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Who thinks that they can subdue Leviathan? Strength resides in its neck; dismay goes before it. It is without fear. It looks down on all who are haughty; it is king over all who are proud. These words inspired PJ Wehry to create Chasing Leviathan. Chasing Leviathan was born out of two ideals: that truth is worth pursuing but will never be subjugated, and the discipline of listening is one of the most important habits anyone can develop. Every episode is a dialogue, a journey into the depths of a meaningful question explored through the lens of personal experience or professional expertise.
PJ Wehry:
Hello and welcome to Chasing the Viathan. I'm your host, PJ Weary, and I'm here today with Dr. Brent P. Waters, Emeritus Professor of Christian Social Ethics at Garrett Evangelical Theological Seminary. This is the second time we've had him on the show. This time we're gonna talk about his book, Common Callings and Ordinary Virtues. And I'm really excited about this because I think this is one of those, and I'm excited to hear your motivation for writing it because I think there's a huge disconnect between philosophy, ethics, academia, and the ordinary everyday things. And it's very clear that's your goal to remedy in this book. So tell us a little bit about your motivation for writing it. Hopefully I didn't steal too much of your thunder there. Thank you for coming on, by the way.
Brent Waters:
No, no, I was glad to be back. Well, what started it was I suddenly began to realize I spent an awful lot of my time as an academic thinking about, writing about issues that I had no firsthand experience of and largely in abstract terms. Now I want to first of all preface everything else I'm going to say is I don't think there's anything wrong about thinking about big ideas. But what I realized was I largely ignored where I spent most of my time. I was ignoring where I lived. And I think that particularly for Christian theologians, that's a dangerous thing to do. Because I think God's very concerned about the ordinary. Otherwise we wouldn't have things like incarnation and many of the parables of Jesus and things like that. Now, what finally clenched the deal that in fact I needed to change my My whole apparatus was, I was sick for an extended period of time. I spent about a month in the hospital and I won't go into details of what all the, what was wrong, but that's when I discovered that, okay, it was the doctors that did a lot from the healing, but they were a little bit like malchysidec. They kind of floated into the room coming
PJ Wehry:
Ha
Brent Waters:
from
PJ Wehry:
ha!
Brent Waters:
nowhere and where they went. No one knew it was the nurses who were there day in and day out. And they were concerned with very ordinary things like, was I eating? How did I get to the bathroom? How did I get through my physical therapy where I had to relearn how to walk, feed myself,
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
dress myself. Very common, but then I realized externally important things. And, you know, here I was on the mercies and good graces of strangers helping to regain my life. Then I realized a lot of my life was spent doing very ordinary things. I think that's what you do being a husband and a father. You know, you get up in the middle of the night, you run that dreadful errand to the drugstore and you pick up the cough medicine. You know, you clean up the puke in the hallway. You know, you mow the lawn, you cut the shrubs, you do all these things. And so increasingly, I began to wonder, maybe the second great commandment. of loving my neighbor, and there's all sorts of neighbors that we encounter, is we express that love through the ordinary and not necessarily the extraordinary things that we do. And that was just a hunch I was kind of playing through and saying, okay, can I make a case for this? And then partly was also a reaction against, I think, increasingly living in a society where the default position is that everyone needs to be extraordinary.
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
But that's really not... a very good strategy because everyone's extraordinary and no one is. And
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, the Incredibles line, yeah.
Brent Waters:
yeah, yeah, yeah. So and then also, it's, you know, again, it's it's a day in and day out. What I would call ordinary, the closest sentiment I know of it is steadfast. You
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
know, you're just there. So that was the motivation for the book. And also, as I was coming toward the end of my career, I wanted to write a book in theology where I primarily used novels as the examples. Gave
PJ Wehry:
Yeah,
Brent Waters:
me an excuse
PJ Wehry:
we talked
Brent Waters:
to
PJ Wehry:
about
Brent Waters:
my sematic.
PJ Wehry:
that.
Brent Waters:
Yeah,
PJ Wehry:
Yeah,
Brent Waters:
yeah,
PJ Wehry:
yeah,
Brent Waters:
gave me an excuse
PJ Wehry:
yeah.
Brent Waters:
to my sematic of reading novels.
PJ Wehry:
I love it. As you set out at the very beginning, you kind of... create a foundation for the book around three major acts of love by God. Why did you make that move and how do those three acts of love play into the rest of the book?
Brent Waters:
Well, I mean, I wanted to first start off with, you know, that is the premier Christian virtue. I mean, it's one of the three theological virtues, but the greatest of these is love. So why is that so important? Well, in the first place, it's just wholly capricious. There's no, I mean, there was no compelling reason why God had to love human beings. It's a completely gratuitous act. And I think, you know, it's that's just an extraordinary thing to contemplate. So that, you know, First extraordinary act is that there's something rather than nothing. God chose to create, and I think it's the best way to describe it, it's this kind of this overflowing of love among the three persons of the Trinity. Kind of spills out and ends up being a creation. Second thing is incarnation, is that that same God actually becomes a human being. I mean, that's an extraordinary thing to think about. I don't know of any other religion that can make that claim, where the creator... becomes one of the created. And then the final thing is resurrection, where you just have this notion that ultimately, death will have its say, but it's not the last word. In the end, it is life that is victorious. And again, I think all those three are grounded in love. It orients us toward love, and how do we begin to fulfill that through the ways that we live our lives? And... And I think what I want to claim is that those three, we come to know those three extraordinary things through the ordinary, because it's sort of like an icon. You catch a glimpse of it. So where do you, where have I gained my greatest insights in love? You know, and the common things of being married for 47 years, of looking upon people in unexpected times and places. So that's, that was really the thing behind it. Now why use those themes?
