Jim Palmer’s Journey
A Rising Star in the World of Mega Churches Crashes to Earth and Discovers That’s Where God Has Been All Along

The complete explorefaith interview with Divine Nobodies author Jim Palmer.

Read interview highlights.

You have written a book called Divine Nobodies. What makes someone a Divine Nobody?

An ancient monastic saying goes, “We open our eyes to find God, his hands still smeared with clay, hovering over us, breathing into us his own divine life, smiling to see in us a reflection of himself.” I spent a lot of my life looking to the world to supply an answer to the question Who am I? only to find the answer was all the while within me.

From the first moment of my existence, before I did anything, the seed of my true identity as a human being is present deep within: I came from God; I am an image of him; Love is the ground of my being; I share in his life in a relationship of untold intimacy. I may be marginal in the eyes of this world, but the true “I” is essentially not of “this world.” I have been awakened to my true identity in God, which every human being shares. This truth has changed me. Who I am is not a goal to achieve but a gift to receive, and I’m learning to wake up each morning and receive it.

Seeing that I have a Masters of Divinity degree, you would think these sorts of epiphanies might have come when I was caught up in some deep theological treatise—Calvin’s Institutes perhaps, or Barth’s Ethics. But that’s not what happened. What happened is what I’ve attempted to tell in Divine Nobodies. God opened my eyes, not through theological and philosophical flashes of brilliance, but through the unlikeliest people, which I, well, just kind of ran into along the way. Everyday run-of-the-mill types, like you and me. Let’s see, there are the waitress, the tire salesman, the hip-hop artist, the swim teacher, and the severely disabled little girl among the unsuspecting cast of characters. Each of them unraveled a bit more the mystery of God and stretched the capacity of my soul to know him.

I’ve learned to keep my eyes wide open. You never know whom God will send across your path to awaken you to the truth that changes everything. The answers to the most important questions reside inside us, but sometimes we need a little help discovering them for ourselves. We are all students and teachers. Some of my teachers who helped unplug my ears and open my eyes to God were smeared in axle grease or sporting body piercings and tattoos. Conditioned to expect God in church buildings and worship services, I never figured on running into him at Waffle House

I think God has things thought through better than we realize. What if all us nobodies of the world discovered we are carrying the life of God inside these jars of clay. And what if we weren’t too preoccupied with becoming somebodies that we became fully present and opened our lives to others God brings across our path or draws us to. And what if us nobodies, understanding God is perfect Love and dwells within us, began to unconditionally and indiscriminately open that flow of divine love to all people as we go and wherever we are. I’m convinced this could change our world. Maybe if those of us who are spiritually awake in God would walk in love, we would become the midwives helping give birth to the seed of God within others. Divine Nobodies tells the story of who some of those midwives have been for me. We are all divine nobodies, it’s just some have not discovered this yet

But we all want meaning and purpose in our life. Isn’t the goal to become a “somebody”?

I see myself as Adam back in the Genesis garden; God offering himself to me in loving relationship and my striking out to explore the possibilities of becoming God myself. As a result, I and humankind suffers from a catastrophic identity crisis whereby we’ve become blinded to our true selves in God, and instead have taken up the burden of establishing identity and worth on our own. The crisis is driven by two lies: I am separated from God, and I must acquire significance by doing something. Contemporary society is absorbed in the latter, while religion is the assumed means of resolving the former. Neither works.

One of the consuming goals of the false self, convinced of its separation from God and blinded to its true identity, is achieving “somebody” status. This is the game of distinguishing oneself over others based on a common human consciousness of “success.” Power, wealth, accomplishment, position, fame, intellect, special gifts, and physical beauty are all accepted indicators of being a “somebody.” Christendom sometimes perpetuates the lie by exalting particular Christians who are gifted leaders, communicators, artists, influencers, or scholars. These are the “somebodies” of Christendom who we assume are especially close to God, valued by God and significant in the world. It was painfully enlightening when I discovered that my drive to be “successful” in ministry was partly fueled by the desire to become a “somebody.”

Jesus said, “Unless a seed falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” Until we die to our false self, our real self cannot be born into our human experience and tragically lays dormant within us. I have experienced the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ as a spiritual door through which I journey backward to the Genesis garden to recover Adam’s face-to-face relationship with God and claim its reality for myself. In Christ’s death, my false self rooted in separation from God and aimlessly searching and seeking identity, meaning, and purpose dies. In Christ’s resurrection, I am raised up as a new creation rooted in oneness with God and complete by our loving communion.

My journey backward started by internalizing grace. I discovered God’s love and acceptance of me was not contingent upon my doing. Up to that point, despite my scholarly understanding of God’s “unmerited favor,” I still more or less upheld a checklist of do’s and don’ts, chasing a “phantom Christian” I imagined would finally please God and secure his blessing. Until I understood I literally could not do anything for God to achieve worth and value in his eyes, I would not stop trying. I could go no further with God until I abandoned the path of striving for God’s favor.

