The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 61 – Heather Walker Peterson

Episode 61: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jeff interviews Dr. Heather Peterson, who serves as senior editor for the Colson Center for Christian Worldview and previously chaired the Department of English and Literature at the University of Northwestern St. Paul. The conversation focuses on how to approach contemporary cultural issues from a biblical worldview perspective, with Peterson explaining her framework of the “four chapters” – creation, fall, redemption, and restoration – as a lens for analyzing current events and cultural trends.

They discuss challenging topics including transgenderism, where Peterson emphasizes acknowledging both the reality of how people were created while also recognizing the pain of those experiencing dysphoria. The conversation also addresses the growing divide between conservative and progressive Christians, with Peterson advocating for maintaining the “image of God perspective” when engaging with those who hold different views.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:01):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable. Wherever you get your podcast, would you do me a favor and go onto the platform where you get your podcast, leave the show a good review that helps more people see it. This is the show where I interview major thought leaders from many fields of influence to show how our worldview changes everything.

Our guest today is the senior editor for the Colson Center for Christian Worldview. She has served as the chair of the Department of English and Literature at University of Northwestern St. Paul and is an active writer on language and faith. Please welcome Dr. Heather Peterson to the show. Dr. Heather Peterson, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (00:46):
Thank you for having me here.

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:47):
Now we get to record in front of the Evangelical Press Association group today. These are people who are writers from an evangelical perspective for all kinds of publications, for lots of organizations that people know about and trust for information. And I know a lot of people are really passionate about communicating a biblical worldview, and it seems like it’s getting harder to do these days. So I’m looking forward to our conversation. Now, you and I actually met because you edited a book of mine.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (01:20):
I did.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:21):
Not only just edited the book, but it turned out to be a book that had 1400 footnotes.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (01:26):
That’s right. I’ll never forget it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:30):
So you’ve spent more time with my material than just about anybody else on the planet except for me and anyway, so it’s fun to have a chance to actually just talk in person. Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit, Heather, as you think about a biblical worldview, and this is a passion of yours because now you are a senior editor with the Colson Center. So every day things are coming out in the news and your main question is, how do we see this from a biblical worldview? And then how do we write about it? So how do you define biblical worldview?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (02:04):
All right, so you all can find out here that I just said, Jeff said, “I’m going to ask you this question.” And I said, “Well, you know how to answer this question.” So you go ahead and answer it. I edited the book, right? I know he has the answer. So you go ahead and answer it, Jeff.

Dr. Jeff Myers (02:19):
Well, I define a biblical worldview as a pattern of beliefs, of convictions and of habits that help us understand God, the world and our relationship to God and the world. So I should say ideas are first, an idea is a thought or conception about the way things are. A belief is an idea that we hold to be true. A conviction is a belief that we are willing to sacrifice for. And then a habit is the way we live every day in response to what we actually believe. So I see it as a pattern.

In other words, if you start with what you believe about, God will determine what you believe about reality. People don’t think about reality often, we just live in it. But what you believe about God will determine what you believe about reality, which in turn determines what you believe about what’s right and wrong, which in turn will determine what you believe about what makes a good society, what makes a good political structure, legal structure and so forth. So how did I do?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (03:16):
You did great.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:17):
Okay. So that’s my definition. Now, Heather, I know you come to an issue and we’ll talk about some specific issues as we get into this because some of the things that we have to cover these days are baffling 20 years ago. Is it fair to say we couldn’t have imagined having to take the approach that we have to take on some of these topics today?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (03:40):
Oh no. Especially as a mom. I mean, there’s no way. I think back to when 20 years ago, and I won’t tell you how old I am. Joyce in the front row here, she knows because we went to college together. But I just think about what my kids face every day and I did not face it right. My 10-year-old told me recently that she has friends who think that they’re lesbians, and I didn’t even know what a lesbian was at age 10. Age 10. I had no clue. Yeah. You’re right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (04:07):
So these things come up and now you have to process it as a mom, but you also have to process it for your readers. You’ve got a daily in your company, you’ve got a daily broadcast, actual couple daily broadcasts, then you’ve got a weekend news show, and then you’ve got other kinds of publications as well. So you’re reaching out to millions of people and how you approach an issue is going to shape no pressure or anything, but it’s going to shape how Christians see things.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (04:38):
It’s a lot of pressure actually, but I’m grateful to do it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (04:44):
What’s your framework, Heather, as you go into these topics? So say a brand new topic comes up and you ask some key questions, I think.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (04:54):
So, can we talk about the four chapters? Would that be all right?

