4:13 Podcast: Can I Experience My Highest Good Even When Reality Isn’t So Good? With Mary Wiley [Episode 344]

Mary Wiley: Everyone has been searching for this good life. And many of the philosophers thought, hey, maybe it's moral goodness. Maybe if we can just be good enough, we can make right choices, then we can live good lives. While others said, hey, maybe if we cultivate beauty and we make sure that everything sounds pretty and it looks pretty, then that is good.

And yet, the Bible has an answer for us. And the Bible doesn't say the things that we receive from God's hand are our highest good, although they are certainly good. But what the Bible really says is our highest good, the prize of our salvation is God himself.

Jennifer Rothschild: Are you living your highest good? And is that even possible when life isn't always good? Well, today's guest, author Mary Wiley, says you can, and she's going to show you how it is possible. You don't need more to-dos or a set of step-by-step instructions to get there on your own. Oh, no. Living your highest good only comes by spending time in the presence of God. And Mary, she's going to give you three very practical ways to experience the good that God has just for you. You are going to love this conversation.

So let's get it going, KC.

KC Wright: Welcome to the 4:13 Podcast, where practical encouragement and biblical wisdom set you up to live the "I Can" life, because you can do all things through Christ who strengthens you.

Now, welcome your host, Jennifer Rothschild.

Jennifer Rothschild: Hey, friends. Glad you're here today. You are in the podcast right place today. We're here in the closet, me and KC. Two friends, one topic, and zero stress. And I'm telling you, even if we started with any stress, it goes away when we think of you on the other side of these microphones.

KC Wright: So true.

Jennifer Rothschild: Thanks for letting us in your ears and in your hearts and in your lives.

KC Wright: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: We are so grateful. We do consider y'all our 4:13 family. So welcome. And hope everything has gone well for you this week. We've had a good week -- well, I've had a good week. I haven't even asked KC about his week, because sometimes it's better just to wait till we get on mic for me to ask. Because y'all, I never, ever know what I'm going to hear. But I have learned that he doesn't even have to make stuff up because his life is so weird.

Okay, now I set you up. Did you have an ordinary week? Did you have anything wack-a-doodle happen to you this week? Because you entertain me with your --

KC Wright: I'll just tell you about what happened last night.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay. What happened last night?

KC Wright: So our church has something called the Community Table. So the first Wednesday of every month, we give an invitation to our neighbors to come to the table, our Community Table --

Jennifer Rothschild: I love this.

KC Wright: -- and we give them a free hot meal.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, that's nice.

KC Wright: So it's the first Wednesday of every month from 5:30 to 6:30, and we've got a wonderful family that runs with this. We have a food pantry at our church as well. So the people that come Saturdays to get free groceries and hygiene and shoes and things, they also get an invite to come and have dinner with us.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, I love it.

KC Wright: And then the dinner concludes with all of us going upstairs and having one full hour of uninterrupted worship. It's a night of worship.

Well, I was put in charge of picking up the main course for this dinner, which is 20 chickens from Costco. I don't know why they thought it was a good idea to put me in charge of picking up these chickens. But, you know, I live my life through JR because she's in Italy, she's outside the gates of C.S. Lewis' home. You know, she lives this -- I'm on vacation, I turn on the TV and she's on QVC. I mean, she lives the epic life; I get to go to Costco. Okay? That's the highlight of my day, is Costco.

Jennifer Rothschild: Twenty chicken -- okay, hold on. Can I just say, I am visualizing KC in Costco with 20 rotisserie chickens in a cart.

KC Wright: So I blast into Costco just to grab these chickens. And that's all I need, I just need the chickens. And you have 20 chickens, and I kept getting stopped.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, I bet.

KC Wright: This lady came up to me and she goes, "Where are you going with all them chickens?"

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, my gosh.

KC Wright: Real nosey. Nosey. And I wanted to say, "None of your business," but I had to remind myself, you're a Christian.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right, right.

