00:00:00 Jeromy Johnson: Hey. Well. We're here. We're together. Jason. Yeah. David. Hey. Good to be here. Thanks for hopping on. Good to see you. Good to see both of you. Uh, you for the first time. And, David, uh, we're starting to make this a regular. Yeah. We've talked we've talked a number of times now. Yeah. And I've gotten to know Jeremy. So. Good. Yeah, this is great. And we're all kind of in that shared space of grace and love and kind of the reconciliation of all things. Come on. And so we just wanted to sit down and circle up, chat about that universalism, grace, God's restorative love, the father's love for us. Yeah. And not just us, but for every single one of his kids. Yeah. Come on. Before we get started, though, let's go around and just do some introductions. David, do you want to start us off?

00:00:48 David Artmant: I'm the author of the book Grace Saves All the Necessity of Christian Universalism, and I think that my sort of contribution, I think, to this discussion, was to reframe it as a question about grace. And so if you if you look at my book, I'm going to be talking about how grace is usually understood in the Christian tradition. And one of two ways either grace actually saves, but then that grace doesn't go to all, or grace goes to all. But then the grace that goes to all doesn't actually save. And so you sort of feel like you're put in a situation where you have to choose one of those two things. What I'm saying in the book is that I think you can choose to believe that grace actually saves, and that grace actually goes to all. And you don't have to leave Christian tradition. You don't have to leave the Bible behind. You can still be authentically Christian and believe this. Along the way, I became convinced that this position was not just an acceptable position or permissible, but folks like David Bentley Hart and Thomas Talbot helped me to see that the consummation of creation is more than just how things end up. It ends up being the revelation of the moral character of God. So if it turns out that one is even possibly lost, then it seems to me inescapable that God has forfeited his goodness in the wager of creation, therefore, is not a being of light in whom there is no darkness at all. That brings a little bit of darkness, or a little bit of evil into the picture of God. And I think that's deeply troubling, to say the least. So I maybe to this conversation, I bring an insistence that this is actually the only way that you can get like a credible moral, philosophically coherent articulation of the Christian faith, which can answer the basic questions, the two big questions which have to do with the problem of hell and the problem of evil and suffering. The book has been out since twenty twenty. I have two hundred and ten something podcast episodes now about this topic. I think I've interviewed every major scholar in the world that's worked on this, and ministers and podcasters and people that are thinking about this. And so that's kind of what I wanted my legacy to be in this lifetime is to let people know this, to let people know about this possibility and this conversation.

00:02:54 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Thank you. you. David. Yeah. Jason, what about you?

00:02:58 Jason Clark: Well, I am a friend of David Hartman. Uh, and I'm getting to know you tonight. I'm a right brained guy and a left brain world. Thomas J. Ward refers to maybe how I operate. He calls it the logic of love. And, uh, as a relational guy or a relational theologian, I'm convinced that all things about the nature of God are founded in love, and that he operates in the context of relationship. He came to reveal who the father was, what it looks like to live confident as a kid, and his and his love. He calls us brothers. Sisters. He calls us friends. And so in that context, as I discover what love looks like and acts like revealed in Jesus, and as I become convinced there's no shadow of turning in the nature of love, and then you revisit the cross, which is what we've been doing for the last twenty years. And I'm pushing against any transactional atonement theory, PSA being the the one that we're most familiar with here in the West. As you realize that there is no shadow of turning in the cross. Was Jesus stepping inside the delusion of separation? Then you begin to participate in that good news, and you begin to explore what it means and all of the ways, both in this life and the next. And that's how I find myself here in this wonderful conversation with you guys. I have a podcast called Rethinking God With Tacos, where I, like David, get to talk to some amazing folks. He's been one of our guests. In fact, it's one of the most listened to podcasts because I think this is a conversation that much of the church is fascinated and interested in. They're done with cognitive dissonance, uh, being told that God is good and then having to do the mental gymnastics around what that looks like with eternal conscious torment and on and on and on. And they're done with that BS. No offense, I haven't even started yet, guys. I pulled out the good stuff Tonight I'm drinking Jefferson's Ocean rye. That's how much I appreciate you guys. That's the high end stuff for tonight's conversation. So, yeah, we've got a podcast called Rethinking God With Tacos. I just had a book come out. I'm probably going to read from it because you noted a few things that were in there, but I actually have a chapter on universal reconciliation in which I feature you, David. I don't even know if you're aware of that.

00:05:14 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, yeah.

00:05:15 Jason Clark: And so that's my heart. My heart is a relational guy is to practically articulate and work out and live out what it means to be loved and to love. We love because he first loved. And so you can't give away what you don't know you have. And I think when you live in that reality and you awaken to that truth, you begin to live an expression of reconciliation of all things. I love this conversation. I love all the ways that it's being had and honored to have it with you.

00:05:44 Jeromy Johnson: Awesome. Thank you. Jason. Every time I think of your podcast, Rethinking God With tacos, I just I'm rethinking God eating tacos like he's just up there smacking on these things.

00:05:53 Jason Clark: And that's why it's there that I didn't want anybody to to to think Jason was an academic because I can't play in that sandbox. No, but I love academics. I love having the conversation with them. And, uh, I'm grateful for all the work they do. But, yeah, those tacos, uh, keep it, keep it real and.

00:06:10 Jeromy Johnson: Keep Jason has the audacity to just go out there and just say, Grace saves all, and he's fighting for absolute universalism. No.

00:06:17 David Artmant: No, David. No, David. I'm the.

00:06:20 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Uh, what did I say? Did I say Jason? Yeah, yeah. See, this is you said Jason. Yeah. There's three people get so confusing.

00:06:28 David Artmant: Well, okay, so I think Jason's job is Jason is is working in the folks that are coming from charismatic, Pentecostal, evangelical background who are discovering union union theology, Trinitarian Union theology. And for folks in that camp. Yes, sir. Just moving into the idea that everybody is in Christ, everybody is loved. Everybody is as a child of God. That's not transactional and that God's love is never ending and never gives up on you. That union message, that's such a positive step for those folks that for them, just getting there is like, Hallelujah, let's have a revival. I mean, come on, these people are so excited and healed by this coming from where they came from. Yeah. And then I think where I intersect is that if we're having the union discussion, then the question arises, well, does that mean that the union is always successful in finally achieving ultimate restoration, or within that union? Is it still possible that some may not be fully united with God in the ages to come? Yeah. And I think that's still an open conversation within the union group. And then I sort of sit in my place, and I give my perspective that I think that the idea that the union could fail doesn't make sense to me, because I think biblically I could if I wanted a proof text, something I could say like, well, Isaiah forty six ten that God knows the end from the beginning. So no true love would make a hopeless situation. Because if you if you come into a creation in which God knows from the beginning that you'll never be united with him in part of the all in all, then if you come into creation where it's foreknown that that's not going to happen, then there's no way it's going to happen for you. So you're a lost cause from the very beginning, then that means the creation then towards you at least, is not an expression of love. All of that logic to me feels inescapable and unavoidable, but it sometimes takes people a while to kind of, I guess, get to that point. Jason gets them to the point where they're doing union theology, and then I hope I'm a part of the conversation where if you want to listen to my arguments about why I think this is a necessity, that you embrace a confident universalism in which the love of God was never going to even possibly fail with any one of us. Yeah, well, then you can come over and listen to my podcast. You can decide if that makes sense or not. At least I hope that you would say. Sometimes I say to people, whether or not you're convinced of my position, you can use it, I think, Evangelically and say somebody comes to you and says, well, I can't worship a God. And foreknowledge would make a creation knowing that people are going to be lost forever. And then you can answer to them and you can say, well, you can be a Christian on those terms. Don't think that you have to do away with Christianity unless you can embrace that God loses people, loses even one person, or even possibly loses one person. You can be a Christian universalist. That's a perfectly acceptable way to be a Christian and come experience then, the fullness of life that Jesus offers now. And, uh, that's that's the good news. So I hope that more people will be able, whether they actually come all the way to my position or not, that they'll be able to say, well, Dave has a point. He's, uh, within the historic Christian tradition. That's if that's the way that Christianity can work for you. Well, then by all means, have it work for you that way. So I'm hoping that my work will will do that.

00:09:37 Jason Clark: Yeah, I love that.

00:09:38 Jeromy Johnson: David, thank you so much for kind of introducing that. Because when we think of universalism and are we okay with that term? Universalism, universal salvation, universal reconciliation?

00:09:48 David Artmant: I use Christian universalism. A lot of people don't like that. Okay. I'm happy with it. Other people like universal reconciliation or some people like the restoration of all things. Ultimate redemption is another term that gets used. Yeah, I like the Christian Universalism one because it's provocative, because Christian is provocative in the non-Christian world, and universalism is provocative in the Christian world. And so when I say I'm a Christian universalist, usually all the Christians and non-Christians kind of tilt their heads at me and say, what does that mean?

00:10:15 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. And I think you bring up that good point where there are differences in that universal thought. And that's kind of what we wanted to discuss a little bit today.