PJ Wehry:
Yeah. Yeah. Um, and you, you've gone into this a little bit and I don't want to jump too far ahead, but it seems that you've referenced ordinary and extraordinary a couple of times. Um, can you expand on that a little bit in terms of how does, uh, what role does the extraordinary play in our day to day lives and why do we need the ordinary?
Brent Waters:
Okay, well I think I'll start with why we need them is the contrast. I mean you can't know either one until you compare it to the other. So that again to use those three theological themes and say okay those are really extraordinary and they're unrepeatable
PJ Wehry:
Right.
Brent Waters:
and that's what makes them extraordinary. I mean it's a notion like okay I know human beings are or they can be creative that doesn't make them the creator. Okay, so it's really that, so it's a way to know that it's only in knowing the ordinary do you become really to see how extraordinary and how rare the extraordinary is. And that's why it really is, in a sense, it's holy and it's awe-inspiring. You know, it motivates responses like, you know, take off your shoes because you're on holy ground. Well, not all ground is holy. And if you make everything holy, then what... There is no God then, because God really is set apart, is extraordinary. So that was the reason, is to say again, is I need the contrast of the ordinary to really begin the extraordinary. And I think sometimes we start in the wrong spot, that we think we know the extraordinary, but we get stuck there and then we never look at the ordinary. And consequently then our understanding of the extraordinary is incomplete. although it will never be totally complete.
PJ Wehry:
Right, right. And then you take like this base of these three acts, these three extraordinary acts of love, and you start into the kind of distinction between calling and vocation. How do you get to calling, our calling and our vocations from those three acts of love? And what is the distinction you draw between those two?
Brent Waters:
Yeah, I think calling is... Okay, I'll begin with vocation. I think vocation, and then I'll get back to it. Eventually I'll wander around to an answer. Vocation are those tools that we have to master in order to fulfill our calling. So, and I think the callings, we have multiple callings. I don't think there's just a single calling. And I don't want to limit the calling to simply things like, well, I'm called to the priesthood and that's the only thing that is a calling, that everything else is not a calling. No, I think we're called to be married, we're called to be parents, we're called to do a certain kind of job for a while, and then in each of those kinds of things, to fulfill your calling you have to learn the vocation. So one of the first things you learn in the vocation of marriage or the calling of marriage, it means that you have to forsake being single. I mean, that's just a very simple lesson, but it's an important lesson, you know.
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
married people are not single anymore and they ought not to act as if they were single. To be a parent means you're no longer childless and it means you've taken on certain obligations and duties to other people who are now part of your household, you've welcomed to the fellowship of your household and you're bound to them. And I think you can go down the line. Since I was called to be a professor it means I couldn't be a banker. In some ways, again, what you learn in the ordinary is that to say yes to some things, you have to say no to others.
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
And there's an inherent limitation in that. And I think that it's another way of saying, stay focused. Stay focused on what your calling is. Stay focused on the vocational skills you need to fulfill that calling. So I mean, to go back to the simple answer again is, you know, in fulfilling your calling as a father or a parent, that means probably you shouldn't. you know, focus on what it means to be, you know, free to take go any place you want, any time you want. Because to be a parent means you're limited in what you can do.
PJ Wehry:
And there's a certain amount of responsibility and risk, you know, to go back to even our last conversation that if we are going to love well, there is risk involved, there is responsibility involved. And it seems from at least the vocational side, you know, you said you're going to get to talking about callings. You know, you've touched on briefly. We are embarking on a journey. towards a certain set of skills, right? It's not that you have to be this perfect parent right from the get-go, but you have committed yourself to get better at parenting, right?
Brent Waters:
Right. Right.
PJ Wehry:
Like you will have rejected your calling, you'll have rejected your vocation if you do not continue to grow in those skills, right? If your very first lecture as a professor was just as good as your last lecture after decades, right? That would be I would hope that you would find that disappointing, right?
Brent Waters:
Right, I think that's an excellent way to put it, because I mean, in a strange sort of way by, at first it looks as if a vocation is restricting your freedom, and in a simplistic sense it is, but at a deeper level it is in taking on the obligations of a calling on a vocation you actually become more free, because you become free to do that, so that you become free to be a parent. because you're willing to take on the duties and obligations and limitations of being a parent. And that's, in a sense, it's in discovering the ordinary that you actually catch glimpse of the extraordinary dimension of what it means to be a parent and love the strange creature who's now in your household.
PJ Wehry:
Oh gosh, that hits too close to home right now.
Brent Waters:
Okay.
PJ Wehry:
I have two kids right now who are not potty trained and yeah,
Brent Waters:
Yeah,
PJ Wehry:
too close to home.
Brent Waters:
all right.
PJ Wehry:
Yes.
Brent Waters:
I'm going to go ahead and close the video.
PJ Wehry:
No, I love that. Do you see any way that this dovetails, like this idea of vocation? and this kind of tool set with the idea of practical wisdom for nesis, you know, this kind of capacity we have for training ourselves to make better judgments and decisions.
