Eden: Thank you for being here right now. We’d love to get to know you a little bit before we hear about what God is doing in your life. So what are a couple of things that bring you joy?

Dan Haase: My family. My wife particularly. There’s lots of laughter in the house, so that is definitely a place of joy. One of the things that brings me a lot of joy is poetry. I have a deep love for words and the beauty of God’s creation. I’ve always been drawn to the outdoors. That’s a place where, almost regardless of the season or what’s going on, there’s like a deep contentment, which I would correlate with joy. There’s like a serenity with being outside. So even last week it was like -20°F, and even that was joyful to be out in. But I love the Midwest in that regard too. So yes. But, creation for sure.

Eden: Is there a poem recently that has been continually on your mind?

Dan Haase: Well, one comes to mind that actually has to do with creation. And here we are next to my bookshelf of poets. Well, this is a classic, which touches on this theme of beauty and nature. There’s no one quite like Gerard Manley Hopkins. Do you know “God’s Grandeur?” Do you know the poem?

Eden: I do not.

Dan Haase: Oh. This is a remarkable poem. So he was actually a Jesuit priest and also a poet. He captures this kind of paying attention.

“God’s Grandeur:”

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

    And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

    And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

    There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

    Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

    World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.
(Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985))

Eden: Wow! That’s amazing!

Dan Haase: It’s a particularly good one. All right, one more.

“Pied Beauty:”

Glory be to God for dappled things –

   For skies of couple-colour as a brinded cow;

      For rose-moles all in stipple upon trout that swim;

Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls; finches’ wings;

   Landscape plotted and pieced – fold, fallow, and plough;

      And áll trádes, their gear and tackle and trim.

All things counter, original, spare, strange;

   Whatever is fickle, freckled (who knows how?)

      With swift, slow; sweet, sour; adazzle, dim;

He fathers-forth whose beauty is past change:

                                Praise him.

(Source: Gerard Manley Hopkins: Poems and Prose (Penguin Classics, 1985))

Eden: Wow. That’s great. His wording is incredible.

Dan Haase: He has a style of poetry that’s referred to as sprung rhythm, which captures it well.

Eden: So beautiful. Thank you.

Dan Haase: So there. That’s some joy. That is some joy, right there!

Eden: Is there a part of God’s Word that’s especially precious to you? And that could be over your lifetime or just recently?

Dan Haase: The Psalms. You know something that comes to mind? Well, I’ll read this too, because this doesn’t come back void. We’re just full of poetry today, right? The Psalter has always been deeply meaningful to me. This is actually a psalm I read at the beginning of every time we meet for my Teaching the Bible class. Psalm 19. And I think this just captures God’s general revelation in a powerful way. It’s kind of the combination of his general revelation and his special revelation, so that that revelation that comes from the world that he’s created and the revelation that he gives to us through his Holy Word—it kind of brings those things together in one psalm.

Psalm 19:

The law of the Lord is perfect,
    reviving the soul;
the testimony of the Lord is sure,
    making wise the simple;
the precepts of the Lord are right,
    rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is pure,
    enlightening the eyes;
the fear of the Lord is clean,
    enduring forever;
the rules of the Lord are true,
    and righteous altogether.
More to be desired are they than gold,
    even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey
    and drippings of the honeycomb.
Moreover, by them is your servant warned;
    in keeping them there is great reward.

Who can discern his errors?
    Declare me innocent from hidden faults.
Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;
    let them not have dominion over me!
Then I shall be blameless,
    and innocent of great transgression.

This psalm has always captured the two great revelations for me in one piece. So the joy that comes from his Word and the joy that comes from the beauty of his created world.

Eden: Thank you for sharing that. Was there a time when Psalm 19 really first became special to you?

Dan Haase: That’s a good question. Probably. I don’t know what the first encounter was, actually.

Eden: That’s okay. It’s there today!

Dan Haase: Yeah. It’s probably one of the psalms I’ve read the most in my life because I read it so frequently in class. So it’s currently lodged in this memory place of it being connected to this course where we think about how we’re teaching his Word.

Eden: Very precious. Well, where does God have you right now?

Dan Haase: Here. Haha.

Eden: Yes, if have taught me anything, it’s to be present. And what does God have you doing most of your hours in the day?

Dan Haase: So I’m currently serving as the chair of the Christian Formation and Ministry department at Wheaton College. I’m an Associate Lecturer of Christian Formation and Ministry. I’m teaching courses in the area of Christian Spirituality. And then I also have some classes that I teach that are connected to the Core Studies program at Wheaton.