00:10:24 David Artmant: Within Christian Universalism there. There's a big I think there's a distinction between a hopeful universalism. Usually I think of hopeful universalism as kind of a form of universalism, but not really. It's hoping that it happens, but if it doesn't happen, there's nothing bad that went wrong. Whereas in Christian Universalism. Usually the idea is if one is not saved or even possibly not saved, then that represents a failure in God. And in order to work out a theodicy, in order to work out the goodness of God, you actually have to get there. That's the kind of debate between hopeful universalism and I think what I would call a more confident universalism.

00:11:02 Jason Clark: I love the grace you have for every aspect of the journey, and I love that hopeful universalism is often the step folks take as they are journeying toward a better gospel, or a clearer picture of who God is, as Jesus reveals. And I have taken that journey. I mean, it would have been seven years ago, maybe eight years ago, when I would have used the term. I'm a hopeful reconciliation, you know, and I might have whispered it because I love that you use the term Christian universalism, and I'm going to show you I'm going to read something from this book that sets you up if you're all right with it. And I think you'll set up the conversation. Take me a minute and a half. Is that all right? Yep. And it speaks to Christian universalism. I love that you use that term because this is I wrote this article six years ago, and it's what got me kicked out of a church.

00:11:48 Jeromy Johnson: Those are the best articles.

00:11:50 Jason Clark: Yeah, and I actually wrote the article Why I'm Not a Universalist. But of course, it was meant to, uh, leave them with the question of the fact that I probably was. But you'll see, I said to me, our Western mind perceives universalism as empathetic Calvinism instead of predetermining how it predetermines heaven. Universalism, when viewed through the dualistic lens, perceives heaven and hell as reward and punishment. In my view, a conversation about universalism in that context is pointless because the God of Jesus, the Jesus revealed, doesn't do dualism or punishment. Such a conversation would be like two flat earthers discussing where the earth ends, ultimately fruitless because the earth isn't flat. Sorry to my flat Earther friends. C.S. Lewis once suggested in his book A grief Observed that many of our God questions are like asking how many miles or how many hours are in a mile, or whether yellow is square or round. Probably half the questions we ask half are great. Theological and metaphysical problems are like that. And then I go on to say this. He died and rose. And when he did, all creation, all humanity rose with him. At the cross, Jesus exposed the lie of distance and separation. He revealed that he will never leave or forsake us. His love is measureless, always good. Ultimately, reconciling doesn't deviate to the left or to the right and will never fail us, not in this life or the next. And the reason I wanted to read that and say how much I appreciated, uh, your delineation of Christian Universalism and I with you that there's lots of phrases that I love, but I like Christian Universalism because the wrestling match was always when I'd be asked in my Universalist, they would ask the Calvinistic deterministic lens where there wasn't ever an opportunity for us to actually experience the restoration process, and thus it seemed to take consent out of the conversation. And for me, consent is the high water mark of love. I love Jonathan Foster's theology of consent. For me, that's a huge part of this conversation, and that the idea of universal reconciliation still doesn't operate outside the context of it's not consent, it's not deterministic. So to call it Christian Universalism to me, delineates from the Western separation mindset and allows for us to actually have an honest conversation of what does that mean? And I know you said there's lots of ways by which to articulate it. When I first heard you say the necessity of Christian universalism and how you delineated that, I thought, oh, that's it. That's what I was trying to get at in this article that ultimately got me kicked out of our church. It was almost six years ago.

00:14:21 Jeromy Johnson: That power of choice, I could think, is where you're you're getting at. That's what I'm getting at. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. I guess what I love about this conversation, you know, we can mince things and try to guess what's going to be happening in the future. And at the end of time and at the end of things. But in the end, we all feel that we are all going to be brought into the loving arms of God. Yeah. So it's really it's really just speaking of mystery at this point, right? But it's fun because I feel like people are going to be coming at this from different angles and a few different angles that I've seen. One that there's going to be this time of almost like purgatory, of kind of refining your sin. There might be, you know, there might be hell, but it's it's going to be temporary. Like this is that restoration part where people who maybe have not embraced Jesus in this lifetime might go through a period of restoration, might go through a period of refinement, might go through a period where their sins are being atoned for during this period. And then there's another line that says, we are already forgiven. It's just up to us to realize that we're forgiven. The distance between God and us never was a thing. It isn't a thing, and it never will be a thing. We've always been close to God and that our distance has been our choice. The distance has been our belief. Basically, you're already forgiven. Do you believe it? Rather than you are forgiven if you believe it. And so those are the two differences that I really that I really see. Where do you guys line up on that?

00:15:43 David Artmant: I'm happy to go because I sort of think if God creates the universe that the God it is imbued with the moral character, it has a certain grain in it and you can go against that grain. But the more you go against that grain, the more splinters you pick up. Finally, you'll pick up so many splinters, it will become so painful that you will just become aware that that you have come to the end, end of yourself, and it no longer makes any sense and you will come to yourself. That's kind of the story of the parable of the Prodigal Son. Yeah, the road away from God is finally kind of a dead end that then results in an awakening or a coming to ourselves. But I sort of have gone with the I was influenced by the early church fathers, I don't think would have used the word that the correction in the age to come is temporary. I think I know what you're saying. I don't think they would have used that word though. I said I think they would have said it's a it's a oneon. In other words, it is the kind of correction that is befitting of God and that God reserves all of the coming ages in order to bring God's good creation to its fulfillment. And God will not rush that process with any of God's children. And so that point of choice is an important one, that God will not remove that choice from us, but bring us to the point where we can fully own and make that choice, and realize and see that a choice against that is not a choice for ourselves, but ultimately a choice against ourselves. Yeah. Now, not that process. I think Origin of Alexandria and other early church fathers thought that that process might be take a very long time. And there's an analogy that I like to use. My mom had a meningioma, brain tumor was cancerous. But it's it's growing and it was causing problems, uh, numbness in her face. It was wrapped around the trigeminal nerve. Talked to the neurosurgeon who performed the surgery to remove that minji enoma and ask him, well, how do you remove a meningioma tumor from the brain and preserve the trigeminal nerve? And he said, very slowly and with a microscope.

00:17:43 Jason Clark: Wow.

00:17:44 David Artmant: And what I'll need to do. I want to get all the cancer out of the brain and off of that nerve. So what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to scrape that nerve to make sure that I get all the cancer off of it. So what he said is I can remove. I can remove the tumor, but I cannot save that nerve without irritating it. I think early church fathers thought that God was the great physician of the soul, and that sometimes I think this is Gregory of Nyssa, sometimes that the physician is not able to effect a painless cure. And so I do think that sin causes pain. And so that is the reason we want to avoid it now and in the future. So sometimes somebody will say, well, if everybody gets saved in the end, then why would why wouldn't I just want to, you know, send this whole life and sure, you know. Yeah. And I said, well, because sin, you know, it causes pain. It's going to cause pain in your life. It's going to cause pain in the lives around you. And the more attached you become to it, the more difficult the process may be for you to truly repent of it and understand it and be separated from it. And the cure that God may need to give you may be extraordinarily painful for you to have to go through. Kind of like Scrooge, you know, in The Christmas Carol, you know, he's driven to his knees by the realization of the mess that he made out of his life, and all the years that he lost and all the people that he hurt. I've even heard people talk about near-death experiences where they said that in their life review, they not only saw the evil that they did, but they experienced it from the perspective of the other person who went through it. Yeah, I can only imagine what it might be for God to have to not only help you to understand the depth of the evil and the suffering that you caused, but to have in eternity the person that you did it, to look at you and know that you experienced Fully the things that you caused. Yeah. Uh, I think maybe because I am also a little afraid of people that will say, oh, well, you don't believe in hell, do you? Right. And I said, yeah, I believe in hell. And I believe it is long and painful to the degree that it needs to be. Not any longer than it needs to be. I don't think it's about punishment as much as it's about restoration. But restoration does involve repentance and coming to terms with what you've done. And I don't know what that might be like. Yeah. But I think we've all had a taste of it in our lives thus far. And if I'm imagining what that must be at the level of God's eonian correction, then I think that anybody in their right mind wouldn't want anything to do with that. On the other hand, there are certain attitudes and ways of thinking that are kind of baked into me from my cultural upbringing and awareness that are very difficult for me to even understand about myself. Sure. And so I'm very happy that I can trust that God's judgments are not just for everybody else, but they're for me, too. And that if there is any evil that is in me that I haven't been able to come to terms with or look at or separate from myself, I can trust that my Heavenly Father will not let that victory of sin last forever. And so when Jesus says, everybody assaulted with fire, I take that as a bracing thing, but also a hopeful thing. Yeah. So I don't want to be put in that camp that, oh, he doesn't believe in hell, or he just says that's just temporary. I don't think anybody in God's reconciled creation will think that they got away with anything when they were sinning. Yeah. They will ultimately see that it was horrible. And if they had it to do all over again, they wouldn't do it. I think that on the other side of all of this, evil will look so evil to us in the clarity of things that we will be actually horrified. Yeah. About the things that we did.