Brent Waters:
Yeah, I mean, I didn't want to write. I mean, I think I think virtue theory is terribly important. And, but I steadfastly resisted writing and using this book as an excuse to write a theory of virtue. Okay. Because there's too many other better people than me that could write better books on theory of virtue. And, you know, why compete when you know, you're going to lose from the get go, but anyway. But I think what I was trying to write is that there's certain kinds of preliminary things that one needs to do. in order to be better skilled in the school of virtue. So that prior to phrenesis, I think, you know, learning things like just the sheer need for repetition, the sheer need for a capacity for doing over and over again, the same thing is actually a good, if you will, preschool to the school of virtue. So that, for example, I think manners is terribly important because that... predisposes you to treat people with a certain degree of respect that is necessary for a virtue such as justice. So it's a way of saying, okay, again, where the ordinary is helpful is that it prepares you to do other things that you may be called to do later in life that otherwise you wouldn't have the capacity to carry through. Something like courage. I mean, we may laugh and say, you know, Children don't build the capacity for courage. Well, of course they do. I mean, what parent isn't courageous or you'd
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
never undertake the enterprise. And as you were saying earlier, it doesn't mean day one you're the best parent in the world, but you slowly begin to realize I can do this and I can begin to develop certain habits, certain dispositions, and I want to instill those in my children as well. So, you know, it's It's important to get up every morning and make the bed. It does kind of make a predisposition to how you're gonna treat the day.
PJ Wehry:
um... my wife makes our bed so now i feel bad but um... uh...
Brent Waters:
Reminders too, which we can
PJ Wehry:
yeah
Brent Waters:
use.
PJ Wehry:
uh... it's a good example though i understand what you're saying um... yeah just to touch back on what you're talking about uh... there's a in a superficial sense we lose freedom uh... what would you say almost that we we lose the capacity to choose other callings, obviously, but we lose that kind of agency, but we gain a different kind of agency that comes with more responsibility and more power. Would that be
Brent Waters:
Yeah,
PJ Wehry:
a fair way to talk about it?
Brent Waters:
I think it is a fair way to talk about it. In some ways, I mean, it's perhaps a bit too simplistic to say, but I think you're on the right track of saying you're exchanging breadth for depth.
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
Um, because,
PJ Wehry:
And
Brent Waters:
because.
PJ Wehry:
it would be problematic to stay in the shallow end.
Brent Waters:
Well, I think it is. I think it's easier. It's less risky. I mean, because, I mean, to go back to example of marriage, I mean, there's a big difference between, you know, after a few dates calling it quits and getting a divorce. I mean, it's because you've made certain kinds of commitments and certain kinds of obligations. And again, there's different kinds of risks involved in that. And let's face it, a good marriage is a deeper relationship than the second date.
PJ Wehry:
Hopefully.
Brent Waters:
Hopefully.
PJ Wehry:
You've mentioned a little bit about the ordinary and repetition. Even as you were just talking there, I'm reminded of some of my own reading in Kierkegaard how just making the commitment itself shapes us and following through on that commitment. That's an important part of this.
Brent Waters:
Yes, I think it's. I think that's a very excellent way to put it, in a sense, you take the leap first,
PJ Wehry:
Yeah. Yeah.
Brent Waters:
and then you learn where you've landed.
PJ Wehry:
I mean that's... yeah go ahead.
Brent Waters:
And then you have to learn the skills of navigating this new terrain that you've leaped into, not knowing in advance where you might land. And again, I think that's why at least I find Kierkegaard simultaneously very interesting and frustrating to read, because I think philosophers are inherently kind of conservative. You want the answers before you make a commitment. And Kierkegaard is not going to offer you that. I mean,
PJ Wehry:
Hi.
Brent Waters:
it's easy. I mean, he's Lutheran to the core. I mean, that's like.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, I'd never thought of that connection. But yeah, that makes total sense. I don't know why I've missed that. As we talk about, my wife is very patient with me. There's a book by Kierkegaard called The Concept of Anxiety, and anxiety there is translated probably poorly. Today it has more this idea of like, chronic... uh kind of numbness i don't know the exact way to describe that whereas for him what he was describing is the kind of a wall of emotion and Not understanding that comes before a new stage of life Uh, and so when i went to go propose to my wife, she knew it was coming. Um, that's a whole story in itself But as we were walking, I was talking to her about how it was so strange to me, because I knew we were embarking on a new stage of life, and I could not even begin to imagine what it was going to be like, because I'd never had been responsible for another person before in that, like completely and totally, right? And put myself together with that person, and I knew that just by creating that commitment, I was going to be fundamentally shaped. And so, that's, you know, as you talk about parenting was the same way. In some ways, I think parenting was even more so because I know even with my wife. I never had to worry like I was like she can survive without me Um, i'll never forget My first child putting them, you know, they handed us the baby. They gave us a pamphlet And a couple diapers and they were like, okay And I was like, but if I if I mess up the baby dies, you know And it was just it was overwhelming all of a sudden like It was like I'd passed through this wall and there was a whole new world where I had to just completely remake myself. And that's, I think, but if that description to me seems extraordinary, but really when you talk about marriage and parenting, these are very ordinary things.
Brent Waters:
Well, they are. And what has struck me about so many of the biographies is you think of these people that you read about who we lift up and do extraordinary things is how routine it is for them. because they've mastered certain kinds of practices, certain kinds of things of what it means for them to be in the position. I mean, particularly I'm thinking of when you read the accounts of generals in wars, so much is riding on their shoulders, you know, an Eisenhower or a Grant or whatever. And they just go about it as if, you know, you and I are getting up and going to work. because it is their calling and vocation in a sense. And they've done, it's not as if they showed up the first day and they were made a general. They had to demonstrate certain kinds of things and they had to learn certain kinds of common ordinary skills. I mean, I think one of the first things a good general learns is the value that basically a shovel may be more valuable than a rifle.
