Voices, with Jeff Chu

About the Guest

Jeff Chu is a Christian writer, reporter, and editor. He completed the late Rachel Held Evans’s, book Wholehearted Faith. He’s also author of the book Does Jesus Really Love Me: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America. He co-curates and co-hosts, with Sarah Bessey, a conference about thoughtful Christianity called Evolving Faith. He’s also an Ordinand in the Reformed Church in America (RCA).

Best Books

Wholehearted Faith, by Rachel Held Evans and Jeff Chu.

Does Jesus Really Love Me: A Gay Christian’s Pilgrimage in Search of God in America, by Jeff Chu.

Pachinko, by Min Jin Lee.

Transcript

JEFF CHU: It was lovely as her friend and as an admirer of hers to be reminded of the breadth of her curiosity and the depth of her intellectual exploration. I loved that.

BLAIR HODGES: When Rachel Held Evans unexpectedly died in 2019, the thirty-seven-year-old Christian writer left behind a husband and two young children, as well as an unfinished book manuscript. Rachel's husband Dan knew Rachel would want that book out in the world, so he enlisted their good friend Jeff Chu, a writer, reporter, and editor, to put all the pieces in place. The logistics of such a project made it hard enough, but Jeff also had to reckon with his own grief at the loss of such a dear friend. Jeff Chu is here to talk about the book, Wholehearted Faith, in this episode of Fireside with Blair Hodges.

Always read the introduction – 1:01

BLAIR HODGES: Jeff Chu, welcome to Fireside. It's really great to meet you.

JEFF CHU: Thanks so much Blair.

BLAIR HODGES: Before we get to some heavier things, I thought we'd start off with a little controversy from the beginning of this book, Wholehearted Faith. It's about reading introductions. So Dan—who is the husband of the late Christian writer, Rachel Held, Evan—says he once confessed to her that he usually skips book introductions, and she was horrified by that. And even though now in this book he's promised to read introductions, including yours. I was disturbed by that! So I just wanted your take, and to know whether you Jeff Chu, ever skip introductions. What are your thoughts about that?

JEFF CHU: I do not skip introductions, because I think they are integral parts of the book! And I also was scandalized when I read what Dan had to say about introductions. And look, I get it, right? His point might be, “Why don't you start with chapter one? Isn't chapter one the beginning of a book?” But yes, I always read the introduction.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah, I couldn't believe it. I liked that this book began sort of confessionally that way too, you know, to be a bit more serious about it, it was kind of beautiful, right? to see him directly addressing her at the beginning of the book in a way that showed their love and humor. It really gave some good insight into their personal dynamics. Did Dan proposed putting that in there? How did that become part of the book?

JEFF CHU: Dan wrote whatever he wanted to write. It was important to me, and to the publisher, that we not pretend that Rachel was still alive. Right? And it can be tempting with a book to just dive into her voice, as if she were still here. And we didn't want to do that. This had to be grounded in the reality of how it was put together, which was posthumously, so it felt like Dan—as the steward of her legacy, as her husband, as her widower—would have the first say, and would be the reader's first companion into these pages. So that was really the point of that.

Remembering Rachel Held Evans’s death – 3:02

BLAIR HODGES: It was beautiful. Let's now go to May of 2019. And I actually remember exactly where I was when I heard the news about Rachel's death, I was in a Utah State Park called Goblin Valley camping out with my family. I knew about Rachel because she was a prominent Christian voice online—maybe an unexpected one, being a white woman from the American South who's often spoke against racism and sexism and misogyny and homophobia. So I’d been following her on Twitter and reading her blog and heard that there were some serious health complications.

But you know, she was around my age, she had two young children. I did not see this coming. And I was just stunned when I saw the announcement she had died. Take us back—it was less than a year before COVID, right? What it was like at that time? What you remember about it?

JEFF CHU: Look, nobody expects someone to die when they're 37. Especially without much warning. This wasn't cancer. This wasn't some long illness. It wasn't something that her family or friends could really prepare for. And I think the grief was maybe more profound, because it was so shocking, that a young mom and wife—someone who many of us believed still had the best work ahead of her, even though she had written already such great things, many of us believe she still had so much more to write—that suddenly she wouldn't be here anymore.

There are some days when I still look back at our text threads on my phone. She's still on my phone. I'm not gonna delete it. And I fantasize that I might see three dots and then I might hear from my friend again. Because it's hard to believe. And it's hard to understand. I couldn't wrap my head around it then. And I still, in some sense, can't wrap my head around it now.

BLAIR HODGES: It's a unique kind of loss. I haven't lost anyone that close to me, around this age. I've lost people who are close to me—I've lost a parent and other people I've loved, but to lose someone that's basically, you know, a colleague, a friend, I haven't had to face that. And you were there, you actually got to be in the hospital where, you talk about in the book, saying goodbye, and that you felt just profound grief and gratitude at the same time.

JEFF CHU: I think grief is often an expression of gratitude and love, right? You grieve hardest the things you cherish the most. If I didn't care about Rachel, maybe intellectually I would have grieved because objectively, it's sad for two kids to grow up without their mom. Right? But I felt the grief that I felt because Rachel was such a tremendous presence in my life.

BLAIR HODGES: It makes me think of that—maybe this is sort of cheesy; I'm not big into the Marvel movies, but I watched Wandavision and there's this line that has stuck with me where one of the characters says, “What else is grief but love persisting?”

And that's just a beautiful—that's what I hear in your words, is this idea of the grief being a manifestation and a witness and a product of a result of love.

