What if the church is trapped in the same invisible loop as an addict — and doesn't know it?

What does addiction science have to do with the body of Christ? More than you'd think. In this follow-up conversation, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma build on their interview with Dr. David Van Dyke (Wheaton College Marriage & Family Therapy) to explore how systems thinking unlocks a deeper understanding of church health, Christian formation, and why faithful people keep repeating the same destructive patterns.

Drawing on Kent Dunnington's groundbreaking work Virtue and Addiction, the conversation reveals that the opposite of virtue isn't simply vice — it's addiction. Both are habit-formed, systems-shaped realities. The hosts then turn this lens on the church: from organizational cultures stuck in toxic loops, to single-issue political formation, to Pharaoh's fear-driven decision-making in Exodus — and what it all reveals about how invisible systems shape us without our awareness.

This is a rare conversation: calm, theologically rigorous, and genuinely challenging for anyone who wants to think clearly about what it means to be the body of Christ in the world today.

Key Takeaways:
Why addiction is the true opposite of virtue — not vice — according to philosopher Kent Dunnington
How invisible systems shape our habits, reactions, and identities without our awareness
Why single-issue political engagement may be forming us into political animals rather than disciples
The Pharaoh principle: how fear-driven, system-bound thinking causes us to miss what God is doing
The Ephesus problem: the danger of being doctrinally right but missionally withdrawn
What Jeremiah 7 and Acts 7 reveal about mistaking second-order goods (doctrine, temples) for first-order realities
What does a multi-denominational coffee shop Bible study teach the church about unity?

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To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on Christianity.com.

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If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian, so you never miss an insightful conversation!

What if the church is trapped in the same invisible loop as an addict &mdash; and doesn't know it?
What does addiction science have to do with the body of Christ? More than you'd think. In this follow-up conversation, Dr. James Spencer and Dr. Ashish Varma build on their interview with Dr. David Van Dyke (Wheaton College Marriage &amp; Family Therapy) to explore how systems thinking unlocks a deeper understanding of church health, Christian formation, and why faithful people keep repeating the same destructive patterns.
Drawing on Kent Dunnington's groundbreaking work Virtue and Addiction, the conversation reveals that the opposite of virtue isn't simply vice &mdash; it's addiction. Both are habit-formed, systems-shaped realities. The hosts then turn this lens on the church: from organizational cultures stuck in toxic loops, to single-issue political formation, to Pharaoh's fear-driven decision-making in Exodus &mdash; and what it all reveals about how invisible systems shape us without our awareness.
This is a rare conversation: calm, theologically rigorous, and genuinely challenging for anyone who wants to think clearly about what it means to be the body of Christ in the world today.
Key Takeaways:
<ul>
<li aria-level="1">Why addiction is the true opposite of virtue &mdash; not vice &mdash; according to philosopher Kent Dunnington</li>
<li aria-level="1">How invisible systems shape our habits, reactions, and identities without our awareness</li>
<li aria-level="1">Why single-issue political engagement may be forming us into political animals rather than disciples</li>
<li aria-level="1">The Pharaoh principle: how fear-driven, system-bound thinking causes us to miss what God is doing</li>
<li aria-level="1">The Ephesus problem: the danger of being doctrinally right but missionally withdrawn</li>
<li aria-level="1">What Jeremiah 7 and Acts 7 reveal about mistaking second-order goods (doctrine, temples) for first-order realities</li>
<li aria-level="1">What does a multi-denominational coffee shop Bible study teach the church about unity?</li>
</ul>
Get early access and a bonus with a <a href="https://www.patreon.com/c/thinkingchristian/membership">Patreon membership</a>.
Subscribe to our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Useful_toGod">YouTube channel</a>
To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on <a href="https://www.christianity.com/author/james-spencer/">Christianity.com</a>.
📢 Stay Connected &amp; Keep Growing!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian, so you never miss an insightful conversation!

Christians shouldn’t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.

Find more from James at https://www.thinkingchristian.org/.