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
Because you've got to dig the trench. And I think it's the same thing you're in mentioning earlier with the professor. You know, you begin to realize, well, actually it's pretty humbling to realize that no one's going to remember my lectures. So it's, it's what do I really have to master to be the, the, the good professor. And increasingly the older I got, I thought, you know, you got to learn how to listen.
PJ Wehry:
Mm.
Brent Waters:
rather than do all the talking. Or you'll never figure out what is it that the students really striving to accomplish and what is it that, you know, now you may have to teach them to saying you're listening for the wrong things. I mean, and that's what you have to hear in their voices, tell the student, well, the reason you're not getting it is because you're not looking in the right place. You're not reading. I mean, you have to teach students how to read, in a sense. Particularly difficult kinds of texts. But you tell them, you know, the first thing I used to tell my students is make sure you get the first sentence down. Because everything else is going to be delivery on that first sentence. So it's, those are things, again, it's a very ordinary part of it. I mean, you know, when you think of how rudimentary it is to learn how to read, and yet if you don't do those, you know, those routine skills at the beginning, you know, I think it's one of the reasons phonics works is because of that repetition. we learn how to read through the basics. And I think life is largely learning how to read. You learn how to read life, you learn how to read others. And again, if you don't have that skill base, and that doesn't mean you can't constantly improve on the skill base, but it's pretty ordinary stuff that helps us to do sometimes extraordinary things for others and to receive extraordinary gifts of others. By the way, did you read Kierkegaard in Danish or English? And okay.
PJ Wehry:
Oh, English, yeah. I'm not that cool, yeah.
Brent Waters:
I had a Danish friend who told me actually Kierkegaard reads better in English than Danish, but I
PJ Wehry:
Oh,
Brent Waters:
don't
PJ Wehry:
well we
Brent Waters:
know
PJ Wehry:
can
Brent Waters:
if
PJ Wehry:
be-
Brent Waters:
that's true or not.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, we can be grateful to the Hongs. I have all those academic, like the black, and they always have some pastel color. Yeah, they're very readable, which I'm grateful for. I've heard the same thing about a couple different philosophers, like Kant especially. I've heard that. I don't know if that's an urban myth, that's just something that people say to make themselves feel better. You know, because... Anyways, maybe we don't have to get into how difficult Kant is to read. I think our audience is probably familiar with that. But so moving from the calling and vocation side of things, you then talk about the distinction, or sorry, the definitions of virtues and vices. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, I could see how this could have turned into a virtue theory book. So this is your chance to maybe expand on that, but.
Brent Waters:
Yeah, well, I think it's just... I think virtues for a long time had a bad rap because we just confined it to the sexual conduct of persons who are either virtuous or they weren't. But it's actually what the virtues are is really a way to ask and answer the question what makes an excellent human being. An excellent human being is someone who's mastered certain kinds of virtues and been formed and shaped by them. And again, I don't want to get into the complexities of did Aristotle or Plato get it right? and later on, you know, the other theories. But I think the insight is correct. And now the other side of virtue, of course, is vice. And if you're formed and shaped by the vices, then you become a vicious person. And viciousness doesn't necessarily mean that you're a wicked person. It means that basically you're shaped by sloth, or you're shaped by cowardice or whatever. And And I think it's important to begin to look at, say that, you know, in many ways, vice is much more interesting and it's much easier, but it's also ultimately malformative. I mean, if the vices really weren't pleasant, they wouldn't be temptation. And that's what makes it so pernicious, because it's just so much easier. I mean, who doesn't want to be a Gorton?
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, we've added a few, right.
Brent Waters:
Thank you.
PJ Wehry:
Actually, to. kind of an example I immediately thought of is we are currently, you know, a lot of younger children, we've added a couple of new members to the household and we've been talking a lot about lying. And one of the things, as I've been thinking about how to explain, because a lot of times they'll lie to not get in trouble for something. And how do you explain that? It's like, well, you're still going to get in trouble, even if you tell
Brent Waters:
Right.
PJ Wehry:
the truth, right?
Brent Waters:
Right.
PJ Wehry:
But getting them to see that... there are, there is small consequences for telling the truth and small gains from lying now, but the long-term consequences and the long-term gains are flip-flopped, right? That like, once you start lying, it starts to malform your character and you will find yourself diverging, right? And even And this as a kid, I did not understand this at all It didn't make sense to me and now as an adult. I've seen people do this with the people who lie habitually The most dangerous part about it is they start to lie to themselves and they start having a hard time distinguishing between Fact and reality or between reality and unreality between fact and fiction
Brent Waters:
Yeah, and I think that that, you know. We see a lot of it these days because... How can I put this? I think we've stumbled into a bad trap of saying truth no longer matters, all that matters is the narrative. And that's a dangerous place to go, because that simply means, in a credulous age, all you have to say is something that is credible. And that seems
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
to be easier and easier to say these days. Go ahead.
PJ Wehry:
Well, go ahead. I was gonna say, to go along with that, I think it's that whole credibility is that you can always find, like in the past, you only had access to a certain group of people. And so you could only get away with saying so much before some people would be like, no, you can't, that's not true, right? Like, and sometimes everyone around you was wrong, right? Like that did happen. But generally speaking, like if you're talking to 100 people and, yeah, they're all saying you're wrong. You might want to check yourself. But the, but what we have now is you now talk to millions of people and you have, you have a service that helps find people just like you. So you, you can curate people who will. uh... agree with what you're saying regardless of its truth or not so we can always find someone to agree with us
Brent Waters:
Yeah, and I think that's right. And then the next step beyond that is eventually, before you know it, you slipped into a kind of easy nihilism. where nothing much of anything matters anymore. So, I mean, if the definition is that if there is nothing noble to will, it is better to will nothing at all, then you begin to realize, you know, the vices are the preparation ground for that, you know. Because, I mean, something like sloth is not just laziness. It's called the demon at noon day, where you just lose any of the ability to affirm anything at all. and
PJ Wehry:
Where did I mean? Forgive me like it may be possible that you came up with that but that sounds like you're quoting something Where's the demon at Noonday?
