Dru Johnson (00:00)
Why are our young adults so lonely, locked in, so out of touch with the communities that surround them? Well in this episode we’re gonna talk to O Alan Noble, a literary scholar, ⁓ and who has written several books now
You are not your own on getting out of bed. And now he’s written to live well, where he asks mainly younger people, but all of us to think about ⁓ how we can actually live courageously and virtuously in this world as Christians, and with Jesus as a model for that. ⁓ if you know ⁓ Alan Noble’s thinking and writing, you know he is both dark and savvy and hopeful, ⁓ a unique combination. Stay tuned.
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Alan (01:49)
Yeah. So the challenges for this book, I would say would be that, well, there’ll be a couple of them. One would be that I’m presenting the virtues, the seven virtues as pathways to live well and
That’s a different way of thinking for a lot of people because a lot of people want life hacks. They want ⁓ simple methods of technique in their life to optimize it to to to live well as it were. And instead what I’m giving them are these time tested habits of cultivating that point them to who they were created to be in Christ.
And those are developed over time through the power of the Holy Spirit. And it’s not a simple fix. so that’s a and it’s done in community. So it’s a much bigger process. It’s a much bigger project that I’m offering them. ⁓ so that’s one thing. The other thing is, especially if I’m talking to a church, ⁓ there’s going to be some
hesitation because this sounds a little bit if you know, especially if they’re Protestant There’s sounds a little bit like works, you know doesn’t is this are you talking about worse? Don’t we live under grace? Are you are you saying I should be focused on works and so helping them to understand one of the first things I want to help them understand is that we’re doing this out of
Dru Johnson (03:16)
Mm.
Alan (03:33)
Christ’s imputed righteousness. we’re doing this because of what Christ has done. We’re doing this out of obedience and a desire to act righteously because we have the freedom to act righteously because we have the freedom to turn from sin and walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. We are obligated to strive towards righteousness that there is this call, there is this command, there is this obligation to do this.
And so that’s what I want them to understand that we’re doing this under grace, but there is this call, this upward call towards righteousness that is commanded, that Paul stresses, that Christ stresses, that’s really there. And so just living in that tension is that one of the things that I want to navigate is for students and for churches that I want to navigate.
Dru Johnson (04:32)
I as you’re saying that, I realize I’m gonna use you as a mirror to talk about me, because this is what I always do. ⁓ but I just realize I am so deep in biblical literature all the time that I forget people have these theological I’m gonna call it a hang up, a talking point, like works versus grace, as if that’s an actual divide in the world and
Alan (04:37)
Yeah. Yeah.
yeah.
Dru Johnson (04:57)
You know, ⁓ like you said, Paul, you know, Ephesians 2, my favorite, the that we may do these good works that were prepared from before the foundations of the world for us to walk in, right? You know. ⁓ it just seems so commonsensical. And I realize how out of touch I am. It’s really more about me being out of touch. ⁓ and then how do you move people over into that lens by which you say, ⁓ hey, look, we need to do things. Jeffrey Garcia, who’s a colleague ⁓ of ours at the Center for Hebraic Thought
Alan (05:05)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (05:25)
we were talking a few weeks ago about Pharisees and how they were legalistic and how that’s like the problem. And he’s like, look, if somebody becomes a Christian at your church, they’re brand new Christian, you don’t pull them aside and go, Hey, great, you’re a Christian now. Now you can do whatever you want, right? He’s like, you are you’re going to disciple them, which means you start
Alan (05:42)
Right, right.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (05:48)
Crafting their daily life into what some people might call works, but you’re basically crafting how they should live in the world. And so that’s these, and so you’re using the lens of the the seven virtues, and I guess the vices will show up there as well. and juxtapose again. Excellent. ⁓ okay. So I had not thought about that angle, so I’m glad I asked. ⁓ the s the community and the slowdown. ⁓ well, I your honest take. Do you think
Community is a problem because you’ll get my kids are all, you know, Gen Z 20 to 24 years old. And they might say, I don’t know if they would, but they might say, well, we just have different kinds of community. Like our communities are more distributed. You guys were locked in, you know, 70s and 80s. You had to run the streets and find your community. But now we have these communities. Do you see that as true? And or what what kinds of communities do you think are actually the most effective?
