Preston Perry

Apologetics, art, food — if you enjoy discussing any of these topics, you’ll get along just fine with Preston Perry. As a poet, performance artist, teacher and apologist, Preston has a passion for words and, more importantly, the Word of God. He and his wife, Jackie, host the “With the Perrys” podcast, where they speak with humor and honesty about essential topics like relationships, race, theology, politics and parenting. Join us for a fascinating conversation with Preston about his favorite ways to relax and seek God, the books that help solidify his faith and why the church needs to work on talking with people instead of at people.

The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

There’s much more to food than palate and preference. How does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind the web bio?

I love that question because I’m a foodie. My wife and I travel the world just to try food. I’m from the city of Chicago, and I love going back to my hometown and eating some of my favorite comfort foods, including at a place called Harold’s Chicken. We have a thing called Chicago mild sauce. We smother our fried chicken with this sweet, mildly spicy sauce.

I love that meal, but I also love trying different meals from around the world and different ethnic backgrounds. I think food tells you not just a lot about you, but a lot about people and culture. You can almost taste history in some dishes. One of the things that I love about food the most is whether you get upscale cuisine or something else, most meals originally come from people who didn’t have a lot of resources. Most meals and recipes — whether you’re eating Pad Thai or Drunken Noodles from a Thai restaurant or Chinese food — came from the creativity of poor people who didn’t have a lot of money but had the natural resources to survive off the land. If you just do research, you’ll find that a lot of these dishes originated from people’s hearts and creativity.

So that’s one of the reasons I love food — because you can almost feel the love it came from. I’m passionate about food, and I love the artistry. Food is an art that you can eat, especially if it’s plated well. As you can see, there’s a lot I love about food!

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activities do you love and help you find spiritual renewal?

Nature. Fishing at a lake, looking at the trees, listening to the birds. I think something special is revealed about God when we sit with his creation. The Bible says that all of creation cries out for the Creator, right? I think that’s so true. So for me, it’s sitting in nature, especially water and seeing animals in trees. I’m really at peace when I’m at a fishing bank. A couple of years ago, I spent a couple of days in Maasai Mara in Kenya — a beautiful wild land of animals. I watched the sunrise in Maasai Mara, and I remember how at peace I was seeing all of God’s creation. I noticed the intentionality of God in the details of how this world was orchestrated and created and designed by him.

I think if we meditate on that, it puts things into perspective, namely, that we were created by somebody who’s really, incredibly big. I’ve heard it said, “No matter how big you get, no matter how famous you get, no matter how many people know your name, you can’t look at the ocean and truly meditate on its massiveness and think that you’re more significant than the ocean.” Creation and nature put me at peace and calm me in a way that really nothing else does.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness. Every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite and how do you hide it?

We’re all fallen. And honestly, I’m such a broken individual it’s hard for me to pinpoint just one kryptonite. I struggle with pride. I struggle with lust at times. These are things I have to surrender to the Lord and give to him often. I struggle with insecurity and not thinking that I’m enough.

I mentioned pride first, but the truth is that all of my struggles are rooted in pride. I think pride makes us look inward, but God doesn’t want us to focus on ourselves. He wants us to reflect and look and gaze upon him. My pride makes me feel like I’m more than I am or less than I am. Either way, it’s still pride because it’s such an inward focus on me. I have to consistently remind myself that I’m a son and it’s not about what I do; God loves me because he made me. I remind myself of the Father’s words to Jesus when he was 30 years old before he did any ministry work. When John the Baptist baptized Jesus, God came down and said, “This is my Son, with whom I am well pleased.” The Father said that about Jesus before he did any ministry work. God loved him before he did anything. So my struggle is forgetting who I am, that is, my inability at times to remind myself of who I am in Christ.

