Lisa Fields: Hello. Welcome to the G3 Project podcast. I’m your host, Lisa Fields. I’m the founder of the G3 Project. Well, thank you for watching another episode of the G3 Project podcast. As always, I’m your host, Lisa Fields, the founder of the G3 Project. And today, we are still on our series on my book, When Heroes Fall. And I’m joined by doctor Vincent Bacot, to talk about this. And one of the reasons I wanna talk about this because of your dissertation figure. So doctor Bacot, just tell our audience a little bit about who you are, and then tell them who your dissertation figure was.
Dr. Vincent Bacote: Vincent Bacot, year 20 ‘7 at Wheaton College. I’m a professor of theology. I direct our center for applied Christian Ethics. My elevator speech, if someone asked me about what do you do, would be to say that I build bridges between faith and life or that I’m a theologian in ethicist. Our faith, how we talk about our faith, the theology part, the ethics about how we go about our lives. So building that bridge or making sure that that connection is always there is very vital to me. Who was my dissertation figure? My dissertation figure was an obscure to some Dutch Calvinist named Abraham Kuiper, k u y p e r. Why was he my dissertation figure? Because, part of that building a bridge between faith and life, I was looking for how that bridge to be built, for how a bridge could be built. When I was in college, I was what you would call the culture affirming Christian around people who tended not to be as culture affirming as I was, especially given my taste in certain kinds of heavier music, you might say. And I had the intuition that Christians should be engaged in the culture And I would say you can listen to, you know, good music whether it’s Christian or not. It’s not only classical music, that’s not Christian that you can listen to. But that also went to should Christians be involved in politics, how should our faith be impacting life beyond Sunday, beyond just being a nice person. It wasn’t until I was in seminary where really reading Abraham Kuyper’s book called Lectures on Calvinism where I really grasped a theology for that. I was looking for theological language for what was only a theological intuition for me. The intuition was, of course, Christians should engage the culture, but I couldn’t make a biblical theological argument for that. I read Kuyper in his first chapter of that book, Lectures on Calvinism. The gift of what I read was when he talked about his doctrine of common grace, where he talked about how basically God has given us this responsibility for engaging the world in Genesis one, right there with, you know, have dominion or or another translation for it for us, steward the creation, because dominion is to manage, not to wreak havoc, and that God’s never negated that. And you can see in Psalm eight, for example, it’s not looking back on what we’ve lost, it’s still an opportunity for us. So this doctrine of common grace is about how God’s preserving the world so we can continue to do this engagement in the world, management of the world. And of course that’s politics, that’s culture, that’s work, all kinds of stuff. And so for me, it’s like driving a car, the radio’s on, and the song that you didn’t know that was your song came on. And so I mean I knew that there was something about Kuyper and culture, but I didn’t know quite how to what exactly it was. When I read that, that was the song. As it happened, in that same chapter, there was the first hint of what would make Kuyper a complicated figure. So he’s talking about common grace, this doctrine of God preserving the world, and of course when you get this preserving preservation of the world, that means history unfolds. Well, Kuyper describes the unfolding of history, and as it turns out, when he talks about like who are the featured players in this development of history, He does it according to the sons of Noah, Shem, Ham, and Japheth. Surprise, surprise, who winds up not being such a great contributor? Right? I mean, he even says about the, you know, the the legacy of the sons of Ham, or Ham and his his progeny, no impulse for higher life has ever come from the third group. Now, because I knew that people had done, you know, talked about this Curse of Ham thing, I was like, you know, I’m gonna give him a mulligan on this, you know, and golf a mulligan, a duo. You get another chance. Because I thought, oh, this is stupid. Nobody cares about this. And, you know, everybody knows. It’s ridiculous. And so, okay, that was idiotic. Read the rest of the book, Ray to sign the dotted line and say, you know, only half jokingly, Father Abraham, will you lead? I will follow. Six pages from the end, he’s contrasting election and evolution. And I’ll never forget the quote, and I I can show anyone who wants