Interview with John Hendrix

John Hendrix is a New York Times Bestselling illustrator and author of many children's books including, "Drawing Is Magic: Discovering Yourself in a Sketchbook," "John Brown: His Fight for Freedom," "Miracle Man: The Story of Jesus," and "The Faithful Spy: Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler." His illustrations have appeared on book jackets, newspapers and magazines all over the world. John also is an associate professor, teaching illustration in the Sam Fox School of Art as Chair of Design at Washington University in St. Louis.

Transcript

And so Christ,

As Christ is manifest in the church,

As he said,

He told us,

I am in the church,

Then really the church is in the other person.

Christ is in that other person.

So there's this huge theological statement in looking to otherness as the place where we get reconciled,

You know,

Where like we are God's cosmic other in some sense.

And so the otherness that Bonhoeffer was looking for was kind of essential to his story,

His life,

And what he wrote about.

Hey there everybody,

And welcome to episode 12 of Contemplate This,

Conversations on Contemplation and Compassion.

My guest this time mixes things up a little bit,

And it's with New York Times best-selling illustrator and author of many children's books,

John Hendricks.

My wife first discovered John Hendricks's work in the Red Balloon Bookstore in St.

Paul,

Minnesota when we were living there.

She brought home a copy of his book,

Miracle Man,

The Story of Jesus.

It's now one of our kids and our family's favorite books,

And it depicts the story of Jesus in a very distinctive way.

One that is clearly faithful and respectful,

While also not being traditional.

John's illustrations are visually stunning,

And we talk about some of them in this interview.

And my wife added,

With excitement,

John's from St.

Louis,

Which is where she's originally from.

Well,

Fast forward,

And we now live in St.

Louis,

And when we heard that John had released his new book called The Faithful Spy,

Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Plot to Kill Hitler,

And that he was speaking at a local public library,

We had to go and hear him for ourselves.

After I met him there at the book signing,

I invited him to be on the podcast,

And he graciously agreed.

Now,

John Hendricks may not be a contemplative teacher in the traditional sense,

But I see his work,

And truly all good art,

To be a deeply contemplative practice and experience.

So for example,

Some of my deepest contemplative moments have come from the time I spent studying in Rome,

Italy,

Where I would sit in front of Bernini's marble carving of St.

Teresa in Ecstasy,

Or Caravaggio's paintings of St.

Matthew or St.

Mark,

In these small little churches in Rome,

Just enwrapped for hours in contemplation of the beauty and the meaning of these pieces of art.

In the same way,

John's work contemplates complex themes and then expresses them in a way that children can join him and join us in that contemplation.

And I would add,

It's not just the visual art that is contemplative,

Although that is stunning in and of itself.

And to illustrate this,

Let me read a brief note from an interview that is posted on John's website,

Where he's describing the research he did and how he depicted the Lutheran theologian,

Nazi resistor and martyr,

Dietrich Bonhoeffer,

In a children's book.

Here's the quote.

"'I really think there is value in talking to children "'about the nature of human conflict "'and the nature of evil.

"'Showing the events of his life,

' "'that is Bonhoeffer's life,

Visually,

"'to an audience of young people was tough.

"'You don't want to sugarcoat his action "'and create some inadvertent propaganda,

"'but you also need to be sensitive "'and protect young people from things "'that would negatively affect their minds.

"'Generally,

I think that kids are pretty robust thinkers "'and can handle cognitive dissonance,

"'as long as we present it in a manner that is clear.

'" End of the quote.

So that particular book on Bonhoeffer is both visually stunning and morally challenging.

I've had conversations with my kids after reading it about why he would be willing to break the law and risk his life in defense of a higher sense of justice and goodness that for Bonhoeffer is rooted in faith.

This,

To me,

Is a deeply contemplative exercise.

Through words,

Images,

And historical research on Bonhoeffer,

Hendrix invites his readers,

Mostly children,

Though adults enjoy it too,

To contemplate the big questions of faith,

Of ethics,

To consider what,

If anything,

We'd be willing to die for.

So I think you're gonna find this interview incredibly rich and in some surprising ways.

You can find the show notes for this show at thomasjbushlack.

Com forward slash episode 12.

That's episode spelled out and then the number 12 with no spaces.

As always,

Your support by secure donations on my website at thomasjbushlack.

Com forward slash donate are deeply appreciated and help to keep the hosting of this podcast and the other media on my site available and going.

So with that intro,

Let's get right into my interview with Jon Hendrix.

Okay,

Jon,

Thanks for coming on the Contemplate This podcast.

It's great to have you here.

Thank you.

Yeah,

So like I said,

As we were chatting right before,

We started recording.

Bit of an anomaly for my usual guests who have tended to kind of be sort of known for contemplative practices of different kinds.

But like I said,

I found your work to have a kind of contemplative dimension to it,

Visually and artistically.