Dr. Jeff Myers (04:57):
Yes, of course.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (04:58):
I would say that is our framework. So at the Colson Center, something that I had to learn. So I had come from a background where I taught my students about the ongoing story of scripture. That was really important to me, and I introduced students to, you are participating in this story. And then at the Colson Center, when I first joined, they helped give me some better categories to explain it. And that’s why when I say the four chapters, that’s what I meant.

So the four chapters, if you’ve heard this, it’s the idea that when we look at the narrative of scripture, we’ve got creation, we’ve got the fall, we’ve got redemption, and we’ve got restoration. So those are the four chapters. And one of the ways then as an editor, especially for breakpoint, so breakpoint is a commentary that we write on cultural trends. That’s every single day I’m editing that, it’s a collaborative effort. John, another writer, it’s our theologian in residence and it is me. But one of the ways that we look at every issue or story that we’re doing is we think about those four chapters as a way to think about that story.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:10):
Okay. Give us an example though, related to, well, let’s just pick out one of the controversies that we face today. A couple of weeks ago, Rachel Levine, who works in the Biden administration, was selected as one of USA Today’s 12 Women of the Year. Rachel Levine is a biological male, USA today seems to believe that there is a distinction between sex as in biological sex and gender. And they have decided that reality is you are whatever you say you are.

How do you take an issue like that and write about that from a biblical perspective? Because there were some who said, oh, wait a second, Rachel Levine is a biological male, and they got canceled from social media because it was assumed that they had bad motives for pointing that out. At least I think that’s the reason why they got canceled.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (07:21):
Babylon Bee, right?

Dr. Jeff Myers (07:22):
Okay. Yeah. So talk about it. I know these are uncomfortable topics sometimes to discuss and we think, oh, I can’t believe I’m writing about this. I want to write about the great work that our organization is doing to help poor people in Ukraine or something like that. And here we are writing about these kinds of things, but we have to be able to think biblically. So take the four chapters and help me understand how you would approach an issue like that.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (07:48):
Okay. Yeah, thanks for starting easy.

Dr. Jeff Myers (07:55):
I have three or four different things here, and I thought none of these are easy.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (08:00):
That is all right. No, this is good. This is very good. So we start with creation. So we look at creation and we see that part of being made in God’s image is as a man and as a woman, that was part of what he was doing in creation. And then we go to redemption, I’m sorry, not redemption. Then we go to the fall, we see that there was a fall, that we’re affected by sin, and then we’d go to redemption. And I think one thing that’s really occurred a lot to me over the last few months as I’ve been at this job is I think, how do I say this? Just even for other believers, I think it’s hard to admit that suffering is part of life.

(08:50):
Because we’re in a world that has been affected by sin, that suffering is part of life. And with so many of the issues, this one included that I see that we’re writing commentary on, we write about surrogacy and what’s happening in Ukraine with surrogacy. We write about abortion, we write, write about homosexuality, et cetera, on and on and on. Nobody wants to suffer.

And actually, I don’t believe that God would want us to suffer. I believe he’s sovereign, but he’s allowed suffering through his good sovereignty. And I think with transgenderism, it’s the same thing we have. You look at a secular worldview, we’ve got all this great science that can do all these great things. So why should we have to live this way? Why should we have this body if we’re uncomfortable in it? And that’s the same way I would say with the surrogacy option.

(09:47):
Why? Well, there’s an option now, so why should we have to live with infertility? So I don’t think we’ve done a good job in America, but even in the church when it comes to redemption with suffering, how do we deal with suffering and how do we come alongside those who suffer? And just so you know, he kind of hinted at me that we’d be right. Well, he directly said it wasn’t a hint anyway that we would be talking about this topic.

