Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
In Ecclesiastes 3:11, we read that God makes everything beautiful in its time. It is comforting to know that nothing is wasted in God's economy, but all of it will be used for our good and His glory. You're invited to join us for poignant conversations and compelling interviews centered on believing for His beauty in every season.
Shannon Scott (00:01.504)
Well friends, welcome back to the Everything Made Beautiful podcast and I have to say to those of you that are watching and listening, I'm especially glad that you're listening today because I've been so looking forward to this conversation with Dr. Joel Mutamale. Joel holds a PhD in theology. He's the director of theology and research at Proverbs 31 Ministries. He co-hosts the Therapy in Theology podcast with Lisa Terkhurst and Jim Kress, but he's also
author of the hidden piece and the unseen battle which we're going to get into today. he is based in charlotte north carolina with his wife britney and their four kids and a german shepherd named lady and that honestly just tells you something great about a person when they've got a dog. but joel has also taught twice for our kava community once on the holy spirit which you have got to go and listen to for those of you who are kava subscribers but most recently we just finished
shooting a series called How to Read and Study Your Bible that'll come out this year and is so good. So as far as I'm concerned that makes us official friends, Joel. So welcome to the podcast.
Joel Muddamalle (01:13.682)
Thanks, Shannon. I'm so excited to be with you and 100 % official friends. After we spend different days full filming all of that and all of our mutual friends, mean, there's no going back from here, so.
Shannon Scott (01:17.55)
Hahaha
Shannon Scott (01:23.979)
Yes.
Exactly, no going back. And I have to tell you, I've told you this before, but just for the audience sake, I followed you before I ever met you, which is a weird thing to say in this day and age, but we know what we mean. So first on Instagram, but then by subscribing to your sub stack, because you were doing something that I don't see nearly enough of, which is making theology genuinely accessible, but without dumbing it down. So you also have been willing to engage the harder or I would
say more tenuous theological and cultural conversations and the collision of those but you do it not only with actual scholarship but with real humility so that combination is rarer than it should be but I have been a grateful beneficiary of your work for a while now so just thank you for stewarding that calling so well for so many because I know that is true of many who are listening as well.
Joel Muddamalle (02:20.434)
Well, thank you. That means the world to me. Thanks.
Shannon Scott (02:23.456)
Well you have written extensively on humble theology but also on the topic of spiritual warfare. So before we get to the unseen battle because that's where I'd like to spend the bulk of our time, would you just unpack the concept of humble theology for people and why you felt really called to approach the study of theology in that way?
Joel Muddamalle (02:48.678)
Yeah, I think one of the things that, and we actually talked through this in the How to the Bible course through Kavah, is our approach to scripture sometimes just from a proximity standpoint can be a little bit challenging because here you have like the Word of God and you're holding in your hand and you're coming from this posture of top down looking at the text.
And we can kind of get conned into believing that we come to the Bible in order to master the text versus like really recognizing, we have actually come to the text to submit ourselves to the word of God.
the person of Jesus Christ to the empowerment of the Holy Spirit, that we might be transformed and conformed into the image of Christ. And one of things that I had kind of experienced throughout my biblical theological pastoral ministry experience is for all of the beautiful and good, there's a lot of pain that happened through academic and pastoral kind of contacts. And the result was really from fallen kind of, you know, just
Shannon Scott (03:22.851)
Mm.
Shannon Scott (03:42.542)
Hmm.
Joel Muddamalle (03:52.676)
humans, being human that had bought into this idea of pride and kind of ambition and began to leverage the biblical text and platform an opportunity in order to really build an opposing kingdom to the kingdom of God. And along the way, I kind of was like, well, there is no plan B, like the church really is God's plan A. And so the issue can't be with the biblical text. can't be with
Shannon Scott (04:08.28)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (04:18.534)
the church in terms of what God's ideal is, it's gotta be the people. And who are the people supposed to be and how should they pursue biblical study in scripture? And really, I came to the conclusion that the ancient virtue of the first century church that sustained the church through the midst of persecution and pain and hardship, the very virtue that Jesus himself embodied in the incarnation, this is all about the...
Philippians 2, the hymn that is sung about Christ was really something that's embedded in the very origin story of humanity being made from the dust of the ground of all things kind of formed and then unthinkable God breathes his spirit into this dust to form us into animate living objects. And it's like, okay, what is this virtue? The virtue is humility. And yet it is the thing that often seems to be missing.
Shannon Scott (05:08.59)
Hmm.
Shannon Scott (05:12.141)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (05:14.812)
from our society and even sadly from, you know, our pews and our churches and how we engage with other believers. And so the reason why Humble Theology was really important for me was to retrieve this perspective of how we read the Bible, how we live out the truths of the Bible, and really how we represent the humble King of heaven and earth. And it's, you know, Matthew 11, 28 and 29. It's to embody His humility and His gentleness. And so
Shannon Scott (05:16.098)
Ha ha ha ha.
Joel Muddamalle (05:42.726)
That has somewhat been the anthem of what I think it's like the message that I will never move on from. I think that will be the message that is intertwined into every other message that the Lord gives me to steward. It will in some form, in some fashion be connected back to this ancient virtue of humility.
Shannon Scott (05:49.901)
Mm.
Shannon Scott (06:01.62)
interested in whether or not you ever get pushback in talking about humility because you know there's that whole think of yourself less and that's really what humility is so if you're talking about humility is it really humility but to your point our natural bent with lots of knowledge is going to be pride and a puffing up and if we use the scripture like a bat to beat people with rather than a bomb to cover people with that you know I
Joel Muddamalle (06:21.947)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (06:27.75)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (06:31.584)
natural bent just is not toward humility. So do you I'm interested do you get pushback on the idea of humble theology?