So curious to explore that with you.

Just to introduce,

Do you wanna say a little bit about who you are and where you're coming from and what you're up to these days in the world?

My name is Jon Hendrix and I am an author,

Illustrator.

I generally write books for young people,

Picture books for very young readers.

And then my most recent is a middle grade novel,

Which is,

If you don't know the young adult Carl Lance,

Middle grade is like 10 to 14.

Okay.

So most of my books are,

My authored books are for younger readers,

Although my new one and Drawing is Magic recently,

Which is about using a sketchbook to create not just drawings,

But ideas.

I've spoken to companies,

I've spoken to churches,

Using that as a framework.

So I think my content kind of runs a lot of ages.

Yeah.

And then on top of my writing work,

I'm a faculty member at Wash U,

Teaching in the Sandbox School of Design and Visual Arts,

Teaching illustration,

Drawing,

Typography,

All sorts of stuff.

Yeah,

Okay.

Well,

I kind of had the pleasure of hearing you speak at the public library,

But all the listeners out there weren't.

So maybe let's,

We could start with The Faithful Spy,

Which is kind of your most recent one.

What kind of inspired you to write about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and then how did you pick that particular age that you kind of targeted for too?

I'm curious about that.

Well,

I had known Dietrich,

His story and well,

His writings I first encountered in college when I was going through my phase where I discovered,

You know,

C.

S.

Lewis and Francis Schaeffer and,

You know,

Read all the thinkers basically to give myself a kind of a theological foundation.

Where did you do undergraduate?

University of Kansas in Lawrence.

Oh yeah,

That's right.

I'm remembering from your website,

Yeah.

And you know,

As everyone does in those days where you're wanting to make your faith your own and I loved Dietrich,

Not only his story,

But his writings of course.

And then my own faith really led me to this sort of content area in a lot of my books,

Which is about moral stakes sort of colliding,

Like ethical decisions that come not counter to faith,

But run into it as sort of a collision and then the protagonists have to make these sort of choices.

So I felt like his story was totally,

As my agent put it,

On my brand.

And I was dying to tell that story,

But my book had been picture books,

So I needed a new lens to really make the story work.

And so middle grade seemed perfect.

It's where World War II and the Holocaust first gets introduced.

And it just seemed like the right age to really tell the story of both Dietrich and the Third Reich.

Wow,

So that's funny,

Because my kids,

We've got three and our oldest is nine.

And we've read,

Well he read the whole thing pretty quickly.

Yeah,

And then we've read parts of it with our daughter who's seven.

The five year old,

It might be a little much.

But I'm realizing now that we were even maybe a little under,

But I felt like they really got into it and were asking really interesting questions.

Yeah,

Oh no,

I think it is,

Kids that age,

This is a misconception about children,

Is that they don't long for complexity.

Yeah.

And when I visit schools,

Man,

They wanna talk about the hard questions.

Like,

When do you act?

When is it okay to kill someone?

Or with my book about John Brown,

If the police arrested your friend,

Should you fight back?

When is that okay?

Why did John Brown do that?

So I find kids are not looking for simplicity,

They're looking for clarity.

And so I deliver stories,

I think,

In a way that is particularly clear,

But that does not avoid the complex.

Yeah,

And I think that is what's kind of fascinated this book in particular,

The Faithful Sly,

Because we actually had conversations with our kids about,

You know,

Why would it be okay to fight the government or break what is the written law for reasons of faith?

I mean,

The fact that we were having those conversations is pretty incredible,

And I think a testament to the work that you're doing.

Yeah,

And that's exactly why you,

As a writer,

Artist,

Author,

You wanna make books that do that exact thing,

That,

You know,

Engage that stuff,

And then you get to talk with your parents about it.

What better thing to do?

Yeah,

So it's interesting how,

Like,

I've got the finished product,

And you make it look easy.

But I saw your presentation about all the research you put into it,

And like,

Just the different sketches that sort of ended up on the cutting room floor.

And I'm not a drawer myself,

At least not since I was very young,

But a writer,

And I recognize that process of,

Like,

You know,

80% of what you write gets cut.

So can you say a little bit about the discipline that you went through to create the story in its current form?

Well,

It always starts with a team of people that I really trust,

My editor,

My copy editor,

And a fact-checking team.

All of these were critical to help me understand what was working and what wasn't.

And on top of that,

My art director,

Chad Beckerman,

Who I've worked with for 12,

13 years,

He just gets my work,

He understands what I'm trying to do,

And he's really good at,

Like,

Saying,

I see what you're doing here,

Let's try it this way.

And,

You know,

He's got a lot of trust.

He gave me the whole InDesign file,

Basically.

So the book,

I designed the whole book on top of the illustrative parts.

So,

You know,

Even,

Like,

The page numbers and the typeface for the in matter.

