From: jimruttshow8596
Jordan Hall, a successful tech entrepreneur known for his insights into global transitions, has recently come out as a committed and baptized Christian [01:37:37]. This transition is deeply intertwined with his exploration of civium and his broader philosophical and religious insights.
The Journey to Faith: From Agnostic to Committed Christian
Hall describes his journey into Christianity as having “a very late start,” acknowledging friends who have been working on this for 40 years, while he has been for about a year [01:54:42]. He identifies as having been an agnostic for as long as he can recall, avoiding atheism due to perceiving it as incoherent [00:56:21].
His exploration began with a critical look at the concept of religion itself, aiming to distinguish its “good and necessary” parts from its “bad or corrupting” elements [00:54:25]. He concluded that terms like “spirituality,” “religion,” and “faith” are often impoverished or even “upside down” in the contemporary secular understanding [00:55:41], and that some of them are “necessary” [00:56:04].
Discovery of “Religion”
Hall’s understanding of “religion” encompasses three main aspects [01:02:48]:
- Liturgy/Communion: Refers to “work together” – cognitive, embodied, and behavioral practices that bind people together into groups with shared identity [01:02:12].
- Hierarchy of Values: The orientation of one’s life energy towards certain values, defining what is most important [01:02:50].
- Rituals: Structures or scaffolding that make it easy for people to live according to their values, form communions, and respond to reality’s challenges (e.g., war, famine, sickness) [01:03:08].
He found that without generations of time, it is difficult to build successful cultures with appropriate practices and a shared hierarchy of values [01:44:48].
The Role of Community and Personal Experience
A pivotal moment in Hall’s journey was moving to Black Mountain, North Carolina, with his family [01:06:21]. Initially skeptical, he and his wife Vanessa found a strong sense of “Good Vibes” in the town [01:06:41]. He observed that people were “kind,” “open,” and engaged in “human communion” [01:09:08]. This environment provided “a degree of well-being, wholesomeness, satisfaction, happiness, fulfillment” [01:10:06], confirming his civium theory that “living in the right place with the right people is actually radically fulfilling” [01:10:14].
His wife, Vanessa, was invited to a local church, which Hall initially had an “allergy” to, especially a Christian church [01:10:37]. After Vanessa’s positive experience, and Hall’s own contrasting visit to a secular tech event in San Francisco [01:11:13], he decided to attend the church [01:11:39].
Hall’s initial observations of the church were crucial [01:13:05]:
- Vitality and Wholesomeness: He noted the profound “aliveness, the vitality, the health and the wholesomeness of the people, and in particular the young people” [01:13:10]. This stood in stark contrast to his observations of “ravaged” Gen Z elsewhere [01:13:24].
- Multigenerational Engagement: He observed teenagers bringing their parents to church, suggesting a “need being met” for the youth [01:14:02].
- Quality of Sermon: He appreciated the pastor’s ability to “hit profound theological points and then drop down and articulate them in a secular analogy,” feeling the “integrity” of the message [01:15:32].
This positive experience led to a “crisis of conscience” for Hall [01:19:32]. He felt it would be “cynical” and “deeply immoral” to participate in the church without genuinely engaging with the core values and beliefs of the community [01:19:40]. This compelled him to take Christianity seriously for the first time in his life [01:20:08].
Core Beliefs and Interpretations
Jordan Hall’s engagement with Christianity led him to embrace several foundational beliefs, often through a process of intellectual and experiential wrestling.
The Personal God and the Trinity
Hall affirms his belief in “one and only living and true God” who is “an intelligent, spiritual, and personal being” [01:17:41]. He emphasizes “personal” as distinct from an egregor or a “loosely coupled memplex” [01:17:56].
His acceptance of the Trinity is particularly significant. He describes the doctrine of the Triune God as having “just dropped” for him, becoming something he “can’t unsee” [01:24:10]. He believes it “describes the most compact, necessary, and sufficient components of any possible reality” [01:24:25], asserting it as “logically necessary” rather than merely possible [01:29:03]. This is part of his relational ontology and the Christian Trinity framework, where “relationship is more fundamental than relata” [01:26:59].
Man Made in God’s Image and Evolution
Hall believes that “man is the special creation of God, Made In His Image” [01:35:09]. He clarifies that this does not imply a “creation institute’s interpretation” that rejects evolution [01:35:23], but rather allows for a nuanced understanding that he is still working to fully bridge [01:35:41].
Gender Roles and Marriage
Regarding the church’s traditional sex/gender role statement, “a wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the leadership of Christ” [01:36:09], Hall affirms that his wife Vanessa is “down with this” [01:36:25]. He interprets the husband’s commitment as “vastly more significant,” referencing Christ’s sacrifice for the church, meaning the husband takes on the “full sin” of the wife [01:36:40].
Abortion and Sin
Hall accepts the church’s stance that “abortion is murder” [01:37:37]. This belief is particularly potent for him and his wife due to a past abortion experience, which he describes as “a very profoundly powerful and negative spiritual experience that almost shattered our marriage” [01:37:25].
He views “sin” not as inherently making one “sniveling or disgusting or unworthy” [01:38:05], but more as “an error, like a mistake, sometimes a confusion, sometimes a consequence of bad habits, sometimes a consequence of bad character,” which leads one in the wrong direction [01:38:17]. He rejects the “mad and punishing God” image often found in American Protestantism, emphasizing instead a “loving God” whose “effort, intent, and hope… is to convey to us how do we humans navigate life well” [01:40:02].
Biblical Inerrancy and Interpretation
Hall’s church believes the Bible is “truth without any mixture of error” [01:42:00]. Hall addresses perceived contradictions by stating that often, the issue is a “lack of… Consciousness on your part that you actually have to grow as a person to be able to grasp what’s actually being said or done there” [01:43:06]. He compares it to rereading a rich story at different ages and gaining new understanding [01:43:16].
Christian and Social Order: Beyond Theocracy
Hall’s church promotes making “the will of Christ Supreme in our lives and in human society” [01:44:16]. He vehemently denies that this implies a “theocracy,” calling such an interpretation “the perfectly satanic version of that” [01:44:51]. He argues that the “true Kingdom is the exact inverse of theocracy” [01:45:21].
A core principle he holds is “soul sovereignty” [01:45:56]: each individual has “exclusive sovereignty over that Soul,” making it “utterly inappropriate, immoral, wrong” for anyone to “Endeavor to convince and certainly not to propagandize you” [01:46:11]. God himself has granted this sovereignty [01:46:41].
His church’s stance is also a reaction against a “withdrawal from the world” prevalent in some American Protestant traditions, emphasizing instead a call to “be co-creators or collaborators to cooperate with God and to support the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth” [01:47:56]. This is based on the Gospel’s focus on the Kingdom of Heaven rather than solely on personal salvation [01:48:20].
The Future of Jordan Hall’s Journey
Hall sees his journey as a lifelong exploration of living “as deeply as possible in discipleship” [01:55:02]. He is committed to an intimate relationship with his church, which includes wrestling with complex theological questions, such as the nuances of the Trinity statement compared to Eastern Orthodox perspectives [01:55:16].
He also acknowledges the challenge of his church’s growth without losing its intimate nature (“how do we grow without scaling?“) [01:55:41]. He aims to participate “properly” in the health and wholesomeness of his predominantly Christian town without “imposing my own perspectives or limited values too heavily and causing it to break” [01:56:33].
Hall recognizes a responsibility to speak to the “autistic technology agnostics” he was once a part of [01:57:20], engaging in good faith conversations. He views his work and calling as a “vocation,” stating he will continue to think and work on “civilization level stuff” if it is his “cross to bear” [01:58:10].