to know on Google Maps where I was at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. I I know what I know what direction that the desk was facing. You know? And, yeah, I was it was in I was a TA for a professor, and I was in this office reading the book. And he’s making this contrast. He says to put it concrete, If you were a plant, you’d rather be a rose than a mushroom. If an insect, a butterfly rather than a spider. If a bird, an eagle rather than an owl. Among the higher vertebrates, a lion rather than a hyena. And then bean man, rich rather than poor, talented rather than dull minded, of the Aryan race, then hot and hot or Kafir. Now this was a complicated situation because I knew I wanted him to be my dissertation figure, and I could not believe what I was reading. I thought, you gotta be kidding me. He did not say that. It’s the kind of thing where where I wanted to close my eyes real tight. It’s like, okay, if I close my eyes really tight and when I open them it’ll be gone. And of course I open my eyes and it’s like, nope, that wish didn’t become true. And so now I have to deal with a major crisis because it’s like, wait. That seems like a you know, he’s definitely a racist. I mean, we had the curse of ham thing already kind of like saying hello, but this just was shocking. And that’s now I’ve heard people say, by the way, he’s just making a comparison. Because my response is you have choices when you make a comparison. Mhmm. And the choices he made was to use was to compare Aryans, whatever that means about certain kinds of Europeans, compared to South African tribes, black tribes. I mean, I and so all kind of stuff was going through my head because he he gave me my song. And it’s like I, you know, I hear my song. I bought the album. I’m liking most of the songs, in fact, loving most of the songs, and I’m almost at the end and the next to the last song is like how did that song give them this album? And I’ve gotta deal with this. And I’m also imagining that if I do have him as my dissertation figure, are people going to be condemning me? Why why would you ever do your dissertation on somebody who would say these kinds of things? But I also knew I hadn’t read anybody else that gave me this theological rationale for public engagement. And so, I was forced into really having to discern whether I could do this, whether I could have him as a dissertation figure when I once I got into doctoral work. And, and so I had that crisis and in and and sitting there in vexation, distress, I I I was moved toward the critical thinking question. Okay. You’ve got this part about public engagement, common grace being the the the theology that is the permission for public engagement. Affirming what he says about common grace mean that right along with it is an affirmation of what he says about race? And so I had to ask this what this critical thinking question. Are these things the same thing or or a part of a larger whole? And one might argue that for Kuiper, in some ways, it was. But for me, the point about this theological claim about what we read in the Bible, God gave humans this responsibility for the world, God’s been preserving the world, it’s really clear. He said he tells Noah I’m not I’m not gonna I’m not gonna destroy the world, I’m gonna preserve the world. Life goes on. Opportunity goes on. Does that entail being a racist? And to me, the answer was clearly no. And so really that that’s what enabled me to keep, pressing forward with Kuyper. The problem is, of course, with any figure I’ve discovered, we could talk about John Howard Yoder. You know, a lot of people like Yoder because of the pacifism. Then they learn about the sexual improprieties, of which there were many, or Karl Barth, you know, the great Protestant theologian of the twentieth century. You know, a woman named Charlotte Von Kirschbaum, who some people say that he had an affair with, is buried in the same crypt with Karl Barth and his wife Nellie. And so they never you know, the triangle, you know, was never broken, you might say, for him. Now what do we do with with that? Right? And my point being is that we often have great encounters with these figures, and then we sometimes people, when we get that great encounter, we wanna know everything about them, and we had to be careful about asking that question. Because it’s as if the thing that is so helpful for us, we can believe sanctifies everything in the person and that we expect to find everything to be sanctified, and then we discover it’s not.
Lisa Fields: Mhmm. So what you’re describing is what psychologists call, and I write about in the book, the halo effect. Yes. Yes. So if you have a positive interaction, a transformational first encounter with the person, you kind of assume that everything in their life is like that encounter. Absolutely.