Like,

All of it was mine,

Because he trusted me to do that,

And I'm,

You know,

Basically a control freak.

So there's only a certain number of people who would let me do that.

So I do love,

Actually,

The process of it.

I actually love the refinement of it.

I love the refinement,

Even though there are moments that it's very frustrating,

Like,

The cover alone,

I know I talked about it in that lecture,

Was how many weeks and weeks it took to get the cover right,

Let alone all the other pages,

You know?

Yeah,

Yeah,

I remember that as a highlight from your presentation.

Like,

Pictures of scary Hitler faces don't go well on book covers for sale.

Nobody wants that on their book,

By the way.

Yeah,

Call me crazy,

Yeah.

So,

I want,

So,

From my standpoint,

This yearbooks kind of hit me as a deeply contemplative approach.

So the two that I'm most familiar with are Miracle Man,

Which my wife discovered at a bookshop when we were living in St.

Paul,

Minnesota.

And then she bought it and then was like,

Oh,

This guy lives in St.

Louis,

Because she's from here.

Yeah,

And then we moved here.

So,

I wonder,

Do you see,

Like,

How do you see that contemplative dimension?

Or,

I mean,

It's clear that you are bringing a faith into the work that you're doing,

And you're raising,

Like,

Really difficult questions and challenges,

Ethical,

Moral,

Faith-type questions.

But you're doing that in a way that's like,

There's never a point where it feels like you're being heavy-handed,

At least in the two books I've read.

So I would assume that that's true for most of them.

Yeah,

And I think that's a goal.

I am not speaking too Christendom with my book,

Actually.

I find that,

I think that's fine,

And there are books that need to be in that space,

But it's just very uninteresting to me.

So,

Like,

Even my book that's about Jesus,

Which is as Christian as you can get,

I actually wrote it in a way to make it sound almost like you're telling a folktale,

Or like you're telling a story that's older than you can remember.

And just to give yourself some distance,

The reader some distance from the story,

And say,

Let's just get back to the core of what this was.

And for believers,

Maybe that's to re-engage it and to rehear it,

And maybe it's for people who have never really heard it to think,

Wow,

That's pretty crazy.

I mean,

That's a bizarre claim to make.

So I do find that the contemplative part of the story is in many ways the heart of the story,

Of that it's the story is a lens for this other sort of thing that you're engaging as you read it.

Is there a particular tradition of denomination,

Flavor of Christianity that you yourself are coming out of?

I have done many of the flavors.

Currently I am in the PCA,

A Presbyterian church,

The more conservative side of the Presbyterian church.

But growing up,

I was a Methodist.

My parents are still at a Methodist church.

I was in an E-free church,

Evangelical free church for a while while I was in Jersey City and New York.

I went to Tim Keller's Redeemer plant when I was in New York and that's what eventually got me into the PCA.

But all basically in the Protestant,

High Protestant side of the church.

I did attend a Bible,

Sort of a non-denominational Bible church for a while.

Yeah.

So I understand the,

I think the sort of evangelical desire to sort of strip Christianity of its artifice.

I know where that comes from.

I have come to disagree with it.

I now long for sort of a higher experience of like,

Not higher in terms of better,

But more Gothic,

More liturgy.

I think the liturgy part of- Liturgy is the word I was thinking of.

Liturgical.

Yeah,

Yeah.

Exactly.

And to me,

Liturgy is what directs a lot of my,

You know,

If we're talking about contemplations.

I mean,

That's the directive for me in a service.

Okay,

Wow.

In this case,

So I've got a bunch of thoughts that are going in different directions here.

But is there any sense in which you see your work as somehow liturgical?

Yeah,

Well,

I think that maybe you could think about it in a couple of ways.

Like just the way that it looks,

Right?

The way that it's drawn is meant to be neither highly representational,

Nor highly stylized or highly iconic.

You know,

It's in between.

So it has a little bit of the,

Let's say the most intuitive and then the most analytical.

You know,

They're like hands look like hands.

Yeah.

But they don't look like Michelangelo drawings,

Right?

So it's kind of halfway between these kind of big artistic poles,

Let's say.

Yeah.

And my church experience,

I think,

Matches that to some degree.

I've been in these sort of austere churches where authenticity means that we don't use a liturgy because we don't wanna have someone tell us what to say.

The sort of Protestant thing where we ran away from the Catholic church,

And then we ran away so far,

We lost all of our artistic desires.

So I think in some ways it's that desire to find the artistic heart of the church without falling into,

Let's say,

The traps of idolatry or of laziness or of casual thinking or whatever that might be.

Yeah.

Wow,

Okay.

Yeah,

I mean,

I could do a whole talk just on the problem of the post-reformation,

What happened to the arts,

You know?

I mean,

Especially America,

I mean,

The American church has been so terrified of anything that feels Catholic in terms of evangelicalism.