And as I’ve thought about it, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I used to teach my, when I was teaching, I taught a course called Writing Theory and Ethics. It was so much fun. And we would read Mark Yarhouse’s article from the 2015 Christianity Today. So to give my students ways to start thinking about transgenderism, and actually until this year at my institution, they were not formally being taught. I found outside of my class.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:45):
What wasn’t formally being taught?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (10:46):
The students weren’t dealing with that as an issue. They weren’t discussing it in some of their other classes. And so now it’s being taught at the freshmen level. They’re talking about transgenderism. They were in ethics. I do not want to diminish the Bible department, where at University of Northwestern, St. Paul, it’s awesome. They talked about in ethics, but they weren’t talking about how to engage with people who were transgender or who believed in transgender ideology. And that is happening now.

But even back then, reading your house now, just to prepare for this, I’ll just tell you, I read Abigail Schrier book, I read much of Preston Sprinkle’s book, I watched some videos and I read the Sadusky and Yarhouse book.

Dr. Jeff Myers (11:31):
So just to put those in context, if people aren’t familiar with those books, you read lots of different perspectives.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (11:38):
That’s what I was trying to do. Yes. So I mean, they’re definitely more conservative perspectives, but they are diverse perspectives within the conservative realm. And I appreciated what Yarhouse and Sadusky said as far as someone who is truly challenged by dysphoria is in a lot of pain. And it’s a crucible. They are in a crucible. And I like that word a lot. And as an editor writer, the way I’ve been thinking about it, and I talked about it with John Stonestreet last week too, is maybe one thing we can do is we can acknowledge they’re in crucible.

And yet at the Colson Center, our focus is we want people to not live by lies. See if I can say it. We don’t want them to live by lies. So we want to acknowledge the reality, the reality of how they were created. We don’t want to forget their history. So at the very least, what we can do is we can acknowledge their pain, we can acknowledge that dysphoria is painful, but at the same time, we want to acknowledge the truth because there’s a goodness in it, even if it’s hard to be in that truth.

Dr. Jeff Myers (13:00):
That article you were referring to in Christianity Today was in 2015, and I think I hadn’t remembered CT talking about the issue of transgenderism before that. So they were trying to figure out not only how do we report in this article, but how do we talk about this issue in general? That was seven years ago. Do you think that the approach they used still has merit? Does it have legs?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (13:31):
Have legs? Well, CT at the time, and I know there are CT people here, so feel free to correct me, okay. If someone from CT is here, I mean at the time they were following journalistic standards, which is you use the preference, you use the preferred pronoun instead of using the biological pronoun. However, they had a special situation, which actually a friend of our family, Margaret Fbri, her brother, had changed his gender right to female or to feminine maybe, I don’t know how to describe it even, but had changed his gender and they got permission from that individual to use the previous pronoun.

So they had a special situation in that they were able to do that. I don’t know what CT would do now, so maybe I’m sure someone out there does. But that is a journalistic standard to use a preferred pronoun. And when I would talk about this with my students, you are in an ethical dilemma.

(14:37):
And I’m fortunate I work at the Colson Center. If I want to write and use a biological pronoun, I’m not going to lose my job. But it is an ethical situation for people who are at other organizations to make that decision. And I know personally as I’ve thought about this, and as John and I have talked about it, it’s like let’s not overuse. If we’re going to use a biological pronoun, let’s not overuse it.

But we’re not going to use the preferred pronoun because again, we, so much of what we’re trying to do is say this is reality. We want to be loving, but this is reality and especially, and I have to go, being a mom influences everything I do. So sorry, I can’t just talk as if I’m an editor or a writer.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:21):
I’m so glad. I’m so glad you’re approaching it this way.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (15:24):
As a mother, I have a 10 and 12-year-old daughter. Neither of them are girly girls. They’re nerds, they’re scientific, they’re athletic. One was such a tomboy, as a mother, I’m scared. I am scared because what I see right now is I see kids being cultured, being conditioned to be dysphoric. And so therefore, as a mother, I want to acknowledge that reality, right? I want to acknowledge that reality, and I’m going to keep them off social media for a long time.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:02):
The point that you’re making with your daughters, being athletic, being tomboy. I have four kids. One’s a helicopter pilot. It’s a girl, so I can’t wait for her to have children. So she can be a helicopter mom.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (16:15):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:17):
That’s my only dad joke. I thought I’d just go ahead and throw it in there. It’s good.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (16:19):
It’s good. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (16:24):
So they’re defying the stereotypes. Is the problem with them or is the problem with the stereotypes? In other words, it seems like we have a culture that has selected certain stereotypes. This is what a boy is, this is what a girl is. If you don’t feel that you identify with that, then you’re wrong. Or in other words, you have to choose for yourself individually what your gender is because you don’t identify with the stereotype. I see that as a problem with the stereotype. Agree.