Joel Muddamalle (06:40.242)
I mean, honestly, I've never really had anybody push back on it, you know, because I mean, I think that at the core of it, we're what we're watching in like the deconstruction movement, what we're watching with people that have really kind of opted out of the way of Jesus completely. If you trace that kind of all the way down at some level, was an unholy exchange for pride versus humility. And I think that what people are allergic to is false humility, you know.
Shannon Scott (06:43.406)
Mm.
Shannon Scott (06:50.552)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (07:09.634)
Yes.
Joel Muddamalle (07:10.114)
It's the presentation of a humble life or a humble, you know, ministry. And in reality, you're just kind of leveraging that to get, but that kind of stuff gets sniffed out real quick, you know? And so I think like true authentic humility and I define humility as a three-part movement, knowing God, knowing ourselves, knowing other people and the order matters, you know? And it's actually a pretty significant aspect of
The second book that I wrote which is the unseen battle because the scariest thing for me Shannon for us to walk into This unseen battle the reality of cosmic conflict is to walk into it with any ounce of pride Because my goodness you're gonna be taken out so fast. You're gonna be blindsided You're gonna be utilized and deceived and so really Humility is the prerequisite virtue in order to be able to really engage in this cosmic conflict that is not a question of if
Shannon Scott (07:50.925)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (08:07.376)
we are in, it's the fact that we are in it, the question is are we going to be advancing the kingdom of God or are we going to not just not advance but maybe even be a hindrance at times to the advancement of the gospel, which is a sobering thought.
Shannon Scott (08:18.094)
Mm.
Shannon Scott (08:21.691)
I was just about to say that is sobering.
The idea of being a hindrance to the advancement of the kingdom of God, should give us a giant pause at that possibility. And I'm glad you brought up the unseen battle. That's what I'd really love to spend the bulk of our time talking about. was flipping through, I've got it right here. I was flipping through this again today, just looking at all the things I've bracketed and underlined and the way that I've starred things.
just want to say thank you for this book. I grew up Southern Baptist in a great church. I'm the daughter of a pastor who eventually then was reformed in his theology until he met Jesus. And the one thing that we didn't talk a lot about was spiritual warfare, even eschatology really in general, but certainly not the concept of spiritual warfare. Um, and so I think there,
is the temptation toward, which you talk about in the book, either everything is spiritual warfare or nothing is. So it's like, I hit a red light. The enemy's against me, you know? Right, right. And my dad used to, you know, kind of push back on that. Not with me, but if he'd hear somebody attributing something to Satan, he'd say, mmm. And I'd be like, what's that? And he's like, well, Satan's not omnipresent. So it's pretty, it's pretty arrogant.
Joel Muddamalle (09:31.59)
Yeah. Right.
The enemy's after me.
Shannon Scott (09:54.05)
think that out of the billions of people on earth he is spending his time with you. You know and I was like I never thought about it that way. Or there was the we never talk about it at all because we don't understand it so maybe if we just don't look at it it isn't really there. So I'm so grateful for your book and in one of the sub stack posts we received I can't remember if it was right before or right after the release the top line was we live in a world at war.
Joel Muddamalle (09:59.782)
Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (10:09.937)
Mm-hmm.
Shannon Scott (10:23.97)
you know who you are fighting and why. And it arrested me as I was reading it and when I think about the primarily women who are listening to this podcast many of whom are exhausted maybe battle weary from life or sadly from ministry. Why does understanding the fact that we're in a battle first of all but who we're fighting and why matter if sometimes it's like I'm just trying to serve
I don't even have it in me to strategize like someone who's at war. What would you say to that person?
Joel Muddamalle (11:00.454)
Yeah, I mean, I think it matters. There's a simple answer, but it's not simplistic. think it matters because it matters to God. I think it matters because that's kind of the framework of the scriptures. And I think it matters because in some form and in some fashion, it's going to frame what you do and how you do it, you know?
and so i do think that what you just described so many i mean i work for a woman's ministry i work at power thirty one ministries and so i get to here these stories consistently of the mom who's in the you know the car line we're to pick up the kids and just like here we go to another like feels like the rat race and can never get ahead and are you have like the businesswoman who's trying to balance the house and home and and and be a good employee or an employer and psych out how do i get into any of you just feel exhausted you feel like
Shannon Scott (11:26.775)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Muddamalle (11:49.988)
you're not enough, don't have enough value or worth. it's like, sometimes what ends up happening is when we don't attribute this to what it should rightly be attributed, it actually places us in a position of being blinded. And what I mean by that is like, those things, the attack against your identity, the attack against your value, the attack against your worth, are all spiritual attacks.
There are all things that are questioning your question of dependence, you know, and what ends up happening, think often with spiritual warfare is an exchange of dependence. You go from a dependence on God to self-dependence. And if we're not aware of the battle that is in front of us and the way the enemy is working, then we're not going to be able to see their schemes appropriately. We're not going to be able to identify our own selfish tendencies. And instead of getting the hope and healing that we're longing
for, we'll find ourselves running the rat race even deeper, even more so, right? There was this interesting tweet the other day by Elon Musk, who's like the most wealthy man in the world. And even after all that wealth, like the money doesn't help. It's not satisfying. It's not easing the ache, you know, and this is an age old tale. Like you can go all the way through human history. I mean, this comes all the way from the author of Ecclesiastes, right? Like, like this should point us to the fact that
Shannon Scott (12:55.286)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah.
Shannon Scott (13:04.781)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (13:13.874)
that the only source of satisfaction and rest will be in the person of Jesus by the power of his spirit, the glory of the father. And so I would say like this matters because if we don't see it rightly, we're going to keep spinning ourselves into exhaustion and it'll be debilitating not just for us, but also for those that we do life with.
Shannon Scott (13:32.59)
Yeah.