Alan (06:43)
That’s interesting. ⁓ So this kind of gets to what my next project is, which is ⁓ so I’m working on kind of a kind of a trilogy, an unofficial trilogy based on you are not your own. Because when I wrote you are not your own, I created a problem unintentionally. I wrote you are not your own where I made this argument that society is based off this false anthropology that says
Dru Johnson (06:50)
Mm.
Alan (07:11)
we are our own and we belong to ourselves, because that’s not true that we belong to God and we are his, ⁓ this creates friction and ⁓ disorder and dehumanization in our society. And so I made this big case for dehumanization in our society. And then I made it the second half of this book, this argument that we have to…
recognize that we belong to God. And when I went around the country giving lectures about this book, people are like, hey, it’s great that you’re saying your solution is we need to recognize we belong to God. But you made this really strong case that society is dehumanizing and you made a weak case for belonging to God. I need to know how do we fix this problem? And so part of my solution is this next book, To Live Well, which is, okay, how do we walk out belonging to God? And part of that is
Dru Johnson (07:52)
Yeah.
Alan (08:04)
individually, we live virtuously and that’s part of belonging to God is living virtuously. But my next book, book five, which I’m working on right now is how do we communally respond to this problem of dehumanization? And ⁓ that gets to your question about these thick and thin, what I would describe as thick and thin communities. So,
We’re in a loneliness epidemic. A lot of our communities, a lot of the thin communities that do exist today, the thin associations, groups, and institutions are low commitment institutions and low commitment groups, right? They’re distributed, as you said, across the internet. They don’t require face-to-face interaction. They don’t require a lot of shared values or…
Dru Johnson (08:48)
Mm-hmm.
Alan (09:00)
Virtues they don’t cultivate virtues in us. They don’t demand much time or resources of us. They don’t ⁓ Expect much of us and they’re easy to dip in and out of they’re also really good at expressing our individuality Right, so they’re good for for me if I want to express who I am but that’s not the point of an institution or
Dru Johnson (09:19)
Hm.
Alan (09:29)
group traditionally part of the point of a group or an institution is a shared value that we are advocating for. So for example a family or a church right. The mission is to glorify God right not to express who you are right. But for some people today going to church is about identifying as a certain kind of Christian right. That’s that’s a reality not not everybody maybe not even most people but for some people that’s that’s a reality. So
Dru Johnson (09:51)
Hm.
Alan (09:59)
So I do think that community is a big problem that we are facing today. ⁓ We have a lot of thin communities because everybody has to belong to something. We need to belong, but we’re belonging in a way that I think doesn’t satisfy our deep sense of belonging and doesn’t involve a deep sense of commitment and won’t actually. And here’s my
Dru Johnson (10:09)
Yeah.
Alan (10:25)
my deep concern and what I’m working on with this next book.
It won’t actually help buffer us from the larger forces of society, both the state and big tech and ⁓ large, ⁓ powerful ideologies that are out there that are pushing down on us when we don’t have those mediating institutions that we are committed to.
then we are just sort of naked individuals that are just getting influenced by them.
Dru Johnson (11:06)
Yeah. ⁓ and and all the the dangers of no guardrails, no guidance, and and then we become our own guides. ⁓ I wanna stick with communities for a second because it also occurred to me that one of the primary features and again I’m kind of thinking of my kids who we lived in the New York City area for a long time and their their kinds of friendships and their kinds of communities, and the students I have.
are often like affirmation first, everything else second. I’m thinking like virtue formation is really hard when all you can do is aff affirm and you’re terrified of shaming anybody or like staking a claim in the ground about what you think is true. because, you know, I’m not saying that’s all that’s going on, but there certain certainly seems to be a high value for affirmation ⁓ of individuality. And then it and as I had my kids these days
Alan (11:37)
Huh.
interesting.
Dru Johnson (12:02)
hat on. I also thought, wait, you know, I grew up as a teenager in the 80s, ⁓ in the punk rock scene and the skinhead scene in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was also like one of the most attractive things about it was it was a community of affirmation. Like it be, yeah, let your freak flag fly, you be you. We’re all misfits and that’s what ties us together. and in some ways that was a very deep sense of of belonging because it was more like
Alan (12:02)
there.