KC Wright: Why don't you tell her. So I told her about the Community Table and I invited her to church.

Jennifer Rothschild: Oh, that's nice.

KC Wright: And then I get up to do the self-checkout, and once again this family behind me, "Where are you going with all those chickens?" I was creating such a conversation walking through Costco with all these chickens.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. Well, that's a great witness, you and the chickens. Jesus had the disciples; you had the chickens.

KC Wright: Anyway, I'm not kidding you -- I am not exaggerating -- I think I was stopped by at least five people before I got to the end -- you know, the front door where you have to show them the receipt.

Jennifer Rothschild: And then when you're checking out just to get out the door, they're like, "Where you going with all these chickens?"

KC Wright: Finally, I got to her and I go, "Ask me why I like chicken." She said, "Why?" And I went, "Because" (imitating a chicken). Because that's an epic dad joke.

Jennifer Rothschild: That is the best thing.

KC Wright: That has actually landed me free Chipotle before, so you can use that.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, that's very good. Wow, KC. Okay, I didn't know I was going to get all that when I asked. You're welcome, my friends. You are welcome. Okay, that's good, that's really good.

And so now there's absolutely no way to transition with any reasonableness --

KC Wright: No, no.

Jennifer Rothschild: -- to Mary Wiley. She's going to be talking about our highest good, which probably has very little to do with 20 chickens. But hey, dude, well done.

KC Wright: Yeah. Thank you.

Jennifer Rothschild: All right, introduce Mary.

KC Wright: Mary Wiley is a Bible teacher and the author of "Everyday Theology: What You Believe Matters" and two books for kids, "Life As A Christian" and "The Gospel Story," with a third one releasing very soon. Mary serves as the associate publisher at B&H Publishing Group, and she and her husband, John, have three children and live in the Nash-Vegas area. It's Nashville. I just call it Nash-Vegas.

Now, listen in to Jennifer and Mary talk about her book, "Our Highest Good." This is going to be so good, y'all.

Jennifer Rothschild: All right, Mary. You and I have known each other in different capacities over the years, but this is so fun for me to get to talk to you as an author, because you have so much to give, and it shows up in this book. So I want us to start with the title, because the title is "Our Highest Good." And we all want that, right? But we're not quite sure sometimes what that is, and there's a lot of opinions about actually what is good. So tell us right up front, what is our highest good?

Mary Wiley: Well, this book is really centered on Christ as our highest good. So I think in today's world, we are all trying to find the good life. And not just in today's world. This is something the philosophers have been talking about since they could think, right? Everyone has been searching for this good life. And many of the philosophers thought, hey, maybe it's moral goodness. Maybe if we can just be good enough, we can make right choices, then we can live good lives. While others said, hey, maybe if we cultivate beauty and we make sure that everything sounds pretty and it looks pretty, then that is good.

And yet, the Bible has an answer for us. And the Bible doesn't say the things that we receive from God's hand are our highest good, although they are certainly good. But what the Bible really says is our highest good, the prize of our salvation, is God himself.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow. Okay, so -- and what's interesting, as you described that I was thinking the things that the philosophers searched for and maybe we tried to call good, all of that is an outflow of our highest good.

Mary Wiley: That's right.

Jennifer Rothschild: Beauty, morality, what we would call virtue, it's all an outflow. And so, yeah, what a -- I mean, how logical and beautiful is that, that Christ is our highest good. So since that is true, you know, that God is our highest good, that means we don't just want to know about him from a theoretical perspective; we want to know him. So let's kind of turn to theology. Now, that can be an intimidating word for people. But you define it as a relationship, a glorious meeting. I love that phrase. It's an ongoing conversation with the God who created all things.

Okay, so we don't often think of theology like that. So I'm curious, how did thinking of theology like that change you or change your perspective of God?