Brent Waters:
Yeah, that
PJ Wehry:
and that idea
Brent Waters:
comes out of the monastery. It goes back a long way in the Christian tradition. That's how sloth was understood to be. And it's, you know, goodness, when you're in the monastery, you worry about a lot of things. One of the things they worried about was sloth. And it wasn't like I said. assignment and a kind of simplistic sign of it is a kind of laziness but it's more of this notion of saying there's absolutely nothing which is worthwhile to affirm and that may be in fact, you know the sin against the holy spirit because basically what you're saying is You you can't even affirm god is good
PJ Wehry:
I have never heard sloth described like that. I always just thought of it as laziness. So one, thank you. And what I find really interesting about that is the worst parts of capitalism, people who are basically just caught up in getting money with no real desire to a firm life, they can be working 80 to 100 hours a week and still be considered slothful. Am I understanding that correctly? Would
Brent Waters:
That's
PJ Wehry:
that be?
Brent Waters:
exactly right. That's exactly right. That's why, interestingly enough, the
PJ Wehry:
Huh.
Brent Waters:
antidote to sloth is playfulness. And the reason being is that play draws you out of yourself.
PJ Wehry:
I-
Brent Waters:
Sloth is really completely self-fixated. Another way to put it is it's the ground of narcissism. Because you've judged the whole world in terms of your own state of being. And if your own state of being is wanting, then the whole world must be terrible. So it's really, it's a very complex, I mean of all the vices, I think it's in some ways more dangerous even than pride.
PJ Wehry:
That definitely adds a whole new dimension of that. I'm gonna have to like, I'm gonna have to sit with that one for a while.
Brent Waters:
Yeah, there's some good books out there too. I mean, it's, I mean, I've already often worried about authors that spend all their time thinking about sloth. I mean, it's just.
PJ Wehry:
Do you have any off the top of your head? I know that puts you on the spot, but...
Brent Waters:
I don't because I'm old enough to claim I can't remember anything,
PJ Wehry:
Okay.
Brent Waters:
but if you email me, I'll send it. I can look it up and send it to you.
PJ Wehry:
Okay. Um, and you mentioned I have this written down to ask about. Um, because I'm, I love this idea. Uh, and I, you know, it sounds like you're referencing, you know, Kant and, uh, you know, Gadamer talks about this quite a bit. Um, why, why is play necessary for the moral life? You make that claim, uh, part way through your book.
Brent Waters:
Yeah, well, let me step back for a minute too, because there was a point that I think is also important. The other reason why it's important to hang on to truth is otherwise you slip into the evil of fantasy. Now, I'm not saying that all fantasies are bad, but I think Iris Murdoch was correct when she says that one of the great enemies of moral excellence is fantasy. because it does not allow you to engage the world as it is. I mean, you begin to simply create substitute worlds, which in fact do not exist. In fact, I think that's the, I mean Hannah Arendt said that's one of the great temptations of the intellectual too. If you don't like the world you're living in, you can bend one in your head that's better. And that's where you end up spending your time. And that's very dangerous, I think, particularly if you're gonna do something like. like a theologian who proclaimed this is how you should be living your life. So that's a digression. I think it's an important one to keep in mind that basically you don't want to live in a world of fantasy. You do want to live in the world that God has created you to be part of and not necessarily to create that alternative. Now, you want to create a world that God wants as an alternative. But that's, again, responding to a calling and a vocation, which I think then is grounded in realism and not fantasy.
PJ Wehry:
I want to make sure I understand you. When you talk about the way the world should be, is it almost like this idea that the theologian, instead of dealing with the world as it is, which requires work, just... is basically writing stories as theology or theology as story, you know, kind of like as like as a like a fantastic like this second reality and so it's almost like he lives in this world that should be and it isn't
Brent Waters:
It can be. It can be, yeah. Or it's, for example, in some of the more progressive Protestant circles that I spent a good part of my career in, you kind of wonder whatever became a sin. And one of the things you begin to notice in the liturgy, we don't do the prayers confession anymore because we don't really believe we've done anything requiring that we confess. And I think it's a grave distortion of the Christian gospel is because central to it is the acknowledgement that, you know, we are sinners. Now that doesn't mean you're irredeemable. In fact, to the contrary, we get back to the incarnation and this is what this is all about. So it's in that fantasy of living as if you're sin free. that gets you into all sorts of mischief, when in fact, and also living in the fantasy that you're nothing but a sinner. either one of those two extremes, I think, will get you into serious kinds of difficulty. It's really the realism of saying that you're a redeemed sinner,
PJ Wehry:
Yeah.
Brent Waters:
or at least you have the possibility of living a redeem, being a redeemed sinner.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, sin abounds, grace abounds more. And so it's, it's problematic to be like there is no sin or sin abounds more. Right.
Brent Waters:
Right,
PJ Wehry:
Yeah.
Brent Waters:
now that doesn't give you a license to go sin so that grace may abound all the more, but.
PJ Wehry:
I'm not sure. God forbid, right? Yes.
Brent Waters:
Yes, right.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah.
Brent Waters:
But now I forgot the question you really asked me, so if you can remind
PJ Wehry:
No,
Brent Waters:
me.