00:21:17 Jason Clark: Yeah. Matthew, I think fifteen scripture about gnashing of teeth. I think that's a sorrow that we will experience because of an awareness of how out of alignment we are with our our our design. How delusional we were in our life and what we missed. The missing of the mark. But, uh, it's Ionia, so I think I'm saying it right. That's eternal life, right? That's.

00:21:39 David Artmant: Yeah, that gets translated into English, into eternal life. But I think it misses kind of the Ionian like in the Greek. Ionian life is also the life is God's life.

00:21:49 Jason Clark: So the God life.

00:21:50 David Artmant: Yeah, yeah. So alien life is not just it's not just about duration, it's about quality. It's about intensity. Yes.

00:21:56 Jason Clark: Yes. Yeah. And I love that because that, that, you know, we're we're living in eternity right now. Yeah. Our concept of time and this may be I would love to hear your thoughts on it, guys, but, uh, I've often I don't know how it all works. I do believe that we are living an awakening to a measureless revelation. I tell the story often, but I'll tell it quick just to set it up. Uh, if God is love, love is before and after. It's everything in between. Uh, it's, uh. It's the game I play with my daughter where I say when she's five. I love you to the trees and back. And she. She doubles it to infinity and beyond and back and forth we go. Until I finally have given her a litany of my love, as creative as I can get. And she says, daddy times two. And when she says times two, my Heavenly Father says, that's the gospel. The moment you think you can understand my nature, my nature, my loving nature, my mercy, my kindness, a two year old or a five year old can blow it up with the smallest multiplier they can think of two. And so when you start having a conversation about the eternal God life, we are we are in eternity right now. That while we're even having this conversation, we are also in the cloud of witnesses cheering us on. Like like it's hard for our heads to get around it. But but I want to speak to that because I use this analogy when talking about, uh, how we've been taught. I work with my brother in films. We've right. We've written some screenplays. And one of the tropes, one of the things that you'll find in every good film is it's called the ticking clock. Yeah. And the ticking clock. You'll find it in the love story where, you know, he's got to beat her to the airport before she leaves. It's in all of them. But of course, the best ticking clock is where there's an actual bomb bond. Often does this, and you've got to actually cut the red wire before it hits zero. And if you don't do it before it hits zero, then it's kaput for the whole world. Great movie, but a horrible way by which to think about God and how we live and move and have our being. Because then we make time. God and we. And for me, this eternal life we're talking about is an invitation to step into the measureless that is before and is after. And time isn't God. Time doesn't determine, you know. You know, we've been told. Say the prayer before you die or it's kaput for you. Well, what that means is that we've elevated time above the revelation of a love that is measureless. So I don't know what it looks like on the other side of this life. Yeah. I just believe that love doesn't change. Love is a restorative reality, and that time is more powerful than his ability to reveal to us who we are. So I don't know what you have to think about that, but that, to me is a real practical, uh, way by which to describe the way we've been raised to understand salvation and the transactional nature by which we interact with God.

00:24:42 David Artmant: I think what helped, what helped me was when I understood that there were some phrases in the Bible that just started not making sense to me, like, uh, forever and ever. Well, how do you get to the other side of ever? Right. And what's going on there? Right. Yeah. And they're this this word aion is translated sometimes as world, or sometimes as age, or sometimes as forever and ever. And so I begin to be aware that something was going on. Yeah. And that, that the Bible seems to be talking about aeons a lot in the Greek. And even back to the Hebrew. I think Olam had to do with an age. And I got this from Ilario Romilly's work on Apocatastasis. But she said, you know, in the, in the, in the ancient world, the thing about Christian apocatastasis or Christian restoration of all things was that like folks like origin believes that God was the God of the eons, so that God initiates the eons, so that at the end of the ages, God will be all in all. Now, that doesn't mean that God is over that just mean that the ages are over and have the creation has fully matured into what God always knew it would be from the beginning. God creates a temporal space so that there can be change over time so that we can mature. Like somebody said one time, I can't remember who said this, but time is helpful because it's the way that you keep everything from happening all at once, right in the space where there's not really time like we think of it. God makes time. So time is something that God makes. Yes, God is the God of the eons. And what what origin thought was that the end of the ages? That nobody would be in an age anymore because we would all be lifted up into the ageless life of God, or the God from whom the ages come. Come on. And so that. That means that then the end is the beginning. That proton is eschatology. That from the perspective of God, this is not happening in the way that we might think.

00:26:27 Jason Clark: Right?

00:26:28 David Artmant: But that God would. To say that God is fully present, I think, means that God is fully present in everything that we think of as time. Yes. So that there's no time in which God is not present. Well, then that then, as you're talking about Jason, then once you start trying to make God into this linear thing where, okay, God makes the creation and uh, oh, well, this happened and then now this happened. And so now God's saying, well, now what am I going to do? And now we've got this problem to solve. And so we'll see if we can solve that and then we'll see what happens. And then maybe this will happen. I'll make a prophecy about some things that are going to happen. But you know what I mean. Yeah. As if God doesn't know what's going on. And so what I say is, in Christian theology, I think outside of Christian universalism, you end up with either Doctor Evil or Doctor Frankenstein, right? You end up with Doctor Evil. If God goes into creation knowing with absolute certainty that the creation is going to be an act of non-love, or an act of violence towards those who are trapped in it through no decision of their own, but have no choice and have no choice about being in the creation, but also have no chance of actually succeeding in that creation. So they are hopeless in that creation. So that's Doctor Evil. And you can do the Arminian version of Doctor Evil if you want to, or you can do the Calvinist version of Doctor Evil. So people try to escape that by going to something called use like open theism or process theology. And that's where God enters into creation, not knowing how it's all going to turn out. Well, now we have Doctor Frankenstein, who neither knows nor understands the creation that God makes and could unleash anything from a universal restoration to a universal condemnation in which everybody is lost forever. Right. And so I think outside of Christian universalism, you end up with, you know, Doctor Evil or Doctor Frankenstein. And I think that once you come to an understanding of at least how time functioned in a series of ages, you know, and Paul talks about Ephesians two seven and he says, talks about the coming ages in which God will be showing the immensity of his love to us. So I think once you once you have an understanding that God is the God of the ages and that God creates the ages for for God's purposes, and then at the end of the ages, this is what the early church fathers understood. God will be all in all. And so that's how they work their theology towards that ultimate culmination of all creation. Were God to be all in all. And they had differences of opinion about how that might all work, or how it might exactly all happen, or how exactly the purification or the judgement or how that all exactly happened. But they were convinced that somehow in Christ, the beginning and the end, and all things were somehow present to us in, in this moment, and that it's that the Christ event was something that happened in time, but it encompasses all of time. Yeah.

00:29:02 Jason Clark: Yeah. That's good man. Yeah.

00:29:03 Jeromy Johnson: And that time is part of that mystery that we will know at some age. Yeah. Jason, what you mentioned were time almost becomes elevated over God's love, over God's power. We were all somewhat taught where.

00:29:16 Jason Clark: Yeah, we're powerless to time.

00:29:17 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, yeah. Once your heart stops beating, that's it. You have no more chance. I picture God's hands literally being tied behind God's back and saying, I would love to. I would love to give you salvation. I would love to bring you into my love. But you died. What am I gonna do? And then that's it. Yeah. And and that's what we were taught. Maybe not in that kind of way. And we just said, yeah, that makes sense. And now you look back at it and you're like, what a small god. And David, when you were talking about those near-death experiences where like a flash before their eyes, they would see their entire life, but feel their entire life, feel the harm that they did. Um, and so the more harm you did, right, the more I can imagine that gnashing of teeth, Jason, as you were saying. Yeah, but then you would also feel the love that you did. And a lot of people would say, like I said this one thing to this grocer, and I helped pay this woman's bills and the echo that I saw in the waters of love and in life, they saw that and felt that as well. I can see this process as taking again, if we talk about time, it might feel like it's three minutes, it might feel like it's it's a flash, right? In that time, I am convinced now that God is not tied. His power is not tied. His love is not tied. Simply because my biological heart stopped beating and I was in Africa, and I never even heard this gospel.

00:30:45 Jason Clark: Right?

00:30:46 David Artmant: Yeah. Have you seen that movie inception, where the people go down to all the different levels of of time, and there's one character that ends up spending like two hundred years in this sort of wasteland type of thing, and he comes to this great awareness of what his life really meant. Of course, it was only a few seconds that had passed, right? Yeah. Once you get talking about time and how all of that works that you might say that, well, hell, it's temporary or something. It doesn't last that long, but for the person that is experiencing it, it may feel like ages and they may actually experience it that way. So we don't know it could.

00:31:19 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.

00:31:19 David Artmant: How that works.

00:31:20 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. Or it could feel like fast and we yeah we just don't know. Yeah.

00:31:25 Jason Clark: The thing that I love about this conversation too is one my journey was how does love change? Because you're right. Who knows how long it takes. I don't understand time, I love inception. I also talk about interstellar. Yeah. You know, there's, uh, Christopher Nolan obviously is fascinated by this, this topic as well. The I don't know how long it lasts, but the real issue for me, as I was processing this years ago was I was like, man, if God is love and his love is reconciling things in this life and his love is forgiving, if God is at on a cross reconciling the world to himself, not counting our sins against us like he's not in that game, he game. He doesn't count sins. It's not what he does. They're there as far as the East is from the West. This love is a measureless love. In Ephesians three sixteen through twenty, where you're filled to the height, the depth, the width, length. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we could like, like how many more and alls do you need?