I mean, why do we have to say that all boys have to play football and they can’t play the violin, or do you see what I’m saying? The problem is that we haven’t started with the biblical categories to begin with. We’re starting with sociological categories and then we’re just compounding our error. Is that wrong? Is that?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (17:13):
No, I fully agree. And I don’t think that the Bible stereotypes women or men, right? I mean, I think I grew up thinking that, right? And then as I got older and realized, oh wow, my closest friends where I work are guys, many of my close friends, the one I got, I talk ideas with those people. Those are guys. And I had to realize, okay, oh wait, I’m breaking this stereotype. You know what I mean? And that the Bible doesn’t actually teach that stereotype. It doesn’t.

Dr. Jeff Myers (17:47):
So when you start with creation, you’re starting with a theological perspective on something, not a sociological one. And that then affects other things in your writing. So you talked about creation we’re made in God’s image. You talked about fall, that suffering is part of our experience, which I think is so instructive in the writing. I’m thinking about, well, what am I working on right now where I’ve acknowledged or not acknowledged that suffering is a part of life?

Bring redemption to bear on this because I have had people say to me, I love Jesus and I’m gay, or whatever it is, that their perspective on what it is about us that Jesus transforms does not include the things that they believe are part of their identity, aside from their relationship with Christ.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (18:45):
So their primary identity is in Christ, right? We have to remember that. And I think about, so the Preston Sprinkle videos, so my church right now are watching, I think, I’m not sure what it’s called, but Preston Sprinkle’s organization and all the youth group is, parents are watching all these videos. And many of them are very, very good.

And there are a couple of women who were transgender who have de-transitioned and beautiful prayerful people who don’t, by the way, fit the stereotypes, but they’re prayer warriors and they are lovely, and they are living faithful lives. And those lives are beautiful. They are flourishing, they are blessing others by living these faithful lives.

And I think about issues like homosexuality. Someone like Jackie Hill Perry, whenever I read Jackie Hill Perry’s book, I don’t know if I read a book, but I read several articles. Wesley Hill. Wesley Hill, and what you hear is faithfulness. And that’s redemption. And that’s why, I mean, I want to aspire to that kind of faithfulness because they’re actually in a situation where they have Christians and non-Christians attacking them right from both sides. That’s what I want to aspire to. And that’s redemption. Their walk by being in this crucible and by being faithful, their walk with God is beautiful. And it is beautiful to look at and to converse with them about it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:21):
So redemption in that situation looks like having your primary identity as a follower of Christ.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (20:28):
Absolutely.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:29):
And then grappling with issues of sexuality or politics or everything else from that perspective, you added the fourth chapter there, which is restoration, right?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (20:39):
Restoration.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:40):
Restoration.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (20:41):
Yes.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:41):
Okay. I hear people talk, creation, fall, redemption a lot, but restoration adds a whole new component. Talk about what you do at the Colson Center in that area.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (20:53):
Right? Restoration for us is we look at someone like Chuck Colson, who I was just telling Ryan down there, I am listening to Slow Burn from 2017, which is about the Watergate scandal. And he was a jerk before he was a Christian. He was a jerk, which hopefully I don’t get in trouble for that. Anyway, and you see him be redeemed and then you see him go to prison for about a year, I think it was, and then leave prison and then start something like Prison Fellowship. He does something for restoration. Restoration.

For me, it’s a little bit of an awkward word because we’re not going, I really believe in scripture that when we look at creation, there was a telos. There’s actually a destination, and God has purpose for people. And so we’re not going back to like, oh, everything’s perfect, everything’s sanitized.