JEFF CHU: I think that line has resonated with so many people—because I've seen it quoted over and over on Twitter and Facebook—because it rings true for so many of us. Saying goodbye to the person we love, or the dog we love, or the place we love. It doesn't entirely ever disappear, that grief, it stays with you. Because the love doesn't just disappear when you have to say goodbye to the person or the pet or the place. And there is something true about the perseverance of that love.

In some sense, I hope I will always be grieving. Not in the same way, right? But I hope I'll always be grieving because I'd never want to forget how special that friendship was.

Becoming friends, then finishing her book – 7:00

BLAIR HODGES: How did that friendship begin?

JEFF CHU: It was really Rachel's doing. I was a journalist in New York working at Fast Company Magazine. I really didn't have much awareness of the Christian blogosphere, or the world that Rachel inhabited. And in 2013, my first book came out, and it was about my personal quest to interview a whole bunch of people across the Christian theological spectrum, and figure out how it was that under this one religious umbrella, there could be so many varying perspectives on homosexuality.

And three months before the book comes out. My publisher gets this email from Rachel asking, How can I help? I didn't know who she was. A friend of mine who worked in Christian publishing said to me, Rachel's a really big deal. She was on the Today Show and on The View, and I'm like, okay.

So it was on that friend's recommendation that I wrote back to this total stranger. And that was classic Rachel. Her generosity in reaching out to someone she didn't know personally, to offer her solidarity and her support. That's what she did over and over and over again, far away from Twitter, far away from any attention. She just wanted to help people.

BLAIR HODGES: And we'll talk more about Rachel's role in amplifying voices a little bit later on. But before Rachel died, she had been working on this manuscript we mentioned earlier called Wholehearted Faith. How did you come to be the one to complete it—it wasn't finished yet at the time she died and and then you came to complete it.

JEFF CHU: Her husband asked me, and I think it's one of those conversations you never really want to have. As remarkable an act of trust as it represents, right? Because to put your partner's work in someone else's hands is a wild gesture of belief in that other person.

BLAIR HODGES: And writing is really personal to, right? Writing is so intimate.

JEFF CHU: And Rachel's writing in particular, because so much of it is memoir-based. She weaves her personal narrative and her life experiences into everything. That's a really hard ask. But it's also a hard thing to say no to.

BLAIR HODGES: Did you think about saying no? Like, did you really think—

JEFF CHU: Of course! I wanted to say no. And Rachel was a really hard person to say no to. And that's what it came down to.

There were numerous occasions when I wouldn't want to do something. And she felt like I was the right person—whether it was to give a talk or to teach at a writing workshop. And I would come up with every excuse. Because I actually, even though I'm having this conversation with you, I'm a writer. I don't love talking. I've never loved talking. I'm a super shy introvert. And sometimes that comes across as aloofness, or some people might read it as arrogance. It's just shyness. I am more comfortable writing my thoughts or sending you an email than I am talking.

And Rachel was like, “No, you're gonna do this. You're a good teacher. You're a good preacher, you're a good speaker.” And it was kind of a waste of my time and hers to put up a fight because I knew she would win in the end. [laughter]

And honestly, it sounds kind of weird when I say it, but let's say the theologies are true, that believe that we're going to meet the people we love again, after death. Let's just assume for the sake of argument that they're true.

BLAIR HODGES: —Yeah, I'm a hoper.

JEFF CHU: I am too. But I don't know. But assuming they're true. I can't fathom dealing with Rachel if I had said no. But it's also a terrible “yes,” because it meant I spent, I don't know, two years, in some form working on my dead friend’s book having to confront the reality of her death every time I sat at the computer to work on it.

BLAIR HODGES: Right, so not just the practical difficulties of figuring out what to include, channeling the voice, feeling like you're being faithful to the sources and all that, but also the emotional weight of kind of having to be present with her through a time of deep mourning—all of those things. It's practical and emotional labor,

JEFF CHU: Writing your own words sucks enough as it is.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah.

JEFF CHU: At least for me. Even though I'm a professional writer, words don't come easily. I'm not one of those people who just sits down and vomits ten thousand words onto the page. Writing can be excruciating. It can be beautiful and lovely and liberating, but sometimes, some days, it is painstaking. And to have to do it because your friend can't do it herself adds an extra layer of emotion to that kind of work that I honestly hope nobody ever has to experience.

The process of completing the book – 11:59

BLAIR HODGES: What did your process day-to-day look like? You were confronted with an unfinished draft, basically. And I also wondered if there was ever talk of, “Let's just put out what she finished.” So, was there that talk, and then also what did your process look like?

JEFF CHU: It was an unfinished draft. It wasn't long enough to constitute a book. So you would have had, I don't know, twelve or fifteen thousand words that just ended in the middle of a story. And already as it is the book that we have, it's not the book that Rachel would have written, right? Had she been here to execute the project that she wanted, we would be reading an entirely different book.

There are folks who have written reviews on Amazon or Goodreads and said, “Oh, this doesn't feel finished.” Yeah, ‘cuz it wasn't. And that was partly intentional, because I could never complete it as she would have. That was an impossible ask.

But what Dan and I did try to produce is something that was faithful to where Rachel was trying to take her writing. She was trying to create something that would be hopeful. And that would meet people—some people, some people from a Christian background, some people wrestling with scripture, some people who have felt fragmented in their faith, she was meeting some people were they were in their journeys. And that was the task.