Dr. Vincent Bacote: Absolutely. You it’s like
Lisa Fields: it’s a normal human experience to do that. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. But on the corollary is what they call horn effect, where if you have a negative encounter, then you assume negative about everything. Yes. So I I compare it to the celebrity culture and cancel culture. Yeah. It’s essentially That’s great. Yeah. The the, to me, a good parallel. When you admire a celebrity, you’re like, man, I wanna know everything about this person. If you find out something negative, everything is is gone, canceled, all of those things. Yes. The book is really how do we live in attention because with every figure, there’s complexity. It may not be as extreme. Right? So Right. Some people do heinous things. However, there’s not a perfect hero. Right. So you can have a disposition where you don’t have people you admire. That’s one. And you just, like, Jesus is the hero, which I mean, that’s I think that’s the kind of way we should be. We shouldn’t put anybody on a pedestal. Right. But what do we do with the works that they taught us? Yeah. And I think if we’re not healthy, we throw everything away, and and we can’t parse Right. Through the things. Right. You parse through the things. So one of the things I say in the book is that my hero told me, make sure your purse your your, private and public life match. Right. Yeah. Correct? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. His didn’t. Yeah. Right? Yeah. But does that mean his advice is something because he was duplicitous that I should not take? Right. That’s still true. I still should make sure my public and my private life makes Exactly. Exactly. Like, you know, so it’s not that we throw away everything they taught us, but we live in the tension that they couldn’t be everything they preach. Right. Whether because they wouldn’t allow it to happen Yeah. Or they had struggles they seemed like they couldn’t overcome. Yeah. It’s funny. I the halo effect. I
Dr. Vincent Bacote: I’ve started drawing an illustration in my classes where I said, so here’s your figure, and I hadn’t heard of the halo effect, but literally I’ve drawn a halo over the head of the figure, but I said the figure is not walking on the ground with us. They’re elevated. They float above us, and we’re down here on the ground or we’re here in this sort of the stream of tradition. They float above us. I said, but what you discover is that, no, actually, they are also with us in the stream, and they can’t bear the weight of the halo.
Lisa Fields: Yes. It’s we’re not we’re not designed as humans to carry that kind of worship. Yes. I I say the admiration does what the sun the rays of the sun, if you’re exposed to it too long Yeah. Or too closely, it will damage you. Yes. Yes. And, unfortunately,
Dr. Vincent Bacote: we we see that. I I tell my students these days, and maybe, like, five the last five to seven years, I’ve started to put it this way. I said, you’ve got to have somebody in your life who can tell you you’re crazy. In other words, just but also somebody who can say, if you’re, you know, having your weaker moments, they can say, it is hard sometimes, isn’t it? In other words, they’re they’re because sometimes we just need somebody just to be the friend who’s with us. Other times, we need the friend that gives us the ultimatum. Right? But we need that that kind of person or a group of people like that in our lives because there is this intoxication, I think, that can happen with people where you start experiencing the benefit of these gifts that God’s given you, and you start to think that somehow that really does make you different from the others. But the fact of the matter is is that, you know, in the case of Kuiper or others, they’re in the stream with us. And and and one of the reasons that’s important that we know they’re in the stream with us is that the fact that they were able to do great things with their gifts doesn’t mean that there aren’t things for us to do and that we can’t do things. And they got and and and we don’t know whether god might do something anywhere on on the scale of those people. Maybe he will, maybe he won’t, but we’re you know, to to see somebody’s works, and be benefited by them doesn’t mean that my goal is just to admire. Right? I mean, actually, I it’s like, how am I moving into my faithfulness being in the same stream? And and and, of course, this is the interesting thing that happens. Most people, you know, they’re if they if they have at least a little bit of self reflect reflection, they know they’re not perfect. And they know that, yeah, I I know I need God’s help, but but it’s this weird thing with the halo effect that people may know that about themselves, but the admiration of the figure with the halo effect, now we we think that somehow there’s nothing they could have done wrong. I remember the first time, you know, reading about William Carey in, my church history book. I said, oh, William Carey, like, the founder of modern missions. One, how hard it was, what he was doing. But second, you know, challenges for his family or or reading about John Wesley’s not so great marriage, Whitfield and and Edwards owning slaves. I was like, wait. But these people were presented to me as these kind of emblems, and the presumption is that the presentation of the emblem means that they’re really, you know, not exactly a messiah, but maybe a little messiah. And it’s just the greatest setup because the closer we get to knowing them is the closer we get to that day of reckoning where then we’ll discover, wait, I thought there was a halo, reckoning where then we’ll discover, wait, I thought there was a halo and now I see that these horns and now of course the challenge is is not to then immediately say it’s all horns or all halo. It’s like unless, I mean even, let’s put it this way, even Wesley who talked about this thing called entire sanctification which meant that a person could be made by the Holy Spirit, perfect in their will so that they only do things out of perfect love for God, Wesley would still say that that person needed to learn and needed to grow, right? So it didn’t mean that the person had arrived. So even with a person like that, you’re going to find something where you see that people need God, that they need to grow, that there’s things that they were unaware of. With Kuyper, I wish it was only racism. But then it turned out he wasn’t always very nice to people, not even nice to people that were on his own team. He never groomed a successor. You know, he was great. He’d have, you know, sort of sort of the right hand man, if you will. But when they, you know, got to mature, he’d push them away. He could he couldn’t he just couldn’t do it. He couldn’t get over himself. He was in toxic I mean, the man was great. He’s incredible. But he but he didn’t go where theology should have taken him on race. He was pulled down by the what I call the culture, the gravity of his cultural assumptions, and he also was just, not able to get over himself.