In the beginning, the only reality for humankind was the perfection, goodness, and love of God. Nothing needed to be added, all was well, and humankind was satisfied and fulfilled. Separated from God, a new reality entered the equation. Now humankind acquired “knowledge of good AND EVIL.” Evil, anything less than the perfection of God, became our experience. God intended to satisfy our deepest created needs for love and meaning through himself, but instead we sought to satisfy these needs through alternate means. Driven into the psyche of humankind is a sense of separation from God. We depend on religion as a system of fixed beliefs and prescribed practices to resolve this but fail. This felt separation from God, despite our religious devotion, hinders us from allowing God to meet our deepest and most intimate needs in relationship with himself, and we strive to satisfy them on our own. Sin is not essentially breaking a moral rule, but is our drive to be what we are not. Sin is an orientation to falsity, a basic lie concerning our own deepest reality in Christ.

The quest for meaning and purpose itself is symptomatic of humankind’s felt separation from God. In the Genesis garden, the picture of humankind is one of peace and completion in God, not of striving to find or add anything. Not only is the goal not becoming a “somebody,” neither is it finding meaning and purpose. Every problem known to humankind is born out of separation from God, and every core need of our lives is satisfied in oneness with him. The significance of Christ was not starting a new religion to compete with all the others, but to provide the essential piece no religion is capable of producing on its own. There is nothing we can do to resolve our sense of separation from God. I believe the mystery of the cross and resurrection is that God proclaims there is no separation and invites all people to come home.

In your book you say, “I realized that my Christianity was essentially a glorified behavior modification program safely rationalized beneath a waving WWJD? banner.” It felt very sterile and artificial. How would you describe a more authentic Christianity?

I was humbled upon discovering God’s reason for wanting me was exponentially better than my reason for wanting him. God’s idea of my “salvation” trumped the version I was too willing to settle for. I dumbed-down God’s intentions for me as little more than a self-help and behavior modification program, with a ticket punched to heaven when I die. Had God not stepped in through those divine nobodies, I might well have gone to the grave having missed much of what God wants to give. The word “relationship” comes to mind when I think of Christianity—relationship with God, relationship with one another, relationship with the world.

What distinguishes these relationships as “Christian” in my mind is that we initiate and nurture them as Christ. We take on Christ’s relationship with the Father, one another, and the world. For example, we express Christ’s law of love in our human relationships. We love all people because we see past their exterior to the truth of who they are in God and we affirm that truth by our love. Love forms our deepest identity. God’s continual supply of love within us is the primary force shaping us, and the overflow of that love to others is part of it. There may be no “discipleship” or “formation” program better than the giving and receiving of love with God and people.

“Freedom” is another word that comes to mind when thinking of authentic Christianity. Jesus said, “the truth will set you free.” I guess we tend to think of this in terms of being freed from something, which certainly is true, but I think it is also being freed to something. The scriptures speak of the “fruit of the Spirit,” which are divine qualities progressively born into our lives—the freedom to love, the freedom to walk in joy, and the freedom to live in peace. The scriptures also describe some of the dimensions of God’s love within us, which are to be a present living reality—freedom from envy, freedom from selfishness, freedom from anger, and freedom from hatred. These realities are fundamentally interior, which on the one hand transcend our circumstantial lives, and on the other, frees us to birth the kingdom of God within them.

You write about people you once believed to be outside the parameters of Christianity—in particular a musician who is a fan of Hip Hop music, something many people associate with violence and misogyny. What did you learn from this man that brought you closer both to Christ and to yourself?

My friend Doug introduced me to the world of hip-hop. Of course I know there are people in hip-hop who glorify sexual excess, violence, and crime to America’s youth in order to make a buck. There is plenty of stupidity, toxicity, and degradation in hip-hop. The nature of any new genre of music or art begins as an authentic overflow of the soul, but eventually becomes compromised and corrupted by a glut of opportunists who jump on the moneymaking bandwagon and dilute it to the least common denominator or formula.

When I took time to dig deeper, I was surprised by what else I found in hip-hop. Things aren’t always as they appear on the surface. I experienced hip-hop music as a powerful fusion of creativity, a brutally honest depiction of human reality, and a deep soul-search for truth. Contrary to my presumptions, hip-hop is not simply about wild sex, killing cops, and selling dope. The originality of the art form and the volatile content it spews flow from an inner world of disillusionment, anger, and hopelessness by people who feel invisible, cast aside, rejected, and duped by the talking heads of politics and religion. Some people in our world are disillusioned and hurting inside but keep playing the game. They’re not going to.

I learned the stories behind some of the names in the hip-hop scene and got to know some in my own city. Sadly, I realized just how willing I was to make judgments and level condemnation toward people who had endured an amount of suffering before age 18 that many Sunday School classes combined have yet to experience. You think you have people figured out by their language and looks, but I learned the hard way you don’t.