Every writer knows that no two days are the same, right? Some days, the words will flow more easily in the morning. Some days—even if you are, like I am, a better writer in the morning, the afternoon turns out to be not as bad as you thought it would be. [laughter] So I can't tell you what a typical day look like, because there was no such thing.

I can say that for the first six months, I barely wrote a word, because it was so excruciating to sit at my computer—Dan gave me access to her hard drive. And I would just go through the files that I had, random notes that I found. And I would grieve, and I would read, and I would learn more about my friend. And I would try to process that information. And there was very little writing that happened. But sometimes you are writing even when there are no new words.

BLAIR HODGES: When you were laying it out, did she have an outline of the scope of the book? Or how did the chapters come together? I felt like earlier on in the book there was—I liked the entire book. I felt a little more cohesion early on. I actually liked the overall shape of the book in the way that the arc went over time, because I felt like that was really appropriate for the context of the book—the fact that the author had died and this was almost, you know, we're almost getting Rachel at a distance. I think it was completely perfect for what the book is. But did she have a layout that you followed? Or were you stuck with an actual table of contents? Or were you able to pick chapter names and stuff yourself?

JEFF CHU: Yeah. So, for folks who don't know anything about this book, there's two sections. One is the same title as the whole book, “Wholehearted Faith.” And I think that's six chapters. And then the rest of the book is a collection of essays that are loosely related, but don't flow one chapter to the next like the first half does.

So the first half is truer to her original outline. The problem with the original outline that I had to work with was, some chapters were just one word. So there would be one word that said “gratitude,” Well, what do I do with that? And the goal of my work was never to write as if I were Rachel. So I don't think it's entirely accurate to say that I “wrote” a lot of this book. I took on more of an active editor's role, cobbling together what I could, filling in blanks, smoothing things out, and working with the material that I had.

I didn't feel comfortable, certainly, inventing anecdotes about her life. Every personal anecdote you read in this book is something that actually happened in Rachel's life. Yes, there are details that Rachel's sister or her dad helped provide. But my job was not to invent anything. It was to finish something that she had started.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, that exactly describes my experience of it, then. Those early chapters that kind of had that narrative arc that she was going for in the book. And then the second half of the book, which was these essays.

From my vantage point, I have to say, it sounded like Rachel's voice the whole time. If I had to do some documentary source criticism and find out [laughs] “Where's Jeff's words, where's he doing things?” I couldn't do it. The voice itself was very consistent. And I think that's a tribute to the work that you're able to do in weaving together the sources that you had. So, I felt like it was really well done.

JEFF CHU: I appreciate that. It was funny. There's a total random person on the internet who said that “The parts that Jeff wrote fell flat.” And I was like, “You don't know me. I don't know you. I would love to know which parts those were.”

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah.

JEFF CHU: And it's interesting that different people have made different conjectures about what I was responsible for and what Rachel was. And I will never confirm or deny, because I don't think it's helpful to people's experience of the book.

But I will tell you, there was a story in The New Yorker by Eliza Griswold about the book. And Eliza did a lovely job. I spent a couple of days with her, she came down to Tennessee and met a lot of Rachel's friends and family, and we had a big meal together. And it was a good experience, insofar as these things can be good experiences. But at one point, Eliza says to me, “Oh, so I knew it was you whenever the book quoted a theologian, because you went to seminary.”

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, no!

JEFF CHU: And that revealed—

BLAIR HODGES: Wait, had she read any of Rachel's other stuff?

JEFF CHU: Well, this is the thing! It revealed a bias, right? Because I have a master's degree in theology. Rachel has a bachelor's degree in English. So the assumption was, well, if there's footnotes that references academic theologian, it must be Jeff.

And I said to Eliza, as I was going through the manuscript, and as I was going through the files that I had, I had to Google so many of these theologians’ names because Rachel was more widely read than I am. She probably read three times as many books over the time that I was in seminary, as I did. And she probably touched on more aspects of Christian teaching from more diverse sources than I—having attended or Presbyterian seminary—would have.

BLAIR HODGES: Nice.

JEFF CHU: So I just kind of had to laugh, because the assumption was the guy with the diploma would have inserted all that.

BLAIR HODGES: You're the egghead. Yeah.

 JEFF CHU: Right. Yeah.

Incarnation, when God became vulnerable – 19:02

BLAIR HODGES: That’s Jeff Chu. He's a Christian writer, reporter, and editor. And he completed the late Rachel Held Evans’s book Wholehearted Faith. And he's also the author of a book called Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America?

Okay, so let's look at something from the book here, Jeff. In her introduction, Rachel talks about a few reasons why she was a Christian, and why she stuck with it in the face of questions and doubts and difficulties. And one thing she was really drawn to was the idea of the Incarnation, right, the idea that “God became flesh,” that Jesus joined humanity in an actual body that could feel pain and emotion and die. And I've highlighted a part here from the chapter for you to read, if you would, there on page five.

JEFF CHU: “God became vulnerable. I can't help but read the story this way. God was humbled choosing to put down roots in a particular family at a particular time, in a particular place. This is even more astounding to me, given that Mary herself was part of the community of Nazareth, which was full of ordinary people who held to bad theology, who gossiped too much, who let political disagreements become wedges between them and who suffered from the first century equivalent of taking an ancient promise, For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, totally out of context and slapping it on every yearbook, photo and Instagram posts. Because even God was born into a dysfunctional family of faith. And God did not wait around for ideal conditions before showing up. We don't like to think of God being vulnerable like that. Just as we often don't like to think of ourselves being vulnerable like that. We don't like to think about God needing anyone, because what good is God for us morals, for those of us who know we need others, if God is needy, too.”

