This Is Going to Hurt: Faith, Division, and Radical Love with Bekah McNeel

In this episode of Good God, George Mason sits down with journalist Bekah McNeel to discuss her latest book, This Is Going to Hurt: Following Jesus in a Divided America. Together, they explore the profound intersections of faith, suffering, and public life, challenging us to move beyond binaries and embrace self-sacrificial love in the face of division. From reframing stories about immigration and race to understanding the call of the cross as a daily act of radical compassion, Bekah invites listeners to go deeper into their convictions and rethink what it means to love their neighbors.

Bekah McNeel is a San Antonio-based journalist and storyteller who writes on education, faith, and society for publications such as Texas Monthly, Sojourners, and Christianity Today.

Watch the video, here.

George (00:00):

Welcome to Good God, conversations that matter about faith and public life. I'm your host George Mason, and I'm delighted to welcome to the program today, Becca McNeil. Becca, thank you for being with us.

Bekah (00:14):

Oh, thank you so much for having me.

George (00:16):

Sure. So, uh, just by way of background, Becca is a Texan. She lives in San Antonio, and she is a journalist, and you will catch her writings in, uh, different, uh, publications like, uh, Texas Monthly, uh, the Texas Tribune, um, other, uh, national as well as state papers, um, sojourners and Christianity Today, and things like that. So, while she is a journalist, she writes also a lot about religion and, uh, social matters, politics and the like, and the intersection of all of those things. Right. Becca.

Bekah (00:58):

So that's a, that's a pretty good description. It's lately been pretty much any peculiar intersection you can think of with religion,

George (01:06):

Right

Bekah (01:06):

There. There I am.

George (01:08):

And you have a new book. Yes. And here it is. It's titled, this Is Going To Hurt Following Jesus in A Divided America. And you begin the, the book by basically, uh, talking about how, uh, the title sort of represents, uh, something about your personality. Uh, you, you, you kind of describe yourself as being no fun at parties, that sort of thing. So I, I think, I hope,

Bekah (01:42):

Hoping that the humor in there kind of is a little bit of a, a twist on it. Right,

George (01:50):

Right, right. Well, I mean, it is a forthright book, uh, that challenges us. Um, you do take on a number of social and political issues and talk about how we typically talk about them and then try to help us reframe them. Uh, but, uh, overall I think it's a, it's a really interesting, uh, book because, uh, to begin with, you say that you are a journalist and not a theologian or a philosopher. Correct. I'll say, first of all, I am a theologian at a philosopher, and I don't know many theologians and philosophers I'd rather talk theology or philosophy with than you. Oh, <laugh>. Uh, because your book, uh, is chock-full of, I think, important insights theologically and philosophically. So thank you for, for venturing out. Uh, and when, when we talk about venturing out, I think it's a an interesting thing you might describe, because, uh, being a journalist does require a certain sense of distance, right? Yes. Uh, and yet this book is anything but about keeping your distance. So could you describe that sort of tension?

Bekah (03:10):

Sure. Well, it really warms my heart that you appreciated, you know, the, the venturing out of my wheelhouse. And mostly, I mean, that's my, my first love is theology and philosophy. That's what I grew up loving. It's what I read in my spare time. It's my kind of, my nature, the bent of my nature is to get into all of that. And I am a stay up till two o'clock in the morning talking about that kind of stuff, uh, girl. And so inherently, when I'm out reporting the, when I say I'm not those things, I'm not trained as those things. . I'm naturally drawn to them, but I'm trained to be a journalist. And so I'm trained to keep my distance. I'm trained to withhold those observations or those contemplations from my work. So I'm out meeting people looking at pretty significant suffering. I've gone to the site of some of, like the biggest debates or events or, um, sites of suffering in the world.

Bekah (04:30):

And even before I was a journalist, like even in my academic cur, like as in after grad school and whatnot, I studied genocide. And so I went to, you know, genocide sites Yeah. And stuff. And so, but going now, I, you know, I went to Valdi. I go to the Texas border. I do all of this stuff and what comes through in a story that's appropriate for consumption, and the, this contract that we have with journalism is, and should be, tell me what's happening. Tell me the facts faithfully relay people's stories and their quotes. . Very rarely do we want the journalist's opinions about why. I mean . , my biggest place where training has to overcome nature is .  ascribing intent. And we've struggled. The Trump era has totally made us, every journalist I know is, is having an internal war, because do you call it a falsehood or a lie?