PJ Wehry:
no. I loved that I know that was a great. That was a great. Rabbit trail sounds derogatory. I liked taking that path, so I'm glad to come back. The Why is play necessary for the moral life? That's fascinating to me.
Brent Waters:
Well, good, you know, if you're gonna play well, you gotta know the rules. You can't play without rules. And when you know the rules, then you know what's expected of you and how to perform and ways to judge. Well, isn't that what the excellent life is about, is forming those rules and living by those rules. And, you know, playing with an attitude that maybe winning isn't everything.
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
Maybe it is just simply for love of the game that we play. Which raises some very fascinating questions about professional athletics. I mean, is athletics play? I mean, at that level? Or is that spectacle? Is it entertainment? What exactly is it? But simply to be involved. And when you think of good play, there's all sorts of rituals that go with it too. And again, it's that repetition and to learn how to play. I mean, there's nothing more boring than practice when you're playing a sport.
PJ Wehry:
I'm going to go.
Brent Waters:
But if you don't go through the rituals of practice and the repetition of it, you can't play well. But in that playfulness, I think, there's also a sort of attitude of being in cooperation, too. You can't play a game if you don't have cooperation. So whether it's a team sport or not, both sides have to cooperate because they're going to abide by the rules or you really can't play the game. I think it was interesting, too. I mean, years ago, back before the first dot-com bubble burst. I was talking to some of the people that used to be involved in that and I used to think it was this hard number crunching everything else. That's not how they started businesses. It was very, very, very interesting. He said, well, yeah, you gather together some people, you put out the plan, and then you look around the table and you ask one question, who wants to play? And there was that kind of, you know, in some ways I think playfulness is maybe rooted with entrepreneurial kinds of endeavors. Because it's, there's also I think a sense that underlying all this is you have to have, I mean, I think it's distressing when you live in an increasingly humorless world. And it's not just the cancel culture that I have in mind, but also the inability to laugh at ourselves, to laugh at our own mistakes, to learn from them. And in that, that kind of humorous attitude, I think is, is, is directly proportional to the playfulness. So again, even, even for children now, I think that playfulness has taken on a, a much more serious aspect than when, when I was young, I mean, when I was young, basically, you know, people played multiple sports. They kind of played at it, if you will. And now I know, you know, talking to parents where, you know, they take their sons to 40 baseball clinics a year so they can get the scholarship at the Division I school. And it's a much more serious, I mean, it's almost like a business.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah.
Brent Waters:
But
PJ Wehry:
Oh, it's
Brent Waters:
the,
PJ Wehry:
very
Brent Waters:
yeah,
PJ Wehry:
true. Yeah. Sorry, go ahead.
Brent Waters:
but the insight I gained was from Heinzige, who's a Dutch philosopher who wrote on this, was saying, look, differences is that seriousness cannot include playfulness, but playfulness can include seriousness. Because you can play seriously and yet still maintain a different kind of attitude. So yeah, so I think so I think yeah, I mean when I look at really the moral exemplars, it's as I've encountered them, it's they have had that kind of playful attitude. where it's not that life itself is played, but there's a playful dimension of life. And if you cut yourself out from that, I don't think your life is as rich as it could be.
PJ Wehry:
I'm definitely going to steal that phrase for our next family game night because my family May not always be serious, but when we play we play seriously
Brent Waters:
Yeah, yeah. So on game night, do you begin me or game on?
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, it's very competitive. Yeah. Yeah, you actually you mentioned it in their ritual in the ordering of time and place that chapter, and then you add this sub, this tag on belonging. And you've referenced this, you know, with the repetition and all that but can you talk a little bit about the role of ritual. I think it has a very certain connotation in American life that to be quite honest in the rest of the world people just kind of think of as good manners, you know, you've referenced
Brent Waters:
Yeah.
PJ Wehry:
that as well.
Brent Waters:
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I think one of the more problematic aspects
PJ Wehry:
Thanks for watching!
Brent Waters:
of contemporary life is we don't belong anywhere and we don't necessarily belong with people, with a particular group of people. So we're kind of cast adrift. We're nomadic, imaginatively and physically. And I think that's a problem. over the long run is that you belong with particular, you belong in particular places and you belong with particular people. Now I'm a hypocrite for saying this because I've moved around a lot and I'm uprooted and things like that. But even there now as I get older I begin to feel like I'm homesick
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
because I'm not grounded anywhere. And that's where I was trying to write in that book about you know, using Anne Tyler of all authors, she says some wonderful things about living in a house, in our home, and how that becomes a kind of focal point for drawing in, you know, people together over generations and they cut across the generations. I mean, it's going back to, you know, that wonderful philosopher Albert Boardman, you know, who recently died, and
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
you know, that's a great loss, but you've raised about focal things and practices and about how... You know, a family meal is that kind of thing that draws the family together. And you're not just there to consume food. You're there to talk to them and the rituals of conversation of hospitality and the things that go into this. And that's what I was trying to get along is that, you know, we, we find our belonging and interactions with other people and was sharing within narratives over time so that, for example, one of the cases that I've tried to make that, you know, why. Why adoptive parents are not second rate parents, but as much as birth parents is because children have to find their belonging with parents. And maybe the parents that they belong with may not be their birth parents for a whole variety of circumstances. So they belong with a different set of persons or parents, or you belong with your spouse as a married person. So you know, and even there, I think that's... properly understood, that's where I think I can draw a difference between, say, the patriot and the nationalist, is the patriot knows that he or she belongs to certain kind of people, not of their choosing. I mean, goodness sakes, you know, you belong to a lot of people that really are very quite irritating. But it's where you find your belonging there, and that doesn't necessarily claiming a superiority of other forms of belonging. But again, what you're talking about that, that You learn the rudiments of manners, you learn the rudiments of how we treat one another, because we belong to each other, we belong with each other. So again, that's what I was trying to draw out in that.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, even it was something that I had seen kind of the dissolution of with my age group, but with the real advent of the internet, because I was kind of old enough that I was on the cusp, but I didn't, I wasn't around during the real like... I wasn't dating during the revolution of the internet, right? It was just
Brent Waters:
Right.