Yeah.
Uh-huh.
Yeah. Right.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (12:30)
This is a dangerous world. If if a fight goes down, I need to know that you’re gonna help me out kind of a thing. I don’t think my kids are getting that from their friendships. ⁓ but hopefully are. Yeah, so I I’m wondering, there seems like some definite benefits to that kind of affirmation of individualism. ⁓ but maybe some benefits or if curated the right way, I guess you’re gonna have some things to say about how you curate curate those benefits.
Alan (12:38)
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, so I think one thing we can point back to is part of belonging, part of the benefit of belonging is we desire this, this affirmation that that comes ultimately from God, but we need to hear echoed from other human beings. This is my theory. This is my theory.
God’s it is good, God’s it is good is what we need to hear. And we hear that from other human beings. For some of us we hear it from a spouse, but we also need to hear it from friends. Even if we have a spouse, we need to hear it from friends. We need to hear, you you’re a good friend or I love you. We need to hear it from our friend as well. ⁓ We need to hear it from other people.
We need to hear that was a good job from a co-worker. We need to hear those affirmations from other human beings. ⁓ We need to hear in church, we need to hear affirmations of our being, of our being. And this goes back to Yosef Pieper’s understanding of love that I work on in the book, To Live Well, which is, is good that you exist how wonderful you are. And I think that’s…
you know, God affirms our existence in that way and we need to hear other humans echo that affirmation. And so that I think is what you’re kind of getting at. In healthy groups, there’s that affirmation. The problem is in disordered groups, that affirmation blends with affirmations of lifestyles. And Pieper’s really good about this. So Pieper says,
Affirmation of being is not affirmation of action necessarily, right? Because it recognizes that affirmation of lifestyle. Sometimes it, you know, sin, it doesn’t affirm sin. is able, love is able to say to sin, you are disordered and called to correction. It’s also able to overlook mistakes out of love.
But it’s not able to overlook sin because it desires sin to come to repentance. And so in healthy groups, there’s this desire for growth and maturity and sanctification, but there’s always that affirmation of being. And so I think what you’re recognizing is there is, you know, that affirmation is a characteristic of healthy groups that build people up.
Dru Johnson (15:23)
Mm.
Alan (15:48)
in disordered groups that affirmation blends with this affirmation of lifestyle, which we have in all kinds of groups today.
Dru Johnson (15:56)
Right. Yeah.
Yeah. no, that’s very helpful. I I also think, you know, I I come from the the Torah forward. ⁓ this idea of how the Torah works on Israel is that it works on Israel and the and and it also has demands of the individual, the individual’s responsibility to the group, but it goes from the group into the individual.
Alan (16:20)
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (16:22)
⁓ and I always like to say it’s it’s more like soccer than a marathon, you know, like you’re only as good as you know, as the people who are working on their own gameplay and their own ⁓ their own craftsmanship. ⁓ and so I hear you in that same dynamic. There’s a group dynamic, there’s an individual dynamic, both both the responsibilities for both. Where do you ⁓ just to throw you a complete monkey wrench, do you see those dynamics working well in
Alan (16:22)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (16:51)
quote unquote secular non Christian communities anywhere.
Alan (16:55)
Hmm.
That’s an interesting question.
Dru Johnson (17:01)
We we
can figure out Christians later, but I wonder if if there’s I always assume if there’s something good in scripture, somebody is aping it out there somehow.
Alan (17:10)
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. Yeah, I don’t know. I have not seen what I’ve seen is, you know, all you know, you can see in corporate structures. It’s you know, there’s probably some corporate managing style that tries to ape this in some way, but it does it in a really corny, ⁓ you know, contrived way. ⁓
Dru Johnson (17:37)
Seven steps two
something, yeah.
Alan (17:39)
Right. Yeah, that and I just you know, I’ve never been in the corporate world. I’ve you know, I’ve worked in, you know, manual labor and then in in teaching. And so I’ve never never made that step. So I really couldn’t say. But that’s that’s my suspicion is that it’s probably in the corporate world somewhere where there’s where that exists.