BLAIR HODGES: So she's talking about “Why I'm Christian,” she gives the example of the Incarnation. And I just wanted to hear your thoughts about giving reasons like this, if this is something you're drawn to in your path of Christianity, to kind of give these reasons that explain why one is a Christian.

JEFF CHU: I think Rachel might have been a little more interested in giving her rationale for her faith than I am. I am probably more in the school of just wanting to live my life and hoping that some of my reasons show up through my actions.

That's not to say Rachel's rationales didn't show up in her actions—they did. But we also come from really different social locations. And I know that as a gay Chinese American man, whatever I have to say will be received through filters that are different from Rachel's. My voice won't be heard in the same way. My voice isn't valued in the same way, in the United States in 2022. That's just the reality of our society.

So, I think my position, and my lack of a desire to “defend” my faith, for lack of a better term, has a lot to do with exhaustion, and has a lot to do with my feeling that there isn't much point in making an argument for it, at least in words.

BLAIR HODGES: I mean, that seems like vulnerability right there. You're coming from a position of vulnerability in a way that makes you testify in different ways than Rachel did. And you point out what people might say is an incongruence there—that there's this white woman from the south, and here she's having her book finished by a gay, Chinese American—and I actually don't know where you're from. Are you from the Pacific Northwest? Or where are you from originally?

JEFF CHU: I'm from California, originally.

BLAIR HODGES: Oh, California. Nice! So yeah, these are very different, very different people [laughs]. And I'm just interested in how you wrestled with that as you were doing the book.

JEFF CHU: This book was not about me, this book was Rachel's. And I've spent enough time with her family to have a sense of the world that she came from. I'm a journalist by training. So my job—from the beginning of my career, it was instilled in me that my job was to fairly represent, as best I could, through deep research, and empathy, the lives of the people that I was writing about. So the work I did on this book was as much a work of journalism about Rachel, as it was about anything else.

And I think I couldn't have done it without that journalistic training. I had to listen to her dad, I had to listen to her husband, I had to listen to her sister, I had to observe the world of Dayton, Tennessee, as best I could, as an outsider, and integrate that with whatever she had already observed herself.

BLAIR HODGES: I see that as a kind of “incarnation” with a lowercase “i” this taking a perspective, entering into a different perspective with, as you said, thought and empathy. And so yeah, I think it's appropriate to kind of see a little mini-incarnation there that you had to do.

JEFF CHU: I've never thought about it that way.

I think one advantage that many folks who come from marginalized backgrounds, who have some kind of marginalized identity—whether it is disability, or sexuality, or ethnicity, or even socioeconomic class, sorry about my dog barking in the background—many of us who come from marginalized backgrounds have to read the room in a different way. We have to understand what the social dynamics are. We have to understand what the tensions are. Because we don't get the privilege of navigating the world as if it's ours, as if we belong.

Rachel understood some of that as a woman growing up in evangelical Christianity. A woman who was not supposed to speak as she spoke. A woman who ended up being called “Jezebel,” so many times, because she dared to confront people who had titles and offices and formal institutional power. I think she understood a little bit of it, insofar as she could as a white woman.

Faith and uncertainty – 25:33

BLAIR HODGES: It certainly comes through. That's definitely a theme we see a couple of times throughout the book.

And Rachel expands on faith and vulnerability in the first chapter of the book. It's called, “On the Days When I Believe,” and the chapter title itself implies there are days when she doesn't believe, right? And one of the things I think resonates with a lot of her readers is her willingness to explore that kind of uncertainty. Did that resonate with you? In your own personal experience of Christianity—that idea of, you know, “On the days when I believe,” meaning there are also days when I don't.

JEFF CHU: Yeah, that was an area of profound agreement between Rachel and me. I have experienced seasons when I've been in church every Sunday, and seasons where I would not have entered a church at all. That's been a reality of my journey, as I'm sure it is for so many other people.

There have been times when I've been almost certain—I won't say completely certain, but almost certain that God exists. And there have been times when I've tried to convince myself that God doesn't exist. Either way, I think it's human nature to want certainty. But it's also a reality of the world, that certainty will always be beyond us.

I think the trouble comes, at least here and now, from the truth that certainty has been an idol for so many people. And I name it that, I name it a false god, because ultimately, our reliance on certainty, on human certainty, will always disappoint us. There's always going to be an element of uncertainty in faith.

There's a place in one of his letters where Paul writes, “We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.” So how do you fix your eyes on something that's unseen? That's weird. [laughter] That doesn't make any sense. And I think what he's getting at is that we have to search, and we have to question, and we have to probe, and we have to be curious. But so many of the things of faith will always just be a bit beyond our senses and our faculties and what we can completely comprehend in this life. We have to come to terms with that and make peace with that.

And I still struggled to do it some days, and Rachel struggled to do it some days. My personality is such, and my training as a journalist is such that I want more information. I want my data to be reliable and clear.

BLAIR HODGES: Give me the sources. Give me the evidence.

JEFF CHU: Yeah! I want to be able to construct an understanding of the world that's unshakable. And yet, I have to confront the reality that I'm human. And so is everyone else. So I'll have questions. And I'll have doubt, and you'll have questions and you'll have doubt. And we'll all have to confront the limits of our own understanding. And we're all invited to humility about that, because we're human.

BLAIR HODGES: That certainly resonates with me. You mentioned that there were times when you wanted to convince yourself that God doesn't exist. And I don't think I've really experienced that. What does that look like?