Eden: So I just had a conversation with someone who asked me what I studied in college, and when I said “Christian Education,” they looked at me cross-eyed. So if you were to explain to someone that’s not from a Christian community what that means, what would you say your goal is?

Dan Haase: I think that’s a very helpful question. So there’s a phrase we use in the department that I think is helpful to make it make sense beyond just the little weird world we live in here. And so one of the things that we’ll talk about with the students is, our degree is really about getting wisdom and giving thanks. And I think that kind of resonates with anybody. People understand what wisdom is or that it has to do with learning things and then applying them in some kind of way. And thanksgiving I think is a way of using language that we’re very accustomed to in any culture, regardless of faith tradition. And I think in the Christian context, it represents for us the whole purpose of why we exist. If you’re going to consider it from a Christian standpoint, we exist to worship a holy God. It’s a form of thanksgiving. And so the degree is kind of a connection of the field of education and theology and what it looks like to kind of practically minister in culture. It’s got some anthropology in there as well, some aspects of psychology, as we think about how do we care for individuals and whole people. So it has a very liberal arts feel in regard to the dialogue that happens between a lot of different disciplines.

One of the ways I’ll often position the question that the degree program is seeking to answer is, “how do you care for a whole person?” And as soon as you ask a question like that, you’re interested in a whole lot of things… Another way I’ll say it is, “what does it mean to be human?” Well, that’s kind of the large, big question that we’re seeking to wrestle with. And then thinking about, what does that mean as an individual? What does it mean that we are—even before we’re an individual, and I actually think primarily—we’re a community. We’re from a people. And so we’re communal first and foremost. And so understanding how we work together as a community. And then what shapes and grows…? What needs do we have that shape those human experiences? So that thanksgiving—unity, what I would believe is kind of a God honoring way of being alive—is fostered.

Eden: And when you said that you’re trying to foster giving thanks, that brought to mind all the things that you have to believe in order to give thanks. You have to be present. You have to understand that life is received. You have to express some element of joy in the midst of what you’re suffering. There’s a lot that goes into having a thankful heart.

Dan Haase: That’s good. And I think what you’re capturing there is a really helpful nuance, which forces me to clarify something, because I think we can throw away a term like thanksgiving and it can turn into kind of just like a positive psychology. You just need to have happy thoughts.

When I say thanksgiving, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t deep pain or sorrow. In fact, from a biblical standpoint, we can talk about lament, which is also something I think people understand in our culture, whether they have a Christian connection or not. But I think for the Christian, lament always includes a posture before a holy God who is fully in control. And so the thanksgiving actually can take place in lament, in deep sorrow, in deep pain, because you’re crying out, “why?” or “this hurts!” but you’re crying out. And you’re crying out to a holy God who’s actually in control.

And so we need to have an understanding of thanksgiving that I think includes that kind of nuanced dynamic—that it’s not just sweeping pain under the rug or pretending like life’s just going to be fine, because sometimes horrible things happen in this world. And yet we are called to recognize that there is a holy God, even in the midst of the confusion that comes from the questions that are raised in the midst of those kinds of circumstances.

So, yeah, I think we need to make sure that when we talk about thanksgiving, we’re broadening our understanding of it to be more than just a sense of happiness or positive thinking. That it really is joy in the sense of a biblical disposition which can include all of the emotions. So one way I’ll often say this to students is, “your circumstances actually do not need to change.” And then you have to wrestle with, what does that actually mean?

Eden: Yes. I thought long and hard about that when I read in Luke when Jesus says that the Father wants to give us the Holy Spirit. He talks about if you ask for a bread, your Father won’t give you a stone. If you ask for fish, he won’t give you a snake. And he says, “how much more will the Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” (Luke 11:11-13). And in the Matthew passage that’s parallel, he says, “how much more will your Father give good gifts to those who ask him?” (Matthew 7:9-11). The Holy Spirit is the good gift that we need most. And I think you realize, wow, if in any situation I have love, joy, peace, patience, and you go through the fruit of the spirit (Galatians 5:2-23), I will have everything I need, regardless of how awful that that situation may be. Most often the things we need are not circumstantial. They’re eternal.

Dan Haase: Well, and transcendent. It’s interesting too, as you bring that up, like the Holy Spirit is also referred to as the Advocate or the Comforter (John 14:16, 26). It’s interesting to have a comforter—it means something’s not well, right? You’re comforted when you’re sick and so by definition, requires as part of the whole situation that, there’s sorrow, there’s brokenness, there’s hurt, there’s pain. And he sends his Comforter.