00:32:23 David Artmant: Like times two.

00:32:26 Jason Clark: Times, two.

00:32:26 Jeromy Johnson: Times, two.

00:32:27 Jason Clark: Times two. And exactly. And so when you're getting that, you're like, well, wait a second. So how does love change when we die? Like that was the thing. I was like, I just I'm not okay with that. So I don't know what it looks like. And I don't know if it's two hundred years, but I believe that there is a, that we're continually having the opportunity to truly awaken to our, our the truth of our being and in the context of consent, again, that consent is always how love works. Uh, so yeah, for me, that was a big one that introduced the conversation way back before I had.

00:33:04 David Artmant: And I think once you get the consent part to me, because people will say, well, what about choice? What about free will? And then what I came to understand was that, well, any will that's bound up in sin and delusion and is making choices against its own well-being is not really acting in any kind of free kind of way. And so but what happens is just like somebody can wake up eventually from an addiction of some kind. Eventually you're able to see your situation clearly and you're able to choose, oh, no, this isn't what I want. This is your you're able to make that choice. So the God who can do all things is the God who is able to preserve free will, to able to let us have choice, but also to know the end from the beginning, and to know that the good free choice that we make is one that we were always going to make. And that's a little bit of a head bender. Yeah, but whatever free will is, I would hope that it's not that thing by which God tenderly will let me devolve into my own insanity forever and to be lost there. The reason that's a real thing for me is because one of the things I got to see in being a minister is I got to see people lose their minds. As I was watching them lose their minds, it came to me that I could very well do the same. Is my salvation based upon my ability to hold on to my sanity, to make good decisions for myself. Well, if it is well, then I've got a problem. Then I'm ultimately saved by my own decisions. Yeah, I don't think that's the correct thing. I think I'm being saved by God who is with me, and who will not leave me in my delusions and will help restore me to sanity so that I can make the good decision that I have been created and destined to make.

00:34:47 Jason Clark: Yeah, yeah. Come on. Yeah. I don't know a child who is loved, um, lives as an expression of love. And that is actually the way of our being. That is the truth of our being. Joining the way of our being is. I think that's a Paul Young, uh, phrase there, but the truth of our being is a big deal. I don't know if you guys have spent a lot of time on that. For me, one of the greatest shifts that would have led me in this direction was to deal with what I had been raised with as total depravity, and to realize that that is actually not the truth of my being. Before the fall, we were all we were in Christ in the before the foundations of the earth, that he was doing this and that. We're having a timeless, that time conversation again. But when you realize that that's not who you are, then what we're talking about is a journey in which we're awakening to the truth of our being. Yeah, we're awakening to, uh, to the to the way that we actually are designed. If God is love, then we are love. We are made in love's image. And so how can you not come into agreement, in alignment with that for me? When when you say every knee will bow and every tongue will confess, and people ask me about it and they think through that deterministic lens, I'm like, yeah, no, that's gonna that'll happen because of an awakening to the reality or the truth of our being and which we have to say, yes, there's there's no other true response.

00:36:09 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. And it's like, if God has created us in love and to be in love. Yeah. And then we're finally standing in the full presence of love and light. I can really foresee this, that, that there's this space of everything falling away where we're just like we we want that now. Was God forcing us that? No. But does God know like, this is how we're we're wired? Does God know that this is how how we are going to be transformed and restored? And it's almost like you come into this space of love and you want it. You just want it with all of your being, because that is what your entire being was made for.

00:36:48 David Artmant: Yeah, we're oriented to it. Like David Bentley Hart puts it, we're transcendentally oriented to the good, the true and the beautiful. To God who is who is our ultimate creator and parent and lover of our souls. And once we see all of that, it will be no forfeit of our freedom to go towards that union for which we have been destined. And that still is a bit of a head scratcher. But on the other hand, free will is kind of a problem too, because like in the Arminian, like the Calvinists make this real interesting critique of the Arminian free will, because usually in Arminian theology what will happen is everybody Arminian theology? It starts with total depravity, right? You're so totally depraved. Well, then you get grace, which comes up and lifts you up. But the thing about Arminian theology is it lifts you up to the point where you can make your decision. It's resistible. Yeah, but it's also it has a certain attraction, but it's also resistible. So God has brought you up to the point where you are sort of neutralized. And then God puts the position, puts the choice in your hands. However, you yourself are neutralized. So God's not making the decision, and you're neutralized. So where does from where does the decision arise? Yeah, right. It comes seemingly out of nowhere. Which doesn't make any sense.

00:38:08 Jason Clark: No, because you're totally depraved.

00:38:10 David Artmant: Well, even. But if you've risen. If God is neutral, like if. But if God is, if God has done the prevenient grace and raised you up from because you can't in Arminian theology, you don't save yourself. You're only saved by grace in the sense that grace lifts you up so that you can make that choice. Yeah, but you're evened out. Okay, so it's not irresistible to you. So that means. Right? It's equally resistible. So it's like everything is balanced out, the scales are balanced out, and God is taking God's hands off of it. Then the choice is left for you. But how are you to make a choice if God isn't helping you making it, and you are, you are completely neutral. You could just go one way as well as you could the other. So your ultimate destiny turns out to be some kind of coin toss which arises out of nowhere.

00:38:52 Jason Clark: Yeah, right.

00:38:53 David Artmant: And that was a that was a critique that a Calvinist was making about about Arminian theology. But the Calvinist was saying is ultimately the choice comes from God, which I then now agree with.

00:39:05 Jeromy Johnson: But it's limited. Well, yeah.

00:39:07 David Artmant: The choice in Calvinist theology that choice is limited. Yes. But what I can agree with in Calvinist theology is that the choice for God, for us, is greater than the choice of God, than our choice against God.

00:39:20 Jeromy Johnson: Against.

00:39:20 David Artmant: Us. And so I can agree with that part of Calvinist theology. I just disagree that that, that, that, that the scope that God makes for humanity is limited in Christ. It's an unlimited choice that God makes for humanity in Christ.

00:39:33 Jason Clark: They got the numbers wrong.

00:39:35 David Artmant: Yeah. I mean, understandably from their context, because they're in a world in which, you know, they're still sort of reforming the kind of theology that they inherited, which had a hell of eternal conscious torment built into it. So they only had one of two options because they had to they couldn't get away of a hell from a hell of eternal conscious tournament for some number of people.

00:39:57 Jason Clark: Their starting place was broken and they tried to. And the problem is. And then we're back to the monster. God. Right. Uh, God, you can't trust. Because I want nothing to do with. Let's call them father two. That's really confused. Yeah, and really.

00:40:10 David Artmant: Doctor Evil, here's my dad, either Doctor Evil or Doctor Frankenstein. Take your pick. Yeah, yeah.

00:40:15 Jason Clark: Yeah yeah, yeah. And we're back to. Hey, he's. He's good. You can trust him, but, you know, not on Tuesdays or, you know, after he's he's been out and it's just it makes no sense.

00:40:26 Jeromy Johnson: He's either been out drinking. Is that where you were going? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

00:40:30 David Artmant: And the point of Christian theology is to come in and say, well, but the reason that that it doesn't make any sense is because God's ways are so much higher than our ways. It's not for us to think about these things. So therefore, we should just be grateful that God is saving some of us in some way. And we should do. Whether you're a Calvinist or Arminian, if you're a Calvinist, because the perseverance of the saints. You don't know if you're one of the elect until you die. Persevering in the saints. So if you're a Calvinist, you better be persevering, brother. And if you're an Arminian, you better be persevering too. So everybody's persevering, hoping that they're either one of the elect or that they have done sufficiently whatever it needs in order to sort of seal the deal that Grace allowed them to have a chance at.

00:41:10 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah.

00:41:11 Jason Clark: Which is distorted. It's a try harder gospel, and that's why so many are done with it. And of course, Jesus blew that whole thing up. But it's, it's, it's. And then we take the language of family and we superimpose it over it. Now you've got just this bastardized understanding of of who he is. There's no life in it. And this is the guy talking again as a relational guy. Listen, if I can't, if I can't trust that he's good, then I can't have access to him. And for me, there's so many flaws in these both of those perspectives.

00:41:43 David Artmant: Let me just say so, you know, you talked about your daughter Jason. And so you're you're a contingent being within this creation. You didn't make it. You don't have. You're not ultimately in control, but you're telling your daughter, to the degree that I have control over things, I will never leave you or forsake you or abandon you. Yeah, well, now let's say we make you the creator of some world, and now you're making this world, and your daughter is going to be in the world that you make. What are the chances that you're going to make a world in which the daughter whom you love so dearly and you would die for. What are the chances that you will make a world in which she will be lost to you eternally?

00:42:19 Jeromy Johnson: It's a great point.

00:42:20 Jason Clark: And and that's the relational approach that that has led me here. It makes no sense. And of course, you know, we've got a scripture that, uh, if they asked for bread, would they give you a stone? Right.