JEFF CHU: When you're told that, because of some aspect of your identity, you are damned to hell by a God who refuses to love you, and might even hate you? Wouldn't you want that God not to exist?

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah. I don't want that God to exist. Yeah.

JEFF CHU: So that's the God that a lot of the formative folks in my early life believe in. That's the God that some folks I still count as friends and family still believe in. I don't think I believe in the same God.

When it was an either/or equation, when it was that God or none, I would prefer to choose none. But over the course of my adulthood, I've gone back to scripture. I've had friends come alongside me. I've had preachers tell me a different story that is good news, of a God who is love, of a God who embodied love, of a God who is not punitive in that way. And maybe, just maybe, through those stories, I was able to start piecing back together faith in the possibility of a different god.

BLAIR HODGES: Well, I really appreciate you going there and talking about that.

I also wanted to say Rachel cites Brené Brown as an important influence on her thoughts, talking about vulnerability and God's love, and she says that she kept Browns books on her nightstand. So, this is a little bit of an aside, but I wondered if you have any nightstand books, are you a nightstand book person? Because I tend to keep some books there that really matter to me. Maybe the one I'm reading right now, and then a couple that I love.

JEFF CHU: Right now I have pandemic brain and it's really hard to read whole books. I have a whole stack of New Yorkers on my nightstand because anyone with a New Yorker subscription knows what a torment that magazine is. Because it just keeps coming every week. [laughter] And nobody has enough time to get through a whole issue. And so I have an ever growing pile. On a good night I might get through one article before I fall asleep. That's what I have on my nightstand.

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, nice. Nice. Well, as a friend of Rachel's, as you're going through this book, were there any chapters or sections or passages that caught you off guard? Were you surprised by Rachel—ideas you hadn't seen her articulate before, or just anything that surprised you during the process of completing the book?

JEFF CHU: There was one section, not far off from that little excerpt I read about God becoming vulnerable, where she writes about “God shrinking down to the size of a zygote, implanted in the soft lining of a woman’s womb. God growing fingers and toes. God kicking and hiccupping in utero. God inching down the birth canal and entering this world covered in blood, perhaps into the steady, waiting arms of a midwife. God crying out in hunger. God reaching for his mother’s breasts. God totally relaxed, eyes closed, his chubby little arms raised over his head in a posture of complete and total trust. God resting in his mother’s lap.”

That litany of a newborn Jesus's actions? That surprised me. I’d never imagined the details of the Nativity story in such a visceral form. So it was really the surprise of encountering prose that I'd never encountered before from anyone. And that's a gift of any great writer, right? They awaken something with their words. They open your eyes to something that might have seemed familiar to you, but suddenly, they turn your head at just the right angle where you encounter this familiar scene, and suddenly you see things there that you'd never noticed before.

That was probably the most surprising thing, was hitting different paragraphs where I would understand something theological, or something scriptural like that. And even though I grew up in the church, and even though I've gone to seminary, and even though I've sat through countless sermons, suddenly it crystallizes in a new way.

I think every book by any author should show the world something new of their mind at heart. And I think even longstanding fans of Rachel's will find something in Wholehearted Faith that builds on her previous work.

I guess I also wasn't necessarily surprised by this, but I did learn more about how thoughtful and well-read Rachel was, as we've already discussed. It was lovely as her friend and as an admirer of hers to be reminded of the breadth of her curiosity and the depth of her intellectual exploration. I loved that.

People are like worms – 33:45

BLAIR HODGES: That’s Jeff Chu, and we're talking about the book Wholehearted Faith that he completed for Rachel Held Evans. He's also a co-curator and cohost, together with Sarah Bessie, of a conference about thoughtful Christianity called “Evolving Faith.” And he's also an ordinand in the Reformed Church in America working towards ordination.

Jeff, you touched on this a little bit earlier, but I wanted to go into a little bit more detail about this. One of the things that made Rachel so widely known is how she could articulate questions that a lot of Christians have as they develop in their faith. And she spends a lot of time in this book addressing the question of total depravity, the Reformist Christian thinking about how humans are basically just utter garbage in the eyes of God, comparatively, and that everyone deserves condemnation except for the elect, the people that Christ intervened for. And I also noticed a common theme in your first book Does Jesus Really Love Me? that, as a gay Christian, as you said, you were often told that being gay was part of that depravity, right? Part of this fallen nature.

And so let's spend just a little bit more time with that, and how you've come to see that in a different way, while still being Christian. Because an easy path would be to say, “If that's Christianity, then I'm out of here. You're telling me that something that matters to me this deeply and is such a present thing in my life is horrible.” So, talk about that a little bit more, if you would.

JEFF CHU: Yeah. So depravity is—at least according to most people—a key part of Reformed theology. So it would seem like a puzzle that, even though I grew up Baptist, I would end up in the Reformed Church.

What you described as total depravity, I would say as a caricature of total depravity. There are definitely more conservative folks who would accept that definition, and even embrace that definition. What I've come to understand as depravity is the teaching that there's nothing on this earth that isn't somehow tainted by sin. That doesn't mean sin has completely erased the good in everything, the beauty of God's creation, but there's nothing that isn't touched by death. There is nothing that isn't somehow marred because of human wrongdoing.

So I would say that's a gentler way of looking at depravity. I would never describe us as utter garbage. And I've actually talked about the fact that, you know, John Calvin, who is one of the giants of Reformed theology, one of the founding fathers of Reformed theology, he writes extensively about the lowliness of man as being nothing but a worm. But he didn't understand the power of worms, he didn't understand how much goodness worms do in the soil.