PJ Wehry:
all starting to change. And the one of the things is how culture just gives like very clear guidelines to protect us. And you know, so when you're talking about manners and the way that People spend so much time discussing and trying to figure out and there's like all this back and forth between different groups about What is the appropriate way to date now? Right. My my brother is like spending time on dating apps and he's like well This is what people say he's like surfing like social sites trying to find out How am I supposed to interact here because it's not something that's like we're literally forming it as we go Is that is that a good example what you're talking about?
Brent Waters:
Yeah, I
PJ Wehry:
Well,
Brent Waters:
think I'm
PJ Wehry:
I
Brent Waters:
gonna
PJ Wehry:
mean,
Brent Waters:
think-
PJ Wehry:
that'd be an example of what the bad things that are happening, right?
Brent Waters:
No, I think that's right because it's just simply exhausting to having to reinvent yourself every day. and not having the guidelines of what does it mean to be X, Y, and Z. So the example I often use with people is that... Okay, yeah, step back from that for a minute. It also perplexed me why when I was part of a predominantly Protestant progressive faculty, almost all of my colleagues came from very traditional, even fundamentalist backgrounds, and they were still rebelling. Okay, whereas I grew up in Southern California and most of my life has been a blessed rage for order because I found having limitless choice is actually very exhausting. And it really doesn't give you any kind of guidelines. So you're right. There used to be a kind of, you know, it was imperfect. It was informal, but yes, there was a kind of rules of dating that everyone recognized. And that's all out the window now. In fact, you know, when my daughter was growing up, I don't think she really dated, they kind of went out in a herd. And, uh, yeah, so.
PJ Wehry:
I was not ready for that.
Brent Waters:
And some of them hooked up and things like that. But it was just very different. I really didn't understand the attraction of it. Because, again, it goes back to that playfulness because there was the game of dating and you had to learn how to play it well. I mean, and it wasn't that you were being hypocritical or anything else. There were just certain rules. And you knew when you had transgressed those rules and it didn't really help you. Because it presupposed that dating would lead to courting and courting would lead to marriage and things like that. And again, you know, today I use the word courting among young people and they have no idea what I'm talking about. I think it has something to do with the courtroom or something.
PJ Wehry:
Right? Right. Yeah. I've been talking to other parents now and they're talking like some of them have teenagers and. the idea of like there we have as we globalize we have more cultures mish-mashing together and so you have parents with different sets of rules with two kids who are wanting to wanting to date even and it's like One family thinks you should ask the dad and one doesn't think you should ask the dad and how do you navigate that? How do you negotiate that and it's um? Yeah, I mean, obviously, and then like, it's like, and what age does that stop? Right. You know, do you have to ask the father if like, you know, you have a 30 year old daughter like these like, and they're just like, they're very ordinary things, but they're also very important things. Right.
Brent Waters:
Yeah, they are. And you're right, we went through the change fairly rapidly and it really didn't take time to pause and catch our breath. And I mean, as I think back now, I could even see it in my own family. I was about 10 and 12 years behind my brother and sister. And it was almost like two different families because
PJ Wehry:
Hmm.
Brent Waters:
I can remember my brother one time being 10 minutes late when he should have been home. and he was grounded for 10 days. I mean, it was one minute
PJ Wehry:
A
Brent Waters:
per
PJ Wehry:
day
Brent Waters:
day.
PJ Wehry:
a minute.
Brent Waters:
Yeah. Um, you know, fast forward, I'm around 17. He comes back to visit. I'm on my way out. My mother says, are you going to be home late? And I said, probably. And she says, well, lock the door and turn off the light when you get home. Well, you know, he goes, you know, basically berserk saying what,
PJ Wehry:
Hahaha
Brent Waters:
you know, what gives here and it's just, you know, times have changed, rules have changed. So. But was it necessarily, I think it was probably, okay, again, this is why you also have to be able to amend certain kinds of practices. I mean, I think my parents were too tough on my older brother and sister, and they probably weren't tough enough on me. And
PJ Wehry:
Little
Brent Waters:
where
PJ Wehry:
bit of
Brent Waters:
do
PJ Wehry:
the
Brent Waters:
you...
PJ Wehry:
baby of the family, yeah. Ha
Brent Waters:
Yeah,
PJ Wehry:
ha ha.
Brent Waters:
yeah. So where do you find this and how do you negotiate that? And I think, again, it comes back to those, you know, livings and arts, not a science, not a technology. Again, going back to your previous comment, you just learn over time how to make the adjustments.
PJ Wehry:
And you end, and it involves a good part of the book, you go through the different relationships and activities. I notice that in relationships, you start with neighbors. I think I know the answer to this, but why start with neighbors there as the first and most important relationship?