(21:56):
That’s not what we’re doing. So I mean restoration this way, I think about, oh, the scripture about the locusts, that kind of restoration. And so at the Colson Center, one of the main things we do, so we don’t want to just challenge, and I love this about us, is that we have sort of multiple arms of our ministry. We don’t want to just challenge people to think about Christian worldview. We want to push them to do something with it, to go serve others, to start ministries or to join a ministry or to influence their kids. That is a big work too, right?

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:34):
Yeah, I get that. The word restoration is interesting. Restoration Hardware catalog just came to our house yesterday. I’m going to need four more jobs to be able to afford anything out of that catalog. But the idea behind that company, and the reason it’s become so successful is because you can take things that have already been made. They were already created by curious, inventive humans, and then you can remake them in a way that retains the bones, so to speak, but brings out a new beauty that wasn’t there before. In a way, the restoration, you wouldn’t say that that’s God’s plan B, you would say restoration. The beauty of it is his plan A. Is that fair?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (23:28):
Yeah, we are, and especially as writers, we’re namers. We’re namers. We do things with writing. We help people to see reality. Yeah, it’s a telos. I agree.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:42):
Okay. Alright. So are you ready for another topic?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (23:45):
Alright, go for it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:46):
Okay. Ashlee Quosigk and George Yancey wrote this book, I think it came out in November or December, I think I read it in December of 2021 called One Faith No Longer. And they said that the battle between conservatives and progressives in the church has gotten to the point where these are no longer even the same faith. That was the conclusion they drew, or at least hinted at in several of the chapters of the book.

So you’ve got people who are in the progressive camp, people who are in the conservative camp, and that political angle always, it irritates people. It can be a good irritant like a pearl forming because we are citizens and we have to be involved. But there’s a real tension between conservatives and progressives inside of the 45,000 denominations that we have in Christianity in the world. Talk about when you approach an issue, how do you account for that or how do you approach issues like that?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (25:03):
Wow, that’s hard. That’s great. He did not warn me about this one. All right, and good, I read that book. I’m glad I read that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (25:12):
I’m glad you did too. Well, and George Yancey, I’ve known for a very long time, he’s a sociologist and it’s extremely important work. I haven’t met Ashlee, but they’re bringing up something that we’ve got to talk about.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (25:25):
I think the main thing when I think about this is especially one of the things that’s really been grievous for me the last several years is I see very conservative Christians completely writing off anything progressive Christians have to say. And I see progressive Christians completely writing off anything that, and that’s very well documented in the book especially is the writing progressive Christians writing off anything that a conservative Christian has to say.

And when I say conservative, I don’t necessarily mean political, I just mean orthodox gospel, use gospel as an adjective that kind of Christian. And I feel like we’ve lost the image of God on people that it doesn’t matter if this person, I mean it does matter that they’re progressive, but it doesn’t mean they don’t have something to say that there’s something to listen to there to maybe hear a critique of, to not agree with all of it.

(26:27):
But there might be a piece there that could challenge us because they are made an image of God and vice versa. Alright, so I don’t think that most of the writing that we’re doing at the Colson Center is toward more of a progressive Christian audience, but we would like to appeal to that audience. And we’re actually working on videos meant to appeal to younger, more Christian progressives right now and changing the genre, being more storytelling, doing things like that sort of as that appeal. But I do feel like how did we lose the image of God on everybody? How did that happen?

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:07):
So people tend to treat one another as a thread on Facebook, say, as opposed to a person who bears God’s image. There are so many angles to this.

But one thing that the authors of the particular book we were mentioning say, is that conservatives tend to operate from theological categories of right doctrine, whereas progressives tend to operate, and this was their conclusion not mine, that progressives tend to operate from political categories where the categories are what has to happen in the political system to result in the outcome that we think would be just, so one is sort of focused on how do you get a just start and the other one’s focused on just end. And that’s pretty far apart. That’s pretty different.

When Donald Trump comes up in a news issue that you’re covering at Colson Center, how do you do that knowing that half the people are going to cheer and half the people are going to boo no matter what you say?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (28:18):
Yeah, that’s a good question. And he hasn’t come up while I’ve been there, but I would say we can acknowledge that he was flawed even if he did appoint some great people, you know what I mean? But I think we have to acknowledge that he was flawed. And I think to some extent we’re never going to please everybody. So again, it’s that truthfulness thing. There are things to grieve, there are things to celebrate. Let’s acknowledge that. But let’s say, hey, we’re really grateful for the Supreme Court judge or things like that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (28:55):
Okay. Okay, good. Well let’s do one more. I think I did warn you about this one just talking about the cancel culture.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (29:02):
Yes. Let’s talk about cancel culture.