And as I've learned more about that—I was a farmhand during seminary because my seminary had a farm, and I got to see the magic that worms participate in, in the soil and in the compost pile. And I realized that John Calvin was kinda full of s*** when it came to worms. [laughter] And maybe to say, “We're nothing but a worm” is actually an invitation to participate with other creatures in turning what's bad in this world into the stuff of life.

I just signed up for a compost service here in Grand Rapids where I live called Wormies. And their whole deal is to harness the power of worms to take all the stuff that I don't want from my kitchen, and then every week they deliver good soil. So maybe John Calvin got it wrong. And maybe a lot of these folks who have given us a caricature of total depravity have gotten it wrong. And maybe, yes, this world is tainted by hate, and sin, and bad deeds, but that can also be an invitation for those of us who are hopeful to bring love, and honor, and goodness. That's how I see Reformed theology.

Public figures on pedestals – 37:55

BLAIR HODGES: I appreciate that, because I grew up with a caricature of Calvinism. You know, I had encountered people like John Piper and others who—and people who had criticized my own faith, Mormonism, from a standpoint of this TULIP, very hardline TULIP doctrine. And it wasn't until I read a book called Predestination by Peter Thuesen, where he put the development of Calvinist theology into its historical perspective. And I realized the caricature I had was incomplete, and that there's actually a pretty broad array of beliefs underneath the Calvinist umbrella.

And what you just did theologically there, of talking about, “Yeah, okay, let's be, we're worms. Great. But let's relook at what we think about worms.” And I really appreciate that. I think it's easy to caricature Calvinism. And it was Peter Thuesen, and also Marilyn Robinson was the other person who, you know, she loves John Calvin. And that was a puzzle to me. I was like, I've got to figure out what's going on there.

So I appreciate you offering and kind of showing that a diversity of thought exists within the Reformed tradition, and there are different perspectives people can take on that. So thank you for that. I really appreciate that.

So Jeff, in an earlier interview about this book, you said [laughs] that you're “mindful of how annoyed Rachel would be to the extent that people would elevate her to some kind of heroine status, for making her out to be some kind of Saint,” and you said, “In my mind, I can hear her yelling, ‘Jeff Chu! Stop it!’”

So I wanted you to expand on that a little bit more, maybe about, you know, the possible pitfalls of elevating public figures, and what it's like to be kind of a public figure, or at least to be proximate to one.

JEFF CHU: Our society loves celebrity, and I don't get it. We're constantly looking for heroes. And there's something dehumanizing about that, because we don't want our heroes to have flaws. We don't want our heroes to make mistakes. We essentially don't want our heroes to be human. We want superhumans. And that's not honest.

Rachel never wanted to be famous. She never wanted to be a celebrity. One of the most refreshing things about her was that there was no pretense. The person you encountered on a podcast, the person you encountered in the pulpit if she was a guest preacher, was the same person you encountered at her dining room table, or in a text thread.

Yeah, you might get different glimpses. I probably got more snark, and maybe some opinions that she didn't even dare to put on Twitter. But she was the same person. And I think her objections to fame are pretty similar to mine. I think any public profile—and mine is very small compared with Rachel's, right? Lin Manuel Miranda started reading one of her books after she died.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] Yeah!

JEFF CHU: Hillary Clinton tweeted about her. That's not happening if I die tomorrow, okay?

BLAIR HODGES: She went to the White House!

JEFF CHU: She did go to the White House, for the Easter breakfast.

BLAIR HODGES: I’ve never been there.

JEFF CHU: She served on a commission—was appointed to a commission by President Obama. All that represented her embrace of the responsibility that came with having a public profile. It kind of sucks for people who don't know you to know something about you. And she got that. And she was committed never to putting up some facade of Rachel Held Evans that wasn't true to who the whole human was.

I just lament that we do live in a culture that is so bent on lifting people—some people above others, when honestly, the biggest gift we could give each other was the permission just to be exactly what Rachel writes about in his book, which is vulnerable, wholehearted humans. All of us have good points and all of us have weaknesses. All of us are going to do some good and loving things in our lives. And all of us are going to make some serious mistakes.

BLAIR HODGES: I like that quote from—oh, his name is escaping me right now, he wrote Just Mercy, where he said—

JEFF CHU: Oh, Bryan Stevenson?

BLAIR HODGES: Bryan Stevenson, thank you, where he says, you know, people aren't the worst thing they've ever done, people aren't the worst thing they ever did one day.

JEFF CHU: And we're not the best, either.

BLAIR HODGES: That’s right.

JEFF CHU: We're not the best thing we've ever done. We're not defined by either the best or the worst. I think if we can widen the lens, and see the scope of the beauty and the ugliness that one life can contain, and the fact that there's grace for that? I think we'll be better off.

Disagreeing with Rachel – 42:45

BLAIR HODGES: Okay, well, I kind of set you up with that question. Because in the introduction of the book, you say that you and Rachel “definitely didn't agree on everything.” So this was also a way to kind of segue into something where you maybe disagreed with Rachel. I wanted to know what a disagreement looks like, and then how you navigated it in light of completing the book.

You already said this wasn't your book. So I recognize that you weren't trying to inject your theology into it or anything. But what were some disagreements and then how did you navigate those?