Eden: I have never thought of it that way. We talk about encouragement all the time. You don’t need to be en-courage-d unless you’re full of fear.

Dan Haase: So it is interesting how those definitions include what comes before that need. I think that allows us to live in a much more complicated story. And it allows for a whole spectrum of human emotion to be a part of the experience we have as just creatures on this earth.

Eden: Well, you teach a number of classes. Do you have a favorite? And give us a snapshot of what that class—what material you go over?

Dan Haase: Yeah, sure. It’s so hard because the classes that I teach each do something so different and I love them all in different kinds of ways. If I had to just choose one, it probably would be my Teaching the Bible course, partly because I think it’s a class that I find does a couple of the things that I value the most all together in a singular class, even though I like all the classes I get to teach. I think that Teaching the Bible class—what I notice is happening in my own heart and mind and in the experience of my students’ lives is, it’s a skill-training course, teaching them how to properly handle the Bible and to experience Scripture as this great love letter that’s been written. And so we take a literary approach to studying the Bible, which functionally just means we’re looking specifically at how the Scripture has been put together in a variety of genres, and they all have their own kind of ways of existing in the world. And the field of literature is particularly helpful as we think about how we study and experience different genres and what they’re seeking to do, and how that helps us understand the ways we seek to learn from the Bible—the different things it has to teach us simply through the form in which it’s been given to us.

But I think that class is really built around inviting students to fall in love with God’s Word. Well, as Psalm 19 kind of says, as I started as we were opening, just that it is sweeter than honey (Psalm 19:10). I mean, even that kind of way of thinking about God’s Word, there’s an affective response you have. So it’s not just a book of ideas. I mean, there’s ideas in there, but if all we’re doing is trying to communicate an idea to somebody, that can be helpful, and it’s a valuable way of communicating, but it’s really a story about an identity of a holy God who came and was enfleshed—which is very unique to Christianity (Who Is Jesus?). The fact that God is transcendent, God comes and becomes man, and goes through death as a way to actually conquer suffering (Why Did Jesus Have to Die?). I mean you could almost say in a sense that God has himself murdered as a way to conquer all suffering. I mean, he uses suffering as the means through which it is actually destroyed.

And then that starts to resonate with our human experience when we see how we’ve made it through difficult circumstances in our own lives. It’s sometimes in those moments of great pain that we learn our greatest lessons, and we also learn how valuable life actually is. I think it resonates with a deep core of just how we’ve actually been created.

So yeah, Teaching the Bible has become a very important class for me to be a part of. I’m grateful for the way my students encourage and challenge me, and just seeing how God’s Word, when studied in that kind of way—as much as we’re reading it—it’s reading us. And to see the way that students’ hearts are transformed, which leads to their minds being transformed, and their hands being transformed. It just it changes the world.

Eden: Yes. One of the verses that we put on almost everything we print is “For the Word of God is alive and powerful” (Hebrews 4:12 NLT).

Dan Haase: Yes it is. And what’s remarkable about that as a statement—you think about the stories that are behind that statement. I mean, why are we doing this right now? It’s because that statement is true, right? And there’s some kind of human experience behind it.

Eden: Yeah. And I think Teaching the Bible for me helped with this. But I think there was a shift when I finally saw the Bible as an expression of a person instead of just something I read, and somehow God inspired it. This thing is alive and powerful because there’s an alive and powerful Someone that somehow takes what he has written here and applies it to my heart.

Dan Haase: I’ll sometimes oversimplify and say, you know, God isn’t an idea. He’s an identity. And there’s a lot of ideas in there, but he is a person. And so all of a sudden you’re like, oh, this is about relationship.

Eden: Yes, all of life.

Dan Haase: Which is very different than kind of the way we sometimes experience what’s often referred to as religion, which is a list of creeds or some kind of statement of faith or those kinds of things. And those are very important aspects of what is also a part of belief. But it also has to have a beating heart. How those two things merge together, I think, become an important way of understanding what does it mean to have a religion that is relational, that is in relationship. Otherwise, we have this kind of cerebral experience.

Eden: Yeah and we miss the point.

Dan Haase: Yeah, some of the philosophical answers, they don’t satisfy.

Eden: Yeah, they’re not enough.

Dan Haase: I mean, how do you answer the problem of pain and evil in the world? I mean I think there’s important philosophy and theology that can be done to give certain kinds of answers. But at the end of the day, you have to live in those questions and answers as well. Both of those things are happening at the same time.