I also struggle with insecurity because, growing up, I wasn’t always looked at as the smartest person. I was popular because of all the wrong things, but I never thought I was smart. I never thought I was intelligent. I just knew that I was creative. I have to remind myself that God has given each of us a gift. Even with the book I recently came out with, “How to Tell the Truth,” I had a lot of insecurities in the beginning, like “Are people going to get my writing style?” I’m a visual learner, so the way I teach and tell stories is very visual. My tendency toward visual learning and teaching was also an insecurity for me growing up. It’s crazy that the things that I was insecure about, and yet God has used those very same things for his glory.

Over the years, I’ve had to give that insecurity to the Lord. I’ve been taking the praise and the criticism, and I’ve been letting it roll off my shoulders because I gave to the Lord. I was obedient and I wrote what he wanted me to write, so I’m at peace.

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your obsession? And why should it be ours?

I think the church and social media do a really good job of teaching us how to call out different ideologies. It does a really good job of teaching us how to call a spade a spade, but it doesn’t teach us how to play cards for real. It teaches us how to talk at people. But it doesn’t teach us how to go out and talk with people. I think that “How to Tell the Truth: The Story of How God Saved Me to Win Hearts — Not Just Arguments” lays out my successes and failures and offers a tangible example of how God wants us to interact with the truth. “How to Tell the Truth” also points out that if the truth is the thing that will set people free, we have to understand that it’s important how we deliver it.

If people understood how much our conduct and behavior get in the way of the gospel, I think a lot of behaviors would change and our heart posture would change in how we give the gospel to the world. I think a lot of Christians find it entertaining when they see Christians bickering and arguing with each other on social media. But other Christians are tired of people talking at people, and we don’t really know how to talk to people.

People want to learn how to engage with the world — but also in truth and with boldness. I think this book is a really good balance of the two. After all, Jesus is both the lion and the lamb. You have people in our culture who just want to take the lamb of Jesus and ignore the lion part. The book is my best attempt to balance both parts of Jesus — lion and lamb — with emotional intelligence but at the same time with truth and honesty and boldness and fearlessness. I think “How to Tell the Truth” is a good balance of that. It is an encouragement to believers who want to reach people, whether they’re reaching out to strangers, giving the gospel to family members or are called to be evangelists. How can we make disciples of all nations in a way that honors God and give unto his people?

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?

I think the Bible is true when it says that you would know every good tree by the fruit it produces. And a bad tree does not produce good fruit that is of God. I think a lot of times we judge God based on how well someone speaks or how well someone delivers a message. But the Bible tells us that gifts come without repentance. So we shouldn’t look at gifts to determine whether or not someone or something is of God. We should look at the fruit, which is love, patience, joy and self-control.

We need to look at the fruit that men and women produce and the work that men and women produce. Is it displaying the fruit of the Spirit, or are they just regurgitating a whole bunch of truths without the evidence of the fruits of the Spirit? There’s a difference. My grandfather used to say all the time, “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” We need to ask, “Is this producing the character of God?” Anybody can just do a hermeneutics study and regurgitate a lot of true things, but it takes the rule of the Spirit to actually walk in and look like Jesus. Not everybody can do that. I would just encourage people to ask, “Does their orthodoxy match their orthopraxy?” If it doesn’t, then I think we can question if it’s truly God.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied actions that open our hearts to the presence of God. So spill it, which spiritual practice is workin' best for you right now?

Prayer. Prayer and knowing and truly believing that God hears me. It’s the faith that God hears me when I talk to him, and it’s a reminder that God wants to commune with me. That at the end of the day — when I’m done writing books and when I’m done teaching, when I’m done doing apologetics videos and when I’m done doing podcasts — I’m just his son and he wants to talk to me. He just wants to commune with me. He wants to be with me. He wants to love me. And he wants me to love him.

If Christians can get that basic truth down, I think everything else falls into place. Prayer is so essential to the Christian faith because it teaches us so much about God. It directs us to what he wants us to read and how he wants us to experience him. He lets us know what he wants us to do and how he wants us to play that out in our lives. For me, prayer is the spiritual practice in my life that has helped cultivate me in the season. It’s giving me clarity in this season about what I should be doing and what I shouldn’t be doing and how I should be loving God and loving my neighbor. Prayer and reading the Word, I think, are synonymous in some ways. They definitely hold hands. The number one thing is this: prayer. Never getting tired and just coming to the Lord in prayer.