Dru Johnson (18:00)
And sports analogies, but I don’t play sports so I have no right to make the analogy. I just
Alan (18:02)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (18:07)
I just assume through certain things. Yeah, that’s that’s very helpful. Okay, so you’re coming through the virtues, the classic virtues. So like some people might not know what those are. ⁓ so why don’t we list a few of those off and what you may be the more significant ones?
Alan (18:19)
Yeah.
Yeah, so I go through prudence, justice, fortitude or courage, temperance, and then, you know, as Paul lists, faith, hope and love. ⁓ And for our time, I think ⁓ this book is interesting because if, you know, they’d say editors tell you, marketers tell you, don’t write to everybody. It’s terrible advice to write to everybody. And so the center target of this book is sort of 18 to 26.
Dru Johnson (18:45)
Right, right.
Alan (18:51)
or to 36. ⁓ And, ⁓ and, and I think in that audience range, I think courage and temperance are really the the main virtues that really resonate the most ⁓ as the most pressing, and the most resonant ⁓ with with that age group.
Dru Johnson (19:16)
I I think everybody’ll know what courage is and maybe it’ll need some clarification, but temperance for for those who are struggling to gr get a concrete picture of that?
Alan (19:26)
Yeah. So the way I work with temperance is not, it can mean moderation, it a better, maybe a better understanding is, and I’m taking this from Peiper too, is this sense of inner order. So ordering your loves or the inner order of your life. So a good way to practice this, you talked about slowing down would be to slow down your, your life for a moment, you know, taking, ⁓
catalog of your day and just asking yourself, am I ordering my life? How am I ordering my time? And are those actions, are those thoughts, are those processes, are those ordered toward the good? Right? And so everything in the book is thinking about telos. And so the telos here is God’s glory and enjoying Him forever. So are those actions
ordered rightly, are my loves ordered rightly? And so, you know, a good test would be, you know, am I pulling out my phone? Can I can I avoid pulling out my phone during a dinner conversation? Right. You know, this is a simple test that a lot of people would fail. Right. You know, can I can I have a conversation with someone without pulling out my phone or checking my watch, you know, to, you know, to check for text messages? Can I can I look at someone in the face and just have a conversation with somebody? So.
Dru Johnson (20:36)
Hm.
Alan (20:53)
You know, that’s a simple thing, right? ⁓ But, you know, yeah, and I even mention and I talk about, ⁓ you know, is my use of, I have a section for each chapter that’s practical application. For this chapter, have a section on smartphones and social media. And I make the argument that realistically, some people just need to be off of social media.
Dru Johnson (21:22)
Right.
Alan (21:22)
reality is that their personalities, that their temperament, that it’s not an issue. This is why I say it’s not just moderation. It’s just you just need to be off. It’s just not you’re not fit. You’re just your mind is not able to moderate it. And so you should just not you should just not be on it at all. And other people are going to be able to use it in moderation. And that’s OK. But knowing that about yourself by taking catalog, by taking ⁓
inventory is important. So that’s how I talk about temperance.
Dru Johnson (21:58)
Yeah, so yeah, self banning, fasting, et cetera. ⁓ yeah, I I think of even a lot a lot of mental health struggles. you know, social media is like gas on the on the flame kind of thing for for those folks. ⁓ and and for people who are immature like me, it can be gas on fl on the flame, right? Someone says the trigger words or something and or or when you’re a public person when they
Alan (22:17)
Yeah. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (22:23)
you know, wrongfully defame you or say things that are not true. You know, that it’s hard to My my standard answer now is when I get really immature in my own thinking and I feel like I need to respond, I’ll just say, Okay. Just to let know I’ve heard their critique. It’s there and I really can’t do anything about it. And I’m not, you know, I’m not mad. I’m not mad. ⁓ okay, so this the the
Alan (22:38)
Yes, right. Yes.
Dru Johnson (22:51)
Seven virtues, this is not a critique but an observation. Is this is a very Greco Roman program, right? This very medieval Augustinian ⁓ program. So I wonder, ⁓ and of course Jesus and the disciples were not neither medieval nor Greco Roman nor Augustinian. they were just Hebrews. I wonder what parts of scripture you generally source kind of the justifications or where you see things that kind of mirror what you’re doing in scripture.
Alan (22:54)
Yeah.
Yah, yah, yah, yah.
That’s right. That’s right.
Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I couldn’t give you passages off the top of my head because I sadly am not very… I don’t have scriptures memorized as well as I should. ⁓ But I would say that…
Scripture is not, know, Proverbs talks about prudence. ⁓ The Bible is filled with passages about justice. mean, you know, constantly talking about, right, yeah, the entire thing is about justice, right? ⁓ You know, depending on how you think about temperance.
Dru Johnson (23:55)
Could be the whole thing is about is about some form of justice. Yeah. Yeah.
Alan (24:06)
you know, the scripture, you know, if you want to talk about it. There’s some debate about whether temperance and self-control are two different things, right? So some scholars will say, well, self-control is not the same thing as temperance. ⁓ In the book, I kind of equate them as the same. In retrospect, I’m not sure that was the right move. This is what happens when you write a book. You look back and you say, was that, you know, but, but yeah.
Dru Johnson (24:13)
Mm.
Mm-hmm.
I know. Six six months after it’s in paper, you’re like, ⁓ I’ve developed
this thought. Yep, you cannot.
Alan (24:34)
And you can’t go back and edit it. It is what
it is. ⁓ But I think that, you know, ⁓ I think Proverbs, you know, speaks to the, you know, the concept of moderation, of temperance repeatedly. So I think these concepts are in the scriptures. Certainly faith, hope, and love are right. So it’s like the theological virtues are a slam dunk. They’re right there.
Dru Johnson (24:47)
Mm-hmm.
Alan (24:59)
And courage is repeatedly talked about in Scripture. Perseverance, which is an aspect of fortitude, is praised with Paul. So, it’s like the Scripture is replete with these ideas. So, it’s not, you know, we’re not talking about, it’s true that we’re not talking about the fruits of the Spirit, but these are aspects, these are characteristics of a life well-lived that are
built into our scriptures and are part of our tradition. ⁓ so it’s not an alien, these aren’t alien concepts. ⁓ So that’s what I would say. And I think, and what I argue in the book is that I think that these are concepts that, these are characteristics that Jesus himself exhibits. And so I have in each chapter an example of Jesus exhibiting one of these characteristics.
Dru Johnson (25:51)
Mm.
Alan (25:58)
⁓ And so.
Dru Johnson (26:01)
Jesus as the kind of ultimate expression of the Torah and all the hopes of Israel. ⁓ yeah. It’s a so it’s it sounds like correct me if I’m wrong, it sounds like it’s a it’s kind of a translation into this other form of the conversation of ⁓ you know, there’s a virtue discussion in scripture, but you’re translated into one I think that most people would be familiar with as well in the so called Western world. ⁓
Alan (26:25)
Yeah, yeah,
yeah.
Dru Johnson (26:26)
courage
has come up. I it’s funny when you mentioned the ones that the that the youngins need, and by youngins I mean under forty. ⁓ the ⁓ I I instantly thought courage has got to be one of them that he’s thinking of. And so it’s glad to hear you say that. But what do you mean by courage? What what do you see
Alan (26:32)
Yeah, right.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So what I’m seeing a lot of and this is an interesting one. ⁓
So the statistics are interesting, right? So are you asking me what I’m seeing in young people or what I mean by courage or both?
Dru Johnson (27:00)
Well ⁓
well well both. Why did why courage? Why why did that one pop for you? Yeah.
Alan (27:03)
Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Yeah. So ⁓ dating is down, right? Young people are dating at a lower rate. They are engaging socially at a lower rate. ⁓ They are getting drivers like they are delaying getting drivers licenses. Yeah. I know I was I was there. Me too. Me too. I was
Dru Johnson (27:22)
Yes, I know. Yeah. Which is crazy to me. Like at fifteen and a half I I was in the driver’s license bureau.
Alan (27:31)
The very day I was 15 and a half, was in
Dru Johnson (27:32)
Yeah, exactly. Yep.
Alan (27:34)
the driver’s license, you I was getting one. yeah. Yeah. So it’s, that’s just wild to me ⁓ as well. ⁓ So they’re getting, they’re delaying getting driver’s licenses and this is a nationwide phenomenon. ⁓ There’s just this, what I’ve been toying with, I don’t, I don’t know if I use this word in the book, but since on my sub stack, I’ve been writing a lot about the concept of inhibition.
