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CBP:    Why don’t you start off by giving me in your own words what the theme is of Slumber of Christianity.

Ted:  The theme of The Slumber of Christianity is that the hope we have in this life ultimately fails us.  We search for happiness in this life, and we look to our faith for giving us happiness in this life.  But ultimately, if you look around, you find that the religion of Christianity ultimately fails to satisfy people in this life.  And that sounds kind of stark on the outside.  It’s like, wait a second, what are you talking about?  Jesus promised all kinds of happiness.

This is true; this is what we preach from our pulpits.  It’s what we hear over and over again.  So we’re looking for benefits of Christianity in this life.  We’re saying, “If I become a Christian, if I follow this faith, and if I give my life to Jesus I will have certain benefits in this life.”  And the question I’m asking in this book is was that really the purpose of Christianity?  Is the purpose of Christianity to give us benefits for this life?

If you look at Christianity compared to other religions – I grew up in a country that was predominately Muslim, so I can compare Christianity to Islam – is there a difference between Christians in their relationships versus Muslims and their relationships?  Is there a difference of how Christians are happier in their relationships than Muslims are?  Do Christians have less disease than non-Christians or Muslims?  Do they die less, or later in life, are their lives longer?  Do they – I can go on and on, but are there true benefits to them in this life?

 And really when you look down to it, you find just as many divorces; you find just as much disease.  I believe that God can heal today and does, but just as many Christians die as non-Christians.  And just as many ultimately get sick and suffer from illness.  This was very disconcerting to many, many Christians, especially youth, who see this and begin to lose faith.  And ultimately they throw out the baby with the bath water and say, “You know, it’s all kind of fake.  It’s all just so much talk.  It’s a religion; it doesn’t really work; it doesn’t change me; it doesn’t change my life.”  And the reason they come to this conclusion is they are actually looking for – they’ve got Christianity turned upside down.  They’re looking for it to satisfy them in this life when really the purpose of Christianity is to save us – in the simplest terms – is to save us from hell and deliver us into an incomparably great, mind-blowing reality that is full of pleasure and happiness.  This is heaven.

So our eyes – our consciousness of that reality that exists beyond this life has fallen into slumber.  We don’t even think of it anymore.  Right?  We hardly think of it.  Instead we are desperately looking for answers in this life, and that’s the theme of this book.

CBP:  Good.  Well, it was hard for me to tell where you were coming from, if you were abdicating or not searching for happiness in our lifetime now, because at one point you say we were created for happiness and are governed by it.  So does that mean we should expect happiness now or not, and what is happiness?  How do you define happiness?

Ted:  Happiness is an emotion.  And we are created for it, we’re obsessed with actual happiness, and we should, because God obsesses after any kind of happiness.  This is something that’s a theme made very popular by a man named John Piper.

CBP:  Okay, I was going to ask you about it.  Is this Desiring God for the younger generation?

Ted:  No.  But there’s Desiring God all through this.  Absolutely.  We need to embrace the pleasures of God.  So, yes, absolutely.  That’s not just Desiring God, but that’s a theme that’s now in many books.  

But your question – We are created for happiness, but when you understand that in this fallen world, it is not redeemed in its entirety and never will be until after Christ is returned.  We are being saved, Paul says.  We’re not saved in this life; we’re saved in the next life.  It’s a minor – it sounds like you’re splitting hairs – no.  Until you enter the next life and enter into paradise with Him, you will live in a fallen world full of suffering.  The suffering will never go away.  He gives us gifts, spiritual gifts to manage that to enjoy this life.  There’s lots of good things He’s given us to help us along the way.  

A great analogy that I think most succinctly communicates this is something that Paul came up with and it’s the marathon runners.  In short order it goes like this:  Why does someone run a marathon race?  To finish, to cross that threshold.  That finish line with thousands of people cheering.  I watch the Olympics and these people just sweating bullets, they’re just killing themselves along this path, this course.  Now, they’re doing it because they think they can finish.  And they can finish on a win or some of them just want to finish, but that’s what their eyes are focused on.  They are focused on the end.  Paul thought of that analogy, he says, “We should run the race for the end, which is heaven.”  

