1. What question are you trying to explore in this new book?<\/strong><\/p>\n In my work, I continually hear people say, \u201cI feel like I\u2019m being pulled in a thousand directions\u201d or \u201cI feel scattered.\u201d Around this is a pervasive sense of busyness, exhaustion, anxiety and a significant existential question \u2013 Am I enough? My aim was to address this universal phenomenon with an examination of our longing for wholeheartedness \u2013 an undivided life. And so, in this new book I call upon poets and psychologists, sociologists and theologians, neurobiologists and mystics to help me address our lack of wholeheartedness, our hope for wholeheartedness, and our pathway to wholeheartedness.<\/p>\n 2. What drew you to the topic of wholeheartedness? What I\u2019d love to say is that I\u2019ve been fascinated by the complex psyche of Pete Enns for years and wanted to figure him out. But he is a lifelong Yankees fan, as am I, and so he is the embodiment of wholeheartedness. Reality is, I\u2019m busy, I\u2019m tired, my life feels scattered. I\u2019m an ordained minister, I\u2019ve got a clinical counseling degree and a PhD in psychology and I am still plagued by my own inner divisions. Clearly you can\u2019t acquire or achieve wholeheartedness. Much of what I\u2019ve learned about it is from failing at it \u2013 in dark moments when I wondered if I\u2019d come apart at the seams, in times when I\u2019d get praise but still feel like I wasn\u2019t quite enough. Wholeheartedness offers a lot of good thinking from wise social scientists and biblical scholars, but it is also an archaeological dig of my own soul. It\u2019s the product of a contemplative journey, a therapeutic journey, a liturgical journey. I bring together many different strands to examine wholeheartedness and offer a pathway to it.<\/p>\n 3. What are a 2-3 parts of the book you\u2019re most excited about?<\/strong><\/p>\n I will tell you what resonates with people I talk to, particularly when I\u2019m out at churches or conferences offering this material. The first is the question \u2013 Am I enough? We live in a scarcity culture. We\u2019re not sure if we\u2019re pretty enough, financially secure enough, relevant enough. I\u2019ve had 50 year old CEO\u2019s say that they feel this question deep in their bones, as well as stay-at-home Mom\u2019s, veteran pastors, bus drivers, and wealthy Silicon Valley software developers. I\u2019m also very excited about bringing important poetic voices into this conversation, though I wasn\u2019t excited to find out that I had to pay poetry permissions to get their voices in there. (Pete, do you have $2000 I can borrow?) The poets I include have been companions on my journey, and they put words around our complexity in a way that I cannot. Finally, I think that I\u2019m just as excited as readers are about the final three chapters which offer a kind of contemplative-psychological-liturgical pathway to wholeheartedness. I hope that is provocative enough to get folks to read through to the end!<\/p>\n 4. You would consider yourself Reformed in your theology. How does this book on wholeheartedness fit that framework? I define wholeheartedness as oneness and worthiness in Christ. I believe that this is deeply Christian and \u201cReformed\u201d definition. Oneness \u2013 we\u2019re made in and for union and communion. Our divided hearts seek love in places that disappoint, but real union is available not merely as a theological concept but as a relational reality. The well-known 20th century Reformed theologian John Murray jumped on the back of John Calvin when he wrote: \u201cUnion with Christ is the central truth of the whole doctrine of salvation.\u201d Yes! But how is that worked out in real lives? Read the book. Second, worthiness. Whenever I talk about our worthiness, Reformed folks begin to panic. We have this love affair with feeling bad about ourselves. This couldn\u2019t be further from a Reformed view of sin. Sin reminds us that we\u2019ve blown it, that we\u2019re guilty, not that we\u2019re unworthy to our core. It\u2019s precisely because God bestows to us dignity and worthiness that he pursues us to the ends of the earth, to hell and back. John Calvin once imagined walking down the street and seeing someone (who isn\u2019t a Christian) in a place of pain and need. He wrote, \u201cbut look to the image of God in them, an image which, covering and obliterating their faults, should by its beauty and dignity allure us to love and embrace them.\u201d And then, in a wink in the direction of many today involved in the important work of social justice, he writes, \u201cthe image of God, which recommends him to you, is worthy of your giving yourself and all your possessions.\u201d I\u2019m Reformed because I think this tradition takes human brokenness very seriously, but because it also takes God\u2019s generosity very seriously. God\u2019s vision for wholehearted lives of flourishing animates this work.<\/p>\n 5. Who are you trying to reach with this book? I can see this book being used in a wide variety of settings \u2013 by solo readers engaging a more intentional journey to oneness and worthiness, by small groups (check out my \u201cReader\u2019s Guide\u201d here), in a college or seminary classroom, by therapists and caregivers. I could see it being read by leaders looking to cultivate flourishing in their teams. I should say \u2013 I identify as a Christian, but I wrote it as a conversation starter for skeptics, as well. Some of my best friends don\u2019t identify as Christians, and I conversed with them through the process. I think that all of us experience shame and division \u2013 it\u2019s a universal human phenomenon. Skeptics see our divisions with a zoom lens in our polarized theological debates and our hypocritical lives. And so, I\u2019d hope that skeptics and Christians alike who long to flourish in a messed up world would allow this book to create (dare I say) wholehearted conversations for the sake of wholehearted lives.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
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