Christians shouldn&rsquo;t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.
Find more from James at <a href="https://www.thinkingchristian.org/">https://www.thinkingchristian.org/</a>.

Christians shouldn’t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.

Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World

Christians shouldn&rsquo;t just think. They should think Christian. Join Dr. James Spencer and guests for calm, thoughtful, theological discussions about a variety of topics Christians face every day. The Thinking Christian Podcast will help you grow spiritually and learn theology as you seek to be faithful in a world that is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny Christ.
Find more from James at <a href="https://www.thinkingchristian.org/">https://www.thinkingchristian.org/</a>.

Systems, Virtue & the Body of Christ

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/5e27a451-e6e6-4c51-aa03-a7370003783c/clips/fb1fad01-96b3-4475-bd18-b46500976b91/transcript

Ezra-Nehemiah opens on a high note. Yahweh keeps the word he spoke through Jeremiah, Cyrus issues the edict, and the exiles go home. By the last chapter, Nehemiah is walking the city alone, pulling out men's hair and cursing them, and the collective repentances that filled the middle of the book have evaporated. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer argues that most of the literature, popular and technical alike, has quietly declined to read that ending as an ending.

In this episode, Dr. James Spencer talks with Dr. Schnittjer about his forthcoming commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah in the Baker Commentary on the Old Testament series. They start with the hyphen. Ezra-Nehemiah is one book split across two scrolls for the same practical reason Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles were split, and reading half of an already difficult book makes it nearly unreadable. From there they work through what happens when you let the ending stand: if the exile was supposed to reform the people, it did not, and God will have to keep his word some other way.

Along the way, Nehemiah 8 through 10, where the people ask Ezra for the Torah scroll at the Water Gate on an ordinary day, study Scripture together for eleven days, and then sign an oath committing themselves to a standard higher than the one Torah sets. The canonical question of why the Hebrew Bible ends in Chronicles on a note of hope while Ezra-Nehemiah ends in failure. And the mass divorces, which Dr. Schnittjer reads against the grain of the usual explanations. The book never calls these others Gentiles or foreigners. It calls them non-covenantal. The pressure was economic before it was ethnic, and Ezra-Nehemiah keeps the camera on the whole community rather than the individual households.

Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament for Cairn Theological Seminary at Cairn University. He writes at Carpenter's Student. 

Get Ezra-Nehemiah (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament) at amazon.com.

This is part two of our conversation. In the previous episode we discussed Connected: How Scripture Guides the Study of Scripture, and in the next two episodes we turn to inter-biblical exegesis and Old Testament Use of Old Testament in Parallel Layout.

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on Christianity.com.

📢 Stay Connected & Keep Growing!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian so you never miss an insightful conversation!

 

 

Ezra-Nehemiah opens on a high note. Yahweh keeps the word he spoke through Jeremiah, Cyrus issues the edict, and the exiles go home. By the last chapter, Nehemiah is walking the city alone, pulling out men's hair and cursing them, and the collective repentances that filled the middle of the book have evaporated. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer argues that most of the literature, popular and technical alike, has quietly declined to read that ending as an ending.
In this episode, Dr. James Spencer talks with Dr. Schnittjer about his forthcoming commentary on Ezra-Nehemiah in the Baker Commentary on the Old Testament series. They start with the hyphen. Ezra-Nehemiah is one book split across two scrolls for the same practical reason Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles were split, and reading half of an already difficult book makes it nearly unreadable. From there they work through what happens when you let the ending stand: if the exile was supposed to reform the people, it did not, and God will have to keep his word some other way.
Along the way, Nehemiah 8 through 10, where the people ask Ezra for the Torah scroll at the Water Gate on an ordinary day, study Scripture together for eleven days, and then sign an oath committing themselves to a standard higher than the one Torah sets. The canonical question of why the Hebrew Bible ends in Chronicles on a note of hope while Ezra-Nehemiah ends in failure. And the mass divorces, which Dr. Schnittjer reads against the grain of the usual explanations. The book never calls these others Gentiles or foreigners. It calls them non-covenantal. The pressure was economic before it was ethnic, and Ezra-Nehemiah keeps the camera on the whole community rather than the individual households.
Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament for Cairn Theological Seminary at Cairn University. He writes at <a href="https://garyedwardschnittjer.substack.com">Carpenter's Student</a>.&nbsp;
Get Ezra-Nehemiah (Baker Commentary on the Old Testament) at <a href="https://amzn.to/4pWgF8g">amazon.com</a>.
This is part two of our conversation. In the previous episode we discussed&nbsp;<a href="https://amzn.to/3TDKiz4">Connected: How Scripture Guides the Study of Scripture</a>, and in the next two episodes we turn to inter-biblical exegesis and <a href="https://amzn.to/4hGmmFe">Old Testament Use of Old Testament in Parallel Layout</a>.
Subscribe to our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Useful_toGod">YouTube channel</a>
To read James's article on this topic, check out his author page on <a href="https://www.christianity.com/author/james-spencer/">Christianity.com</a>.
📢 Stay Connected &amp; Keep Growing!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian so you never miss an insightful conversation!
&nbsp;
&nbsp;

