Review: The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to Have

August 20, 2025August 19, 2025 / rtrube54 / Leave a comment

Cover image of "The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to Have" by Regina V. Cates

The Real Conversation Jesus Wants Us to Have, Regina V. Cates, foreword by Paula Stone Williams. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802884107) 2025.

Summary: A pastor imagines what Jesus would want to talk about with Christians in the present moment.

Regina V. Cates invites us to imagine Jesus in conversation with his followers today. She believes he would talk about the abuses of power toward the marginalized and how the church ought love these “neighbors.” Cates thinks he would have a problem with our dogmatic judgementalism toward the “other.” Divisive and corrupt political leadership would deeply disturb him. Jesus would wade into issues we don’t talk about in polite society: sexuality, racism, abortion, toxic masculinity, and more.

Then Cates proceeds to have that conversation in a hard-hitting series of chapters addressing different topics. She pulls no punches, beginning on LGBTQIA+ issues and the church. Cates gets personal, sharing her own painful journey of realizing she was lesbian from an early age in a fundamentalist church. She was sexually assaulted by a sitter and later by a counselor her parents took her to in an effort to “change” her. She was told all such persons are going to hell. No one saw her as a person to be loved. She recounts her own experience of emotional healing in an Inipi sweat lodge. In subsequent chapters, she challenges what she sees as the dogmatism that undergirds what she understands as ancient and misinterpreted texts. She argues that to be religious and moral are two different things.

She describes her remarkable relationship with Byll, an atheist who is one of the kindest people she has met, and who showed her loving acceptance. Then she challenges the “better than arrogance of Christians, challenging us to get ego out of the way. However, all relationships are not like this. Rather, there are times when we must discern when to turn the other cheek and when to responsibly stand up.

She moves on to address other hot-button issues. For example, she argues that “men of quality respect women’s equality” and bluntly addresses sexism and patriarchy and toxic masculinity in the church. This includes male responsibility in matters of sex. She also challenges the church’s complicity in racism and all the ways we try to deny this is a problem. Nor does she mince words about political corruption and our need for leaders of integrity.

Finally, she explores what it means to be a church that embraces all members of the human family. This includes becoming places that create secure settings for the healing of trauma. Ultimately, this means becoming places where we love as Jesus loved.

While I would respectfully differ with the author in my understanding of some biblical texts concerning human sexuality, it broke my heart to read of her experiences in her fundamentalist church. No interpretation of scripture or dogma requires or justifies how the church treated her or what they taught.

Likewise, it saddens me that so many former fundamentalists and evangelicals are writing books like this. In a way, it makes the author’s point that there is a conversation Jesus wants us to have. For example, I grieve that so many men have treated women so badly. As Cates observes, true partnership in ministry does not diminish men. Rather, such men are the real superheroes.

Finally, is this the book to read about the real conversation the church needs to have? While there is much I would affirm in this book, it felt like I’d read this book before and for me, it did not break new ground. That said, this book certainly could spark needed conversations for those open and honest and secure enough with each other to have them.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

Why I’m Celebrating Dependence Day Today

July 4, 2024July 4, 2024 / rtrube54 / 7 Comments

a religious man praying solemnly — Photo by MART PRODUCTION on Pexels.com

I’m not celebrating Independence Day. It’s not for lack of love for the United States. It is because I love this country. My father, who fought in World War II, taught me to love this country. He was proud of his service. But were he alive today, I think he might be asking, “is this what I fought for?” As much as I miss him, I’m glad he is not living through these days.

Two old men, unfit in my judgement to serve, running for the highest office of our land (is this the best we can do?). A high court that lacks an ethical compass and will not act to remedy its flaws. A congress engaged in endless partisan squabbling that rarely comes together to tackle the substantive issues facing our country.

Sadly, these institutions are just a reflection of us. We are a violent country, leading the high income countries of the world in firearm deaths. Students from other countries fear coming here because of gun violence. Increasingly people question the idea of the rule of law. Do we realize that the only alternatives are the rule of power or chaos? We allow our political leaders to persuade us it is right to demean whole groups of people, blaming the problems of the country on “them.”

I could go on and indulge my “cranky old man.” But it’s a holiday.

Not Independence Day for me. The idea of independence has become one of untrammeled personal freedom reflecting neither an appropriate fear of God, concern for the common good, nor care for the good land we’ve been given.

For me, it is Dependence Day. But not on our politicians. Not on our technology. Not on some dream of American greatness. It can be argued that all of these have demonstrably failed us. So why do we keep putting so much trust in them? Isn’t that a definition of insanity?