Yeah, so good. And you frame, this was so helpful to me, you frame spiritual warfare as a long running conflict between rival households, basically. The family of God and a counterfeit family ruled by rebel powers. So that, at least for me, was very different than I have ever heard anyone talk about it. So how does thinking about spiritual warfare as households instead of just individual
Joel Muddamalle (13:51.911)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (14:05.05)
battles change kind of the understanding of what and who we're actually fighting.
Joel Muddamalle (14:11.246)
Yeah, I would say, like, for instance, let's take a look at the actual scriptures, because sometimes it could be like, wait a minute, household competing. Like, where does this idea come from? So like in Ephesians, chapter three, verse 14, it says this, Paul says to the church in Ephesus, for this reason, I bow my knees before the father. This is Yahweh, from whom every family. And this is so interesting. In heaven and on earth is named.
Shannon Scott (14:18.03)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Muddamalle (14:37.648)
And so now you're left wondering like, who's this family in heaven and who's this family on earth? and, and why is Paul even talking about that? And earlier in Ephesians one and two, he talks about powers, principalities and authorities, these things that are in the heavenlies and, the supremacy of Christ, how all these things have been brought low and the crisis subjugated them. And he is on top of all things and is supreme over all things. And so I think the reason why this is important is if I were to kind of take a step back, Shannon and say like, what
Shannon Scott (14:38.082)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (15:07.652)
is like how would I define spiritual warfare? I would define it very closely with how I would describe the narrative of scripture. And the narrative of scripture, the story of scripture is simply the story of a good father who's the cosmic king of heaven and earth who's determined to have his family back together.
And in that is like, wait a minute, how did the family first fall apart? And in my book, Then Seen Battle, I really have kind of this trajectory of these three rebellions that take place. And in each of these rebellions in Genesis three, Genesis six and Genesis 11, you find the correlation of both a rebellion at the earthly sphere of existence and the spiritual sphere. So you have angelic beings that fall into rebellion and divide the household of God, and they don't want to do it on their own. And so they
the human children of God to follow along with them. And this really sets the backdrop of the entire Old Testament, the whole issue of the gods of the nations, you know, like right now, while we're filming most people in their Bible reading plan are getting through Leviticus and they're doing the very best they can to skip as many pages along the way because it's just exhausting. What is going on with Leviticus? Well, Leviticus makes a lot of sense if you understand that the gods of the nations want to
Shannon Scott (16:03.394)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (16:11.417)
huh.
Right.
Joel Muddamalle (16:24.39)
despoil, wants to corrupt the people of God and all of humanity. And this is why, like, Leviticus is given to us as a series of laws or codes in order to visibly represent the people of God.
based off of their spiritual status. And their spiritual status is as sons and daughters of God. And they have a holy vocation that they're to like live out in and through the world. we have a real enemy who hates us, who absolutely hates us and wants to entice us away from God and really deeper into ourselves. And so this creates a competing household. It creates division. it's like on the one side you have Yahweh who wants to have his family back together.
whole idea of the Abrahamic covenant of Genesis 12, 15, 17, and 22. This is what Jesus accomplishes on the cross, Ephesians chapter two. He tears down the dividing wall of hostility. And yet there's an enemy who absolutely wants to deceive us, wants to have us divided in order to ultimately create destruction and oftentimes through self-destruction, through like our very own means. And so, yeah, I think that that's why the framing of this is really important because it moves it
Shannon Scott (17:11.841)
Mm-hmm.
Shannon Scott (17:19.704)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (17:38.564)
it out of this kind of ethereal cosmic out there language into like very relatable terms like I feel a sense of pain when my children are not in the house like even this out we're gonna get done recording we're gonna all split apart like my son's gotta go to lacrosse my daughter's got gymnastics my other son right and there will be this aching in the sense of like my family is not together but then tonight when we all come back together just for a split second when we're all home right before
Shannon Scott (17:51.554)
Right.
Shannon Scott (17:58.968)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (18:03.564)
Right.
Joel Muddamalle (18:08.558)
We go to bed and do it right. It's like
Shannon Scott (18:12.29)
Yeah, everybody's back. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (18:12.882)
We're all together. We're all back. Well, that's what God desires. He wants his family back. And the way in which he does this is through his son, Jesus.
Shannon Scott (18:17.41)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (18:21.836)
Yeah, so good. Well, and even if we just, I mean, you and I are both parents. We've got, I think seven children between us and to think about it as a parent, there is not anything I would not do to protect my children if it was within my power to do so. And so when we think about God as father who has a household, who has a family, who is fractured, why,
why wouldn't he do all he could to bring it back together? And so it takes it, I guess for me, it takes it out of this ethereal, I don't really understand, I don't know how much is going on in the unseen realm and makes it very concrete. God is a father who wants his family together and I get that very viscerally. You've talked also about in terms of spiritual warfare that one of our greatest
enemies is just distraction. I'd love for you just to talk a little bit about that because I think that will resonate for a lot of people.
Joel Muddamalle (19:24.347)
Thank
Joel Muddamalle (19:29.478)
Yeah, I mean, I think like when like, it's just really interesting. remember early on with social media, I remember the time when you would on Facebook or on Instagram, you would hit the end of your scroll and they would say, congratulations, you're all caught up. That was like, that was like the first thing to go. That was like the first thing that the algorithm took away because it's like, we don't want you to be done.
Shannon Scott (19:42.124)
Yes. Yep, all done. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (19:53.296)
We want to keep presenting to you different things in order to entice you in order to keep you in this endless spiral loop of, and really what that does is create more insecurity, more depression, more anxiety. You feel like you can never catch up. You're always wondering what other people are doing. Why am I not with them? Did they not invite me to this? how come like, and you have these thoughts and so distraction ends up becoming, I think one of the key ways that the enemy wants to work because distraction, moves us away.