Yes.

We've lost any sense of the decorative and the contemplative spaces and all the things that goes into what has been part of church for 1,

500 years.

And then now we're like,

Nope,

We're gonna be in these white gymnasiums because that means we're pure,

You know?

Yeah,

That's interesting then how you would be drawn to the PCA with some of that,

Even though I'm not quite as familiar with that particularly liturgical tradition,

But certainly there would be a little bit more of that.

So even my church building that I'm in,

I'm just such a sucker for beautiful spaces.

I mean,

It's hard for me to divorce my church from its location in some ways.

I mean,

It's like the body and mind conundrum.

I mean,

As a thought experiment,

It's like,

What if my church met suddenly,

Like we had a fire and we met in the gymnasium,

You know,

Who would we be?

I mean,

It is weird to think,

Well,

We're still the same church,

But so much of my experience with worship is about sanctuary and place and all the,

Maybe ephemeral is the wrong word,

But the things that you interact with that are non-tangible.

Yeah.

That it's hard for me to separate that.

And I don't think that's a dumb concern.

Like,

Oh,

But you know,

I don't care about the music,

Don't care about the building,

It's about the people.

And yes,

They are right,

But also like,

We have eyes.

Like we have bodies,

We have ears,

You know.

The whole experience in church is this integrated moment.

So yeah,

I have great sympathy for people who would like a better building.

Yeah.

Well,

I mean,

It's funny because I think in my theological language that I would use is that if Christianity is an incarnational tradition that says that the presence of God is in fully human form,

Then the ways in which the aesthetic embodied experience of all of our senses is encountered conveys something of who God is or to get even more technical that grace works through those things,

Not in opposition to them or in absence of them if you just whitewash everything and meet in a gym.

Well,

And it's actually a form of like Gnosticism,

I think.

Like not really,

But in the sense of like,

We have to divorce our body experience from our head,

Spiritual experience.

Yeah.

And you get where it came from and that like the beautiful cathedrals of Europe were these in their day,

Like opulence.

Like there was so much money that was spent on them that of course the reformers looked at that as like,

What an idol to themselves.

Of course,

Now with such distance,

We look at them as these beautiful works of art,

Which of course they are.

And so,

You have to find a way between those two things as with many issues of faith.

It feels black and white,

But of course our lived experience is a much muddier thing.

Yeah.

Well,

It's interesting how the aesthetic that you've developed in your own work is wanting to recapture some of that love of beauty and transcendence.

But like you said,

Without being really like,

Baroque is the word I keep thinking of in the Catholic sense of like over the top,

Stylized.

So it's really approachable in our culture without being heavy handed,

Like I said before.

Well,

A lot of illustrated children's biblical texts does not err on the high baroque side,

But errs on the low cartoony style outside.

Yeah.

Yeah,

And again,

There are moments where that really works.

I have a friend,

Don Clark,

Who did this illustrated version of the Bible,

Which is very stylized and almost like a Charlie Harper sort of design sensibility shapes and edges.

And of course it works,

It's beautiful sensibility.

But yeah,

I think my stuff longs to make it feel lived in and real,

But not to the point where it's a simulation of reality,

It's clearly a voice,

Someone's hand is in the drawing.

And you're trying to see,

You long to see that the person who made the mark.

You can't take the person who made the mark out of my drawing.

Yeah,

Yeah,

That's a great way of putting it.

Obviously you've thought about this.

Yeah,

Yeah.

It is your life's work.

Actually better than that,

I was not good at talking about this until I had to teach for 14 years.

So the idea of explaining this stuff to young people who are trying to figure it out themselves,

You get a lot better at quantifying it.

Yeah,

Well,

That's what they always say is if you really wanna learn something,

Teach it.

Because then you look at your own stuff and you're like,

You know,

I should really try out what I've been telling these students to do for the last.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You're like such a blazing hypocrite.

The moment you start teaching,

You're like,

Oh man,

I don't do that.

Yeah.

I've had years,

You know?

Yeah,

Oh yeah,

Yeah.

I could go into my own stories there.

As you were talking about how you kind of put the visual together,

There's one picture from Miracle Man,

One of the drawings where Jesus is walking across the dry earth and everywhere he steps,

Flowers start growing.

Yeah.

Like our kids,

They remember that.

They'll refer back to it when we're not sitting and reading the book.

But again,

I think it does capture what you were just talking about is that kind of incarnational sort of leaving a mark on the earth and then contemplating that,

What that might look like.

Yeah,

And that touch is quite funny in that that was not in the original sketches of the book.

It was as I was drawing that first piece of art where he's calling the disciples,

I just thought,

Oh,

He should be standing on a little patch of flowers.

And then I thought,

You know,

Probably everywhere he goes,

He should have floral footprints.

And it was this moment of like,

That's an interesting idea.