Along the way, there are cups of water; these are the pleasures of life, reprieves that refresh us that are thrust out to us.  They’re given to us saying, “Here drink, be merry, and take rest.”  But these are not things that should distract us from the end, from the finish line.  They’re just things to help us get there.   But too often in Christianity what we’ve done is we’ve gone chasing after the cup bearers, we’ve gone chasing after the drinks along the way, the glasses of water along the way and completely lost sight of the finish line altogether.  We find ourselves lost in alleys and byways; and marathon?  What marathon?  Where’s the goblet for the next glass of water?  And that’s our lives.  

So you see that is our vision of the finish line is falling in slumber.  

CBP:  It was difficult to understand which side of the argument you were standing on, because it seems like a lot of it is the discussion of emotion and how much we should pursue that.  It seems to me you suggest we should pursue that emotional state, and a lot of times people experience the highs of Christianity and then the lows.  You talk about your own lifestyle the same way.

Ted:  Emotion is great – the fact of the matter is emotions govern the course of our lives.  You can talk all you want about whether or not emotions should or shouldn’t do this or do that to us and faith actually. The bottom line is, you know, we are driven to do things because they make us happy.  We seek pleasure because it makes us happy.  

How would you define happiness?  What makes you happy might be greater than what makes me happy.  What makes you happy might be sitting at home cross-legged meditating.  You still do it ultimately for happiness, and we avoid things that bring us suffering.  So you understand, again, we don’t like the way suffering makes us feel.  It’s not just the pain; it’s the fear of death which is an emotion.  It’s fear; it’s an emotion that drives us.  

So we are driven primarily by emotion.  It’s important we understand this – and that we were created in the image of God; He’s a very emotional being as well.  Emotion can really come to our benefit because, as it turns out, that in the end there’s faith, hope, and love.  

You can say all kinds of things about love.  I think love is primarily an emotion, but it’s also decisions, also all these other things.  Hope is an emotion, desire.  In the end there’s faith, hope, and love.  We don’t even talk about hope anymore.  You understand what I’m saying?  It’s gone from our lexicon; it’s gone from our vocabulary, and it’s the primary force – this emotion called hope is what primarily should drive us to the end zone, to the finish line to heaven.  But because we disparage emotion so much, hope becomes unimportant to us, and we lose sight of this great emotion called hope which should motivate us towards the end zone.  We end up wandering around this life looking for other things to satisfy us, gritting our teeth trying to find ways to be motivated in our faith.  

I’m saying we need to be motivated in our faith by embracing hope, by embracing desire for heaven, which is emotion.  We need to embrace, once again, emotion.  And the emotion needs to be directed towards God in heaven.

CBP:  As long as we’re reigning in the emotions that’s going in the right direction because –

Ted:  Don’t say “reigning it in”, directing it, call it –

CBP:  Okay, direct.

Ted:  There’s a difference.  You’re right.

CBP:  I think people can be really, “Oh well, I just don’t feel like praying.”  “I just don’t feel like God’s here.”  And those things, I think, get people sidetracked because they’re following that emotion rather than continuing on what they know is the right path.  Mentally.

Ted:  Absolutely.  Well that’s the enemy’s corruption.  The enemy will take faith, hope, and love, all three of them and distort them.  And the way he corrupts hope is by getting us to put our hope, our desires, in something besides the finish line.  That could be church, there could be many things.

CBP:  When I read your story, your own testimony, the things you went through, it seems like those times that you didn’t believe God were when you didn’t emotionally didn’t feel Him, and then the time when you had your epiphany is when you had that emotional moment.  Do you think that encourages people to follow that type of personal sensation as a guide for faith?