Bekah (05:38):

A lie says they intended to deceive a falsehood says it's just not accurate. Right. And so, how many falsehoods does a person get to relay before they're a liar? Right. And that's hard. Those are moral philosophical questions that journalists are not trained to take on, but more and more as the witnesses, as the people who bear witness to these things on behalf of an entire nation that's going to need to vote. .  or need to, you know, advocate or spend their money, or however you choose to engage society. We are interconnected enough that what you vote, who you vote for, how you spend your money, all that has implications for all of these suffering people. And you do need information. And so what basically happened with this book is that I had done enough stories and done them from my as fair, and I can't be objective, no one can be objective.

Bekah (06:45):

We're all coming from a place, but fair and combing out my own analysis or my own weaving together of the common threads. So I'd done enough stories like that, but then I wanted to s say what I had seen .  like the truth behind the facts. Right. And so that's what the book is. The book is finally sitting down with the observation behind the news, the things that I was seeing and hearing that don't really have a place in the story, because without context, they're not need to know items. But also, but I could track that across stories and across topics and across time and place, and find this common thread. And that turned out to be something that was a, did have a lot of theology to it, because it very much is in the realm of what it means to love God and love your neighbor <laugh>.

George (07:51):

So if people are looking to this book for, uh, you to get behind the stories and tell you, tell us what's really going on, and essentially offer a prescription for how to write the narrative, uh, correctly, um, it, they're going to be disappointed just to be candid, because, uh, the part of your point is, uh, that we have created binaries and we're all looking for, uh, how to have the correct story that doesn't cost us anything. Right. The, the, the one, the one that, that says, this is the right point of view. And in a sense, what you're, I think arguing for is how do we overcome the us against them? Right. How do we, how do we move beyond, uh, this position where we can identify, we can be comfortable with a, a measure of suffering of other people, people as long as it doesn't touch us. Right? Yes. Very much so. Talk a little more about how you think about the role of suffering in our engagement with our neighbors and with, uh, public issues.

Bekah (09:14):

Yes. Oh, such good questions. And Yes. I <laugh> do love the disclaimer. And I, I didn't even think about this when I was writing. I, but in every, um, guest, like whenever I go do events with a q and a, anytime I'm doing something where the, the audience gets to ask questions. Someone will ask, how do I convince my, you know, uncle, neighbor, whatever. Right? Um, that, how do I help them see that this is wrong? That their politics are politic, are hurting people? And that's not the book that I wrote. . , I don't know. There are people who have tried to take that on. But the truth is that that conversation doesn't necessarily exist either. A person responds to data, you know, either you hold up these stories and say, but look, this is what's happening. Look at these numbers, look at this person. And the person changes their mind or they don't . .

Bekah (10:26):

And there's no argumentative rhetorical strategy or telling this, making your story more compelling, making the stories of making the data more compelling. I, journalists are trained in that, and we're doing a really good job, frankly, a lot of us at telling, making these stories compelling, and we're not changing your uncle's mind. So, you know, and there's this temptation to say like, oh, well, your relationship is what changes your mind. Sometimes, sometimes not. Yeah. There are people who have broken those relationships, right. Because they can't agree that's common right now. . . . . And so I don't have the solution to how to, this is not the how to win book. . . Right. This is not the how to change your story so that you're in the right and everybody has to eventually come over to your side. It's also, like you mentioned, not saying, oh, the way we're doing this is all wrong. If we do it right, it's win-win. Right?

George (11:24):

Right.