Why Ezra-Nehemiah Ends Badly: Gary Edward Schnittjer on One Book, Two Scrolls, and a Failed Reform

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/5e27a451-e6e6-4c51-aa03-a7370003783c/clips/0f66ec63-13ad-4394-a308-b49b0129270d/transcript

What does repealing Sunday shopping laws have to do with rising rates of suicide, alcohol deaths, and drug overdoses? More than you might expect. In this episode of Thinking Christian, I sit down with Dr. Tamar Oostrom, health economist at The Ohio State University, to walk through her research on blue laws, religious decline, and what the data reveals about the hidden costs of losing community.

The paper's central finding is striking: states that repealed blue laws — the Sunday retail restrictions that once made church the default social gathering of the week — saw measurable increases in deaths of despair in the years that followed. States that kept those laws did not. The mechanism isn't as simple as more alcohol access. It's something harder to quantify: the erosion of identity, purpose, and the kind of social accountability that comes with belonging to a local religious community.

We talk through what economists actually study, why unintended consequences are so hard to see in real time, and why re-instituting blue laws isn't the answer even if the data is compelling. The more useful question is what individuals, employers, and communities can do now to rebuild the connective tissue that those laws once quietly enforced.

The conversation also touches on remote work, social media, and the broader collapse of in-person socialization — and what all of it might mean for where deaths of despair go from here.

Find more from Tamar Oostrom at https://www.tamaroostrom.com 

Subscribe to our YouTube channel

📢 Stay Connected & Keep Growing!

If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian so you never miss an insightful conversation!

What does repealing Sunday shopping laws have to do with rising rates of suicide, alcohol deaths, and drug overdoses? More than you might expect. In this episode of Thinking Christian, I sit down with Dr. Tamar Oostrom, health economist at The Ohio State University, to walk through her research on blue laws, religious decline, and what the data reveals about the hidden costs of losing community.
The paper's central finding is striking: states that repealed blue laws &mdash; the Sunday retail restrictions that once made church the default social gathering of the week &mdash; saw measurable increases in deaths of despair in the years that followed. States that kept those laws did not. The mechanism isn't as simple as more alcohol access. It's something harder to quantify: the erosion of identity, purpose, and the kind of social accountability that comes with belonging to a local religious community.
We talk through what economists actually study, why unintended consequences are so hard to see in real time, and why re-instituting blue laws isn't the answer even if the data is compelling. The more useful question is what individuals, employers, and communities can do now to rebuild the connective tissue that those laws once quietly enforced.
The conversation also touches on remote work, social media, and the broader collapse of in-person socialization &mdash; and what all of it might mean for where deaths of despair go from here.
Find more from Tamar Oostrom at <a href="https://www.tamaroostrom.com">https://www.tamaroostrom.com</a>&nbsp;
Subscribe to our <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@Useful_toGod">YouTube channel</a>
📢 Stay Connected &amp; Keep Growing!
If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to Thinking Christian so you never miss an insightful conversation!

Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion: What the Data Actually Shows — with Dr. Tamar Oostrom

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/5e27a451-e6e6-4c51-aa03-a7370003783c/clips/ec0a1035-8dfa-42e8-bcee-b49c00d9ea1e/transcript

Christians have inherited a strange habit of treating the Old Testament as optional. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer argues that Jesus and the apostles would not have understood the question. There was a gospel, a Messiah, and a church before there was a New Testament, and none of it was possible without the Scriptures Israel already had. Even the word "gospel" comes to Mark by way of Isaiah.

In this episode, Dr. James Spencer talks with Dr. Schnittjer about his new book, Connected: How Scripture Guides the Study of Scripture. The premise is that the Bible already teaches us how to read it. Story teaches us to read story in Deuteronomy 6. Prophecy teaches us to read prophecy in Zechariah 1. Poetry and wisdom teach us to read poetry and wisdom in Psalm 1. Jesus models the whole thing in the synagogue at Nazareth in Luke 4.

Along the way they work through continuity and discontinuity between the testaments, the burden of holiness carried by the priests and what Hebrews does with it, Daniel's need for help understanding Jeremiah, and the strange counterpoint in Jeremiah 44 where survivors of Jerusalem's fall blame Josiah's reforms for the disaster. They close on Deuteronomy as a book that builds an entire culture of Scripture study, from the king who writes his own copy of the law to the whole covenant community gathered every seven years to hear it read.

Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament for Cairn Theological Seminary at Cairn University. He writes at Carpenter's Student.

This is part one of a two-part conversation. In the next episode, Dr. Spencer and Dr. Schnittjer turn to Ezra-Nehemiah.

Get Connected: How Scripture Guides the Study of Scripture at 

Christians have inherited a strange habit of treating the Old Testament as optional. Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer argues that Jesus and the apostles would not have understood the question. There was a gospel, a Messiah, and a church before there was a New Testament, and none of it was possible without the Scriptures Israel already had. Even the word "gospel" comes to Mark by way of Isaiah.
In this episode, Dr. James Spencer talks with Dr. Schnittjer about his new book, Connected: How Scripture Guides the Study of Scripture. The premise is that the Bible already teaches us how to read it. Story teaches us to read story in Deuteronomy 6. Prophecy teaches us to read prophecy in Zechariah 1. Poetry and wisdom teach us to read poetry and wisdom in Psalm 1. Jesus models the whole thing in the synagogue at Nazareth in Luke 4.
Along the way they work through continuity and discontinuity between the testaments, the burden of holiness carried by the priests and what Hebrews does with it, Daniel's need for help understanding Jeremiah, and the strange counterpoint in Jeremiah 44 where survivors of Jerusalem's fall blame Josiah's reforms for the disaster. They close on Deuteronomy as a book that builds an entire culture of Scripture study, from the king who writes his own copy of the law to the whole covenant community gathered every seven years to hear it read.
Dr. Gary Edward Schnittjer is distinguished professor of Old Testament for Cairn Theological Seminary at Cairn University. He writes at <a href="https://garyedwardschnittjer.substack.com">Carpenter's Student</a>.
This is part one of a two-part conversation. In the next episode, Dr. Spencer and Dr. Schnittjer turn to Ezra-Nehemiah.
Get <a href="https://amzn.to/3TQxpBO">Connected: How Scripture Guides the Study of Scripture&nbsp;at&nbsp;</a>

Why Study the Old Testament? Gary Edward Schnittjer on How Scripture Guides the Study of Scripture

https://api.omny.fm/orgs/5e27a451-e6e6-4c51-aa03-a7370003783c/clips/1dad3e21-eb62-4f16-a413-b49b01275b53/transcript

Systems, Virtue & the Body of Christ

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Thinking Christian: Clear Theology for a Confusing World

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