And then of course I immediately had the thought,

That is extra biblical.

Like,

This is not a,

I am adding my own idea to this book.

And it's not a very metaphorical book in the sense of the story.

Now it is pictorially,

That's the way I think I could get away with it.

Yeah.

Jesus's words are forming buildings and butterflies.

And so I felt it was okay to live in there,

But it is funny how often people mention that.

Really,

That particular one?

Yeah,

Yeah.

Huh.

Yeah,

Well,

It must've hit a nerve somewhere in there.

So how did you come to then decide that your audience is maybe not directly,

I can't remember what word you used,

But it's not necessarily directed at the church first.

Yeah.

And not that you're opposed to Christians being drawn to it.

So can you talk a little bit about how you discern your way into that audience?

Yeah,

Well,

I think the first part of that to talk about is my publisher is not a Christian publisher.

Abrams is a secular house.

They have very few religious titles.

So,

And in many ways,

They came to me and said,

They saw my church sketchbooks and said,

Do you have any religious titles you'd be interested in?

And honestly,

I never pitched them anything religious because my assumption was,

Why in the world would they be interested in that?

Right.

So I came to them with this Jesus book idea thinking,

Well,

Let's start with the sort of most religious thing I can think of here.

And it was the one I was most interested in thinking,

As soon as they knock this down,

Then I'll know kind of the terrain.

And they're like,

Great.

I mean,

They basically bought that book off of a paragraph I had written to them.

Wow.

And a title,

I mean,

That never happens.

I mean,

I spend months on my pitches.

So all that to say is that I had a lot of support from a secular publisher to say,

Well,

You think this story has value?

So as I started working with,

Again,

This retelling,

As I mentioned before,

What interested me is like trying to inhabit the people who first met Jesus.

And they didn't have the lens of the church.

They didn't have the lens of Christianity.

They just had this man.

Right.

Had this encounter with.

And so if you can take a reader back to that moment,

Even momentarily,

I just think that's very instructive and interesting.

And maybe you think it's a myth or you don't believe it,

But still people had this experience.

And so if you can inhabit that for a moment,

I think that helps tell the story to me in a much better way than expounding sort of doctrinal statements.

Yeah,

Yeah.

I don't know if you're familiar at all with like the Jesuit order and St.

Ignatius of Loyola and his spiritual practices,

But there's a contemplative practice of kind of imagining oneself into the gospel stories.

And it strikes me that that's maybe part of like,

Kind of how you did that visually.

And then you take people through that experience in the way that you retell that through your own hand,

Literally.

Well,

I mean,

Bonhoeffer actually,

Not to redirect us here,

But Bonhoeffer.

No,

That's good.

I do wanna,

I mean,

Those are just the two I'm most familiar with.

You can bring up other stuff too,

But well,

In his book,

Life Together,

Which is great.

I always tell people to read it one,

Cause it's so thin,

You can do it in a couple hours.

But he in there talks about this idea of the Psalms.

Like when you read the Psalms,

Those were Christ's Psalms.

And so he read them,

He knew them,

Obviously,

And quoted them on the cross.

So when you read the Psalms as a believer,

You can read them through the voice of Christ when you feel like you haven't earned them.

You know,

Like when you can't say the Psalms,

You can say them in the voice of Jesus,

Which is really interesting,

And sort of a similar idea that St.

Ignatius discipline.

Yeah,

Well,

And my own background is formed by encounter with Benedictine monks.

Oh,

Yeah.

And the core of their communal prayer life is the Psalms.

They come together at different points throughout the day.

And those are sort of understood to be the universal prayers of the church and of Christ and of the original people of God,

The people of Israel.

And that there's something sort of,

Like I've always looked at the Psalms as like every possible human expression.

Yeah,

From the emotion you have can be found somewhere.

From the pits of despair to the heights of ecstasy and everything in between,

That there's a language for that in a context of prayer.

Well,

I've spent a few weekends out at the Priory Abbey with the Benedictine guys out there and I have great admiration for them.

Yeah.

There's like a season of the year where I'm like,

I'm gonna give it all up and be a monk.

I just,

And I would last basically three weeks and then I'd be miserable,

But there is something about that order that- Well,

I tried that in my 20s and I lasted up almost three months.

And then- Well,

I'm impressed,

That's pretty much it.

Yeah.

I think my wife is glad I moved on from that.

Yeah,

I bet.

Yeah.

I'm trying to formulate a question around,

Maybe here's a way to get at it.

Do you have any,

Cause I know you travel around and you've been interviewed a lot of different places and you've written on a lot of different themes from John Brown,

Was that,

That was your first or second book,

I forget.

First book,

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well,

It's weird,

It was my second book,

But the first I ever wrote.

So I published another one previous to that.

Okay.

My first one I wrote.