Bekah (11:25):

We, nobody suffers. You don't suffer. And I see that a lot. The best example I see of that is in the immigration debate where people who are very pro-immigrant . , instead of kind of confronting the fears and the concerns of people who are anti-immigration and saying, you know, the fear that, oh, we're letting end dangerous people. They're taking our jobs, the system can't sustain it, all of that. They'll say, no, no, we actually won't suffer if we let these immigrants in. They're good people. They're hard workers. They're this, they're that, they're Christians, you know, all of this stuff. And we try to pitch the immigrants as something that won't hurt you. Well, the fact of the matter is that people hurt people. You, if you let in a hundred immigrants, statistically one or two of them might shoplift one day. They're people, uh, uh, in the room of a hundred like native born Americans, one or two of them are gonna shoplift. . , you know, there's people who hurt, people who are born here, people who hurt, people who are coming over here. It's just, we're people. Yeah. And so what happens is that we start to argue about it based on, oh, I wanna convince you that this won't hurt you. Well, then when somebody gets hurt, the whole argument falls apart.

George (12:49):

Right? Right.

Bekah (12:50):

And that's what you see is that one side is saying they're all bad. One side's saying it's all good. And then they're being able to throw these little bits of evidence. Yes. Look at this story about the, you know, this immigrant who committed this crime, versus look at this story about this amazing immigrant who did something nice in their community. And my argument is that the, the way we have these conversations is that we look at the human suffering and say, how do we alleviate this? Yes. And recognize that the suffering at the border is significant enough, and the suffering in the countries of origin for these folks is significant enough that it merits some effort into getting people out of tents, getting people away from gangs, getting little children medical care. Right? Like, this is not bumps and bruises. This is significant. And when you do that, you don't do it on the condition that, okay, but it can't cost me anything. Right. You do it. And that's where this, this is going to hurt, comes in, is that the actual charge of the gospels, I think is saying, I accept whatever suffering comes with loving my neighbor.

George (14:08):

Okay. So that leads me to quoting you from your book. Okay. Uh, something I actually did, I'll have to send you the article I recently wrote for publication where I cited this passage in your book. Um, but you're talking about Jesus and the way of Jesus. And when he tells us that we must take up our cross daily, what that means, and you say this, he's not talking about grand martyrdom here. He's talking about lives that put our self-interest aside and choose self-sacrificial love in a way that is not rewarded, in fact may be punished by the power structures of the day. Taking up your cross and following Jesus means not capitulating to exploitation and power hoarding just because that's the way it's done. And when you realize, oh, that's going to cost you something, a promotion, an election, some profit, some power, the gospels are there to agree with you.

George (15:20):

Right. Because it's a cross, I think that is at the very heart what you're trying to call us to. Right. And that is what, you know, Brian, Brian Stevenson, the civil rights lawyer, uh, talks about the key, uh, to so much of this is becoming proximate to pain. And, uh, much of what you're talking about here, I think, is that rather than making suffering a zero sum game, uh, we have to all be involved in the suffering of the story of, of others. And that's going to cost us, it's going to hurt, it's gonna feel, we're going to feel the burden of that for the sake of loving our neighbor. And, uh, when we do that, we'll start to reframe, uh, the stories that we tell and the way we live our lives. So you begin to address, uh, the reframing of these stories, right? Yes.

George (16:38):

And I, I'll, I'll, I'll just name some of them. Immigration, um, critical race theory, abortion, guns, climate, covid. Uh, you take these on and in the book you kind of say, here's the way we have been telling these stories, and then here's an alternative way of doing so if you're gonna take up your cross, so to speak. Right. If you're, if you're gonna do that. So can you choose one of those and kind of give our listeners a, a hint of, of, of how we might listen to the current narratives and reframe them in this way?

Bekah (17:16):

Yes. Um, I want to really quick respond to something you said, because I think it's a, a subtlety in the book that not a lot of people, or like, I don't talk about it often and it, but it is worth mentioning, and I'm glad you brought it up, because one of the things about this is going to hurt, it's when I'm hiking with my kids, I am const. My kids are very adventurous and they like to scramble up things. And I'm constantly doing the math in my head of if they fell from there, what's the worst that could happen? Yeah. Like, . , it'll all be unpleasant. Right. If they scrape their knee, we are going to have an unpleasant walk back to the car. .  if they fall from a three foot ledge . , we're probably gonna have to go to the hospital and go get an arm set.