Ted:  Well, no, I don’t think that sensation should be – necessarily should be a guide for faith.  I think, though, for all of our talk, it is.  We’re created as emotional beings, unlike flies.  We are driven by our emotions.  And you say it shouldn’t be.  Well, God is driven by passion.  The reason we’re different from flies is because we are emotional beings.  We’re emotional because we were created in the image of God.  This is part of what makes us very unique are our emotions.  So the enemy will try and distort our emotions and ruin them, and get us losing faith because we don’t feel.  

But that is what happens.  He does distract us by dashing our emotions and our hopes.  And you end up saying, “That’s it, I’m so depressed, I don’t even know if I believe anymore.”  You know what?  That’s the state of it.  You can tell someone all day long that they shouldn’t, but if you try to minister to someone who is in a deep depression, you can say all you want you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t – they will.  Instead of saying, you shouldn’t, you shouldn’t, and you say take those feelings –let’s talk about something that is really exciting.  You try to redirect those emotions.  Instead of trying to shut off the emotions, let’s redirect them.  Let’s take them away from what Satan is trying to get you to focus on.  

You want some real simplistic Christian counseling?  Let’s take the emotions – let’s talk about the emotions and let’s redirect them from what Satan is trying to get you to focus on which is something very negative and very depressing in your life, and instead focusing them on something that is full of hope, something that is intoxicating, something that is beautiful, wondrous, wonderful, you know, peace, love, joy, these are all emotions.  But our tendency is just to cut them out entirely.  Not our tendency, but certain teachings of the church have attempted to do that.  And I think that’s a problem.  

CBP:  Let me rephrase it so that I make sure I understand you.  You’re not guided by your emotions, but you’re directing them.  You’ve redirected them with the ultimate goal being, of course, heaven, future life, our ultimate goal of being with Christ.

Ted:  You can never be guided by your emotions because –

CBP:  Well you can be guided, that’s the problem.

Ted:  I agree with you.  You should not be guided by your emotions because your emotions are very fragile and not trustworthy.  However, your emotions will direct you.  Let’s quit pretending they won’t.  We’re emotional beings and they will direct you.  So you need to set your emotions on the hope of glory, on the hope of Christ, on what he offers rather than what the enemy offers instead of trying to shut it off altogether.  It just doesn’t work; you’re being sub-human.  You’re trying to go before the fall.  You can’t do that.

CBP:  And you talk a lot about using imagination as a tool for maintaining that hope.  You want to talk about that?

Ted:  Imagination, in my opinion, is one of God’s greatest gifts given to man, because it allows us to engage Him in a way that a fly can’t.  When you think of God, and if you think the character of God, you’ll think in terms of words and a lot of things that aren’t fleshed out.  But when you think of Him in metaphor, the Lion of Judah, when you think of heaven in terms of streets of gold – whether that’s literal or an analogy or a metaphor for something else that exists in heaven, you have a very clear picture that comes to life in your imagination, and you are actually able to see it!  It becomes something real as opposed to something that’s blah.  What’s God?  Try to describe God.  Well, so many people have no idea who God is.  They have no idea – even less idea of what heaven is other than streets of gold.  You can’t have passion for something that you cannot imagine or see.  

So it’s very important that through our imagination visualize – now the enemy has stolen this too.  The whole visualization thing and it freaks people out because it’s like New Age.  This is the enemy’s distortion of it; knowing that it will cause many of us to shut off imagination just like we shut off emotion.  These are wonderful gifts given to us by God, and because they’ve been compromised by the enemy, we just want to cut them off.  What that does is that’s ultimately the devil’s plan – if he can get us to stop using imagination, shut off our emotions, we have no hope of being desperate for heaven.  We have no hope – you can’t desire something that you can’t visualize, you can’t have a great, burning passion for something that’s just foggy in your mind.