Dru Johnson (27:36)
Yeah. None of my kids though didn’t.
Alan (28:00)
There’s ⁓ this sense of inadequacy and then inhibition as a result of it. ⁓ The world is a highly competitive place and I’m not sure I can compete or it seems overwhelming. There’s a lot of alternate ways of dealing with life. I don’t necessarily have to drive. There are AI companion bots to chat with.
I don’t have to chat with a friend. I don’t have to make a friend. I don’t have to ask somebody out. ⁓ There’s pornography available to me. you know, there are alternate sources of of companionship or, you know, there are things available to me. And ⁓ I’m not saying that all young people are doing this, but I’m saying that, you know, that’s a reality. There are substitute all, you know. And so
They turn it some for some young people there. I think the inhibition is happening. They’re experiencing inhibition where they feel that they can’t act. They feel like they can’t act that they lack agency that they lack agency in their own lives which is a very sad place to be because they do have agency. I think this is one of the things God gives us is he gives us agency in our lives to to make choices to make wise choices. In fact the premise of this book is that God gives us agency to make wise choices.
And ⁓ so courage comes along and courage says you have to risk suffering or experience suffering for the sake of the good. And so your task, that’s a rough definition. So your task is when you identify a situation like I would like ⁓ to make a friendship. So that’s the good. A friend. Having a friend. Companionship.
or a romantic relationship. That’s the good. I’m going to risk getting rejected by asking them out for coffee. I’m going to risk that suffering for the sake of that good. That’s courage. And you take that risk. And for some people that seems like a bridge too far. in this book, and in fact I have a section on this, I’m calling people to
to take that risk. And I think that a lot of young people are open to being invited into that courage. you know, Jonathan Haidt has written about the fact that we’ve, you know, overprotected people, our young people in the real world and underprotected them in the online world. And I think that’s true. And I think as a result of that, they haven’t had that muscle of courage developed.
Dru Johnson (30:43)
Hmm. Yeah.
Alan (30:52)
Because it is a habit. If it’s a habit, then is it surprising that now, you know, as they’ve grown older, they’re they’re struggling to to strike out. And the last thing I’ll say on this is I’m pointing out this challenge for younger people. But as I get older, I’m experiencing this myself with making friends. Right. The older I get, the harder it is to make friends because they don’t fall in your lap because you’re not in school anymore.
and you just basically have work, right? And if it doesn’t happen that you find the perfect coworker to make friends with, then you’re basically, you you’ve got worker church and that’s it, right? And so making friends is hard. You have to be intentional. You have to like go out and like find somebody at church and say, will you meet me for coffee? And it’s like asking somebody out on a date. It’s like, yeah.
Dru Johnson (31:24)
Mm-hmm.
Like well you meet me for coffee and it’s gonna be weird.
I’ll just tell you right now.
Alan (31:50)
It’s going to be weird
and you have to have courage. You have to have courage. And I’m realizing more and more. So I’ve been talking for the last five minutes or three minutes or whatever about, about young people as if it’s a unique problem to them. But I want to be very clear that, that I’ve talked to many middle-aged and you know, and older people who, who experienced very similar, you know, challenges with timidity who are when it comes to friendship.
So it’s not just young people. We all could use more courage.
Dru Johnson (32:24)
And when you’re older, you can get locked into if especially like in my case where I have a spouse who I, you know, is like a g like the best friend ever, right? ⁓ and you know, you talk to older people and they go, Yeah, be careful with that, because she might die and then and now you are absolutely friendless. Like you don’t have a close, intimate friend, right? ⁓ and and actually that will happen. One of us will die and you still need other friends to help you through that period and to kind of carry on. ⁓
I’m glad you clarified as well with courage. be if I hear you correctly, I mean I think we hear courage and cowardice. Those are the two ends of the continuum. And you’re actually saying courage and inhibition, ⁓ which is actually a much in some ways a very practical like you can get out of that practically by doing certain things and habituating certain practices in your life. I have found so I I was kind of famous in my former institution, like people would come to me for counsel.