Shannon Scott (19:53.688)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (19:59.755)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (20:05.3)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (20:12.105)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (20:23.22)
from actual like focused living on the way that God wants us to live. And there's I keep going, I'm gonna keep going back to this idea of an exchange of dependence because distraction is gonna suggest that we can find sufficiency and we can find help and wholeness in things that are not
Shannon Scott (20:39.498)
Hmm.
Joel Muddamalle (20:43.836)
God in things that are not the sufficiency of who Christ is. And it's like lesser loves will absolutely always derail us, you know, and it's not those, it's not that those things are bad. It's just that they're not sufficient, you know, and in theological terms, there's this thing called the creator creation distinction. And part of the distraction that the enemy wants to do is to make us believe that created things are on level with the creator.
Shannon Scott (20:50.398)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (20:57.972)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (21:12.626)
that we worship after, we seek after, we long after the created things. And in the Bible, particularly in the three rebellions, Genesis 3, 6, and 11, there's this kind of.
Shannon Scott (21:12.873)
Hmm.
Joel Muddamalle (21:24.604)
theme that comes up. It's kind of three words that really are centered on distraction. And it's the idea of seeing, desiring, and taking. And this happens in Genesis three with Adam and Eve. They see the fruit, the desire, the fruit that take the fruit. This happens in Genesis six. They show the sons of God and the daughters of man, the sons of God, these angelic beings. They see the daughters of men. They desire them. They take them. I make the argument in my book that this is actually the origin story of human sex trafficking.
Shannon Scott (21:35.402)
Hmm.
Joel Muddamalle (21:55.219)
that there is a, an altruistic background in a patriarchal society where when you read what happens in Genesis six in light of the what's called the Enochic tradition, which is based off of a couple chapters in the book of Enoch, where you get kind of the background story of possibly what took place, like what's actually happening. And in it, you have an exchange of goods, you have humanity that receives knowledge.
Shannon Scott (21:55.304)
Mmm, wow.
Joel Muddamalle (22:19.654)
that they were not ready for, that they shouldn't have utilized. And in return, the sons of God receive human women. The question is, how does this happen? And actually there's a footnote for a scholar who actually alludes to this as well, which is always helpful when you're doing scholarship. You don't want to be out on an island on your own, you know?
Shannon Scott (22:37.58)
No, you want to be like, look, they said it too.
Joel Muddamalle (22:40.004)
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. It's like, wait a minute. actually, think that we're onto something here is, that these patriarchal kind of Kings and ruling human leaders, they're, they literally like, I'll give you my daughters. We want the knowledge. We want the metallurgy, the astrology, the learning how to cut up plants and roots. Like we want all of that. This, really sets up the flood. It's amazing to me that Christians like.
all over, at least here in the West, like vacation Bible school, knowing the flood is a top five, maybe even a top three of like the hallmark themes, you know, it's, up there and yet it's wild. We never talk about the Nephilim. You never talk about the sons of God and the daughters of man that literally the same chapter, like it's the first four verses before you get into the flood narrative. Right. And like, why?
Shannon Scott (23:16.062)
I was gonna say yes.
Shannon Scott (23:24.285)
Yeah, yeah, no.
Joel Muddamalle (23:35.708)
The biblical author like Moses didn't like make a mistake. It's not a, these are not throwaway sentences. This sets the precursor to what takes place. Look what happens to humanity. They come, they become distracted by created things and being distracted by those things that give themselves over to it. And it creates havoc throughout the world. You know, I think the story of David and Bathsheba is a fascinating one. You find the same parallel words that are being used. There's something about.
Shannon Scott (23:49.01)
Mm. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (24:05.15)
in the Hebrew language, when those words go together, the see, desire and take that the outcome is just generally negative, you know? So you have David who sees Bathsheba desires her and takes her for himself. And, and this is, and even that looked at distraction. The text says they're like, it would have been routine for the Kings to go out to war, but David didn't go out to war with the soldiers. He wasn't in his rightful place. Exactly.
Shannon Scott (24:12.041)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (24:18.569)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (24:28.298)
Yeah, yeah, he wasn't where he was supposed to be. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (24:33.882)
And he got distracted by something that he should have never even been put in the position to be able to, be distracted by. And we live in a world of distraction. I mean, the ads that we get the, the, know, it's like, it's, just everywhere. And so, the, the antidote to distraction is discernment. And so like, we need to be able to discern what is right, what is wrong, what is almost right.
Shannon Scott (24:43.528)
Ugh.
Shannon Scott (24:54.026)
Yeah, it's good.
Joel Muddamalle (24:59.94)
you know, and be able to divide those things up so we can receive what is good and beautiful for us, but then also reject the things that are going to be harmful for us in the long run.
Shannon Scott (25:09.9)
That's so good. I had a pastor. I'm pretty sure that
I'm attributing this correctly to Andy Stanley said, if we're getting to the question of, it right or is it wrong? We passed, is it wise a little bit earlier? And I think about that in terms of distraction as well, because for those of us who are in, know, Lisa Harper would say everyone's in full-time ministry. It's just whether it's vocational or not. So, but for those of us who've vocationally been in full-time ministry for a long time, most of what distracts us is not bad things.
Joel Muddamalle (25:23.377)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (25:33.542)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (25:43.412)
It's good things. It isn't is it good or is it bad? But just is this wise is am I discerning that this is wise in this time because I do believe that we will be tempted by anything that will take us away from the intimacy and the connection with God even good spiritual things like knowledge and those sorts of things so good. If you would be willing I know that you experienced your
Joel Muddamalle (25:43.42)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (25:48.892)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (26:04.519)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (26:13.132)
battle as you were launching the unseen battle which is not is not only ironic it's probably proof of concept there but your dad needed emergency triple bypass surgery flights were canceled a snowstorm came of course you know in Charlotte you suddenly had a snowstorm organizational issues relational complications probably nothing went as planned when
Joel Muddamalle (26:17.755)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (26:24.945)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (26:28.935)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (26:32.401)
Yeah, yeah, right.