JEFF CHU: Look, the public record is clear. Rachel was a white southerner who grew up in Bible churches and became an Episcopalian. I am a gay Chinese American guy who grew up Baptist and ended up in the Reformed Church. People can read between the lines. I would prefer not to publicly discuss any of the ideas that I might have disagreed with in this book.

It is kind of interesting to me how many people have homed in on that one sentence in the intro. Because I wonder what it says about our society and its fixation on disagreement, rather than shared values. Why is the conflict the catnip? I won't talk about our disagreements publicly—

BLAIR HODGES: It makes for good podcast interviews! 

JEFF CHU: Sometimes! [laughter]

I won't talk about her disagreements publicly because Rachel isn't here to have the argument. It doesn't seem right or fair to her. This is her book, as I said, as you noted. It's not my place as the person who facilitated its completion to push back against anything in there.

Also, she's my friend. And I don't think it honors her memory, right?

BLAIR HODGES: Mhmm.

JEFF CHU: I will name one major disagreement I have with her. And that is her inexplicable—some might even say sinful—allegiance to the Alabama Crimson Tide. [laughter] I think it's morally indefensible. You can Google all the evidence.

BLAIR HODGES: It's all there.

JEFF CHU: I just think it's wrong. But I loved her anyway.

BLAIR HODGES: See? And kudos to you for your grace extended to Rachel for that.

JEFF CHU: I struggle with it someday, still.

The commencement address – 44:47

BLAIR HODGES: Nice. Well, I'm glad to see that you're working through it. That's important.

Let's talk about a commencement address Rachel recounts in the book in a chapter called, “The Steady Work of Living Water.” I loved this part, she revisits a commencement address that she delivered at the end of her undergraduate studies. So she's looking back in time, and now she's cringing, and who hasn't written something or said something years ago that they now look at and just shake their heads.

Basically, she was telling the students that now that they were graduating from the good Christian school, they were gonna go out to the wicked world, and save it and teach them about God. And now, looking back, she says she wished she could have also recognized that it would have been important to tell those students to let the world change them, too. There's an excerpt from this chapter that I asked you to read here, I'm looking at page 112. There at the bottom.

JEFF CHU: “I thought the world was essentially a giant patch of weeds, and we, the faithful class of 2003, the weeders. We have seen that there is certainly evil in the world, and so many more varieties of fear and hate, bigotry and prejudice. But I've realized that there is also such abundant life springing up in all sorts of unlikely soil, in the form of protesters who insist that black lives matter. LGBTQIA+ people who with their very bodies rebuke the insistent messages that they are less than, and survivors who have dared to tell their stories of abuse in the church. Wheat enough for a thousand lifetimes of harvests. I thought the world was waiting for every single one of the answers I had at the ready. As it turns out, I've been blessed by the world's huge, honest, and often unanswerable questions. And every time I have the presence of mind to ask, what's up with that? I think I can just about make out God whispering, with a chuckle, ‘You have no idea.’”

BLAIR HODGES: So this comes a little bit later in the book during the essay portion. And I just wanted to hear your thoughts about that section there, whether you had a similar kind of change later on, where earlier views were kind of overturned as you matured, as you got older.

JEFF CHU: We’ve already talked a little bit about the idolatry of certainty, right? And sometimes the most dangerous certainty is that youthful version. Life has a way of dealing with that kind of certainty that grew up in an environment shielded from hardship. Life has a way of introducing complications and telling you that maybe you didn't understand the full complexity of what circumstance could do. And maybe you haven't had to carry the weight of tragedy or suffering. And those kinds of experiences really do a number on a person, and on a soul. And sometimes, having gone through some of those experiences, you begin to see the holes in the structures you had put up around you, maybe, by other people in childhood. And through those holes, you might be able to see a wider world.

And I think both Rachel and I experienced that. Both Rachel and I benefited from having opportunities to wrestle. It wasn't easy. Sometimes that put us at odds with people we really loved. Sometimes there were real, and significant, and great costs. But I, for one, would never take any of it back. Because it's made me who I am now.

And I hope that other people will be able to do the same. Will be able to unclench their fists and open their hearts just enough to start asking those big questions. Those scary questions. Those befuddling questions that might not have tidy answers.

And I know there's fear that comes with it, right? But what if you dare to ask the questions because, even if you take that jump, you choose to believe that the love of God is there, ready to catch you when you fall, that you're not falling into abyss, that the world is not going to end. Because God's love is there.

I think that's what Rachel was hoping for. And that's what I'm hoping for, too.

BLAIR HODGES: It takes me, again, back to that incarnational idea, that there are experiences that come with living, with life, that can't be had any other way—even for God. That the relationships, and the experiences, and the specific contexts that people deal with matter.

And Rachel became a vocal ally for marginalized Christians—especially gay, trans queer folks, black Christians, people with disabilities, indigenous people, other people of color. I mentioned this earlier, but I just think it was so fitting that a woman who really did try to give voice to marginalized people was amplified in her final book—for adults anyway, there are some children’s books things going on—but that this final book, at least, was given voice by Jeff Chu. I think that's a beautiful thing. And I'm glad that you said yes to doing the book.

JEFF CHU: Thanks. Most days I am too.

Rachel’s absence – 50:17

BLAIR HODGES: Alright, well, at the end of the foreword, here's a quote from you. You say, “As you read these words, I hope you will not just hear, but also feel Rachel walking alongside you, probing with her characteristic curiosity and listening for the questions that dog you on your own journey.”