Alan (33:02)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (33:23)
And I would hear they would tell me, they would say, Well, s my roommate recommend I come talk to you. ⁓ but they warn me, you’re not going to tell me what to do. ⁓ and I was like, Well, that that is correct. I really do not like telling people what to do. ⁓ or maybe sinfully, I really like it, so I just avoid it as much as I can. And what I’ve run into is ⁓ I’ve I’ve struggled personally, I just don’t know what to do with it. Is the it seems like the desire of the
the younger folks is they just want someone to tell them what to do, right? So they’ll latch on to whatever public intellectual or non-intellectual who is out there saying, kids, just do this, just do that. We need more of this. We need and and so they’ll listen to it whether it’s wise or not. And then you got people over like me, I don’t I’m not to equate myself to the to them, but just going like
Alan (33:54)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (34:12)
Well, there’s a a a thousand thing. I I don’t want to tell you what to do ’cause I’m always surprised by how God uses people and you know, I don’t I don’t wanna l get you locked in syndrome or anything like that. So I don’t do you feel that personally? And if you do or don’t, like what what do you do with that feeling?
Alan (34:18)
Yeah.
Yeah,
I do. I have sense that there is a hunger. What I would describe it as is a hunger for mentorship, ⁓ that there’s a lot of there are a lot of young people who who are looking for older people to give them wise counsel because it seems like they have lacked that in their lives. ⁓ And I’m not sure I would would love to read a book
Dru Johnson (34:35)
Mm-hmm.
Alan (34:57)
on the history of this. I would love to know, has this historically always been the case? Has this changed? Because I could speculate. ⁓ I could speculate that that it’s been the case for the last couple of generations and that there was a change. ⁓ Maybe with maybe a few generations ago, there was a breakdown of passing on passing on wisdom ⁓ that happened. That’s
Dru Johnson (35:06)
Hm. Right.
Alan (35:27)
That’s my theory, but I have absolutely no way of backing that up. That’s my theory. But something’s happened where wisdom doesn’t seem to be passed down to other generations. Parents don’t seem to be, in general, down wisdom to their children, or aunts and uncles don’t seem to be passing down wisdom to their nephews and nieces. And ⁓ so, you know, I once asked a class,
Dru Johnson (35:38)
Yeah.
Alan (35:54)
⁓ We were having a class discussion and ⁓ there was a student in the class who was ⁓ doing counseling, ⁓ as in she was ⁓ working in counseling and she ⁓ was an advanced student ⁓ in a master’s program and she said that a lot of the counselors that she saw ⁓
probably wouldn’t need to see a counselor. The only reason they needed to see a counselor was to get practical advice on how to study or how to manage stress. Like if they had it, what and what what the student said was if they had someone to who is a wise mentor in their life to just give them good advice, they would be fine. And so I asked the class at that moment like
Do you guys have a good mentor in your life? And they all uniformly said no. And ⁓ in some ways this book is a response to that. I mean, it doesn’t give you advice on how to study. So it doesn’t do that. And it can’t be that wise mentor in your life giving you specific advice about your life problems. But ⁓ it tries to give wise counsel in general. ⁓
Dru Johnson (36:54)
Yeah.
Alan (37:18)
But I do think that we have a generational problem ⁓ with that. And it goes back multiple generations, I think.
Dru Johnson (37:26)
Yeah.
No, that that actually rings very true for me anecdotally. Al also like the number of young people who have told me they went to counseling but didn’t like it because all the counselor did was listen to them and reframe questions but didn’t tell them what to do. As if that cause that was the goal for them is I just want someone to tell me what to do or to diagnose me as a particular thing that I can get medicine for or something like that. And I often have students
Alan (37:45)
Mmm.
Yeah.
Right.
Dru Johnson (37:56)
Who will say, How did you know, you know, like I came from a family of divorce, like, how did you know that it was gonna be okay for you to be married? Right. And I said, well, I worked with a a bunch of people who were ten, twenty, thirty years older than me and I was talking to them, asking them, like s many of them were divorced and I was like, Hey, what happened when you got married? Did you know there was a problem? I was just talking to people of all kinds of different walks and ⁓ part partly ’cause when you work in manual labor, ⁓ there’s just a lot more diversity.