Joel Muddamalle (26:39.985)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (26:43.062)
you planned the launch of your book but your whole I mean the last page of this book is Christ is victorious. So we know that intellectually we know that's true. How do we hold that tension that sometimes the battle is really brutal but the victory is also already won. When we're in the middle of whatever our chaos is of the moment how do we hold that tension well? How did you hold it well?
Joel Muddamalle (26:45.511)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (26:52.571)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (27:04.794)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (27:11.984)
Yeah. I mean, I don't know that I held it well in the moment. I think that I kind of was, felt like a chicken with my head cut off and, and it was kind of damage control. It really was like, my gosh, you know, you don't expect or plan any of this. dad's health had been declining for a little bit, but we didn't like, kind of thought we had a little bit of a runway until they do like the pre-op, meeting and the doctor looks at the reports and goes, no, this is like days, like within 24 hours to 48 hours. need, this was on a Monday, a
Shannon Scott (27:31.273)
Hmm.
Joel Muddamalle (27:41.87)
Sunday night is when is when we heard that outcome. The book launched on Tuesday. And so, I mean, I'm literally on book launch day. I'm in the air in the air flying to Dallas, you know, canceling a whole bunch of things, reorganizing things, trying to move events. And then on top of all that, you get a snowstorm that doesn't just hit Charlotte, but hits Dallas, hits Nashville. You know, I was actually supposed to be in Nashville that week. All this stuff like this is just wild. And I get stuck.
Shannon Scott (28:03.722)
Mm-hmm.
Yes. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (28:11.864)
in Dallas a whole extra night because I couldn't get out the next day. This was the most comical scene, Shannon. I am on a flight early to try to get back in order to do an event like a related to the book release. I'm in Dallas. It's like a 7 a.m. flight. So I get there at like five and it's like the crack of dawn, you know, like 5 a.m. and I'm sitting there at DFW.
Shannon Scott (28:29.32)
Yes, yes at DFW.
Joel Muddamalle (28:33.4)
And like everything is fine until 30 minutes before the lady comes on the intercom. And I won't ever forget like the noise out of everybody in the gate. go, we have been delayed and everybody's like, what? You won't even the delay is because of the ice on the ground. There is no salt. And so they literally cannot haul the plane that is already there. They cannot haul it from the hanger to the gate.
because of the ice. Like, like the plane is there. I almost want to be like, guys.
Shannon Scott (29:03.754)
Ugh.
Yeah. Everybody's like, I'll take a hairdryer. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (29:12.428)
Literally, was like, Hey, who's got like kosher salt or something like that in their backpack, you know, like, or if we need to go out there and like all like push it ourselves on skis and slides, like, what do we have to do? And you're just wondering like, what is going on? And, and in all of that, I kind of realized a couple of things. One is, and I actually want to like, go to like some really important wisdom that I think your dad said. That is kind of my goal throughout the unseen battle. It's a correction to obsession versus neglect. Right. and, often this is kind of a CS Lewis.
Shannon Scott (29:16.402)
Right. Yeah.
Shannon Scott (29:21.577)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (29:40.17)
Mm.
Joel Muddamalle (29:42.334)
quote, we like to live either in obsession or neglect. So the obsession is, well, the enemy did it like the devil, the devil like orchestrated this entire thing, right? Or the neglect is like, man, that's just bad luck. Like, you know, like there is no real enemy. There's no real spiritual warfare. It's just, and the enemy loves for us to live in both realities. And so one is a careful pushback on obsession that gives the enemy way too much credit for what is beyond their control or
Shannon Scott (30:11.038)
Right.
Joel Muddamalle (30:12.148)
beyond their ability, you know, and to really affirm what your dad said, it's like the enemy is not co-equal with the uncreated creator.
Shannon Scott (30:14.207)
Right.
Joel Muddamalle (30:22.834)
Right. The theological terms are the in incommunicable attributes of God, the things that are unique to him, his omniscience, his omnipresence, his omnipotence, all knowing, all present, you know, all powerful. These things are unique of God that he shares with nobody else. So we should not attribute those things to the enemy. The enemy cannot be in all places at all times. Now, what this does mean, though, is that the enemy loves to what I refer to, I'd like to call it, create opportunities to create mass market sin.
Shannon Scott (30:23.144)
Right.
Shannon Scott (30:29.726)
Yeah. Yes.
Joel Muddamalle (30:52.912)
to create opportunities to scale sin at magnificent levels and at a magnitude because they cannot be in all places. What does that mean? They love to work in systems and structures, you know? And so there is a reality of part of the turmoil, the chaos that we're dealing with is the byproduct of just sin in the world. This is Romans eight, the earth is groaning.
Shannon Scott (30:53.386)
Mm.
Shannon Scott (31:03.91)
good. Yeah.
Shannon Scott (31:14.686)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (31:16.88)
right now because of sin, sin destroys not just humanity, but it's actually like stripping apart and ripping apart the earth, just like geologically, you know, which is why we long for a new heavens and new earth. It's a restoration of creation. And there's also a real enemy.
Shannon Scott (31:27.518)
Yes.
Shannon Scott (31:33.076)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (31:35.772)
who is working within systems and structures, who at times even is personally active in the lives of believers in an oppressive state. I think we need to distinguish between what is normative and what is not normative. And we have to be careful that we don't just like throw around language. There's a poet who has a phrase. He says, the words we use build the worlds that we live in. And like, we have to be careful that we don't build worlds that are actually not true.
Shannon Scott (31:38.644)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (31:48.062)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (31:57.886)
Yes, so good.