Lisa Fields: Yes. When you say because you said he was great. Yeah. I think when I hear that, when people hear that, they’re like, well,
Dr. Vincent Bacote: what do you mean? Yeah. How do you define great? Yeah. That’s great. So the reason I say Kuiper was great is he had great capacity. He wrote a lot. He had he was a genius level intellect. He he wrote about so many things. He knew about so many things. And and here’s another way of putting it why here’s why I think he’s great. I mean, he for all his flaws, there are ways for me that he articulates theologically how we ought to think about Christians engaging in in public life that I mean, nobody else has kinda put it the way he’s put it. And so it’s clear that he had tremendous insight. And and he was great yes. Yes. And he was a great organizer. He I mean, he there’s a reason why there was one biography about him called God’s Renaissance Man. He really was that kind of person. That doesn’t mean that people should do things the way he did things, but it’s hard to not recognize his greatness. In fact, I once met a person from The Netherlands who came from the, a church that a denomination, the Kuiper, split around there there are a lot of reasons why why it split in the middle of eighteen eighties. And I mentioned to this guy that I that that Kuiper was my figure. He was like, Kuiper, right? And then at one point he goes, but you have to be a great man to do these things. That’s what he’s what he said. So so he he he respected Kuiper even if he didn’t like Kuiper. Mhmm. And so, so there’s just the acknowledgment of of what kind of figure he was. But but the gifting does not lead to messianism or the halo. They they they’re they’re people who can maybe help us in a certain kind of scale, provide certain kind of insight, but as I’ve as I’ve come to say it recently, he’s helpful, but you will see that he needed help. Mhmm. And and we and I think we have to have that in mind. I sometimes wonder if we get it’s the problem sometimes the way that we get presented with figures as these exemplars because somebody’s like, oh you should read this person, or I love this person’s book, this person’s writing, their messages, whatever it is, and sometimes the enthusiasm or the endorsement can lead us to think that, oh you’re endorsing, you’re telling me this and you’re a person I trust, which means nothing about that person could surprise me. And of course, that’s not really what they’re telling us, but sometimes the impression we get is, especially if we’re talking about a Christian figure, we think, okay, they’re great and 100% safe.
Lisa Fields: You’re like, no. They’re actually just great at helping you understand Christians in the civic space. But everything else Yeah. They’re horrible. Yeah. That It’s it’s to me to me like a a professor.
Dr. Vincent Bacote: Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Lisa Fields: Yeah. I don’t know how good you are at molecular biology.
Dr. Vincent Bacote: I was a biology major, but didn’t get no. No. No. You can use molecular biology because I didn’t take the course. So so I thought that’d get it. Are you kidding me? Oh, wow. Wow. Wow. You know? No. No. Math is, I wanna say I’m not gonna go I’m not gonna go all the way with the word nemesis, but, for me, most things were easy growing up until I got to long division of fractions. Yeah. And then it was it was like, you know, one of those movies where you’re driving along and all of a sudden you run aground and you’re, like, pressing the accelerator and you’re like, what’s going
Lisa Fields: on? And you know? Yeah. It’s almost like we should introduce people to people for their specialty. Yeah. Right. Like Right. Right. Doctor Bacot is good for helping you bridge theology and the public square. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Not for calculus.
Dr. Vincent Bacote: No. No. No. I I I do have, I have former students that that I I could connect you with,
Lisa Fields: but but I’m not that person. And I think saying a person’s specialty and saying, but these are not the things they can help you with Yes. Help strip the halo from them. Yes. Because it’s like they have a narrow specialty that is helpful. They have a lane Yes. That is helpful. Yes. Yes. And these other spaces, they could be harmful. Yes.
Dr. Vincent Bacote: And Or just or or just they just don’t they’re just not good at it. Yeah. Harmful, ignorant, or just not. Yeah. Skillset. Yeah. Right? Yes.
Lisa Fields: Yes. I think what happens, particularly with Christian figures, is there’s a temptation to pretend that you’re an expert where you’re not. Mhmm.
