You said you were fine, but fine is not a spiritual condition—it’s a managed one. Fine means you’ve stopped expecting anything, stopped reaching for anything, and settled into the low hum of a life that moves without going anywhere. You’re not in crisis. You’re not walking away from the Lord. You’re just less hungry than you used to be, less expectant, less alive. And because nothing is dramatically wrong, you’ve convinced yourself nothing needs to change. Dr. Chris Palmer joins me for a conversation that names what that condition actually is—and it’s not a season.
Dr. Palmer is Dean of the Barnett College of Ministry and Theology at Southeastern University and the author of A World Without God (Zondervan), a work of narrative philosophy that takes the reader into Novemberton, an allegorical town in the grip of something it cannot name. What he argues is that the despair overtaking our culture isn’t arriving as a manifesto—it’s arriving as a mood. Nihilism, as he frames it, is not the dramatic philosophy-class version; it’s the quiet, functional, show-up-to-church version—passive surrender dressed as stability, apathy wearing the clothes of peace. We talk about why values are on sale right now, what practical polytheism looks like inside a congregation, how self-centered spirituality masquerades as devotion, and why the only thing durable enough to bear the weight of our emptiness is not our own shoulders.
This conversation will not give you a strategy. It will give you a mirror—and what you do with what you see in it is the entire question. Come ready to be honest about what you’ve been calling fine.
Guest Bio
Dr. Chris Palmer is Dean of the Barnett College of Ministry and Theology at Southeastern University in Lakeland, Florida, where he teaches at the intersection of New Testament studies, philosophy, and cultural theology. He holds a PhD from Bangor University in Wales and is the author of several books, including his latest, A World Without God (Zondervan)—a work of narrative philosophy that examines what happens to meaning, purpose, and the human soul when God is not forgotten so much as he is treated as one option among many.
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Resources Mentioned This Week
- Healing What You Can’t Erase: Transform Your Mental, Emotional, and Spiritual Health from the Inside Out
- A World Without God: The Search for Meaning in a Society Overwhelmed by Despair
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