Joel Muddamalle (32:04.198)
But we'd become a slave to them because we built them and now we're, we're like abiding by those things as if they're actually true. And so, yeah, like for me, was, it was a lot that week and at the end of it, it reminded me even in the midst of all of this, the truth that is unshaken is that Christ is still victorious on the cross. And the back half of the book is all about the victory of Christ and, and this idea that you and I live in the tension of the already, but not yet. We live in the wake of the victory of
Shannon Scott (32:04.65)
All
Shannon Scott (32:10.676)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (32:23.146)
Hmm.
Shannon Scott (32:32.265)
Yes.
Joel Muddamalle (32:34.192)
Jesus and we live in the tension of all things not being finally made right, you know, it's that CS Lewis idea waiting for the return of the king and You know that things are gonna be okay You're just waiting for that to be finalized and actualized. And so the question is how do we live in the midst of that time? This is Ephesians 6 Ephesians 6 reminds us this is kind of some nerdy Greek grammar you and I are passive recipients of a divine action
Shannon Scott (32:40.125)
Mm-hmm.
Shannon Scott (32:44.266)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (33:04.052)
action.
The Spirit of God empowers us and equips us. So we're passive recipients. We don't equip ourselves. We don't have the power in and of ourselves, but we receive divine power through the power of the Holy Spirit. And when we receive that, we now are held responsible to rightly put on the armor of God so that we can withstand the onslaught of the enemy so we can identify the schemes of the enemy. And our weapons in all of this is actually the gospel. It's proclaiming the good news.
Shannon Scott (33:05.087)
Hmm.
Shannon Scott (33:23.508)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (33:33.171)
Mm-hmm.
Joel Muddamalle (33:35.148)
to a world that is desperate to know that it is true. And so it's like it all hinges on a place of confident assurance that we view the conversation of spiritual warfare not from a place of what's going to happen. Is this thing going to work out? That's not our posture or perspective. It's actually from the perspective of an empty grave, you know, the evidence of the cross, you know, in Jesus' dismantling of death through death itself.
Shannon Scott (33:38.43)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (33:44.276)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (33:50.856)
Yeah. No.
Shannon Scott (33:56.82)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (34:04.424)
yeah so good. i have heard you say and i've also seen you write it and i'm not sure this was in the book but it has stuck with me that the enemy focuses on isolation while the spirit of god focuses on connection and
Joel Muddamalle (34:20.178)
.
Shannon Scott (34:21.682)
You know, we're more quote connected than we've ever been, but I also think we're more isolated than we've ever been. Most of our connection is faux connection that, you know, social media and all this. I don't have to call you and ask how you're doing. I can just scroll your Instagram feed and have a pretty good idea. If you post regularly enough of how you are, that isn't actually connection, but we see it playing out everywhere. People are isolated in pain, in politics, in
Joel Muddamalle (34:42.652)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (34:51.616)
whatever their current life story is, how is that isolation a weapon of the enemy in this unseen battle?
Joel Muddamalle (35:00.71)
Yeah, I think like I find it fascinating that in Acts chapter two, you have the this explosion of the church and the explosion of the church based off of what the text says is that all the believers were devoted to the preaching of the word of God, to the breaking of bread and to prayer and fellowship.
They had all things in common that gave to each other as everybody had need. it's like, man, those are the building blocks of, the multiplicity, the multiplying of the goodness of God and, and really seeing, and it says that the Lord added to their number daily. It's not that they added to it, right? The Lord added to their number daily. Well, I just think that isolation disconnects us from the image of God in other people.
Shannon Scott (35:35.582)
Yes. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (35:47.396)
And one of the most like powerful things that we can experience is the image of God being communicated to us tangibly, visibly, practically through other followers of Jesus. You know, like, like we get to experience the comfort of God through other image bearers. We get to experience the wisdom of God through other image bearers. We get to experience the power of God, you know, in our area of weaknesses through other image bearers. And yet when we live in isolation and separate from that,
Shannon Scott (35:59.7)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (36:16.518)
Like we're disconnected from that tangible expression of the goodness of God. And it's in the midst of isolation that things like shame can really come into play. You you start to feel bad about yourself. You start to speak lies over yourself. You believe the lies that maybe other people have said about you in the past and you don't have anybody to like look at you be like, yo, don't talk about my friend that way. You know, like, like, like the God says a lot of things about you and the things that you're saying about yourself are in
Shannon Scott (36:20.511)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (36:40.518)
Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (36:46.632)
with what God thinks about you. So don't do that. Don't do that. You're like we need other image bearers, other followers of Jesus to draw out in us the truth the scriptures already say about us and the enemy loves isolation because it's in the pot like like think about it this way. The serpent waits until Yahweh is not around.
Shannon Scott (36:48.809)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (37:05.4)
in order to suggest the temptation. Right. But yet the text says that it was routine. was, it was regular, forgot to walk with Adam and Eve in the cool of the evening breeze. Right. Isn't it fascinating that I often wonder like, what if Eve and Adam were like, Hey, that's a good question. Nicosha serpent, like you serpent, like that's a great question. You know, it's getting a little cool outside. You feel the breeze. Yahweh should be around here any minute. Let's ask him this question. Let's ask him.
Shannon Scott (37:05.826)
huh.
Shannon Scott (37:24.681)
Mm-hmm.
Shannon Scott (37:29.546)
Let's ask him.
Joel Muddamalle (37:35.024)
Like, well, the enemy is going to run for its daggum life, right? Like, it's not going to stick around. but the enemy gets to whisper all kinds of deceptive.
Shannon Scott (37:38.908)
Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (37:43.218)
destructive lies when we're in isolation. We're isolated from other believers, we're isolated from the Word of God, we're isolated from God himself. We don't commit ourselves to prayer, all of those things. so I think that's a really important reason for us to be, and honestly, theology should always be done in the context of community. The idea of theology done in isolation is also super dangerous because you step into an echo chamber of your own thoughts and ideas and life.