Dr. Jeff Myers (29:05):
So cancel culture. I wrote an ebook on this. I was trying to articulate my thoughts. I did an interview on it later, which I thought, that was better than the original article. So we went back and changed some things. But the issue that I saw in this was that viewpoints contrary to the ones of those who held the reins of power.

So the editors of a particular website, for example, or those who are the content observers for a social media company, any viewpoint that did not hold to the one that they held ended up not even seeing the light of day, or if it did see the light of day, it got canceled. So the cancel culture moved from I’m going to take my business elsewhere, which is a very free market thing to do to that person. It’s not the sort of person whose opinion should matter.

It seems to me that if we do journalism as Christians, and I just realized I said that to an English professor and that was a grammatically incorrect sentence. If we do it well, that we can bring out aspects of reality that are getting covered up by a lot of other outlets right now.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (30:28):
And we need to, and then we’re going to get canceled for doing it. But oh wow, so, so many ways to go on this. We have to, someone has to be standing for truth. There isn’t anything else to stand for, right? I mean, I feel like sometimes I am a little Mark Knoll. I have to process internally for a moment and I think Mark Knoll does it. So it’s okay if I do. So a personal thing about me is I actually went through a deconstructive phase while I was working on my dissertation.

And during that phase I told God, okay, God, I’m going to critique everything about my faith, everything. I’m going to start at the beginning, but I’m not going to stop believing in your word. I might not believe all the interpretations from my past. I’m not going to stop believing your word and I’m not going to stop talking to your son, and I’m not going to stop going to church because frankly, if there isn’t you out there, if there’s not truth out there, then I don’t know what I have to live for.

(31:44):
And I still feel that way. I still feel like, man, if we don’t have truth, we don’t have anything. We don’t have anything to lean on, we’re just going to be falling all the time. And when it comes to cancel culture, something that’s been really helpful for me is, oh, sorry. So I’m a huge fan of Oliver O’Donovan who is a philosopher, kind of political science guy. He’s super hard to read, I’ll just warn you, alright. But he is wonderful and he writes about how Jesus experienced divine exclusion on the cross.

And so I think for us, what’s encouraging is if we are canceled, we are following in Jesus’s footsteps, we are being excluded like Jesus was on the cross. And I’m not saying we should go look for persecution, but if we say, if we’re just saying what truth is and trying to say it lovingly and there’s many times I need to do it better, then okay, you’re identifying with Jesus now in a special way.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:03):
I think that goes back to the question of suffering because as a writer, the whole point is to get the word out there so that people can consider the thoughts that you’re bringing up. But if there’s someone in a position of power who says your voice will not be heard, we’re not commenting on whether what you’re saying is true. We’re just saying your voice will not be heard. You’re entering a really different phase of society.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (33:37):
And you’re going to have to find someone else to write for and you’re not going to have the esteem you had before. So you better be strongly tied into your church community and have people who can encourage you. I would say. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (34:00):
Yeah, that gets really real.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (34:03):
Yeah, it does. And I think too from the other perspective, let’s not be counselors ourselves, right? Because these people are made in God’s image and sometimes they say crazy things, but let us remember there’s grace and redemption and God can still change them. I mean, let’s be the people who forgive.

Dr. Jeff Myers (34:30):
Yeah. Well you mentioned Chuck Colson earlier. If you took a slice of Chuck Colson’s life when he was 45, you would despair that anything good could come out of this man. But with having gone through a public humiliation, reading C.S. Lewis and having great mentors and being part of a church body, he transformed and then made it his life mission to bring transformation to people. Society had given up on, how do we Christians, we fight the temptation to be counselors because I think that’s probably an elephant in the room so to speak, is that Christians do this too to one another.

