. Yeah. Yeah.
Dr. Esau McCaulley: And and you even see it, like, as far as, like, in in this in the in the rest of the if best that I can tell, I could be wrong about this one. We’ll check it. Like, Bathsheba she would never talks to David again until it comes time to get Solomon the kingship. Seems like they have nothing to do with each other. I don’t think she has another child by him because I think she’s traumatized by this, and so she has like, she’s completely separate from him. She doesn’t say anything. But the people who write the story, who are apart from it, who are stepping back, they tell us David’s story, and they include his brokenness as a warning to other people. And so that’s what I was trying to say is that Psalm one thirty seven is kind of like Bathsheba writing a story. Mhmm. And that’s what you see a lot in on the Internet. Well, that’s different. But like I said, I think that, like, they’re just a different category for traumatized people who we’re not talking to. We’re talking about the people who are trying to make sense of it Yeah. From a few steps from Yeah. So I make it clear at the beginning of the book. This is not usually this book
Lisa Fields: is on is written from somebody who admires someone, not who the Yeah. Trauma actually has to do. Yeah. Because I think that’s a whole different It’s a whole it’s a whole That’s a whole different whole different. Yeah. But for people who what was missing, I felt like, in the space And I think you’re right about it. Was there’s books on, like, if you’re the trauma if the person did deceive you, like, there’s there’s books, their stories, but it’s kind of like this book is like when you admire somebody and you don’t have a personal relationship with them or you have a very shallow personal relationship with them. Yeah. And they didn’t do anything to you personally. How long did it take you? How long I’ve got I how long did it take you to feel like
Dr. Esau McCaulley: you were able to get to this place? When did you decide that you were able to write on? How long did you wait? Five years. Five years. How was the book different if you had written it, like, the week after versus now?
Lisa Fields: I think I wouldn’t have had empathy. So I talk about, like, in the book, I say that, one of the things that Bruce said to me that was really that I had to grapple with was Bruce? Mhmm. That’s what I say to say that he’s in the book. Okay. Make sure your public and private life match. Right? That’s my advice. And so when it first happened, I thought, man, this man I just remembered that. Like, I replayed that conversation in my mind. Like, you know, that’s so interesting to tell me because he and then I was like, Lisa, maybe he wasn’t trying to deceive you in that moment. Maybe he was actually trying to help you because maybe he knew what duplicity does to a person. Wow. Right?
Dr. Esau McCaulley: Man, that sounds like I mean, when I was a kid, there was like, the drug dealers. There was, like, two type of drug dealers. There was, like, the people who were, like, really hard Mhmm. And who kind of or even some people who have money, and they were drug dealers like it was a game. Mhmm. And I got these other drug dealers. You’re like, hey. You don’t wanna be like us. I remember, one time, some of them gave one gave me some cash. Like, hey, man. Go buy yourself something. Because I was, you know, down bad all of the time where I dressed. They just, like, gave me some cash. Give me a couple of twenties. And it’s, like, don’t do this. Like, you seem like you’re a good kid. Like, you’re not you’re not for this life. Mhmm. They were right because I was scary. I would have, like, listen. The The first cop come back, I would’ve told everything. And I remember, like, always be like, I told this story in, like, my book, how about to the promised land? We are playing playing basketball with these drug dealers, and, like, they had brought this, this cooler. Mhmm. And we were just this great. And they were killing us at the beginning. They were just, like, crossing us up. They were drinking these Michelobes or whatever, just beer, whatever the beer was. And as the day went on, because it was hot out of that month, they got drunker. And the drunker they got, we started beating them because they stumbled around and they had, like, like, white tank tops and all of that stuff, and they would kinda pants would fall down. And it was so it was probably the funniest day I remember of my childhood. And but those are also the same people who sold the drugs that members of my family were addicted to. Mhmm. And I and they was the same ones who said stay away from us, but they were like, you know, they could be really nice, but they were hiding. There was like a dark side that you couldn’t see to a person. And I’m always trying to figure out how could both of those things reside in the same person. And I actually think that’s a part of what it mean part of the brokenness of the world is that people can be engaged.
Lisa Fields: People are messy. Mhmm. They can they can people could be two things at one time. I I talk about this in my book. And we want to, like, say a person’s all good, all bad. It’s the what psychologists call a halo effect and a horn effect. Yeah. And I talk about that, walk through the psychological things. And there’s a story in there I talk about Frank Lucas. His daughter finds out later on in life who Frank who her dad was. And she’s like, all I knew was he was a good daddy. Like, as a kid, he told me he was a he owned a candy store. Like, you know what I’m saying? He made me breakfast in the morning. But Frank Lucas on the street Yes. Who Frank Lucas was to his daughter as a little kid Yeah. Was the best daddy. Yeah. Who Frank Lucas was on the street was a monster.
Dr. Esau McCaulley: And that’s what so spirited confusion to people. Mhmm.
Lisa Fields: And so it’s like, how do we live? And she says in that, she was like, even though I read all the evil things about him, I still love my daddy. And that’s the tension Yeah.
Dr. Esau McCaulley: That we live in. So, Esau, thank you for joining us. Well, thank you so much for coming for coming. I’m on your podcast. You so for y’all who don’t know, this is the Jude three podcast, but she’s actually at the Holy Post Media Studio. Yeah. So I’m telling you, thank you for coming even though I’m on your podcast.
Lisa Fields: Well, thank you so much, Esau. Y’all grab the book when when heroes fall, to continue to wrestle with, some of what Esau and I were just just talking about is wherever books are sold. And we have a series of conversations just like the one Esau and I did for you to enjoy. Remember, subscribe, like, share all the things. All of our resources are on our website. Past episodes are on our website, and we cannot do what we do without generous support from people like you. So consider being a monthly partner at jude3project.org by hitting that donate tab. Until next time, grace and peace and god bless. See you also.