Bekah (18:07):

Yeah. If they fall from a 20 foot cliff, they're dead. Yeah. So the degree to which I am comfortable intervening is very much, uh, proportional to what could happen if they don't, if they're at the corner of a 20 foot ledge, I am on top of them, I've got my hand on their back. Yeah. You know, and I'm being very obnoxious to them, and we're probably fighting if they are scrambling up something that's very craggy and rocky, and I'm going, oh God, we're gonna end up with a scraped knee here. I will hold it back because that's an appropriate risk for their age. And I'm going, Ugh, I could be ruining my own hike here, but I'm willing to do it because I think that's good for their development. When you see someone suffering the degree to which you have compassion for it, and you're feeling it absolutely informs what kind of response you're willing to do.

Bekah (19:06):

Not just that, but the catharsis that you get in the response. And so, when I am anguished over what I see at the border, then going down and doing some kind of relief work, volunteering in a shelter actually feels good. That .  use of my, that sacrifice of my time. .  that sacrifice of my comfort, that kind of, you know, whatever feels actually very good. And so a what might have felt like suffering if I wasn't proximate, is now actually a relief to the, I would say it's resurrection. . . So if you're willing to do the suffering in being proximate and feeling compassion, the suffering on the alleviating or the, the amount that you have to feel discomfort or whatever, whatever, when you're alleviating someone else's suffering is actually lessened. And I think that's a really beautiful thing that happens. And it's an offer that Jesus gives us, is that if you'll do this work in your heart, then the actions and all the things that you're afraid of, the, you know, the giving of money, the giving of time, the giving up of your, you know, giving them your cloak, they ask <laugh>, whatever, that doesn't feel as like, oh, for me, if your heart is already broken.

Bekah (20:26):

And so that's a really im portant point now to your question. Um,

George (20:30):

okay, well, let's hold, let's, let's hold off on the, on the issues for a moment and, and keep going with that, because I think, uh, I, I think you know, what you've, what you've raised is an important thing for people to think about, and Christians have a way of thinking about the cross, uh, and the resurrection as a, a one time thing that is something that happened to Jesus and to Jesus alone that has some sort of effect upon us if we transactionally make our profession of faith in him. And then the payoff will be that when we die, someday, we will have a resurrection life in heaven. Right. And, and that secures our religious life, um, because we have identified with his one-off sacrifice, death and, uh, resurrection and put ourselves in a position where we will avoid eternal suffering, uh, if, if, if we, you know, accept it now for this time. But your point in the book is that, that the cross and resurrection that happens to Jesus is actually the nature of reality.

Bekah (22:01):

Yes.

George (22:01):

And, and that, uh, when we take up our cross and when we enter into suffering voluntarily as he did, we put ourselves in a position for the resurrection power of God to be at work now in our lives, to, to, to surprise us, to bring us new joy, to, to help us cathart experience relief of suffering, uh, not only for someone else, but even for our ourselves, uh, because we have entered into reality, uh, and stopped trying to pretend that it's something else. Yeah. So I think this is a really important thing that Christians need to learn and hear, is that we're talking about everyone experiencing by the way they, uh, view the cross and resurrection something truly fundamental about reality, not just a spiritual or religious and, uh, sphere of life,

Bekah (23:09):

Right? Yes. Uh, yes. I think the atonement, <laugh> theory of atonement that I grew up with. Yeah, yeah. Um, which was your classic substitutionary, you know, Jesus, you owed a blood debt to God. Right. Jesus came, paid your blood debt. Now you're free. The real world living that out is limited, if not destructive, in my opinion. . . , because what it does is it makes exactly what you said, my eternity is secure. So how I apply God's word that doesn't actually have much to do with death and resurrection doesn't actually have much to do with that part. . . It's to do with all these other parts, and we're gonna look at the epistles and try to get it right on how we order our churches and what the governance structure looks like. And we're gonna obsess about that. . , because this is in the realm of how you get saved.

Bekah (24:16):

Yes., right, you know, and the, I was lucky enough to get to talk about this with the theologian Angela Parker once, and she is a womanist theologian and womanist theology. And, um, very much is about the, the walking of the road. The . . Let's bringing everyone along. And you start to see that, oh, in that case, and we talked about moti, the use of death and resurrection as a motif in scripture. . . And actually, if you take that not as, oh, that was Jesus was on earth just to get there and accomplish this big goal. Right. And like, that's, that, that was the ring he's throwing into Mordor or whatever. . . Um, but instead look at it as Jesus comes and lives this liberating redemptive life, and you see the motif of death and resurrection, I'm making all things new. Right. And then it culminates, you almost hear the argument build.