Eden: When I was here last time, you said that God’s answer to our pain is Immanuel (which means “God with us,” from Matthew 1:23). Just one word. And I was mind-blown. But it’s true! You either cling to the God that you trust, and you know is sovereign and you find your comfort in him, and you let go of some of the questions or the intellectual answers just won’t satisfy. But somehow, when you know him, he is satisfying in that that pain.

Dan Haase: It is challenging. One of the things I’ll often reflect this in my own life, and this maybe is too simplistic, but I think it’s a certain kind of data point we have to at least wrestle with or acknowledge is, we are using a limited faculty. Our mind or heart, or just even our bodies, are limited. You know, they hold a specific space. But we’re using this limited faculty to explain and understand a limitless God. And then I think sometimes we just speak with a kind of certainty that can sometimes be dangerous. And that doesn’t mean that there can’t be things that can be assuredly known. But the way in which we know things, too, also matters. And there can be a certain a kind of arrogance that sometimes follows. And so how do we live in that humility in the midst of those limitations? That’s important.

Eden: And you’re saying we kind of lose the wonder over God being something beyond our understanding even though we can understand true certain things. There’s still so much we can’t understand.

Dan Haase: The use of our mind is absolutely a part of our spiritual act of worship—that’s Romans (Romans 12:1-2). And so we ought to use our intellect. And this isn’t to say, “oh, it just should be this mystical experience where we can’t really know.” It includes this holistic experience where there is mystery even as there is abilities to know very specific, tangible, practical things. But yeah, that wonder, living in that wonder is so important.

Eden: Is there a habit that has really helped bring joy to your walk with Jesus?

Dan Haase: Yes. Gratitude. Partly because the nice thing about gratitude is its fruit is immediate. It’s a very simple practice. I mean you could talk about certain aspects of prayer, or service—it’s amazing what that does to bring joy—aspects of even the nutrients that come from sitting in his Word. One of the things I noticed about gratitude, though, is because its fruit is immediate, it’s a very unique Christian discipline. Most of the Christian disciplines require a kind of long suffering to receive the fruit. A lot of prayer is that way, fasting, aspects of service, even studying his Word, practicing the Sabbath, you know, it takes time. The interesting thing with gratitude is the fruit-to-yield ratio is like, so short! Like, as soon as you think about something gratefully, you’re experiencing the fruit of gratitude, which is gratitude! And it’s literally immediate.

And I have found the discipline of going through my day keeping a gratitude journal, jotting down moments of gratefulness, has deeply shaped my posture in the world. And I had an experience with this very vividly. I had maybe been practicing this discipline for a couple of years or something like that, where I actually had a notebook and I had committed to three little bullet points a day of something I was grateful for. And a lot of times it’s just like “the orange juice tasted good.” It didn’t have to be super meaningful, but just noticing the world, those around me, and the small little gifts. You know, the laughter of a friend, or just seeing like, “that leaf was pretty,” and being alerted to those things. I woke up one February morning here in the Midwest and it was one of those gray, like you just you couldn’t tell where the earth and the sky—it was just awash with gray. And I have some melancholy tendencies. And I looked out the window and I just thought, “oh, death. I’m going to go back to bed.” And I remember I stood there, and I just said, “well, I’m grateful for my emotions.” And I wasn’t having a good emotion at the moment. And it caught me off guard because I realized, “oh, I couldn’t have done this two years ago.” The fruit of the discipline was emerging, and I caught it.

Eden: Your reflex was thankfulness.

Dan Haase: Yes, yes. I had kind of trained myself to look for, “is there something good here?” And again, beyond thinking positively, when that is oriented through a heart that wants to worship a holy God that gave those good gifts—and this is where I think Christian thankfulness is all the more full (James 1:17).

There’s plenty of people who are just thankful people. They’re positively inclined, you know, and they might not have any faith. But I think for the Christian, the joy is even more complete in Christ. And so that gets ushered into it all as well. And that has had a significant impact, I think, on the way I view the world and how I even enter into spaces of deep pain and suffering. A lot of my work is sitting with people who are who are carrying very, very hard stories or just trying to figure out calling. I mean, they’re in college and they’re falling in love and out of love, asking “What should I do with my life?” and all of what comes into kind of making sense of the world in those young adult years. So gratitude has been huge.

Eden: That reminds me of, do you know Andrew Peterson’s song, “Don’t You Want to Thank Someone“? It’s probably like ten stanzas long.

Dan Haase: No.

Eden: I’ll send it to you.

Dan Haase: Please do.

Eden: Well, I typically like to wrap up with learning from you a couple of books that people might want on their bookshelf. So are there one or two books that have really transformed your walk with Jesus?