So,

You know,

Like provocative characters,

Dietrich Klinghoffer,

John Brown,

Jesus.

Yeah.

Do you know any- They all get killed in the end.

What'd you say?

I said they all get killed in the end,

Which is- Well,

That's actually true.

Yeah,

That's good to keep in mind.

Right.

So maybe one way to get at this,

Cause what I'm interested in getting at is how the visual representation and the storytelling brings out that own wrestling within the people who read it.

So have you had some like stories that have really kind of stuck with you or blown you away about meeting people who say,

Wow,

You know,

Reading about John Brown or about Bonhoeffer had this effect on me?

Yeah,

I mean,

It really runs the gamut.

It's so interesting with these,

This kind of subject matter,

People wanna talk about it one way or another.

I remember I was at the Princeton Book Festival after John Brown came out.

It was my first book.

I was like thrilled to be invited to a book festival.

So I'm at my little booth and this high school kid comes running up to me and he's like,

Hey,

I wanna talk to you about your John Brown book.

I'm like,

Oh man,

A fan.

And then just unloads on me.

He's like,

It is so reprehensible that you would make a book about John Brown for children.

This is a disgrace.

I cannot,

But anyway,

He was very polite about it,

But he was hot.

And so we basically had a little debate club.

We talked fugitive slave act,

But this kid,

He was like,

He must've been in forensics or something cause he was a gifted orator and he basically destroyed me.

But at the end of the day,

I shook his hand.

I'm like,

Man,

You read my book.

I appreciate it.

I was just like,

I had some thoughts.

So whether it's that or the Christmas truce,

I did a book about the Christmas truce in World War I,

Which is- Yeah.

Called Shooting at the Stars.

And that's one I hear from people a lot about,

Mainly because it's almost unfair for me to take credit for that story.

It's so good.

It's like,

I mean,

My son could tell the story.

My daughter could tell the story and people would tear up at the end cause it's just so beautiful.

But that's one that often just goes across a lot of boundaries.

People,

Non-religious,

Patriotic people.

I mean,

All kinds of people react to that story,

Which basically to me is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit on earth.

But I didn't frame it as that in the book.

I framed it as an inexplicable miracle,

Basically.

But so I have interests and desires in certain kinds of storytelling,

But I don't always tip my hand as to why I'm interested in them.

I mean,

In the Bonhoeffer book,

It's a little more about that.

I don't draw a ton of parallels between today and the journey of the 1930s,

But I don't think you can read it and not get some of that.

Yeah,

Okay,

Well,

I was feeling a little nervous about how to make that question though.

I'm assuming you've been asked it a lot.

Yeah.

You probably have an answer now at this point.

But I mean,

Yeah,

It's clear.

I mean,

I don't think we're in as extreme of a situation,

But we are being inundated with being told that certain groups and races and classes of people are the problem and scapegoated,

And we should fear them and keep them out.

So how do you respond to that when you're asked about it?

Well,

I started the book in 2013.

So I mean,

This,

To me,

I was not sure that the world needed or wanted another book about the Nazis.

I honestly felt like I'm interested in this story I'm probably gonna be the only one.

So as all this stuff is unfolding and I'm in the midst of writing and making the art for this book,

It was honestly,

It was spooky.

I mean,

We have literal Nazis in America last year.

Before my book comes out,

I'm like,

This is suddenly the most timely book I will ever write.

And it's,

I had nothing to do with that.

So a lot of people feel like this was my answer to Trump in some way.

And I was really interested in Dietrich's story regardless,

But there's certainly no question that our current environment has echoes of the same human reactions and the same human tropes that got played out in Germany in the 1930s.

There's just,

You're a fool if you don't see the parallels.

I mean,

I think in some ways we're fortunate in that I don't think Donald Trump as a political figure is as intelligent or has the work ethic that Hitler did.

So I don't have a ton of fears about that,

But there is no question that the same impulses that motivated why the German people got played by Hitler are the same root causes as to why Trump's message has landed with a certain demographic.

And even more spookily is part of the way that that message has been mobilized is through the capitulation of the church.

So to me- Yeah,

That's the interesting parallel for me as a theologian and it's scary to see the ways in which not all avenues of the church and neither at the time of Bonhoeffer,

But certainly a lot of the powerful channels of the church are not only going along with it,

But hailing it as a Christian moment.

Yeah,

It's utterly bizarre to me.

I mean,

So I think that's the real lesson that Bonhoeffer offers.

His fight against the right in terms of joining the Valkyrie plot and all that was fascinating and really is exciting.

I mean,

That's the thing you make the movie about,

But to me,

His true message is the warning to the church.

Whether it's liberal or conservative ideology,

Any church that is beholden to the state and becomes some sort of bringer of their message is subject to compromising the gospel of Jesus.

Yeah,

Howard Watts himself couldn't have said it better.