00:42:31 David Artmant: So even a bad, even bad, you know, parents know how to give good gifts to their children.

00:42:35 Jason Clark: Even bad parents. Got it. How much better is our heavenly Father? I mean, that is the logic of love.

00:42:40 David Artmant: And that's relational theology, which Jesus taught. Yeah, specifically taught us relational theology, I think so he wouldn't get bogged down in philosophical, uh, conundrums.

00:42:51 Jason Clark: Every term he used was relational. The only time that he ever used the phrase God. Uh, was at the at the cross on the cross, where he's quoting Psalm twenty two to draw our attention to the prophetic nature of the psalm that culminates in my day of trouble. He did not turn his face from me. So every term, every time he interacts with with God, it's father. It's what got him in trouble, to be honest. And every time he interacted with us, he's calling us friends. He's calling us brothers and sisters, sons and daughters.

00:43:19 David Artmant: And even though he taught the kingdom of God, he referred to God as Father.

00:43:24 Jeromy Johnson: Yes.

00:43:24 Jason Clark: Yeah, yeah. Yes. So that that invites us into that relational dynamic. Yeah. To me, that's in the chapter Jesus is a relational theologian. To me, if you're doing theology outside of relationship, you're doing it wrong. That's how I feel about it.

00:43:40 David Artmant: Yeah, that's to me, that's what you know, I remember, you know, the idea of like, process theology. It just seems like God is on a big adventure and seeing what's going to happen. Well, I certainly hope God is not. You know, I certainly hope God is not like that. Or the God of volunteerism, who, who does, who, whose power and strength and might are are God's greatest attributes so that whatever God does is right and God can do whatever God wants to do. And it's not for humans to to question that. I think that relational theology can rescue us from a lot of that problem.

00:44:12 Jeromy Johnson: And David, you mentioned that when people don't agree, they just throw out the well, God's ways are higher than our ways. Who are we to understand the mind of of God? And really what they're saying is God's judgment, God's wrath, God's hell, sending people to hell. I mean, those are all just higher ways. Who are we to understand it? But maybe God's grace, maybe God's love, maybe God's restoration, maybe God's kindness, maybe God's restorative heart is bigger and larger than ours. And that is what he was talking about. So we can go there where I really don't feel like God is a balanced God. In fact, in my podcast slutty Grace, I have an episode queued up that says God is not balanced. God leans heavily towards his identity of love and grace and it filters everything.

00:45:00 David Artmant: Yeah, God is loving, but God is also just. And so sometimes God, which means that God has to do a lot of things that God doesn't want to do.

00:45:07 Jeromy Johnson: But justice will flow through his love. It will flow through that grace. And if it doesn't, then it's not. It's not ultimately justice.

00:45:15 Jason Clark: That's just I just was talking with Brad Jersak today, and I mean, we've had this conversation and you guys have had many capacities. God is love, period. Every, every other attribute. And Brad was speaking to this as well. It must be founded, grounded and flow from love. If God is love. And so a justice that isn't loving or isn't love is not, is not the justice that God is participating in. I love what you said about unbalanced. He's not. He doesn't do balance. Balance is a measurement word. And we're having a conversation about a measureless revelation. That's great. So anytime someone's trying to balance grace, they don't even know what grace is. It's, you know, we're having a times two conversation where you can't get your arms around it the moment you think you understand how good he is, you know, five year blows it up. Says, yeah, it's way that well.

00:46:04 David Artmant: one of the okay. So one of the, one of the issues that I'm having or one of the issues that, that I kind of have with all of this, is that it seems like across Christendom, though, that there are mechanisms by which this message is made, is taken off the table. And usually the way this happens. What do you mean? Well, is by some in denominations, most denominations will have a doctrinal statement which says that you can't think this way or you're out. Okay. Yeah. Most and and even churches that have that are non-denominational will have a pastor or an apostle, which will set the limits of acceptable thought. And you're not allowed to question those people. What are the communities of faith where this way of thinking is allowed and celebrated as a normal part of the congregational life? What percentage would you say? Right. One.

00:46:58 Jason Clark: Yeah. Yeah.

00:46:59 David Artmant: You know, while while I do agree with you all that more people are coming to this, it's going to take a lot more people coming to it, being willing to challenge, you know, whatever those doctrinal standards are or whoever those pastors or preachers or apostles are and say, you might be the one that's in authority here, but I think I have a revelation. I think I have a word of God that I if I have to give it up, I may have to give up my Christianity or give up being a part of this fellowship. And so I'd really like to have a conversation about this. And so I'm hoping that these conversations can get around some of the formal ways that denominations have tried to suppress this conversation, which is why I think these podcasts. This podcast world is so important because it allows people to have what I call the parking lot conversation. Yes, it's not the conversation you can have in church, it's the conversation you have after church in the parking lot. Yes. And if we can bring the parking lot conversation about this into the life of the church. Yeah. And normalize it. If I could think, like, one hundred years from now that in churches across the world, somebody would say, oh, yeah, I'm Catholic. I mean, I'm, I'm Universalist or I'm Methodist, I'm, I'm a Universalist within the Methodists or I'm a Baptist. I'm, I'm Pentecostal. I'm a universalist within that. You know, that. I don't think it all has to be it's all in one conglomeration where it all has to be universalism, I think. But if all of the fellowships could embrace that, people can legitimately be a part of their fellowships with this point of view, then we can all have the best of all worlds.

00:48:36 Jason Clark: I love that you said they're talking in the parking lot. I call it they're whispering in the hallways, but in the. In the hallways.

00:48:42 David Artmant: Oh, well, they're braver. They're braver in your church.

00:48:44 Jason Clark: Well, no no no, no, they're whispering in the hallways. They're talking in the parking lot.

00:48:48 David Artmant: They're talking in.

00:48:49 Jason Clark: There.

00:48:49 Jeromy Johnson: They're cheersing in their cheersing in the bars. Yeah.

00:48:52 David Artmant: And I think also, you know, like, there's some people there's a lot of people that sit in church and, you know, make no mistake, there's a lot of people that sit in church and think to themselves that the God that they're hearing from the pastor is not as good as the God they know in their heart.

00:49:04 Jason Clark: And that's what I that's what I think, David. I it may be that I, uh, you know how it is if you buy a vehicle and you've never seen them on the road, and all of a sudden they're everywhere. Yeah, it may be that that's the moment I'm in personally, but if it is one percent, uh, it was five, ten years ago. Yeah, yeah. And I feel like a groundswell. And here's where I feel there's a groundswell. Uh, it's not happening from the pulpit. More and more aren't just whispering in the hallways. They're saying it out loud. They're listening to the podcast and.

00:49:36 David Artmant: And their resources are out there. Like your book, you know, is out there that kind of compiles all of these conversations together.

00:49:42 Jason Clark: And I and I think, I think there's been your book, so many that have put language to it. There's there's a hunger and a curiosity, but there's also language and there's a receptibility that didn't exist ten years ago within. Yeah. To me, within, uh, most of the circles I run in now, I again, I might be seeing the same car I drove, but my heart is that it's not a hundred years from now. It's fifty years from now or twenty years from now. Baxter Kruger used to put Athanasius and Jabe Torrance, uh, pictures of them on the seats when he would preach for twenty some years, twenty five years, maybe longer. Forgive me, Baxter, if I'm not giving the right number of years to this. So. But but he would do that because he knew the message he was preaching. And I do believe that the Trinitarian union message, it ultimately awakens you to this, to the grace to say I am good with this conversation, or even I am all in on this conversation. I do think that that is a fruit of the of the gospel.

00:50:44 David Artmant: You see, that's how that's how I can tell that you're a Pentecostal and I'm a mainline Protestant. You think something's going to happen and you think something's going to happen in ten years? I think it's going to happen in one hundred years. Well, but. But I'll.

00:50:55 Jason Clark: Say this. Baxter didn't believe in his lifetime, so he. The reason he put them there is that he knew that that he could preach to them when the rest of the folks were staring daggers. And recently he made the comment when I preached, these days I take off my armor. I'm no longer having to preach with my armor on because the room is so receptive. And by the way, there's a whole lot more people in it. And I was encouraged by his statement that I didn't think I would see what I'm seeing now in my lifetime. And I feel that. And so I am encouraged. Not everyone becomes a universalist, but that everyone becomes confident in his affection, or that we continue to grow confident in his love and a love that doesn't look away. Because here's the thing if you are awakening to union and a love that doesn't look away. Well then, then whether you ever get to this conversation or not, you're having this conversation. This is yeah, this is the reality. Because at the end of the day, if he doesn't look away, he doesn't look away. And there is a, uh, neither death nor life, angels or demons, present or future powers or principalities. Nothing separates us from God in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, not counting preachings against us. Yeah. And so I am encouraged, I am excited, I'm probably seeing my car on the road, but, uh, yeah, yeah.

00:52:15 Jeromy Johnson: I well, I began this journey about twenty years ago, Jason. And back then it was not a conversation that was happening very often.

00:52:24 Jason Clark: You were whispering at home.