Dan Haase: Oh, that’s such a good question. How do you limit it?

Eden: You could give more than two if you want.

Dan Haase: Well, I will say this just as a general rule that I think is helpful—and I’m often recommending this to my students as well (I suppose to anyone who listens to this they can maybe follow this as a lead, and then you can kind of choose your own adventure, as it were)—but I think novels are important. There are some that are better than others or whatnot, but things are classics for a reason. You know, you pick up a Dostoyevsky novel and you know you’re going to be in the stream of a classic.

I do think there are so many great artists and craftsmen of words and story that are out there that touch on the human condition, and they train us in empathy. They teach us more about ourselves, these characters that have stood the test of time because they are classics. They help us understand humanity. And I think that good work is just important for building empathy, particularly in our world right now that’s so polarized, learning how to listen into the story of another and think about what it might be to be interested and fascinated in them, even if we disagree with them. I think novels train our hearts in that way and they enliven the imagination, which I think is just a very important aspect of being Christian well, or just even being human well in the world. So I would say pick up a novel and make it a classic. The Brothers Karamazov comes right to mind, because that just had such a—you’re picking up a pretty hardcore Russian novel. You know, we got time. I mean, life is long, you know? So that’s just as a general rule.

I myself personally, I always have some volume of poetry that I’m working my way through. The thing I like about poetry is, it’s accessible. A lot of people are scared of it because they just haven’t been trained to read it well, and it’s confusing, and can be hard to understand. But there’s a lot of accessible poetry out there. And I think one of the things that poets do well is they pay attention, and then they kind of package it in this small little frame that you can sit with for ten minutes and the commitment in our busy lives doesn’t require as much, but the bang for the buck is there because you have someone who has distilled meaningful observation into a small frame. And I think poetry makes us more human. Now, I also love poetry, so it’s easy. Pick up a volume of poetry.

Eden: I was, in fact, just writing an article on the Song of Solomon and how—you were talking about genres in the Bible and how God gave us 66 books, but they are all different genres? And God said you need poetry, you need letters, you need instruction, history. But sometimes I just need to sing you a song. And I think that was profoundly helpful for me.

Dan Haase: I think it’s like a third of Scripture is poetry or something like that?

Eden: Yeah.

Dan Haase: Oh I do. Ah, it’s right here. I just read it last semester or a few months ago. Boethius’ The Consolation of Philosophy. Do you know this book?

Eden: I do not.

Dan Haase: I would put this as one of my top five books I’ve ever read.

Eden: And a little context?

Dan Haase: I didn’t realize what this book was. I mean, I had heard of Boethius before. And he’s from the fourth century. 480 to 524 was when he lived. So, you know, it’s a classic from antiquity. I didn’t realize this. I just thought it was kind of like a philosophical book, which it is. But the “consolation of philosophy” is actually a woman. It’s Lady Philosophy who’s coming to console him (Boethius) in prison. And so he’s about to be executed by the emperor. It’s a true story. He wrote this in prison before he died. And the “consolation of philosophy” is Lady Wisdom, Lady Philosophy, coming and meeting with him and consoling him as he’s meditating on the meaning of life and how to end well as the end is imminent. So it’s this great epic human story. And what’s nice about it is, it’s so accessible because it reads as a story, and they’re just having this dialogue back and forth. So, yeah, Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy. This one’s has been on the shelf for like 1500 years. So if nothing else, it has stood the test of time.

Eden: You know, they say don’t judge a book by its cover. I feel like title is the same.

Dan Haase: Yeah. And I never knew it was like a dialectic in that way. I just thought it was a philosophy book, kind of dry—but it’s actually a story! He’s doing the work of philosophy through dialogue that he’s having with the imagination of this Philosophy being embodied in front of him and having conversation. It’s a very important book.

Eden: Okay. That’s wild. I just read Proverbs 8 this morning about wisdom personified as a woman calling out to us.

Dan Haase: And he’s definitely playing off of that motif. Read that. You’ll love it.

Eden: Okay. Well, thank you for your time.

Dan Haase: Yeah. This was wonderful.

Eden: Thank you for sharing just what the Lord is doing in your life and what he’s called you to.

Eden: Thank you so much for listening to our podcast today. If you enjoyed our conversation, I would encourage you to like or subscribe to our podcast so that you can hear the next conversation. And if something that you heard today spoke to your heart or got you thinking, I would encourage you to not let the day go by without talking to God about what’s on your mind. We believe that he loves you and that he’s pursuing you today out of that love.