I don't know if you're familiar with Stanley Howard Watts' work.

Yes,

Yes.

Yeah.

Well,

It is tempting to make comparisons and I think there's always a bit,

We do a bit of presentism when we're talking about where the Hitler echoes are.

Right.

But boy,

You could not get a more bizarre alignment of character and politics as is what's going on right now.

It's truly mind boggling.

Yeah.

Well,

And I know you did a lot of research and traveled to Germany and saw different parts of Bonhoeffer's life and what you did in terms of Bonhoeffer's life and even the spot where he died.

What was that like for you on a personal level?

Like what,

How did that,

Obviously it spurred the book,

But what else does that do for you as just a citizen,

A Christian?

Well,

It was a wonderful trip and incredibly moving,

Obviously.

Every time you visit a concentration camp,

You cannot help but be moved.

Which camp did he end up killed in?

I can't remember.

It was a smaller one.

It was a work camp,

Flossenburg.

And I say smaller one in that they only executed around a hundred and thousand people there.

So,

It's still,

That is nuts,

But it is one that was not,

It was not like Auschwitz or some of the Dachau or the bigger camps that really millions of people going through it.

But that said,

It was certainly,

I mean,

There's this enormous pile of ashes there,

Which they believe Bonhoeffer's remains are a part of.

And they think there's 20,

30,

000 people in this sort of pillar of ash.

So,

It's really haunting to see those things in person.

But being a person who has just been a fan of anything,

Like if you're reading books about someone or where they lived and then you go see it yourself and I was sitting in Bonhoeffer's desk at his house in Berlin when he was arrested,

That's where he was.

It feels like you're walking into Narnia.

I mean,

It really does.

It's like,

I've only read about these things and now I'm here.

Yeah.

There's a cigarette burn on the blotter,

His desk that he made.

There's just touches like that,

That you feel like,

I am inhabiting that space that he was in.

And it feels like a thousand years ago that he lived,

But it was not that long.

It really wasn't,

Yeah.

So,

To feel that close to something that is so horrid and so what seems like some sort of medieval history,

When we think about what happened,

All this could never occur again.

No,

The stuff is still there.

The ovens are still there.

Ashes,

That's a powerful image.

Yeah.

I had just had a thought that blew out the back of my head about,

Oh,

I know what it was.

So,

If you had to boil down Bonhoeffer's message,

At least insofar as it came through for you in The Faithful Spy,

Would you say it's around the question of how the Christian relates to the other?

That.

.

.

Yeah,

And that is a thing that I sort of summarized in his work,

Is like otherness was a central theme.

And I brought that out by looking at his writings about the church,

Which he eventually defined as the church is primarily about other,

The other.

So,

You can have the church with self.

There is only the church when there is a group of people around you and you are dedicating yourself to those other people.

And so,

As Christ is manifested in the church,

As he said,

He told us,

I am in the church,

Then really the church is in the other person.

Christ is in that other person.

So,

There's this huge theological statement in looking to otherness as the place where we get reconciled.

Where we are God's cosmic other in some sense.

And so,

The otherness that Bonhoeffer was looking for was kind of essential to his story,

His life,

And what he wrote about.

And he doesn't have a book titled The Other,

But he does have,

If you look across his writings,

It's kind of a theme you see in various moments.

I mean,

Many people don't know that he had a chance to escape from Tegel prison right before he got sent to the Gestapo prison and sent to Flossenburg.

Yeah,

He had this guard that was very friendly to him and took his letters for him to his home so he wouldn't have the Nazi censors.

And so,

He had this guard that would basically say,

Anytime you wanna go,

You tell me and I'll escape.

Well,

We'll get you out.

So,

He decided to stay because he knew if he escaped that his family,

His friends,

His fiancee would all be tortured.

So,

He could have,

He had several moments in his life where escape was possible.

And for his love of otherness,

Other people he decided to stay.

That's profoundly moving.

And I just question if I would have made those choices.

I just don't think I had that kind of ability.

So,

I'll just marvel at it.

Yeah,

That resolve.

As you were talking about your reflections on his theology of otherness and that for the church,

Is just keep having this image of like human nature being such that we repeatedly want to turn the church into this closed thing,

Right?

So,

The other is just like the person next to me in the pew.

But what Bonhoeffer's story and the story of the immigrants on the border right now is this constant call to be like,

You gather together for your liturgy,

But then you have to look outward to the other.

And always be moving in that direction.

And we only have to look to Jesus's Good Samaritan parable,

Which is probably one of the most well-known parables.

And the whole thing was animated by a rabbi trying to get Jesus to define who our neighbor was.

And the answer that Jesus gave is not one that will make us feel better.

It's one that challenges us and makes us question our loyalties.

Yeah,

When I would teach that,

In my previous job,

I was teaching primarily undergraduates.

And I would introduce that story,

Try it like through the lens of that timeframe.