One thing I’ve learned about God is that God doesn’t compete with the idols in the world around us — because he doesn’t have to. When we pray, God is not going to speak very loudly to compete. God wants us to come to him, and he wants to be exclusive with us. He wants to talk to us. I’m not talking about audibly; he wants to put impressions on our hearts to reveal to us his will in our lives. This thing called Christianity is not just a religious practice where we systematically do things. It is a relationship with a real being. So God is consistently talking. He’s always talking to us. We’re just not always listening. I’m not quiet enough to just be still to listen. So I think prayer kind of holds the scene and helps us focus on what God is trying to reveal and speak to us.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Our email subscribers get free ebooks featuring our favorite resources — lots of things that have truly impacted our faith lives. But you know about some really great stuff, too. What are some resources that have impacted you?

Early on in my faith, the works of John Piper really helped teach me a lot. The first book I ever read that was biblically sound and transformative was “What Jesus Demands from the World” by John Piper. The second book was “Don’t Waste Your Life.” Those books gave me, as a Christian believer, a sound theology and sound faith. And when I was engaged to Jackie, who’s now my wife, “This Momentary Marriage” really spoke to me. I proposed to my wife in a poem called “Covenant.” I named it “Covenant” because a chapter of this book is about covenant-keeping. John Piper’s work has been really instrumental and helped me a lot. There’s also a book by Matt Chandler called “The Explicit Gospel” that really spoke to me early on in my faith.

We all have things we cling to to survive (or thrive) in tough times. Name one resource you’ve found indispensable in this current season — and tell us what it’s done for you.

I read a lot of Tim Keller’s work. “Counterfeit Gods” is in front of me right now, along with “The Reason for God” and “The Prodigal God.” I think Tim Keller says some of the most profound things but in the simplest language. He’s helped me think about deep theological things in really simple ways.

When it comes to apologetics, I love Dr. Eric Mason’s work, all his theories and his “Urban Apologetics” series. A lot of his content is on apologetics and engaging with the world around us, and how to do it in the urban context. I love his preaching in his teaching.

I also love art. I love the way we can experience God through art. A lot of times we underestimate how much God wants to speak to us through creativity. When the Bible says, the first thing we learn about God is that he is a creator. So I think creation and us being made in the image of God is indicative of that. We are creators, and so I learned a lot about God and I see a lot about God just through art. Whether it’s poetry, creative writing, painting and drawing or hip-hop, I love art. I think those are the main things.

QUESTION #8: dream

God is continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

I have a fiction book that I have been chewing on for the last two and a half years. I’ve always wanted to write fiction. I have a concept that I think is really good, and I think the Lord gave it to me. I think it’s an angle that the Christian community hasn’t seen before. It’s a creative pairing with fiction and a popular topic in our culture. I’m really excited about that. I don’t know when I’m going to start it, but I have the whole book in my head. I just love the idea of writing fiction because I think it allows me to display my writing style in ways that I couldn’t even display in my book, “How to Tell the Truth.” I was torn between creative writing and trying not to be too creative when I was talking about theological things. Fiction gives me more freedom to write the way I want to write. I also have a devotional that I want to write. It’s stirring in me too — a devotional and a fiction book.

What do you feel you have to do so that God will love you? Go to church every week, read the Bible every day, give to the poor, pray out loud during Bible studies?

As Preston pointed out earlier in the interview, there’s absolutely nothing we have to do to earn God’s love. In fact, it’s impossible. The Book of Isaiah likens even our good deeds to “a polluted garment” (Is. 64:6, ESV), and Paul hammers the idea home by saying that “no one is righteous, no, not one” (Rom. 3:9b, ESV).

Instead, God loves us because he — and he alone — is good. Isn’t that incredible? This week, our prayer for you is that you find freedom from striving and simply allow yourself to receive the audacious, outrageous, staggering love of God.