Bekah (25:22):

And it's the argument that I make in the book. You see Jesus, um, turn water into wine. . , we ran out of wine. That's bad. I'm making new wine. You know, resurrection, the storm is big. You're walking on the water. . , there's, I think you see this motif of the old is insufficient and there's suffering in, in, uh, scarcity. The new is abundant. Right. And there, you know, and you see this rhythm happening and happening. And the big question is, okay, but what if I die? . . . , you know, the big question is, if I share my last can of beans during the apocalypse, then I'm the one who starves to death. Right. This could eventually, and that's, you'll see in politics, they'll, politicians will raise the stakes and raise the stakes and raise the stakes until the immigrants aren't taking their job, they're killing your children. Ah. That, you know, abortion isn't, um, an ethical gray area. It's a moral, absolute. It's murder. Right. Um, critical race theory isn't, oh, maybe we're overemphasizing this too much. It's no, it's hurting us. It's actually making racism worse. Right.

George (26:44):

Right.

Bekah (26:44):

You see this raising of the stakes and Jesus' life, I think is this raising of the stakes until you say like, okay, but what if I die? . . And Jesus says, alright, what if I die? .  resurrection. 'cause life is abundant. And Right. That's, to me, to me, it's the, it's, the gospels are actually this beautiful building argument of even there, right. Like, does God go there? And then you get into the, the idea of <laugh>, like Romans eight, even if I go into the place of death, God is, there is God, there is God there, there, there. . . And Jesus says, yes, God is there and redemption is there, and resurrection is there. And that's, I think, what we're being asked to do, because so few of us are gonna be asked to actually die on a cross.

George (27:43):

Right.

Bekah (27:43):

Right. And I think that's why Jesus said, take up your cross, is because we have to be able to equate the f the, the furthest you can possibly go with the . Very small sacrifices that we are so reluctant to make.

George (28:00):

And yet, uh, you know, this, this is something I learned, Becca, um, when I was a pastor, and we made the decision at our church that we would, uh, engage the matter of what would be the role of L-G-B-T-Q persons in our church. And it was, um, a deeply challenging and painful time to, uh, address that. And, uh, nothing, nothing I did hurt more, I suppose, uh, in terms of personal relationships with people that I had loved and cared for, and it hurt them as well. Um, uh, but the truth is that for all the sense of sacrifice or pain, for those of us who were allies, you might say in, in this, first of all, our pain was nothing compared to the suffering that they had experienced at the hands of the church for a long, long time. And so, uh, simply entering into that with them and sharing that suffering for a time, the, the beautiful thing that happened is I, I had all of these new unexpected friendships and all of these new relationships, and our church has a, a, a new sense of joy about not having to divide the world up into gay and straight or, you know, who's in and who's out.

George (29:38):

We, we now are able to look at one another and see children of God every, in, every, every time we, we see one another regardless of these things. That's the surprising joy that comes on the other side. And I, I love Yeah.

Bekah (29:54):

Everybody I know who has let go of an exclusive exclusionary, um, very judgment based .  theology has described a kind of death and resurrection .  that that happens. Right. And I think the freedom of going through the world, I mean, there's memes in deconstruction Instagram about, like, nothing's been better for my mental health than changing my theology on hell.

George (30:25):

<laugh>.

Bekah (30:25):

You know, it's, it's amazing if you, if you'll risk it, the, the freedom on the other side and Yeah. The community on the other side, and like how lovely it is to be able to look at the world and go, there's no one here I have to condemn to hell.

George (30:42):

Right. Right. Or

Bekah (30:43):

There's nobody here. I can't serve communion to. Right. There's nobody here that I have to sit and say, I'm sorry, but who you are is simply unacceptable to me.

George (30:58):

Yeah. The, the command of Jesus is, uh, and, and of God and biblically is not that we, um, are called to be in the business of sorting out the world. Uh, it's serving the world. Right. It's loving the world, and we can leave the sorting to God. Um, yeah. That's not our job. Right. So Yeah.