Mary Wiley: Yeah. So as a teenager, I was really, really curious about what the Bible had to say about God. I was hungry for His Word. And I had a really great youth minister -- although, I think he may have just been trying to keep me out of his office -- but a really great youth minister who gave me his copy of "Systematic Theology." He was like, "I think the answers to your questions are in here somewhere. Can you just leave."

And so I read "Systematic Theology" from cover to cover and felt like I -- I really began to think through the ways of God. And I had a whole lot of knowledge about it. And often when we think about theology, we're thinking about the things that maybe we memorize or just the truths about God that we know. And so while it is beneficial for us to learn -- absolutely. I'm a huge fan of learning. And I'm continuing in classrooms even today because I love to learn. But theology is not for the purpose of puffing up knowledge in our heads so that we can win arguments or we can be the smartest person in the room. The goal of theology is really that we would rightly worship the God of the Bible. And the Good News of the Gospel is not that we do something, but that we know someone who has done something on our behalf.

And so theology really began to open up for me -- I went to a Bible college and began to really see that this thing we called theology is really just a meeting with God, that we know him, that we love him, that we draw closer and closer to him as he draws closer and closer to us, and that it's not this intellectual dusty library, musty '80s carpet. At least that was true in my college, the musty carpet smells. That's not the picture of theology that we get. It is an invitation.

The real picture of theology is the parable of the prodigal son. Which I prefer to call the parable of the running father. And it is a father whose arms are wide open, a daddy whose eyes have been scanning the horizon for his returning-home son. Theology is really the journey of us being brought back home, right? We were exiled from the goodness of God in the Garden, exiled from those moments where God had created everything, and as he created, he called each thing good. That we were sent out from that goodness. Although God did go with his people, which I think we often miss. It wasn't that God completely abandoned his people, it's that they did not get to see the fullness of his goodness and his glory any longer. And so the work of theology is just a coming back to God.

Jennifer Rothschild: Okay, so what I love about that -- you probably said "good" about 12 times. And I love that, because sometimes we're so intimidated by theology because we think it's an out-there seminary '80s musty carpet thing. And you're saying no, it is just literally -- well, like it says in Psalms, it is tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. And isn't it interesting, the psalmist in that verse, Mary, he could have said taste and see that the Lord is massive, taste and see that the Lord is holy.

Mary Wiley: Uh-huh, he could.

Jennifer Rothschild: No. He said "good." Good. It's our highest good.

Mary Wiley: That's right.

Jennifer Rothschild: So in your devotional, you deal a lot with beauty. That's an important concept in your book. So I would like to hear from you, what is the beauty of God, and how is beauty related to theology?

Mary Wiley: Yes. So I've been on a journey to really redefine what beauty means. And I didn't set out to go on this journey, but I found a scholar who is really the most prominent theologian in the 20th century. His name is Hans Urs von Balthasar. Say that two times fast. And he talks a lot about how beauty is the undercurrent of all theology. That in our culture, we're pretty good at getting truth right. When we think about the transcendentals of goodness, truth, and beauty, we're pretty good at drawing hard black-and-white lines and saying this is what is true and this is not true. We're relatively okay at calling things good that are good. We're not going to call something that is utterly evil good, at least not in the church. Now, global culture, there's certainly examples we could point to where this is happening.

But I think even within our churches, beauty becomes in so many ways the forgotten attribute of God in our Western culture. We live in a culture that is all about productivity. It is about efficiency. I laugh with my friends often -- and really the study of beauty for me got started by asking the question, "Why are we okay with worshiping in black boxes that used to be K-Marts?" When people spent their whole life across multiple generations to build cathedrals in other places in the world, what has changed for us? And I think in so many ways, it is this idea of I need to move fast, I need it to be marketable. I only need the space that I need and the things that I absolutely need when it comes to efficiency, utilitarianism. And we think that beauty is extra, that it is lavish, that maybe it's even outside of the favor of God because we might be using resources that we would use elsewhere in another way to serve him differently.

