Hearing the Voice of the Good Shepherd

A Conversation with Russell Moore

Russell Moore is the Editor-in-Chief at Christianity Today and the author of Losing Our Religion: An Altar Call for Evangelical America. In this conversation with In Good Faith host Steven Kapp Perry, Russell discusses his early cynicism about Christianity and what pulled him through to the other side of belief and practice.

Did you grow up in a believing home?

I grew up in a Southern Baptist church that had been pastored by my grandfather. He had retired before I was born, but it was a very cohesive community. It wasn't a perfect church by any means, but I was able to see my beliefs demonstrated in many real and tangible ways.

I came to personal faith in Christ at about 11 or 12 years old. I went through a faith crisis at a very young age, around 15. I was worried. I thought, What if this is all just politics or Southern culture, and Jesus is the hood ornament on top? Is this all just a means to an end?

I spent a considerable time working through that. I didn't have many people to talk to. Thankfully, I'd read the Chronicles of Narnia so many times as a kid that I recognized the name C. S. Lewis on the spine of a book. “Mere Christianity” really was the mechanism to pull me out of that doubt—not because of the arguments, although those are good and sound, it was more the tone of voice that inspired me. Lewis obviously wasn't trying to sell me anything or to mobilize me. He was actually bearing witness to something true and real and beautiful, and that helped me to work through that process.

I suppose that's why, for the rest of my life, I have understood people who are in that situation I was in when I was 15.

If young people today heard more of people's personal conversion and connection to Christ, would that help them get there sooner? Rather than just saying, here are the rules we live by.

Yeah, I think especially if they see people for whom the faith is first, and everything else comes after that. That's one of the really disillusioning things that we see right now: a group of people who would be together, no matter what, and who are at odds with people they would be at odds with, no matter what. That's one of the things that I see very differently in the ministry of Jesus and the life of the early church.

In the book of Acts, for instance, you have this shaking up and putting together of people who may have had nothing else in common except for following Jesus. It created quite a bit of disruption throughout the early church era, but it also created a witness to what's really true and what's really important.

One of the things I enjoy about being part of a local interfaith association is that chance to meet people I would not have met. Because you do so much interacting with people that may be different from you, how do you remember that we are here to work together? What is it that helps you do that?

For me, it's really not a least common denominator sort of conversation. I never show up as anything less than what I actually am: a conservative Evangelical Protestant who believes the creeds and confessions that I believe.

I've found that if you actually have confidence in what you believe, you're not threatened by conversations with other people who may differ from you. Often, though you disagree on everything else, you'll find one thing that you have in common.

Right before I came in here, I was texting a friend of mine, who’s a very secular, progressive Muslim. We started working together on some refugee issues some 15 years ago. I realized that we actually really love each other and appreciate each other. We don't agree on everything, and we don't have to. If you have people who actually have confidence in what they believe, even just agreeing on one issue where you can work together, that's a path forward.

That's beautifully stated. I love the whole idea that you have to be all of who you are to show up and feel you actually belong there. And the other person from a different faith has to be able to show up as all of who they are.

Yeah. Last year, I taught at a very secular university. I think all of my students were from completely secular backgrounds, and most of them had never met an Evangelical Christian until me. They’d ask me theological questions because they really wanted to talk to somebody who wasn't scared or embarrassed about those things, and they could actually have a conversation. I think we need more of that.

Do you have particular reasons for believing in God?

I think that I am convinced by the person of Jesus. I really believe both intellectual and experiential reasons that the resurrection actually happened. That means that I'm very attentive to the authority of what Jesus says.

There's a novelist essayist, Frederick Beechner, who said at one point, “I can't really articulate in terms of a syllogism or an abstraction. I can just tell you there's something about the voice of Jesus that inclines me to follow him.” I think that's true. The way that Jesus is calling all of his disciples in the Gospels is, “come and see.” And they do.

I really have become convinced that Jesus is who he said he was, and the gospel is what it is. I've seen that demonstrated and lived out. As Jesus says, the spirit blows where he wills, and you don't see the wind, but you see the results. I have seen that.

On rough days, I flip through a red-letter Bible and find the red letters—the ones that we attribute to Jesus personally. There is something about reading what he said and what he did. Hearing it directly is pretty uplifting and encouraging to me.

It's also true that you have in Jesus somebody who was both scandalously offensive (I am the way the truth and the life; No one comes to the Father except through me) and gentle. He was not personally threatened or insulted by talking with a Samaritan woman who disagrees with much of what he was saying. That's somebody who actually knew where he was coming from, where he was going, and who he was.

What are personal practices, or maybe rituals, that you do to connect you to the divine?

I find it easiest to pray walking. If I find myself prayerless, it helps to walk. I had a very wise person, an older man, who said to me one time when I said, “I just don't feel motivated to pray right now.” He said, “Then say that.” God, I don't feel motivated to pray right now. That is itself a prayer: God, I don’t feel motivated to pray right now.

I think we all have different ways of feeling the Holy Spirit. Of course, I always want more answers than I think I'm getting. Are there particular ways you have felt prepared or guided to the kind of things you do today?

For a long time, I was very suspicious of that language. I saw that used in my context in some really awful ways—subjectivity defined as, “this is God leading me.”

As time has gone on, most of the major decisions that I've made in my life, I didn't make by writing pros and cons on a sheet of paper. Instead, and I'd spent a lot of time in counsel with people that I really trust. And one of them said, “You've already made this decision. You just don't know it. Your mind isn't there yet, but you're there.” And his point was, I think that God's been working underground in your psyche in ways that are almost imperceptible and invisible to you.

I think of the shepherd metaphor that's used in both the Old and New Testaments. It's a voice that is calling, but it's not a map. I'm the kind of person who would like a map. I would like to have everything detailed out and all of the mystery removed, but that’s not what life is or who God is. He provides just enough light from the pillar of fire for the next step.

It sounds like you have become comfortable with that situation.

I have, and I've seen that not just in my own life but in everybody that I deal with. I have never seen the most important instances of God’s intervention happening at moments of triumph—they almost always are times when God seems to be absent or silent. And I'm at the moment saying, “Where is God? I can't see where I'm going.” It's only looking backward that I'm able to see God was doing all of these things with me and for me that I couldn't recognize then.

When I was going through a really difficult time, I spent a lot of time in the life of Elijah. I had always thought of him first as the prophet who's in the contest with the prophets of Baal calling down a literal fire from heaven. But what I saw is that the center of Elijah in 1 Kings is not that. It's in the wilderness where Elijah feels as though he’s been completely abandoned. He realizes that God is present—not in the earthquake, and not in the whirlwind, and not in the fire, but in this sound of thinnest silence. God is there.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length. Listen to the full interview here.

The In Good Faith podcast, hosted by Steven Kapp Perry, aims to build bridges of understanding between religions. In talking with believers of different faiths, In Good Faith highlights personal experience and commonalities across spiritual traditions.