Dr. Vincent Bacote: Wow. Wow. I don’t think it’s just Christians, but you’re right. Yeah. Even in practice. Yeah. So it’s kind of like
Lisa Fields: people aren’t mad that Christians make a mistake. They mad they get mad because Christians pretend like they don’t make the mistake. Yes. Yes. They they’re not mad that you have that you struggle with sin. Now abuse is something different. Right. Right. It’d be we’re not I wanna delineate that. Yeah. But if you’re struggling with sin and temptation and you’re honest about it, people usually they’re like, oh, okay. Cool. Yeah. All of us. Yeah. It’s the acting of perfection. Yes. It’s acting like you should have the halo on. Yes. When you know you live like a horn. Yeah. Yeah. So so tell me if you think this is also
Dr. Vincent Bacote: something that goes along with that. One of the reasons that people are can be really critical of evangelicals is evangelicals say, we’re the Bible people. Yes. We believe everything that’s in here, and sometimes they’re saying, and we’re committed to all of it, which, of course, entails, of course, and I absolutely live this whole thing. And then people find out, oh, they were mean. They weren’t nice. They had this scandal or whatever. And it just kind of it’s kind of an expectation that the stated commitment will, of course, be practiced Mhmm. Without any with with any without any imperfection. And the funny thing about it is that if you if you you can’t read that book actually and know that because Paul talks about running the race to win, pressing toward the mark. Mhmm. But but but I think there there is that there this way of saying, we stand for this, and therefore our standing for this means we’re always gonna be the people that get it right. We’re always gonna be the people that are, you know, most trustworthy, etcetera. And then so many people have, you know, a letdown because they really thought that. A A friend of mine, used to do, like, booking for, like, CCM acts, like, in the late nineties and early aughts. He pointed out the fact that this interesting thing would happen where the audience expects the person on stage to be what they’re not. In other words, they the person who seems you know, it could be some 19 year old, great with songwriting, singing love songs to Jesus, and what’s projected onto that person is because you’re up there and because you got a platform, it must mean that you’re unique and different from us. And whatever difficulties and struggles I’m dealing with in my own life, you don’t have those because you’re up there. And so what’s projected onto the person is what I am lacking. And, of course, this is obviously, we see over and over again that this is not the case, but I think there I think part of it is that there’s this desire. Is there a person that is kinda getting it all right? And if somebody gives me the preacher, the author, the singer, who whoever it is, that pedestal Christian, is is the one that’s doing it. It’s like, well, no. If you’re reading the Bible, you know that unless they’re Jesus, they’re all on the way. And and and and if you if you get close to them, either by reading about them or maybe you get to know them, you will see them on the way. Yeah. It’s the knowledge gap. Yes. Like Yes. It is the the knowledge you have to say,
Lisa Fields: oh, I own the admiration comes from distance, actually. Right. Right. Yes. Yes. That’s why people say never meet your heroes because the there’s a distance that admiration brings that once you get close, you’re like you start seeing flaws. You start being critical of the things that you see up close. It’s almost like if you stay distant, you could have that admiration. You could have the Yes. The halo. Yes. But I think it’s also I talk about this in the book too when I talk about Jesus being the actual hero. I talk about the fact that we we understand that Jesus is the hero. We understand God is God. But because we can’t see, the triune God Right. We want somebody we can see. Yes. Yes. Exactly. Tangible. We want perfect in in our that we can, like, touch or see with our eyes. Yes. And, you know, Paul says follow me as I follow Christ. So we are to have examples. Yes. But we are still to know that our examples
Dr. Vincent Bacote: are still broken humans. Yes. Yes. That that they’re on the way with us. They might be a in some ways, they might be further along than us. Mhmm. They know a little bit more than us. But the funny thing is, of course, you know, many of them will tell you that the more that they know, the more that they see that they need to know, the more they see that they need to grow Mhmm. Even if they’ve grown a lot that you know, I think what what happen what can happen for us is the more we become the person people think of as the example is the more that we ought to be becoming the person that’s humble because we know how much transformation God still needs to do within us. Yeah.
Lisa Fields: Well, I think that’s a good place to end. Thank you, doctor Vaco. Thank you for for this special series on When Heroes Fall. Get the book wherever books are sold. Remember, you catch all our past episodes at g3project.org or our YouTube channel wherever you stream podcast. We cannot do what we do without generous support from people like you, so consider being a monthly partner at g3project.org, hitting that donate tab. Until next time, grace and peace and god bless.