And Jeff, I just wanted to say there were times when, in reading this book, when I did feel like Rachel was right there, like her voice was there. There were even times while reading it that the tragedy of her death just seemed to recede completely to the background. And I really appreciate you doing the emotional work it required to do that. And I wondered if you felt that presence as well, as you were completing the book.

JEFF CHU: I think it was a little bit different for me. I got a question one day from a reader wondering whether I felt Rachel's presence like that of a ghost at any point. And I'm like, “No! No, I did not!” [laughter]

BLAIR HODGES: No spooky ghosts.

JEFF CHU: No spooky ghosts. Rachel is not haunting me from beyond the grave. I think it's different because she had been a steady presence in my daily life.

BLAIR HODGES: Interesting.

JEFF CHU: I'll be honest. I didn't even read all of her books before I started this writing process. And maybe I shouldn't say that. Maybe that makes me a disloyal friend. [laughs] But this is the reality when you have a lot of writers as friends.

BLAIR HODGES: Yeah, there's a lot of stuff to read when you have writer friends. Yeah.

JEFF CHU: I hadn't read all of her work. I had to catch up! I had to give myself a crash course and do the remedial training, right? I experienced Rachel—I was lucky enough to experience Rachel through text messages, and emails, and phone calls, and lunches, and dinners, and time spent in her living room watching her rock in the La-Z-Boy™ that she was so proud she got on clearance from the factory outlet. [laughter]

So she was present to me through my memories, through the echoes of the laughter that I've been trying to hold on to, through the text messages and the emails that I've gone back and read. That's how I felt her presence and that's how I would re-center myself sometimes.

BLAIR HODGES: That’s Jeff Chu. He's a writer, reporter, and editor. He completed the late Rachel Held Evans’s book Wholehearted Faith, and he's also author of the book, Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America.

Okay, Jeff, we're just going to take a quick break and come back for one more question. It's the Best Books segment. I hope you brought a good recommendation, and we'll be right back after this.

[BREAK]

Best Books – 54:10

BLAIR HODGES: It's Fireside with Blair Hodges and today we talked with Jeff Chu, who finished the book Wholehearted Faith that Rachel Held Evans had been working on before she died in 2019. And he's also the author of a great book, Does Jesus Really Love Me?: A Gay Christian's Pilgrimage in Search of God in America.

Alright, Jeff. It's time for best books. What did you bring to recommend?

JEFF CHU: I brought Min Jin Lee's book Pachinko. It is an award-winning novel about four generations of a Korean family. It is a rich testament about relationship, and religion, secrets and sins. Pachinko is at once an epic story, and a deeply and powerfully intimate one. Min Jin Lee draws you into the lives of these characters, but more than that, I think she invites us to ask big questions, just like Rachel does, about our own conceptions of family and belonging. And she does it in such a hospitable and compelling way.

BLAIR HODGES: It's funny that, you know, this is a fiction book, and I just wonder about your thoughts about reading fiction. I've tried to ramp up my fiction reading. I used to read almost exclusively nonfiction for years. And I'm trying to read more fiction now.

How is the ratio for you? Do you tend to read more fiction for fun? Or what's the ratio like?

JEFF CHU: It depends on different seasons. There are years when I would say it's seventy percent fiction, thirty percent nonfiction, and then their years when that ratio flips. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. But I will say that sometimes, often, a good novel is just as true as a nonfiction work. It's emotionally honest. It is historically accurate. It paints a picture of humanity and the complexity of our inner lives in just as compelling a way as a good nonfiction book can. It's just as true.

BLAIR HODGES: I think, in some ways, it can be more true in the sense of—I guess memoir can kind of get it this, but the author’s in control of the hearts and the feelings, right? So we can get a view of interior life from fiction that we really can't access in nonfiction the same way. So yeah, I've certainly experienced that.

JEFF CHU: But bad fiction is super, super bad.

BLAIR HODGES: [laughs] What's the worst? Give us a bad book real quick!

JEFF CHU: [laughter] Oh, I’m not gonna do that. No writer would dare to throw another writer under the bus on air.

BLAIR HODGES: I should have known! Well, Jeff, thanks for that recommendation. There'll be a link to that to that book, Pachinko, on firesidepod.org.

That's Jeff Chu, and today we talked about Wholehearted Faith. Jeff this was a real treat. Thank you for doing this and spending so much time with us on Fireside.

JEFF CHU: Thanks so much for the invitation.

Outro - 56:52

BLAIR HODGES: Fireside with Blair Hodges is sponsored by the Howard W. Hunter Foundation—supporters of the Mormon Studies program at Claremont Graduate University in California. It’s also supported by the Dialogue Foundation. A proud part of the Dialogue Podcast Network.

Alright, another episode is in the books, the fire has dimmed, but the discussion continues. Join me on Twitter and Instagram, I’m at @podfireside. And I’m on Facebook as well. You can leave a comment at firesidepod.org. You can also email me questions, comments, or suggestions to blair@firesidepod.org. And please don’t forget to rate and review the show in Apple Podcasts if you haven’t already.

Fireside is recorded, produced, and edited by me, Blair Hodges, in Salt Lake City. Special thanks to my production assistants, Kate Davis and Camille Messick, and also thanks to Christie Frandsen, Matthew Bowman, and Kristen Ullrich Hodges.

Our theme music is “Great Light” by Deep Sea Diver, check out that excellent band at thisisdeepseadiver.com.

Fireside with Blair Hodges is the place to fan the flames of your curiosity about life, faith, culture, and more. See you next time.

[End]

NOTE: Transcripts have been lightly edited for readability.