And I think we've really lost the glory that we see when Isaiah sees the filling of the temple and he falls on his face. In Isaiah 1, he says, "Woe is me." He sees this amazing glory of God. And glory and beauty are often used pretty interchangeably in Scripture, and yet this vision of who God is is so important to Isaiah that he would be moved to go be -- deliver a really difficult message to God's people. That it was this vision of God that kept him going.

And in so many ways, the promise of Scripture is that Christ has given us new eyes to see. That in His Word, our eyes are illuminated. It's often calling God's Word light and God's people light. That there is this spiritual perception, this spiritual seeing that is tied to being a believer that sees something more glorious than our human eyes could ever imagine.

And Jennifer, I know this is probably really special for you. I love story of Fanny Crosby --

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah.

Mary Wiley: -- which I would imagine you're probably familiar with. Fanny wrote about 9,000 hymns, many of which we still sing today. She was absolutely prolific. And at the age of about six months, she lost her sight due to an infection that a doctor couldn't figure out how to heal. And she was singing at a church in her later years, and a pastor came to her and said, really apologetically, "Fanny, I'm so sorry you've had to deal with this your whole life. What a difficult plight the Lord has given you." And the story says that Fanny smiled, and she said, "If I had had any choice at birth to be seeing or to be blind, I would choose to be blind because the first face I will see is the face of Christ." And if we could really live that way, we could really say the beauty of Christ is what is my highest good, to see a suffering man on a cross as our highest level of good.

Hans Urs von Balthasar would say beauty is not found in symmetry or in harmony, although those things may be pretty. I think if he lived today, he would say beauty is not in the fancy pictures of your house on Instagram, it is not in creating the perfect table space for your holiday parties, but really true beauty, to look at true beauty is to cast your eyes on a suffering man on the cross and to see the depth of God's love.

Jennifer Rothschild: Wow.

Mary Wiley: Now, can we reflect his beauty in the way that we cultivate things? Absolutely. That comes full circle to how I feel about cathedrals and how I feel about the beauty of where we should worship and how we should follow suit in so many ways of those who've gone before us, to make beautiful things to worship God, to glorify God with our hands. But that's not our ultimate. Our ultimate beauty or our ultimate good, that our ultimate beauty is found in Christ and Christ alone.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. It's such an interesting cycle almost. The beauty that we see here that we perceive should cast our gaze to the higher beauty.

Mary Wiley: Yes.

Jennifer Rothschild: And it's almost like, Mary, if we don't consider and contemplate the beauty of God, then in some ways -- we don't mean to, but we're reducing him.

Mary Wiley: Absolutely.

Jennifer Rothschild: And so I just -- I appreciate you bringing this out, because it's probably something that we don't think of often because we are so caught up in utility and productivity. And also, let's be honest, like, when it comes to cathedrals and the beauty of the church, we are the church, the people.

Mary Wiley: That's right.

Jennifer Rothschild: We are the beauty of God, we are the church.

Mary Wiley: We are the beauty of God, that's right.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right, right. But at the same time, can we still honor him with our creativity and our artfulness in making a beautiful place to honor him? I think it's a good tension, a good conversation to continue to contemplate and to have.

But I do want us to switch gears, because lots of our listeners are women. Okay? So I'm curious in particular, how have you seen God's goodness or beauty in his unique design and purpose for women?

Mary Wiley: Yeah. Well, certainly God in the Garden has a purpose for both man and woman together. And so God has made his children, his daughters, to worship him in a way that is so unlike our brothers in Christ. So often I see it. I see it in my local church in the way that so many of my dear friends are so wired for relationship, that their superpower is connecting with people who don't yet know Christ and bringing them into the doors of a small group setting or into their homes and really loving them well, building relationships.

I love that God has made his daughters, those who bear the light of his fellowship with his people well. And what a beautiful thing that we can look to and say, wow, look at the church. Of course, the church is the outpost of the Kingdom of Heaven, and in so many ways his daughters are those carrying that light into their communities. Now, men in the church are doing this as well, but women especially have this relational muscle that they don't even have to really think about to exercise. And it is just a beautiful picture of how Christ has pursued us as they pursue others, as we pursue others, in so many ways again without even having the strategy to do it. It just is this natural outworking of who God has made his daughters to be.