Shannon Scott (37:47.38)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (37:56.072)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (38:13.97)
I don't know, there's something so not fulfilling about that. Like, I love learning new things about the Bible through the perspective of others as they see something because of the unique way that they're wired that I'm just not, but I get to glean from their insights and grow. That doesn't happen in isolation.
Shannon Scott (38:17.918)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (38:33.47)
This is a little bit of a hot take. I've never said this like publicly, but I do believe it pretty passionately. You know, I was on a church staff for a long time and during the last several years I was there was the COVID years. And so we as a church were particularly well resourced to be able to stream our services and to keep the rhythm going. didn't have to like not see people because we were able to stream it. But once we were able to come back and once everybody was
able to come back to church there were a there was a whole swath of people that had gotten really comfortable with we just stream church now we drink mimosas and we get with our people and we all they all come to our house and we stream the service we don't really want to come back it's such a pain to park you know just kind of all of the preferential things but I thought to myself in that season when we were trying six ways to Sunday to figure out how do we address this moment and how do we call people to more and back
Joel Muddamalle (39:15.442)
you
Shannon Scott (39:33.374)
into actual community, I thought what a strategic tactic of an enemy who knows that isolation is a breeding ground. I think of that scripture have nothing to do with the unfruitful deeds of darkness but rather expose them. And unfruitful deeds of darkness are so often born in isolation. I thought what a tactic of the enemy to sell to people that this is exactly the same as being there in person.
Joel Muddamalle (39:48.828)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (40:03.274)
is just to stream it at your leisure on YouTube. Because it's a good thing and lots of people are still doing it every week. But if you are able to be in physical community, that is really the design for us as believers.
Joel Muddamalle (40:19.547)
Yeah.
Yeah, I often think about Acts chapter two and the difference between efficiency and intimacy. And like, you know, it's an Acts two, again, you go back to this passage where the Spirit of God comes down and dwells and believers and there's this little section there where it talks about the nations represented during Acts two. And in fact, it's a it's a redemptive reinstitution reversal of what takes place in Babel. If you take a look at chapter 10 on the table of nations there and you plotted the nation
Shannon Scott (40:26.218)
Mmm.
Shannon Scott (40:45.353)
Hmm.
Joel Muddamalle (40:50.768)
of Genesis chapter 10 with the nations that are representative in Acts chapter 2, you have roughly the same geographical areas that are represented. But in Genesis 11, you have the loss of the one language and everybody divides and goes out. In Acts chapter 2, you have common understanding, but the thing that is so fascinating is the text says they were all amazed because they heard the gospel in their own native tongues. Now the thing is, is like
Shannon Scott (40:59.401)
Hmm.
Shannon Scott (41:08.318)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (41:16.671)
Mm.
Joel Muddamalle (41:17.976)
If God wanted to, the Holy Spirit wanted to be efficient, the Holy Spirit would have been like, we'll just translate everything in Greek or we'll do everything in Aramaic. Those were like the known languages at the time. But what I find fascinating here is that God cares so much more about intimacy than efficiency.
Right? How amazing to hear the truth of the gospel, the truth of the resurrected Messiah for the very first time in your own native tongue. And there's just a part of me that wonders like when it comes to spiritual warfare, when it comes to the church that we have bought into a tactic of the enemy that suggests that efficiency equates automatically to intimacy. But just because you can be efficient in something doesn't mean that you're actually growing in relationship with someone, you know? And it's like, yeah, streaming is awesome.
Shannon Scott (41:43.956)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (41:58.687)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (42:02.708)
Good.
Joel Muddamalle (42:04.628)
It's like super efficient. but does it produce intimacy? Does it, does it, is there a cost equated to it? Like what you just said, right? Like the parking, guess what? That encourages sanctification in your life.
Shannon Scott (42:09.577)
Hmm.
Shannon Scott (42:15.209)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (42:18.158)
You are reminded you're one person and whole group of other people. Everybody got to get to the exact same spot. I sometimes I joke when I preach at church at TC, we have this one little corner that is like so inefficient. It's like, everybody's got to go into this one and it creates the biggest traffic jam, right? And there's this point where the three lanes go into two lanes. And at some point you have to like start letting people in, you know, and, I kind of joke, I'm like,
Shannon Scott (42:18.194)
Yes.
Shannon Scott (42:31.785)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (42:36.826)
bottleneck.
Shannon Scott (42:44.863)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (42:45.976)
You all know that sometimes every now and then you forget you're a church and you think you're at the airport and you cut somebody off right there, you know, because you're just like naked and it's like, man, it is good for us to be reminded of our humanness in these moments where you like cut somebody off and you got to now walk into the same church and they're heated and you're heated and you got to sit down and you got to worship Jesus together.
Shannon Scott (42:50.078)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (42:53.502)
Yes.
Shannon Scott (43:02.015)
good.
Shannon Scott (43:09.788)
Mm-hmm. Yes, so good.
Joel Muddamalle (43:11.786)
You know, and it's like, are you gonna do at home? Be mad at the internet for it? Because it lagged on you. You know, it's like, there's just something about embodied experience that just reminds us that we are part of a body, like we're part of a whole. And each one of us has an act to participate in and a responsibility. And the enemy loves loves to detach us from the whole.
Shannon Scott (43:19.784)
Yeah. Yeah.
Shannon Scott (43:24.234)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (43:38.984)
Mmm, mmm, that's so good.