I would say,

The phrase Good Samaritan to a century Jew would be like us kind of saying the good ISIS fighter.

Right.

You know,

Like this is the total oxymoron or parrot,

You know,

And then they kind of like,

Oh yeah,

That kind of breaks it open a little bit.

Yeah,

And how hilarious now that Samaritan is now in our language,

You know,

Has come to mean goodness,

You know.

Jesus inverted the meaning of it.

Yeah,

Inverted a lot of things.

Well,

I'm recognizing the time.

I know you gotta go pick up your daughter from school.

Man,

Is there anything I didn't ask you that you just feel like you really wanted to say?

No,

I think,

Yeah,

I mean,

I think one thing that people should,

If you're wondering is The Faithful Spy a book for you,

You do not have to have an interest in theology to enjoy the story.

It's not a,

You know,

Bonhoeffer has been this sort of tug of war between the conservative and the liberal sides of the Christian church as to sort of who owns him and where he fits.

And I just didn't get into that.

There's enough commonality in his theology that I really focused on him as a believer in a foreign land in some ways.

And that's kind of what the story is about.

And I think children,

Whether that or not they have a religious interest will find something to take away like the idea that Dietrich had about civil courage and what that means.

I think it's very applicable.

Well,

And I'm reminded,

You mentioned CS Lewis at the beginning,

But his argument that ethics is sort of the fundamental doorway into the question of God because- Oh,

Totally,

Yeah.

Either ethics is grounded in something beyond or it's just human power.

Right.

There's something about that internal questioning that naturally just leads to why is this right?

Yeah.

And so much of our internal lives are left unexamined,

Even Christians,

You know,

Even people who are religious in a regular way that the unexamined life is sort of the problematic life and knowing where our first principles are.

You know,

Many people have an ethical system and they're convinced it's right,

But they're not exactly sure where it came from or how to examine it.

So,

You know,

Books,

I think like this,

Even at a young age can help children at that moment when they're trying to think,

Who am I really?

I'm not my parents,

I'm somebody else.

What does it mean to believe something?

Yeah.

Yeah,

Well,

I can attest I've seen that with definitely our older two kids already.

So nice work.

Well,

Thank you.

Thanks so much for being here.

I really appreciate it.

It's been fun.

Oh,

Awesome,

Thanks.

You mentioned another book about sketching,

Is that?

Oh,

Drawing is Magic?

Yeah,

Is that out?

It is,

Yeah.

That one you can get Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

It's a awesome book.

It's one where you actually draw in the book you're supposed to fill in.

Oh,

Cool.

On the different pages.

It's kind of an all ages book,

So yeah,

Check it out.

Okay,

Definitely will.

All right,

Thanks again,

Man.

Appreciate it.

Okay,

Take care.

Yeah,

You too.

Thanks again,

Everybody,

For listening and tuning in and for your support for Contemplate This,

Whether that is a financial donation or writing a review on iTunes or elsewhere.

You can find all the podcast info at thomasjbushlack.

Com forward slash contemplate dash this.

Or the show notes for this particular episode with John Hendricks at thomasjbushlack.

Com forward slash episode 12.

Again,

That's the word episode followed by the number 12,

No spaces.

You can also find more information about John and some of his books there.

And this is the last episode of 2018.

And I have some great interviews lined up for 2019.

I'll have my first repeat guest with Filena Huertz and we'll be discussing her new book,

Mindful Silence,

The Heart of Christian Contemplation that was just recently published.

And that will be followed by an interview with Father Lawrence Freeman,

A Benedictine monk and the current director of the World Community for Christian Meditation.

The World Community for Christian Meditation,

Or WCCM,

Is probably the largest global organization dedicated to teaching a particular form of Christian mantra meditation.

So really looking forward to sharing these shows with you and until next time,

I hope you find some peace both in your contemplative practice and in your daily life,

Especially during this busy holiday season that can be both fun and a little taxing at times.

So thanks again for tuning in and see you in the new year.

Thanks.

Magical music

Reviews

Great interview! Looking forward to reading his books. So true, when I visited Dachau in 1979, I was 17 years old and it made a profound impression on my body, mind and soul, which still impacts me today. I’m 64.

I absolutely love these podcasts! I found each one of them to be intelligently inspirational, discerning, fascinating, educational, and affirming. I will check out The Faithful Spy, and Drawing Is Magic. I also wish to point out that, while Donald Trump may not have either the intellect or work ethic of Hitler, there are too many in his circle who do. And it is possible that Trump’s narcissism far surpasses Hitler’s, although Hitler’s psychopathy was greater. I very much appreciate you and John’s starting that the alignment of certain self-proclaimed “Christian” groups’ political alignment with Trump is bizarre. Yes, indeed.

May You Wall In Beauty
✨🙏🏽🌸💜☯️✨