00:52:25 Jeromy Johnson: We were whispering. Yeah. Yeah, we were whispering at home. We were whispering in.

00:52:29 David Artmant: The.

00:52:29 Jason Clark: Parking lot.

00:52:30 Jeromy Johnson: There were no resources like, like, uh, non-religious spiritual coaches. There was no resources of how do you deconstruct? Like we were just deconstructing before we even knew what the word was or even like, I feel like that word was being created. So, yeah, I feel like there is hope. I feel like David, it might be a hundred years, but maybe we'll just split it and call it forty years. And, uh.

00:52:53 Jason Clark: And that way of splitting, it's not even.

00:52:57 Jeromy Johnson: It's not even fifty. Hey, do you guys mind if we shift gears just a tad?

00:53:00 Jason Clark: Yeah, let's do it. Go ahead.

00:53:02 Jeromy Johnson: All right. What is the best thing about this ultimate grace theology for you?

00:53:07 David Artmant: All right, I'll tell you a story I had come to. I had come, come, come to be convinced of this. But I hadn't really started talking about it yet. In church too much. I was still looking for language for it and how how to express it. And, um, and I was because in my church, we allowed people to come to their own best conclusions about things. But we we had a big tent, and so we had a lot of people that would still have been shocked if I just sort of sang from the pulpit that this was the conclusion that I had come to, and it wasn't the terms by which I was called to the congregation. So I was more called to help people to grow in Christ and to come to their own best conclusions. So not to preach so much. Here's everything, I think. But let me encourage you to go on your best journey to seek out the love of God in the best way that you can. So we had a recovery class called Being Human because it wasn't about being an alcoholic or being an addict, it was about being human. And so we were just talking about what it's like to be human. And this guy came to the class, except first time he came to the class, first couple times he came, he was he just sat in the parking lot in in just sat in his car. He couldn't come into the church. Finally, like the second or third time he sat in the parking lot, he decided to come in and he came into our class and he listened to where we were talking about. He didn't say anything. Eventually I said something to him. I said, um, I know that you're not saying much and that's fine. You can just listen to what's being said. And I said, but just so you know, at this church, people are free to pursue their best understanding of God's love for them. And I've come to the conclusion that God's love for us is unbounding and unfailing, and that there's no decision that we can make against ourselves that God can't undo and that God won't help us to. So there's no depth that we can fall, that God never abandons us. And at least in my understanding, God never fails with any single one of us. I believe the love of God will succeed with every single one of us, will not leave any of us alone or abandon. Not everybody that comes to this church maybe reaches that conclusion, but I have. And so I want you to know, you know, if that if you need to reach that conclusion as a way of understanding the Christian faith that you can, you don't have to, but just know that that's on the table. But you know, you need to have your own journey, your own experience. So I just said that to him. Then he didn't say anything for about three or four months, still kept coming. And then we were sitting there one day and he talked and we were all we all jumped because he hadn't said anything, you know, for months. And he started talking, and I can't remember if he told me to the to the group or he told this to me privately. Now might have been privately, but he said to me, you know, that time that you told me about, you know, about your understanding of God? He said, well, when I lost everything in alcoholism, I got right to the very bottom. I did not consider myself to be a spiritual person, but when I hit the absolute bottom, I found that I was talking to somebody down there. You're the first person that's described to me. That person, that person that I met. Yeah, at the bottom. And I knew the person I met at the bottom, but I didn't know if that person was allowed in church or not.

00:56:08 Jason Clark: Oh, wow.

00:56:09 Jeromy Johnson: That's beautiful. David.

00:56:10 Jason Clark: Wow. Wow.

00:56:13 David Artmant: Yeah. And so just to say to him that, yes, that view of God is, has been understood as, as, as the most profound. I think for a lot of people in the history of the church, the greatest saints understood that this is who God is. Now that message has gotten muted and lost, I think, over the history of the Western Church and the medieval times and Dante's Inferno and all that kind of stuff. Through all the hellfire evangelical preaching we've all heard. But I think now that we're able to recover this and that this can be a part of your spiritual life, and if you're more interested, I can help you with more resources and that kind of stuff.

00:56:50 Jason Clark: Yeah.

00:56:51 David Artmant: So just seeing the power of that for somebody that's just completely defeated. Yeah. And then just into my own life, how it has given me, it's kind of supercharged my I'm not Pentecostal, but I almost feel like I've gotten baptized in the Holy Spirit since, I believe since I began believing this, because I think I was still performing in some way up to about age fifty. Yeah. And once I stopped performing and just started receiving in full confidence, well, that changed my whole spirituality. Yeah. And it wasn't like I had changed that much. I just, I thought God was going to save ninety nine and lose the one. Sort of the reverse of the parable that Jesus told. I thought that Jesus was going to save all but the absolute worst. And then I started believing that God isn't going to the God's going to save even the one percent, the one percent worst. And I started to recognize that I could be a part of that crew if my life had gone differently, that their salvation is a part of my salvation, and that when I that when I embrace that. So I went from believing God would save ninety nine percent, that God would save all. But that one percent change in my theology was like a nuclear spiritual explosion that went off in my life. It changed everything for me. Yeah. So, yeah, you know, I'm so excited about it that I know what that feeling is like when people get to it. And I just, I hope I think that's what we're all going to experience in eternity. But, man, if you can experience it on this side of the grave, that's that's a big deal.

00:58:18 Jeromy Johnson: Wow. Well, welcome to the club, David of smiling and laughing about your faith. Jason, how about you? How about, uh, what's the best thing about this belief that you started to give yourself permission to discover seven, eight years ago?

00:58:31 Jason Clark: Well, it's very, very much like David in that the liberty of this gospel. I'm not here to defend, but to live as a walking revelation. I had a shift sixteen years ago. Uh, that was, uh, what road was Paul on?

00:58:46 David Artmant: Damascus.

00:58:47 Jeromy Johnson: Damascus.

00:58:47 Jason Clark: I want to say Emmaus. It wasn't on the Damascus Road. Not that I was Paul. Not that I was persecuting his church, but that I had an awakening to Union. And, uh, I was exposed to the separation reality that I'd lived in. And I have one message since then. Uh, it's that he loves us. He loves us. He loves us. And that trust is my through line. For me, trust is. It's the commodity we trade in here on earth. It is the most precious thing you can. You can participate in and and without trust, you can't have access to intimacy and connection and authentic relationship. And so for me, I became like a dog on a bone, looking for any aspect of the nature of God where I had I couldn't trust him because where you can't trust him, you can't access friendship, access, connection, access, interaction, intimacy with him. And then that cuts you off around everyone else as well. So yeah, man, for me this journey has been one in which since that time, about sixteen years ago, where he confirmed that Jesus is what God has to say about himself, and that I don't get a say in how I see myself. And he sees me through the finished work of the cross, and that I needed to start living in agreement with that, and that I was giddy. I lived, uh, I went, I ended up on staff at a church. They called me Pastor Love. You know, uh, is God in a good mood today? They would say. And I said, yeah, he's in such a good mood today. You should ask him for something. I mean, this is. This is the good news that he loves us, that there's no shadow of turning and and and so since that time, I have been in my own life. And then once I get it, I have to share it systematically finding any flaw on my guidelines that would cut me off from his lap, that would cut me off from knowing, uh, the relational kindness that leads to repentance that transforms us. And so, yeah, that's the best thing I would say, um, that the liberty of this gospel, uh, I'm. Yeah. You know, like David, uh, with so true with the church. I'm not here to make you think like me. Like I'm in the long game of love. And the liberty of this gospel is that all things are being reconciled. So my job isn't to get you to think like me, to talk like me, to agree with me. In fact, you don't have to agree with me. I wrote a book called God Is Not in Control And the first thing I did when people said yes, he is, I was like, well, maybe he is like, I'm okay with you want to navigate this? I'm not here to defend some idea about God. I'm here to reveal him, and I'm here to reveal him as love and a love that transforms us. And so the liberty there to get to live in that space where I don't need you to agree with me. I don't need you to. To think like I think I just get to be a walking revelation of his goodness, his kindness and trust that he will transform. He will reveal himself to you. It's a beautiful thing.

01:01:50 David Artmant: I was talking to somebody the other. Now that I'm not a minister anymore, I. I get out in the public and I, I actually I've started playing chess at Springfield, Missouri. There's a good group of people that play chess, and most all of the people that I play chess with are very analytical kinds of thinkers and almost.

01:02:04 Jeromy Johnson: Sure.

01:02:05 David Artmant: Almost universally they are either atheists or agnostics because they've rejected the kind of Christianity they've been exposed to. And they just say, you know what? You represent that guy that makes a world and knows in advance that all these people are going to go to hell. Right. And then you try to convince us that he's good. You're one of those guys. Yeah. Yeah. And. Yeah.

01:02:23 Jeromy Johnson: And these are chess players. That move doesn't make any sense.