If you know me, you know that I am a follower of Jesus. Jesus gets my implicit trust and allegiance. It means that in life and death, I depend utterly on Jesus to sustain me and I take my marching orders for life from him. But what troubles me is that much of the Christian “tribe” of which I’m part seems to pay only lip service to this and seems more enamored with politics than Jesus. I agree with this assessment in an NPR interview by Christianity Today editor Russell Moore that we are in trouble:

“Well, it was the result of having multiple pastors tell me essentially the same story about quoting the Sermon on the Mount parenthetically in their preaching – turn the other cheek – to have someone come up after and to say, where did you get those liberal talking points? And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, I’m literally quoting Jesus Christ, the response would not be, I apologize. The response would be, yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak. And when we get to the point where the teachings of Jesus himself are seen as subversive to us, then we’re in a crisis.“

This is the day I want to renew my dependence on Jesus. Not to make America anything, as much as I long for an awakening to God in our country. I want to renew my dependence on what he taught, even if it seems weak. My father had a watchword that seems important to remember today:

Read and pray;

Trust and obey;

Live God’s way.

My father lived in the faith that come what may, God sustained those who depended on him. I want to join my father in making this day, and every day, Dependence Day.

Review: Called

November 30, 2015November 29, 2015 / rtrube54 / 2 Comments

Called, Mark Labberton. Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2014.

Summary: Understanding our calling to follow Jesus and seek God’s purposes for the flourishing of the world is key both to a life well-lived and a church that fulfills its mission. This book explores the contours of what it means to live a called life.

Mark Labberton has a vision of a church filled with people living out in daily life the call to follow Jesus and seek the flourishing of God’s purposes in God’s world. He sees the lack of the fulfillment of that vision expressed in lost churches that are self-absorbed, silo-ed, oppressive, invisible and often the bearers of bad news or no news. This lack is all the more urgent because he sees this church in the midst of a lost world characterized by free-floating values, disconnectedness from real community, consumeristic, and fearful–a place where the church which knows its calling could make a difference.

Having outlined the need, Labberton then charts the path. It begins by returning to the “first thing” of following Jesus. When Jesus called people, his call was “follow me.” Following means re-locating from the Promised Land of the American Dream to those who understand themselves to be exiles in Babylon. It means re-orienting by taking a hard look at how one is living out this call. It means re-focusing on who is calling and his fundamental call to character reflected in the fruit of the Spirit. It also means an embrace of wisdom, which he defines at “the truth and character of God lived in context.”

The next three chapters focus on three”ways” in which the called person lives. First is the Way of the Beloved–understanding ourselves individually and as communities as the beloved of God called to live in sacrificial love. The second is the Way of Wisdom, which is the translation of the truth and character of God into practical action that fits the needs of our context. Finally, he speaks of The Way of Suffering, in which faithfulness to Christ’s call is an invitation to enter into the sufferings of others, or even to suffer for the call itself.

Having laid out the need for a called people and the fundamental contours of the called life, Labberton turns to discerning the particular expression of calling for an individual. What is key here is keeping primary calling to Christ, to God’s purposes in the world, and to character, primary. Beyond this, individual call is discerned through the work of the Spirit, evidenced in the fruit of the Spirit, confirmed by the scriptures, attested to by the community, reflected in one’s spiritual gifts and strengths, and lived out in one’s context–one’s time, passions, work, finances and more.

The epilogue comes back to “first things” and challenges us with the idea that who we are as followers of Jesus is far more critical than what we do. All work that isn’t illegal or immoral is honorable and may be done unto the Lord. Opening ourselves up to pursue Jesus and listen to his call will lead us individually and together into well-lived lives and church communities that are salt and light in the world.

Each chapter concludes with a “Practice” section, allowing the reader to reflect on and put into practice the chapter content.

I can think of at least three audiences for which this book would be of value. First, church leadership teams could use this to great benefit to reflect on what it might be like to lead their churches in following Christ and hearing his call. Second, this could be helpful in adult ed contexts, particularly where the idea of “calling” is thought of as something for a special class of “saints”. Finally, this is a good gift for college students on the front end of discerning calling in their own lives.

The book size lends it to gift giving, and the short chapters and “Practice” sections lend this to use with groups. I would hope for wide circulation of this book, that Labberton’s vision of called people and renewed churches might be realized in many communities. Granted, that will take more than a book, but one never knows what the biblically-rooted vision found in this book under the grace of God might accomplish!