Alan (38:15)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (38:26)
Sometimes in those jobs. And and even if I didn’t think these people were in life the wisest people I ever met, I was always astonished about how much wisdom kind of came collectively from people, even if, you know, they had made major life mistakes or weren’t even living the greatest life right now, they kind of had a good beat on what they should be doing and how it could have worked out. ⁓ and that’s the part and then I and then I’ll say that to a student and they’ll go.
Alan (38:26)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (38:54)
Yeah, you’re the only older person I know. Like like Yeah, and it’s like, well, you can’t just rely on me, right? ⁓ because ⁓ I you know, I’ve only got my my insights and my views and perspectives. So that certainly hits very deep. I I mean I I yeah, it would be interesting to see if I’m sure somebody has studied this, generational the loss, the gap of generational wisdom. Okay. So ⁓ before we leave, maybe maybe we should do a
Alan (38:57)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (39:23)
Step one, what do people need to begin maybe not even do, but just start inventorying to help themselves start thinking in the direction of ⁓ living well?
Alan (39:24)
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So I would say that, ⁓ well, I guess the argument of this book is that I think it’s helpful to understand what the virtues are. And I can say that, I can attest to that, because in studying the virtues myself, it honed them in my own life. I think ⁓
Dru Johnson (40:01)
Hm.
Alan (40:04)
understanding. You know the virtues. Let me pause that sentence. The virtues are interesting because it’s not head knowledge that’s going to make you virtuous. Their habits their practices that you actually have to do. So you can’t just get you know you can’t read this book get it dumped into your head and all of a sudden you become a virtuous person that’s not going to work. You actually have to go out. Yeah you actually have to. Yeah exactly. You actually have to go out and do them.
Dru Johnson (40:16)
Mm-hmm.
No Neo and a Matrix. Yeah.
Alan (40:32)
in order to become a virtuous person and it’s going to take time. It’s going to take a lot of time. ⁓ However, if you don’t know what the virtues are, like if you don’t know how they work and if you don’t know what they feel like and look like and how they act, it’s hard to know how to practice them. so knowing the contours of the virtues does help you practice them. And so I felt that myself with things like love, with things like hope.
Dru Johnson (40:45)
Mm-hmm.
Alan (41:02)
⁓ As I studied the virtues myself, gave me, it made me more courageous. It made me think more prudently ⁓ and it gave me more hope, ⁓ you know, as I thought through some of my experiences in life. so, I can attest to the fact that just in the process of writing this book, I think I became a more virtuous person. ⁓
That sounds haughty, but that’s not what I meant, ⁓ intended. But it did help me think about how to become, how to practice these virtues better. And so that’s one thing I think is just like learning what these things are is helpful. ⁓ The other thing I would say is that, you know, as I stress in the book, this is the work of the Holy Spirit. So if you’re not in prayer, like if you’re not in the Word, if you’re not in prayer, it doesn’t
You know, it doesn’t really matter if you’re striving to be some holy person, some virtuous person, if you’re not turning your life to God and pointing your life towards Christ and striving to to be immersed yourself in the scriptures and immersing yourself in prayer. ⁓ That’s the other thing I would that I would say.
Dru Johnson (42:24)
And what was the name of this book? Again, is it Life Maxine? Is that what you called it?
Alan (42:28)
That’s right. Yeah. Alan’s Alan seven life hacks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that’s right.
Dru Johnson (42:31)
Life maxing hacks. How to get your jawline
and your life straightened out.
Alan (42:37)
That’s right. That’s right.
Yeah. Yeah. I hide my jawline with a beard, but yeah.
Dru Johnson (42:41)
I
I realize why I kept on calling it on being well. I just interviewed last week Brian Fickert, whose book with Kelly Kapic is called On Being Well. This is called To Live Well. Yeah, that’s that’s why I was confusing them. Which is a great, great compliment. ⁓ those two books together. Well, ⁓ O Alan Noble. Do you go by O in in regular life or Al
Alan (42:51)
yeah. Yeah. To live well. There you go.
I don’t, although sometimes people do that exactly. They’ll say, ⁓ Alan.
Dru Johnson (43:10)
Is is
is it it’s a vocative yeah. Yeah, yeah, exactly. ⁓ Alan, thank you very much ⁓ for your wisdom and ⁓ guiding us through the virtues.
Alan (43:14)
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah.
Yeah, thank you. It’s been fun.