01:02:27 David Artmant: Right? That move doesn't make any sense. And then so, you know, I'll explain my position to them and they'll say, I don't know. There's an invisible God that loves us and we're in this world that's so crappy and horrible. I mean, it still sounds far fetched to me, right? And, um, this is what I believe. It's what gives me hope in my life. It's what gives me manageability. I love, I love believing it, but you don't have to believe it. I mean, if I'm right, I think you ultimately will believe it. But, yeah, I'm not worried about your ultimate destiny. I'm just enjoying getting to be friends and having this conversation. And we can talk about this as much as you want to, or we don't have to ever talk about it again.

01:03:02 Jeromy Johnson: And David, for Jason and I, you have no idea the weight that was lifted as evangelicals from carrying the world's souls on your shoulders. Yeah. Hey, you may be the only Bible that people will ever read right to to this.

01:03:15 David Artmant: But since I. But I say that stuff to people, right? And they're the ones that start asking me if I stop drinking when I was. I mean, I had one guy tell people that, um, I dated, but we never we never got married. But but what happened was, was ministry kind of got me. Well, ministry, you know, I, I kind of come from the world where drinking is not. I come from the non non-fundamentalist side. So that we were the side that. Oh yeah. You want to have a beer? Whatever. You know, just don't become, don't get addicted to it. Sure. Yeah. What I found out was that the pressure of ministry was starting to get me addicted to alcohol, because I had Friday and Saturday off, and I started to look forward to Friday to Thursday at five o'clock, so I could have some free beers to kind of make, make it all go away. And I wasn't saying to myself that I was that I was doing that, but I realized I was. And so I got to a point where I said, you know, I need to stop this. And I did. And so I really wasn't an alcoholic because if you're an alcoholic and you say, I'm going to stop this, you'll find out that you can't. Well, anyway, so when I go out and I play chess now, all of these breweries that I go to where I play chess, they all have non-alcoholic beer now, like they have like twenty different non-alcoholic beers and they're pretty good. And so I just drink the non-alcoholic beers. And this guy, this guy that I was talking to, I was trying to play chess with him. I'll just say he was not drinking non-alcoholic beer, but I guess we spent fifteen minutes playing chess in two hours talking about theology.

01:04:37 Jeromy Johnson: That's awesome.

01:04:39 David Artmant: Like I was saying, hey, do you want to get back to playing chess? And he said, well, let me ask you another question.

01:04:47 Jason Clark: I find that atheists are the most authentic, honest and curious in many ways. You know, I've had that conversation many times, uh, where they're an atheist. I'm like, yeah, I kind of am, too. Like, I don't believe in the God that you were taught.

01:05:02 David Artmant: It turns out that a lot of my closest friends now are people that don't believe in God, are agnostic or they're atheists or agnostics, but we're all just great friends. We play chess and hang out and.

01:05:13 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, I.

01:05:13 Jason Clark: Love.

01:05:14 Jeromy Johnson: That.

01:05:14 Jason Clark: I love that, and I love that there's a just an opportunity to be loved. Just to be you. Yeah. Just to be present again. Like Jeremy said, you know, the weight of the world. The weight of the world was on our shoulders. Uh, you know, you had to. I mean, I took a evangelical evangelistic class where they sent me to a college, and I wasn't going to pass unless I handed out tracts and and scared people shitless, you know, scared them. Yeah. Uh, you know, into just saying a prayer, and I couldn't do it. Uh, I just lied about it, and. Yeah, let the guy I was with give me get me to pass the class I passed, but but it didn't make any sense.

01:05:57 Jeromy Johnson: But because now we know they said no, you didn't, because now we know. Yeah.

01:06:02 Jason Clark: They never gave you my degree in.

01:06:03 David Artmant: The groups that I spend most of the time in, it's like, oh, yeah, we got a lot of different kinds of people here. As Dave over there, he thinks God's going to save everybody somehow. But anyway, a lot of people are here, you know. But then people will start gradually, like, well, why do you how do you think that or how could you how do you make that? How do you make that work from the Bible, you know.

01:06:21 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:22 Jason Clark: I love it, I love it.

01:06:24 Jeromy Johnson: All right, take a minute. Because how we view ourselves typically shapes how we view God and others. How has this changed your view of yourself?

01:06:33 David Artmant: Well, one of the things that happened when I first heard about Christianity, I thought it was kind of the same as Satanism.

01:06:38 Jeromy Johnson: Okay.

01:06:39 David Artmant: And I'll say this. Yeah. Because at the time I was in, I was like in teenager and The Exorcist movie was out and I went and saw The Exorcist. What happened in The Exorcist was Satan comes in and takes over this kid's life, and the kid doesn't get to be a kid anymore. The kid's head spins around and spits out vomit or whatever takes the kid is not the kid doesn't get to live anymore. Well, then when I went to church, they said the same thing. They said that Jesus is going to come into you and you're going to die, and he's going to live his life through you.

01:07:10 Jason Clark: Well, right. Yeah.

01:07:11 David Artmant: I didn't know I didn't grow up. You know, it's like, really? So if I say the prayer, then I die. Jesus is going to kill me, and then he's going to come in and he's going to live his life. So it seemed to me that both Jesus and Satan were kind of on the same page. They both wanted to kill me, and they both wanted to live their life in me instead of me getting to live my life. And I was like, listen, I'm not even sixteen yet. I would like to live my own life for a while, maybe make a few mistakes. I don't know what's going to happen, but can I, you know, Jesus and Satan? Can you just kind of hold off for a bit and let me be me for a little while? So but then later on, as I got to be older and I started to think that if maybe I do have an identity and maybe what's happening is this is over a long process, but maybe what's happening is God is not helping me to become who I'm not. God is helping me to become who I am. And so God is not taking away anything from me. That is essentially who I am, because who I am is essentially a child of the perfect God of love. The only thing that is natural to me is that perfect love and light and goodness. But as I go through this world and I learn more about how to understand that what it really is evil attaches itself to me, it insinuates itself into my life. And then so all that's happening is God is helping me to get rid of all that, or become aware of it so that we can work it out. And it's already been forgiven. God has worked the forgiveness, but I can receive that forgiveness and begin to work that out. But I'm always doing that now, under understanding that God's love for me is overwhelming and that God is never angry at me in the sense that God says, man, I wish I never made that kid God's anger. God's augé in the Greek is God's intention that God will not be satisfied to let any sin have the final, have a final residence in my life that I finally cannot escape from. That means that I don't have to obsess about whether or not I'm finally going to be delivered from X, Y, or Z. I'll work on it in my lifetime. I'll try to get as far as I can with God's help, but I can trust if there's something that is wicked in me that I haven't been able to defeat in my lifetime, that God will help me in the ages to come. And not just me, but everybody else. And I expect that that will be the case, that I don't expect to come before the judgment seat of God. And for God to say, well, huh? You're aware of every sin you've ever committed. You're aware of every single bad thought you've ever had. Your your heart is completely pure. There's nothing that we have to tell you about. There's nothing you have to just come on in.

01:09:46 Jeromy Johnson: Good job. David.

01:09:47 David Artmant: Yeah, I would think that everybody gets salted with fire, but salt is good. I guess I have never felt better about who I am and how God loves me, but I'm also very excited about the journey that I'm on, and that will happen to me after I die and that I get into God's eonian life, and I'm excited for that. And so it's helped me to, like, not be afraid of death and to not be afraid of death for other people, but to see that God's life and God's goodness is working through all of us. And it helps me to accept and love myself. And then it helps me to love and accept other people. So, you know, that kind of makes you have a good day if you're if you're living that way.

01:10:33 Jeromy Johnson: Sounds like some good fruit. Some really good fruit. Yeah. Jason, how about you?

01:10:38 Jason Clark: Yeah. Love doesn't have to try to love. Love doesn't have to do push ups or bootstrap it. Love is love. What you've said, I can I can kind of speak to that as well. And the fruit of this, of this love message is that, oh, this is it that I get to live, uh, in the truth of my being now as opposed to later. and the fruits of the spirit become accessible not through trying but through rest. The confidence of of living in his affection is beautiful, and so being able to have access to that confidence. Uh, not as a bootstrap. Not not not not like like I don't wake up in the morning and go, I gotta do push ups today to to get access to these fruits. I just put my head upon his chest, and I, I get to live in the response of love. There was once upon a time where I lived with this weight of responsibility, like I had to somehow defend God, and thus, honestly, I had to defend myself. I'll say this I have many times in my life, felt what Peter might have felt in the Garden of Gethsemane when he swung his sword. He was swinging it in defense of his ideology. He was swinging it to defend his ideas about God. Uh, and I've been on the I've been on the ducking side of that sword. And I've been on the swinging side of that sword where you're swinging it and imagine what he feels. He loves Jesus. And I've loved Jesus. He loves the kingdom. He loves so much about God. But because he's got the lens flawed, because he's got a flaw on his lens, he's living in a neurosis, a fear he's got. Not only does he have to be willing to die for God, but he has to be willing to kill for God. And you know, he's a farmer with a sword. What the hell is going on with this story? It doesn't make any. And I've lived there. I've lived in that desperate insecurity where I have to defend my ideology. I have to defend my ideas about God. And the liberty of this, of this good news is that I. I'm I'm on a beach with Jesus where he says the sword is in the extension of your arm. It's a revelation of my love. Now feed my sheep. Live in a greater revelation of how I love you, and live as a response. And and to me, I would say my hope is, is that if you talk to my wife and my kids, they're they're more aware of my my love for them today than they were yesterday. And my hope is that my friends would be more confident and how I feel about them today than they did yesterday. And and none of it is striving. And when I am striving, that's a that's a road sign that I'm participating in some life.