We have 45,000 different, as I mentioned, 45,000 different Christian denominations. It’s like the guy on the island who was rescued and he had built three huts. They asked, well, why do you have three huts? Well, this one is my house, this one is my church and this is where I used to go to church. But there’s division and it’s real. We talk about a Christian worldview, but there are a lot of people saying, well, if you don’t have this perspective on baptism, then we can’t walk side by side or we can’t fellowship. Or if I have a chance, I’m going to make sure your voice is not heard. That’s a real thing in the Christian community as well.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (36:06):
Yeah, I think that’s humility, right? I mean, we have to recognize we skew things. I think about things I have done, things I have written and ways I have written them and recognize I could have done it better. I can look back the past 30, 20 years of my life and see changes or these things I regret. So I think it’s humility and I, I mean I have to hope again, it’s like if there’s not a God or truth for me to hope in, there’s nothing for me. I have to hope.

So my friends who make me angry on Facebook, I need to hear their voices and sometimes they make me mad. And actually even within the last six months, someone posted an article and made a comment and the comment made me mad or the posting did and I made a comment and she’s one of my friends who’s a progressive Christian.

(37:20):
And she said, did you even read the article? And I didn’t. I was so ashamed, but I had to fess up and say, you know what? I didn’t, I’m sorry. And she still posts things I don’t always agree with, but I need to know where she’s coming from so that I know how to have a conversation with her. And so when she does say something that I believe is from God because God still works with her, made in his image, I need to be able to celebrate that with her. I feel like, I’m not sure I’m answering your question anymore. I might have personalized it too much.

Dr. Jeff Myers (38:03):
I think that’s exactly the right direction to go because what we’re talking about here is if I feel personally offended, then I lash out in some way. I treat the other person as an object rather than as a person and then all of a sudden they are their idea. But if you could step back from the idea, the idea that you are your ideas, then you can have a more free flowing discussion and acknowledge we’re not posturing here, we’re not trying to get to the mic drop moment, that we’re actually trying to both walk side by side toward the truth. It’s fascinating how journalists have a chance to influence that praise.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (38:47):
And praise God for journalists. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (38:50):
One thing I wanted to ask in closing, Heather, you talked about in our conversations before we started, you used the term flourishing, which I thought is maybe a wonderful way to sort of keep in mind what our ultimate goal is in all of the writing and speaking and that we do the photographs, we take all of those kinds of things. Can you talk a little bit about that term?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (39:18):
Okay, flourishing. I like it just because of the way it sounds. So I’ll just admit that. But I really believe that’s what God is doing in the creation narrative, that he is telling us to go and flourish, that we’re supposed to go and we’re going to cultivate life and we’re going to name like him, right? Because that’s what Adam did. He was a namer and we’re going to take these raw elements and we’re going to make them more beautiful. We’re going to be mothers or fathers and we can’t tell our kids what to do, but we can try to till a soil around them that is flourishing and for sure in writing, I mean I think it’s different for every genre, but we can flourish as well.

Dr. Jeff Myers (40:10):
We could tell those stories of flourishing, which I think is wonderful.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (40:14):
Yeah, I know I was just with Patricia Ravens, and as I said before, the spirit of God comes out of her. I don’t think she’s in here right now, but it does. God’s spirit comes out of her. I mean, that is what she was saying. We can tell those stories.

Dr. Jeff Myers (40:27):
So for people who weren’t at, we have a lot of people who are going to be watching this online or listening to it. They don’t know who that is.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (40:34):
Or what she said. Okay. So she is a writer. She does lots of things. She’s done journalism, right? She has done devotionals. She is a woman. She wrote this beautiful book that I haven’t read yet, but I’ve heard about many times I’m friends with her on Facebook about how she made her first white friend that now I’m going to go and buy as soon as I can. And she’s just written her first mystery novel as well. And a wonderful person as far as I would say, being able to engage with us regarding race.

Dr. Jeff Myers (41:12):
Okay. Yeah. Wow. Thanks Heather. This is really helpful. I love the framework. I love the four chapters. I love that word flourishing. I love the way treating people as image bearers of God enables us to cross over the divides that our stereotypes or our system tells us have to remain in place in order to have stability.