Bekah (31:23):

And that's the core, the other core argument in the book is that we're all one. Yeah.

George (31:26):

So, yeah. Exactly. Okay. So what, what does it mean? I love this phrase, find your radishes.

Bekah (31:36):

<laugh>, thank you for, thank you for calling that that was one of my favorite plays on words when I did it. I was like, oh, wow. This is like borderline dad joke. Um, <laugh>, but the root word of radical, radical, rad radish, it's a root, root vegetable. Right. Um, and what I'm asking people to do is get beneath politics. Politics has this, like, it covers a multitude of beliefs and, and politics right now. And James Davison Hunter actually comments on this a lot in his book To Change the World about how politics have consumed every other place we might go for identity or agency in society. .  now, and you, you see, we saw Covid was the best example of this, right. Wearing a mask became a political statement. Right. And it is absolutely absurd the way politics overtook covid. Right, right. And, um, and not just that people's beliefs about a virus drove them to different political parties, though that did happen. But even worse, people's political parties told them how they had to feel about medical issues. . . And the, when I'm asking people to find their radishes, I'm basically saying, get underneath rather than letting, rather than going to your political party and saying, okay, what do I believe about this? Where do we stand on Palestine folks? . . I mean, good luck figuring that out. And or where do I stand on abortion political party? Instead, get really deep into what you believe and why you believe it and what you're actually afraid of. Right. And what you're actually hoping for. . . And look at some of the deep dividing lines. .  that you have, you have placed yourself on one side or the other and start dealing with it there. .  rather than trying to have it the fight on a political us them, because the political us them is too easy to be like, well, but they do this well, but they do, you know?

Bekah (34:03):

Go deep and figure out before you decide, how am I gonna vote? Get deep on where you stand on race and gender and nation. . Like, what is our nation? And all of that. And have that debate with yourself on a deep, deep level. . , because that's where the work is actually gonna happen. And then watch it completely mess up your politics because you're going to come back up to the surface and be like, oh, shoot. You know? , , I'm not as right aligned maybe as I thought I was, or now that I've done this work .  I'm having a lot of trouble reconciling this. And then you realize that politics is a largely a game of compromise, and we're all compromising something, and we're trying to do the, you know, the least damage and the most good and pick the party that you wanna debate with. Because if you're doing your job as a Christian and American, you should be holding the government accountable, not being their foot soldiers. And so, <laugh>

George (35:05):

Well, this, this, this is actually a good place for us to have to close, even though I would love to keep going and going and going with you. Uh, but, uh, and that is the, uh, the, the way you, you talk about going deeper and you know, Jim Wallace of Sojourns likes to say, uh, he doesn't ask people to move left or right, but to go deep. Uh, and, and I think that's, that's important. But there's another way that I think you, you frame this and, and that's the distinction between state and Soulcraft. Ah, and the fact that yes, we have to be involved in, in statecraft because public policy can be used to hurt people or to minimize hurt, to reduce and alleviate suffering. And that's a good thing. But then you say this, you can require statecraft that people stop hurting people, but until they stop hating people, you're going to have to keep plucking that weed.

George (36:08):

And I think, um, then you say, we, we have to get radical to the roots. We're going for radishes. And I, I think this is, uh, this is where we, we want to probably summarize at this point and say that until we go deep enough to address the hate, uh, to, to, to, to find our common humanity, to enter into it, uh, and to voluntarily take up our cross and share in people's suffering, uh, we're not gonna, we're not gonna find that oneness, that unity that is, uh, what Jesus lived and what he calls us to live toward. So Becca, thank you for this theologically rich and philosophically wise book, uh, from a journalist, uh, who is teaching us to write a better story.

Bekah (37:10):

Thank you so much.

George (37:12):

Yes. The book again, is, this is Going to Hurt Following Jesus in a Divided America, Becca McNeil. You can also find more of her writings and, uh, things@beccamcneil.com. Uh, and thank you, uh, Becca for all you do and for your good journalism work, but also for, uh, pointing us toward the places of healing, uh, for us personally and as a society.

Bekah (37:39):

Thank you so much, George. This was so much fun.