01:13:15 David Artmant: You're not going around being desperate all the time.

01:13:18 Jason Clark: Yeah. Well, it's it's it's it's I mean, this this was the thing sixteen years ago. He literally said to me, Jason, you don't get a say in how I see you. And desperation is an illegal emotion to participate in. Not that you won't feel it, but that I'm not interested in desperate kids. Everything I have is yours. And I'm not looking for you to be desperate for me. Imagine if your kids followed you around, uh, the house. And there's a song in the charismatic movement that goes. And I am desperate for you. And I used to sing that it was my love song to God. He met me there, but he said, imagine your kids walking around the house singing that song, And it was true. They were desperate for your affection. They were desperate for your food. They were desperate. It's. It's BS. You would be a bad father. Someone would have to report you. I'm not like that. And I don't want you living in that insecure place, that desperate place. Instead, I want you to live in the confidence of my affection. Everything I have is yours. And now you get to live in the overflow. You don't have to defend me. You get to reveal me. And so to me, that's the joy of this gospel. I get access to the fruits of the spirit that are discovered in rest and in the finished work of the cross. So this is beautiful thing.

01:14:28 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, it is, it is.

01:14:29 David Artmant: Yeah.

01:14:30 Jeromy Johnson: Hey, your Canadian. Canadian.

01:14:32 David Artmant: Oh, Canada. Oh, I'm a Toronto Blue Jays fan now.

01:14:35 Jason Clark: I am so sorry.

01:14:36 Jeromy Johnson: No.

01:14:37 David Artmant: It's no, it was a fantastic season. They did better than anybody thought they were going to do. I went up to Toronto and went to the Rogers Centre. Saw him beat, saw him beat the Yankees and it was right at the turning point in the season where people were going like, these guys might make it all the way. And, uh, yeah, they and uh, man that Toronto, the Blue Jays, that's the national team of Canada and, uh, I'm loving Canada came close.

01:15:01 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah, yeah.

01:15:02 David Artmant: You know, and sometimes, uh, you know, sometimes the people that win aren't what somebody said. The first shall be last. The last.

01:15:09 Jeromy Johnson: Oh, okay. Anyway. Okay.

01:15:11 David Artmant: You know what I like to say is that the, you know, the we all kind of knew that the Dodgers are probably going to win at the beginning of the season, none of us saw the Toronto Blue Jays come. And so what I like to say is the Dodgers might have won the series, but the Blue Jays won our hearts. And what would you rather have?

01:15:28 Jeromy Johnson: There you go. Ah, there you go go.

01:15:31 David Artmant: Go Jays go Jays go Canada go Canada.

01:15:35 Jeromy Johnson: Eh eh. This is awesome I David you're at Grace saves all Jason. You're at rethinking God with tacos and I'm at slutty Grace. What's great is hopefully all of our listeners and all of our audience can really start to feel and resonate with this message. Um, I do want to do a quick speed round and we're going to just limit to like 10s. Okay, David. Okay. All right. Yeah.

01:16:02 Jason Clark: Okay.

01:16:03 Jeromy Johnson: We're going to see how it goes. Jason, you were going to say something really quick.

01:16:06 Jason Clark: Well, I I'm grateful to you guys too. And, uh, because we, we try and release this as a bonus on our tacos podcast. At some point, we'll, we'll we'll have to have tacos together. I always ask my guests for taco story, but we don't have to get into that other than I just need a head nod. Uh, you know, uh, you guys tacos, guys? Yeah. Steak or chicken or fish? What would what would be the.

01:16:30 Jeromy Johnson: Okay, well, here we go. Because we're about to enter a speed round and you're going to love this first question. All right, all right. So speed round ten to fifteen seconds each. First one favorite taco. And we're going to go uh, Jason David and then myself.

01:16:43 Jason Clark: Carne asada uh cilantro a little bit of onion. I know I'm going to get myself in trouble, but I love the flour over the corn tortilla and a very hot salsa. And I am a very happy man. You can put a little cheese, a little sour cream on there too, if you want, but you don't have to.

01:17:01 Jeromy Johnson: All right, David.

01:17:02 David Artmant: I'm gonna go. I'm gonna go, uh, flour tortilla, fish taco, uh, avocado, guacamole, some lime, some good picante sauce on it. And, uh, sounds great.

01:17:14 Jeromy Johnson: Any street tacos in Mexico that you're risking your intestines for? That's gonna be one of the best tacos.

01:17:23 Jason Clark: I'm learning a lot about you in that answer. Learning a lot about you.

01:17:26 Jeromy Johnson: All right, second question. Disneyland or Disney World?

01:17:30 Jason Clark: Oh.

01:17:31 David Artmant: Disney World? Um, neither.

01:17:34 Jeromy Johnson: Neither. Okay, okay, so you said world, but you live on the East Coast, so it's closer. I would say land because it's it's the original. I mean, Walt.

01:17:42 Jason Clark: I've never been. So you might be right, but, uh.

01:17:45 Jeromy Johnson: Well, we'll have tacos in Disneyland.

01:17:46 Jason Clark: You know what I changed? Can I change my vote? Because it's probably. The weather's probably perfect.

01:17:50 Jeromy Johnson: There it is.

01:17:52 Jason Clark: Yes, it is Disneyland. Because you got. There's a very small window where I would enjoy Disney World.

01:17:58 Jeromy Johnson: And David's not there, but we'll we'll bring you there anyhow. David. Okay. Okay. Question you would ask Jesus. Ten fifteen seconds.

01:18:06 David Artmant: Oh, well, I just want to know about the restoration of all things. And, uh, you know, how does that how does that work? Um, how does how does divinity work? Yeah. How do what's your self-understanding and awareness?

01:18:18 Jason Clark: I guess I gotta have a precursor. Is it after I die or right now?

01:18:23 Jeromy Johnson: Yeah. I mean, face to face after you die.

01:18:25 Jason Clark: Oh, because I would like to. I would like to meet Bono in this life. I don't know. That might be a question I have. Well, I mean.

01:18:32 David Artmant: The first thing I want to say, I mean, if if I'm coming into the light and I get to meet a being of Divine's like, are you Jesus? And have you saved us all?

01:18:40 Jason Clark: Yes, exactly.

01:18:42 Jeromy Johnson: Exactly.

01:18:43 Jason Clark: Well, of course, of course. That being right on brand.

01:18:46 Jeromy Johnson: That thing is going to say a lot.

01:18:48 David Artmant: Because I want you to know, I got a lot of writing on this.

01:18:53 Jason Clark: Okay.

01:18:54 Jeromy Johnson: So, Jason, you would say, Jesus, I want to ask Bono a question. Perfect. Awesome. Awesome. Okay. Creek or creek?

01:19:03 Jason Clark: Uh, Creek.

01:19:05 David Artmant: Well, I played the played the banjo. So Salt Creek, you know, would be the kind of a, you know, Cripple Creek.

01:19:12 Jason Clark: Good, good. Lord willing. And the creek don't rise. You ever heard that? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is creek.

01:19:18 Jeromy Johnson: I mean, no one spells it c r I c, right?

01:19:21 David Artmant: Yeah.

01:19:21 Jason Clark: Creek. That's right. Yeah.

01:19:22 Jeromy Johnson: Last one. Parting words to those who are listening.

01:19:27 Jason Clark: Oh, go, Jason. I just say I'm thankful. I'm thankful, uh, to you guys. And thankful for those that are listening. I'm grateful for the moment we're in.

01:19:37 David Artmant: Yeah, I think it's an exciting time. We're in the time of the rediscovery, of the reconciliation of all things, as I think, the most beautiful gospel that was ever preached in the early centuries of the church. And we get to be a part of the revival, and it's just exciting and let's go for it.

01:19:52 Jason Clark: Come on.

01:19:53 Jeromy Johnson: Revival. You're Pentecostal now. Look at this. Yeah, I know you guys are.

01:19:56 David Artmant: You guys are affecting me.

01:19:58 Jeromy Johnson: And I would say, um, yeah, be thankful, but know that God has will and will always love you.

01:20:07 Jason Clark: Come on.

01:20:07 Jeromy Johnson: And there's never been any separation. There never will be. Don't believe the bullshit. Just step in and lean into it. Have the courage to let go of that fear. Because I guarantee you, the God that you're going to find is so much bigger, so much more beautiful, and so much more loving than you ever could have imagined. And I'm not just saying that it's beautiful.

01:20:32 Jason Clark: Amen. Amen. Amen. Yes and amen. Thanks.

01:20:36 Jeromy Johnson: Right, gentlemen. Thank you. It was fun.

01:20:38 David Artmant: You're welcome.

01:20:39 Jason Clark: Loved it. Loved every second of it. Guys. Good to see you, David. Good to meet you, Jeremy.