CBP:  Right.  And most people are not excited about the idea of heaven.  I don’t know if you saw Randy Alcorn’s book that came out last year on heaven.  That’s the thing, what’s heaven like isn’t it just us sitting around plucking harps on a cloud.  It’s like why do I care about that?  And that is a big problem.  They just don’t have an understanding.

Ted:  My book is very different then Randy’s and I’m not describing heaven, but both books work in tandem.  I’ve gotten a number of emails from people who’ve read both books, and it’s kind of like a one, two punch.  It really is two different approaches to the same problem in the church.  The bottom line is we need to awaken to hope in this mind-bending reality that does exist.  And the Bible is full of descriptions of this using metaphor.  And the whole purpose of Christianity is to draw us into that reality where we are saved from this – you know.  

And yet, we look for salvation simply in this life and we will be disappointed.  Christianity will disappoint you and ultimately you’ll be disillusioned by it, gradually lose your faith even if you keep going to church.  I mean, the church is full of people that don’t have faith anymore.  They just pretend; it’s part of their life now.  They don’t really have – they’ve lost their faith.  They don’t believe, really, anymore.  They wonder.  They wonder.  They wonder.  And we live in a society that mocks our faith which makes it even easier to lose our faith.  

Instead we should be a people that constantly talk about this incredible reality that awaits us, and how we can’t wait to enter that reality.  And we’re pushed there by suffering, we’re drawn there by pleasure, but the foretaste in this life of that pleasure that comes and you can work up a pretty healthy desire pretty quickly.  Just like you can fall in love with a woman, fall in love with a man, become enamored of a car.  You know, all it takes is a little bit of – you start walking around it, you start contemplating, you start letting your imagination go and pretty soon you have a pretty strong desire.  But you know what?  That’s the way it works and that’s the way it works in heaven.   It’s really quite simple.

CBP:  Do you think that people who are persecuted in other countries, are more able to look at that hoop deferred – to use that phrase – to glorious – do you think it’s easier for them to look forward that way?

Ted:  I think absolutely because the suffering of this life is very real in their lives, and so they look to another life.  Suffering is a force in this life that pushes us to the next.  The early church is a great example of that.  

Peter said, “There will be suffering.”  He didn’t say there wouldn’t be any suffering; that Christianity would eliminate suffering.  Christianity was the cause of suffering in their lives.  And he says, “Don’t worry because a time is coming soon when all this will be worth it.  Such an incredible inheritance awaits you that all this suffering will pale in comparison.  And Randy Alcorn talks about it in his book, the hieroglyphs written on the walls of the catacombs.  I mean, these people were waiting to die and they wrote images of heaven on the walls.  They were obsessed with the realities of what was to come.  They knew.  They knew.  They knew.  

Most Christians – I’m not sure how much Christians believe – really believe – in heaven other than it’s the next life.  But beyond that, I mean, if we really knew what it was like, wouldn’t we be desperate to be there?

CBP:  Right.  It doesn’t seem tangible.  It seems more like an illusion.

Ted:  And desperation is a strong desire, again, it’s emotion.  We need emotions to desire heaven.  Hope is an emotion.  Faith, you can make an argument either way for.  Hope is an emotion – so we’re going back to your first question.  But at least to the extent that it draws you to heaven is your desire for something to come, we must embrace that emotion.

CBP:  And how does Martyr's Song fit into it?

Ted:  Martyr's Song – you have to read Martyr's Song.  

CBP:  I’m sorry, I didn’t get that one.

Ted:  That’s okay.  It doesn’t come out until September anyway.

Martyr's Song will take these truths that we’re discussing today, put flesh on them as only story can and make them real.  Story is far more real than didactic teaching, way more real.  That’s why Jesus used it so much.  Heaven is wonderful, matchless, you know, all the words we use.  Or you can say, Thomas dove into the water and you’re describing somebody entering that pleasure.  You’re putting flesh on the teaching, you’re actually making it real because a real character is taking the journey and experiencing it.  So there you go.