And I just love that God, in the way that he has designed us in our very DNA, he has allowed us to carry his light in a special way. It's just really, really sweet to see that God didn't make us all the exact same. That he has given purpose. And in so many ways, it's the same conversation as this idea of beauty in our lives, is that if everything -- if the only color we ever saw on earth was green, then green would be really boring and dull to us. And yet because of the variety that God has gifted us, we can walk into a forest and be amazed at the green, at the difference.

And so I love that God has given mothers and daughters to serve his church in special ways. And I think we could do a better job of continuing to lean into his goodness, to lean into who he is and what he's doing in the world so that we might be better mothers and better sisters to one another.

Jennifer Rothschild: And, you know, too, Mary, it's interesting, sometimes the very thing that you just casually called a superpower, sometimes that's the thing that we'll be like, I got no purpose, you know, I don't --

Mary Wiley: That's right.

Jennifer Rothschild: But since Christ is our highest good, when he is in us, how he created us is good, and how we manifest that creative work in us through our purpose relationally, it is good. So, like, sisters out there, next time you feel like you got nothing except, you know, you talk to a bunch of people and your husband's like, "Will she ever leave the church?" that is part of the good. You know, the next time you get emotional because you're so tender, don't say, "Oh, I'm so sorry I'm crying." No. Say, "This is good. This is part of the goodness."

Mary Wiley: That's right.

Jennifer Rothschild: What I really appreciate you've done in this book, Mary, and in this conversation is show us how this is not just a God is our highest good, therefore, we lowlies need to look up and honor that. No. You're saying this highest good is woven through our DNA when we are in Christ. What a beautiful perspective. It really is the ongoing conversation that you describe theology as.

Okay. So you know I'm a fan of yours anyway, and your writing, and so I want all of us 4:13ers -- this is a great devo. You guys need to get this. It's just a good perspective shift for some of us.

So we're going to get to our last question, though. And I want us to end really practical. Okay? So what are some very practical ways -- besides doing this devotional, what are some very practical ways that we can exercise theology, according to your definition, in everyday life so that we really do live out our highest good?

Mary Wiley: Yeah. So I think the first thing that really we see in the story of the Israelites is as they are wandering in the wilderness and they have created this golden calf. And Moses approaches God and he is advocating for the people. God is not sure he's going to continue on with his people because they have just rebelled over and over and over again, and Moses -- or God tells Moses, he says, "Moses, they are a stiff-necked people. They're a forgetful people. They do not remember God." And so when we are really seeking to practice our theology daily, it is a work of remembering. That we have to rehearse the truth over and over and over again because we, too, are a forgetful people.

Now, I like to read that story and pretend like I'm Moses, but then the Holy Spirit very quickly puts me in my place and he's like, You would be at the bottom of the mountain right next to Aaron. Don't be pretending you'd be Moses.

Jennifer Rothschild: Right. Right next to Jennifer. I'd be right there with you.

Mary Wiley: That's right. We would be needing to rehearse the truth of what God has done and what he will do, what he had already promised to them and he promises to us in Christ.

The next way to really practice our theology is that we need to pray the truth. I've been really convicted recently that we do a lot of talking about God and not enough talking to God. That there are times where I will teach even for 45 minutes, and we only spend five to ten minutes talking to God. And yet I believe that even in teaching, God wants to have a conversation with us, so we need to invite him into that.