One more unseen battle question and then I'll ask you one last question to close. So throughout the book you talk about those three rebellions that you mentioned and that I mean that happens at the very beginning of the biblical story that we have. And now we're living thousands of years later and we're still experiencing division and disunity and fragmentation and all of the things you know and this whole podcast obviously jumps off of the preacher's words in Ecclesiastes.
as asked these three where he says he is making everything beautiful in its time and I always say to women
Beautiful is in the eye of the person making it beautiful. It doesn't necessarily mean I'm going to look at it and just be like, that is beautiful. That's exactly what I would have done. But in his time and in its time, he's going to make it beautiful. Well, it's one thing to know that, but then it's another thing to have to wait a really long time for God to make something beautiful. So what would you say today? Cause I know that you're also a pastor who can speak
to a woman who is really really tired of waiting maybe that is for her marriage to be restored or a child who's far from God to come home or for an illness to resolve itself whatever the really prolonged waiting might be that she is in how does she root herself in this truth that God is about getting his family back together and that
Joel Muddamalle (44:54.407)
Mm-hmm.
Shannon Scott (45:19.885)
is a promise that is meant to sustain us in those seasons.
Joel Muddamalle (45:25.232)
Yeah, I mean, I think I would say that, that in your waiting and that Eugene Peterson, the brilliant scholar who gave us the message, the paraphrase of the Bible, he has a great book called A Long Obedience in the Same Direction. And it's really a telling of the songs of ascent through the Psalms. And it's a reminder that your long waiting that you're experiencing is part of the long history of the people of God.
The people of God have always been a people in the middle. They've always been a people in waiting. And the question is, what are we doing in the midst of that waiting? Where do we turn to? How is our life being formed and shaped? And so I would say like there are a couple of things about the waiting. One is, are you learning to develop a deeper dependence on God in those areas? Because oftentimes waiting exposes our selfishness. It exposes our vices. It exposes our human leanings, you know?
Shannon Scott (46:02.888)
Yeah. Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (46:24.006)
And it's a place for sanctification. then secondarily, think waiting is a perfect time to exercise the theology of remembrance. Because though you're waiting now, there might have been a season where God had been so faithful. And in this moment of waiting, you have to draw on the past faithfulness of God, you know, and retrieve that and remember that and know that the same God who's faithful yesterday is going to be faithful today, who's going to be faithful tomorrow.
Shannon Scott (46:44.415)
Yeah.
Joel Muddamalle (46:53.876)
because you and I are experiencing a momentary delay and we're like in that waiting period. It does not mean that God himself is delayed. It doesn't mean that he is ambivalent to your needs. It just means that the timing is still waiting to be perfected. Charles Spurgeon has this really great quote where he says, the one who sends help has never been known to be late. You know, and it's like,
Shannon Scott (47:20.038)
Mmm, so good.
Joel Muddamalle (47:22.5)
It's like we're waiting. It feels like we're late. It's late on our terms, you know, but when help comes, it's always the perfect timing because the one who sends it is perfect. And so we kind of need a little bit of a reorientation, a re perspective on, on the goodness of God.
Shannon Scott (47:25.013)
huh.
Yes.
Shannon Scott (47:40.67)
Yeah, there is a way to wait well. And that is our mandate in seasons of waiting, especially prolonged waiting. I'm very good at waiting for a short amount of time. It's when I'm actually waiting over a prolonged season that as you said, it exposes so much, which I have a feeling is kind of the point.
Joel Muddamalle (48:01.51)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (48:02.306)
Okay so finally the question that I ask all my guests as we end because this is the Everything Made Beautiful podcast. If you could design an architect your perfect beautiful day what would that look like from start to finish? And my caveat is there are no restrictions on the perfect beautiful day. So like if you're normally gluten intolerant you don't have to be in the perfect beautiful day. If you need to time travel you can do that. So
Joel Muddamalle (48:27.122)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (48:32.18)
What would your perfect beautiful day for Joel Mudamalai look like?
Joel Muddamalle (48:37.086)
I think it would look like, waking up, where I'm like, my family is all home, kind of all together. We're on some farm that we own, but we don't have to like do any of the farm things. We just get the benefit of the farm without like the farm work, right. And, wake up and have coffee and, like watch the sunrise with like a favorite theology book. sit on the front porch with my wife, kind of process life. My kids are not acting crazy.
Shannon Scott (48:49.642)
You
Joel Muddamalle (49:06.9)
but they're not necessarily calm. They're somewhere in that sweet medium in between and I spend the day reading, researching, writing until it's dinner time and then we hang out and play video games and watch movies and that's it. I just it's like the perfect day for me would be like to be with my family and do the things that I love to do and get a couple words in for a book project and then spend more time with my family.
Shannon Scott (49:11.166)
Mm-hmm.
Shannon Scott (49:28.404)
Yeah.
Yeah. Love it.
Well, Dr. Joel, thank you so much for being willing to talk to us about something that for so many of us has been confusing or at best confusing at worst fear inducing. I cannot recommend to this audience enough. Get the unseen battle. Don't just look at it on your Kindle. Literally order a copy, a paper copy so that you can underline it and dog ear it and use it as a reference book to go back to with questions.
Joel Muddamalle (49:47.217)
Yeah.
Shannon Scott (50:04.596)
I also want to encourage you I'll put all of that about the book in the show notes I also want to encourage you to follow follow dr. Joel on Instagram but also on sub stack because when you follow on sub stack you get so much good theological content about issues of the day Cultural moments maybe that he's not going to talk about publicly on Instagram, but he will on sub stack So you will do yourself a big favor if one of the things you're intaking on a regular basis
is humble theology on Substack. So go to the show notes for all that information and make sure you keep up to date with what Dr. Joel is doing. And for those of you that are coming to Charigma Summit, which you hear me talk about every spring, Dr. Joel is going to be there. He's teaching breakouts. He's teaching a main session. You don't want to miss it. Joel, thank you for spending time with us today on the Everything Made Beautiful podcast.
Joel Muddamalle (50:46.866)
Let's go.
Joel Muddamalle (51:00.818)
You're so welcome.