Brent Waters:
Because, I mean, it's the most ubiquitous form of other persons that you run into. I mean, Bart does a masterful job with that. There are neighbors near and far. There are neighbors who are intimate neighbors, who are strangers. And, you know, you have to learn how to treat different kinds of neighbors in ways that are appropriate. So you don't treat a stranger as if they're an intimate, and you don't treat an intimate as if they're a stranger. And again, it's just, you know. the world is full of neighbors. And I think it's, you know, really, we do ourselves a disservice if we think neighbors are simply those who live in close proximity. Because particularly in the kind of technology you and I have to learn to navigate, there are global neighbors and we interact with them every day on the internet. They're just invisible.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, and then I noticed, so you have neighbors, friends, spouses, parents and children together, strangers and citizens. Is there a particular reason that you didn't have family together, that you separated spouses, parents and children and you didn't include brothers and sisters?
Brent Waters:
I wish I could say there was a good reason. I mean, I made the separation between marriage and family because there are quite a few marriages these days who do not have children. And I think to try to say, you know, that a household based on solely a married couple is the same as a household with 12 children. No, they're not. They're two different kinds of things. Yeah, I concentrated on the relationship between parents and children. In retrospect, I probably should have said something among siblings. Yeah. Because I mean, I once said in class and it got me in all sorts of trouble that, you know, one of the nice things about having siblings is we learn to love people we don't like. Well, that was just too much autobiography, but it also opened up, you know, too many other things, but yeah, because I think, I think it is. It's the... You got to pay attention to siblings because they also are ways that you're grounded in the world, ways that you find your belonging. And in retrospect, I should have said something about it, didn't.
PJ Wehry:
That was not... I thought you had a reason, I apologize, I was not looking
Brent Waters:
No,
PJ Wehry:
for that, like...
Brent Waters:
no, no. No, it's just an oversight on my part.
PJ Wehry:
As we look at activities, you know, I want to be conscious of your time here. You talk about work, housework and homework, and manners and appearance. Can you speak a little bit to housework and homework and what the distinction is between those two?
Brent Waters:
Yeah, well, I think what I tried to say is that, you know, it's a little bit borrowing without giving credit to Hannah Arendt's difference between work and labor. Where work is something that we do with our imagination and labor is just simply a response to natural necessity, physical necessity. I would, I'd say housework is those things that basically you just got to do. Like, you know, you got to clean the dishes, you got to cook the meals, you got to clean the carpets, it's just, it's just maintaining the physical, you know, place where you live. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's housework. keeping the house in good repair. But if you don't do that, you can't do your homework properly. And homework is building upon living together in a house and putting that building a home. So the two are not synonymous terms. I think people can live in houses and not necessarily have a home. And with certain refugees, they can have a home and not necessarily have a house. So it's, but I think the two are related and it should be, and that's why I use that again, the Ann Tyler novel of seeing the intimate relationship between a family over multiple generations in a house and what went into that. And it just really struck me as a, you know, I think people tend to thrive when houses are well-maintained and they're not living in squalor or something like that. I think, you know, human beings are kind of geared that way. living in good environments where there's three meals a day and things like that. And that's again, it's a discipline, it's reputation, and it's certainly not interesting. I mean, I tried to go out my way, I've never found a household chore that I've liked. I mean,
PJ Wehry:
Hahaha
Brent Waters:
so, but it's, you just got to do them.
PJ Wehry:
So just to make sure I'm tracking with you, you see a very similar distinction to Hannah Arendt's labor and work. That
Brent Waters:
Mm-hmm.
PJ Wehry:
work is what we use our imagination for, and you see homework is that kind of what when we use our imagination. It's that more creative side to build.
Brent Waters:
Yeah, homework is game night.
PJ Wehry:
OK. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brent Waters:
Okay, Housework is making the beds.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, yeah. I feel that felt a little pointed, I'm not gonna lie. That's fair. That's fair. Yeah,
Brent Waters:
Well,
PJ Wehry:
yeah,
Brent Waters:
no, I mean,
PJ Wehry:
yeah.
Brent Waters:
I think it's
PJ Wehry:
It's
Brent Waters:
excellent.
PJ Wehry:
fair,
Brent Waters:
I
PJ Wehry:
it's
Brent Waters:
mean,
PJ Wehry:
fair.
Brent Waters:
yeah.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so for me, I love to cook. So I spend a lot of time being creative with cooking. Whereas, you know, laundry does not, you know, and I don't know how you get creative about laundry, but that's definitely housework, right?
Brent Waters:
Yeah, you know, you mentioned about the cooking and I think cooking is the bridge between housework and homework. I mean, it's a little bit of both.
PJ Wehry:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Dr. Waters, one, let me just say, I've really enjoyed her time and it's really, I love the blend here of the philosophical and the everyday because I feel like big questions are only worth it if we can meet them, right? And so this has been, I've really appreciated you sharing your wisdom today. For our audience, if you could give one takeaway, not asking for a summary, I don't think that's fair, but just a takeaway for this upcoming week as they listen, what would you give them?
Brent Waters:
Pay attention to the little things because they're so easily ignored and if you ignored them you might actually miss something important because it's often in the little things that redirects our attention to what is most important in our lives. And as I sometimes tell my students, don't be afraid to do little things. They count. And I think it's counterintuitive. Again, with the, you know, you mentioned later, you know, the technology, we think things have to be bigger than life. But actually, you know, life has to be just the right size. There is a go-day locked to wisdom after all that, you know. And so that would be the takeaway. And then the other takeaway is read novels.
PJ Wehry:
I love it. And, you know, after a long and fruitful academic career, find a book that can justify reading novels on sabbatical.
Brent Waters:
Yeah, yeah, no, that's the biggest trick at all because then you know, then you can use your book allowance to buy them and
PJ Wehry:
I love it. Thank you Dr. Waters, it's been a real pleasure.
Brent Waters:
Thank you.