There is an early church father named Evagrius who said, "A theologian is one who prays, and one who prays is a theologian." And I think this is the pivotal thing that separates those who know a lot about God and are really just jerks. We all know some of those people.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Mary Wiley: A lot of them congregate on the internet, right? And so there are two ways that a knowledge of God can go. And it can make you more like Christ or it can take you far from looking like Christ. And when we stay tethered to God in prayer, when we see his beauty, his greatness, his goodness, and our creatureliness in the way that we pray, then we can stay grounded. And really, theology becomes not an end to a means to force God's hand or an end to a means to win an argument, but it becomes a path to worship.

And so we rehearse the truth, we pray the truth, and then we live the truth. And this one seems really simplistic, but we do have to do the work of cultivating goodness and flourishing. Now, what God says is good, even in the pages of creation, the story that begins -- the Christian story is that he is calling it good. That it is worthy of flourishing, that it is going to be beneficial for his people. He calls the fruit in the Garden good, that it will nourish them in the same way that Christ nourishes us as the Bread of Life. That we have to be tethered to this. We have to be consuming Jesus as the Bread of Life.

And then we need to be asking questions. We need to have wise counselors around us. We are -- I can speak for myself. I am incredibly valuable. I need wise counselors around me to help me live the truth, to help me rightly understand God's Word so that I can apply it and live for him. We are really, really good at creating God in our own image and thinking he will respond like we will, thinking that he thinks like we do, that his goals are our goals, rather than recognizing that we are the ones created in his image.

And we want to make sure that we are worshiping the God of the Bible, that we haven't created a god who has no wrath for sin or who doesn't actually care how you live your life, he just wants you to be happy. Well, that's not the God of the Bible. The God of the Bible tells us in His Word that the way, the good life, the way of goodness, the way of righteousness is that we would live as Christ lives, that we would become -- we would be modeled in the image of Christ. And so we don't want to create God in our image, and so to do that we have to rehearse the truth, we have to pray the truth, and then we have to live the truth.

Jennifer Rothschild: If you want to live your highest good, Mary gave you the three things. Remember what they are? First, rehearse the truth. We can be so forgetful. Second, pray the truth. Don't just talk about God; talk to God. And then last -- do you remember what it was? Live the truth. That means cultivate goodness, flourish, keep asking questions, and live in community. Get wise counselors around you.

KC Wright: This was a great conversation. And her book, this 90-day devotional, will really help your heart. You need it, and we're giving one away. Go to the Show Notes at 413podcast.com/344, 344, or go straight to Jennifer's Instagram right now @jennrothschild to enter to win.

And this is a rich transcript, so you will want to review it. And a big podcast hug to the sweet lady who makes our transcripts possible.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes. Thank you, Jill.

KC Wright: I met her at our last Fresh Grounded Faith.

Jennifer Rothschild: She's a wonderful lady. Yeah.

KC Wright: She's so sweet. We love you, Jill. Shout out.

Well, I think we're out of here. This one is a wrap. Let's get to it, 4:13ers. Let's start living our highest good for the glory of God and the building of his church.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

KC Wright: You can, because you can do all things through Christ who gives you strength. I can.

Jennifer Rothschild: I can.

Jennifer and KC: And you can.

KC Wright: Hey, I'm going to tell you, I wish Costco would sponsor our podcast.

Jennifer Rothschild: After 20 chickens?

KC Wright: Because it's one of my favorite places.

Jennifer Rothschild: I love Costco.

KC Wright: I love Costco. I could go there every day and never get tired.

Jennifer Rothschild: Well, and they change up their products so often.

KC Wright: And there's so many new things.

Jennifer Rothschild: Yes.

KC Wright: There's this dip there with these jalapeno peppers and this cherry, and you just need a bag of chips.

Jennifer Rothschild: Ooh.

KC Wright: But honestly, if you want to be an evangelist --

Jennifer Rothschild: Go buy chicken?

KC Wright: -- go to Costco on Black Friday, which I did last year, and wear a Kansas City Chief's hoodie on game day. Everybody stopped me, as if I was the coach, wanting to know about the game. But you talk about conversations popping.

Jennifer Rothschild: That's great.

KC Wright: It was almost more than the 20 chickens in the cart.