Is there anything else that you would say to, I’m thinking of the people who are listening right now, and there are lots of people who when this episode comes out, they’ll be listening to it. They’re in the car, they’re taking kids back and forth to school. They might be exercising or walking their pet in their thinking. How does this apply to me if I’m not a writer, if I don’t see myself as a journalist, what does this do? How do I apply this?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (42:09):
So I think one of the main encouragement right now that I have for people who are standing up for truth is, know you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to screw up the process like I have done multiple times, and especially in our cancellation culture, you might feel shamed, like you should stop, you should just stop. I blew it. I made God’s name look bad, maybe.

And I just want you to know, I want you to know that God’s grace is so big that he will help you to continue on to share the truth and you’ll do better and you’re going to make a mistake again. But his grace is that big. And to be encouraged in that and to keep standing for the truth and being salt and light even when it doesn’t feel like it.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:04):
Yeah, that’s a good word. Thanks so much for being on the show today. I really appreciate it.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (43:09):
Thank you.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:11):
Thank you all for participating in our audience. We have three minutes left so we have time for a question. No answers, but we have time for a question. Anybody want to, and I’ll repeat the question because we don’t have the audience. Yes sir. What are the top three books you recommend broadly on the, that you’ve talked about, top three books that you would recommend broadly on the themes that you’ve talked about?

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (43:41):
Is he asking me? Both of us? Alright, so I can’t help but to recommend Oliver O’Donovan, even though he is really hard to read, you all. Alright, so Resurrection. Do you remember the name? Resurrection and…?

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:56):
I don’t remember.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (43:57):
Moral Order. Thank you. Resurrection and Moral Order. It was written in the 1980s. It was life-changing for me as far as how I used to teach. He also has a really lovely book too about participation I think is one of the main words in it that we’re participating. And what we do is we’re participating in God’s story.

Dr. Jeff Myers (44:19):
Another book you could use that would give you a good sense as a journalist, how to pull all of these ideas together is a book called Restoring All Things by John Stonestreet and Warren Cole Smith. That particular book is Warren’s journalistic efforts to tell stories of redemption along with John’s focus on a biblical worldview and it brings a lot of those things together. Yeah.

A third book I would want to recommend, a book, I think my favorite book of 20, I think it was 2020, was Live Not By Lies by Rod Dre. You can look at Rod’s blog because he writes and then he takes feedback and then he adjusts. He’s doing what Dr. Heather is talking about as he goes. But that book Live Not By Lies by Rod Dre, is his attempt as a writer to go back to Europe and interview people who were persecuted by communism and then ask them, what do you think about what’s happening in America right now? So I think it’s been overall very well received, very controversial, but it’s a good illustration of how to do this kind of work.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (45:43):
This is what you need to know about Roger. Right? You guys, I know he’s so spicy on Twitter. Okay. Because I’ve had friends say, how can you like him? He’s so too spicy on Twitter. He’s a lovely person. He is just a lovely person. So you need to talk to him and listen to him. And he’s the deepest listener. He is such a good listener.

Dr. Jeff Myers (46:01):
And he’ll listen to you if you say, I disagree, and here’s why I am.

Dr. Heather Walker Peterson (46:04):
He truly is a deep listener. So we just need to love these prickly people because some of them are precious under their prickles.

Dr. Jeff Myers (46:14):
That’s awesome. Alright, thank you all. Thank you so much. Thank you to my guest today, Dr. Heather Walker Peterson for joining the program. You can find her online heatherwalkerpeterson.org and on Twitter at Language N Faith, language, letter N, faith. God has given us the great gift of the written scriptures and the ability to understand them, and we can use our words to bring truth and life to the world. Thanks for joining the show. We’ll see you next week.

Hey everyone, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Dr. Jeff Show. It’s a podcast from Summit Ministries, summit.org. Summit is a nonprofit ministry that exists to equip and support the rising generation to embrace God’s truth and champion a biblical worldview. For nearly 60 years, Summit Ministries has been training students and those who work with students to develop, deepen and defend a biblical worldview through life-changing conferences, thoughtful church homeschool and Christian school curriculum books, free online resources, and more.

(47:19):
If you want to live out a biblical worldview in today’s world and you desire to instill a lifelong faith in the rising generation, visit summit.org/the Dr. Jeff Show. For more information listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place for your listening enjoyment. You can download it at edifii.app. Be sure to share the show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review if you would, on the site where you download the show that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show, and I’ll look forward to seeing you next week.