Some hip-hop artists didn’t quite fit the evil image I was prone to pin on them. Turns out, there are some hip-hop icons who actively oppose gang violence and believe hip-hop culture of music, art and dance is a non-violent and creative outlet for hostilities. Others invest significant time and financial resources in community development efforts, and work with political, business, sport, and entertainment leaders to address issues such as inner city crime, dropout rates, unemployment, and teen pregnancy. People might be surprised to know that some of the biggest personalities in hip-hop are highly engaged in root issues like systemic injustice and individual responsibility. Many of these artists understand the struggle of the street and the accompanying agony of soul, and have a unique position and voice to speak into it.

It’s odd how we Christians are so intolerable of others’ “fleshly” sins and so tolerant of our so-called “spiritual” ones. Jesus was gentle and accepting with the adulterous woman, but hammered the clerical leaders for enslaving people with religion in the name of God. Obviously people should not use their bodies destructively because it prevents the wholeness God desires for them and others, but I discovered that pretense, duplicity, and self-righteousness are truly deadly sins as corrupting to the soul as are excesses of the body. It’s a little curious that the “sinners” in the Bible were much more responsive to Jesus and ready to receive the kingdom of God than religious people. The same sun melts wax and hardens clay, and the same Jesus melted and hardened people’s hearts, but maybe there’s a hidden message in who was melted (prostitutes) and who was hardened (religious establishment).

Doesn’t God want folks either passionately in love (hot) or flipping him the bird (cold) rather than the halfhearted mediocrity of religious compliance? Both the passion and the rebellion flow from the same source, which God placed in us and knows he must get hold of and transform (not eliminate) in order to make people whole. Sure, when unplugged from God our hardwired human impulses and instincts are unraveled into the mess some people associate with hip-hop. But at least these people are being honest with what they are and feel, as offensive as that may be to others. We cannot be fully healed unless we know we are hurting. God can deal with the messy truth of who we are. He wasn’t happy with the woman at the well who was prostituting her body in hopes of finding love, not just because she was doing it, but because she wouldn’t admit to herself that she was. God knew the woman had to face the truth in order for her to become the whole woman he wanted her to be.

Turns out in the end, the main thing God asks of us on the road to wholeness is the truth. The idea we can “clean up our act” through our own will power is an illusion, and the only hope of ever being whole is to receive the life of God. It’s clear from the “hot/cold” scripture from Revelations that the video [that is] grieving God is not categorically the hip-hop one, but the one where we come to church masking our brokenness, out of touch with the truth about ourselves, while pointing the finger of condemnation at others. Honestly, I’m messed up in plenty of ways enough myself and figure I’ve got a ways to go before I feel confident enough to start tossing stones.

How did Christianity come to be understood as a religion more concerned with morality than relationship? Why is it so important that this misconception be changed?

I don’t believe Jesus essentially came to start a new religion bearing his name to compete with all the others. In certain respects, the question of how Jesus Christ’s life, teachings, death and resurrection morphed into a religion referred to as “Christianity” might best be answered by a detailed and careful analysis of history. Here are a few of my own thoughts about it.

I guess it would be helpful to define what I mean by “religion.” When I use the term, I am not referring to any particular religion but a certain mentality that can find its way into any belief system, including what many people refer to as “Christianity.” There are all sorts of consequences, well intentioned or unintended as they might be, which result from living out of the illusion of the false self. When the clerics, leaders, scholars or creative influencers of any religion act out of the false self, they perpetuate distortions of the truth.

A few of the common distortions I have experienced and have perpetuated myself include the striving through works to secure God’s love and favor, rather than receiving God’s love and favor as an unconditional gift of God’s grace. Another distortion would be settling for the legalistic observance of religious rules and rituals, maintaining spiritual appearances, and the intellectual assent to creeds and sacred writings, rather than embracing and living the inner transformation these acts, creeds, and writings point to.

The institutionalization of religion can also be detrimental, whereby people sometimes replace the authority of the Spirit within with the “professional” minister, or depend too heavily on organized programs as the primary mode for being Christians. I don’t believe “church” is essentially some configuration of services, programs, meetings, classes, and staff teams, though I’m not saying the presence of these necessarily exclude it from being an expression of “church.” Frankly, I sometimes feel the constant debate over what form church takes only serves as a distraction from more important matters. The works-oriented and institutional mindset of religion often leaves people busy but barren. Somehow in all our religiosity and activity, we miss the forest for the trees and things unravel into one big adventure in missing the point.

I think some Christians become especially focused on morality and sin management out of an inadequate view of the holiness of God and sin. I don’t believe God is repulsed by our human flaws or views us through eyes of disgust, as if we need to “clean up our act” to be acceptable to him. God is perfect and complete within himself in every way (perfect love, goodness, freedom, beauty, wisdom) and desires all people to share in his life of perfection. Seeking life independently of God will always result in falling short of the perfect peace, fulfillment, freedom and wholeness God wants us to experience in him. “Sin” is anything less than the perfection of God, and God’s motive for “hating sin” is love. In God’s eyes, achieving higher levels of “good” behavior is not the end game, eliminating every barrier, which hinders our receiving his divine life is. I believe the central issue with sin is dying to the false self of separation from God and embracing the true self of oneness with God.

Do you think God cares about how we act and what we do?

I believe we need to recover a spirituality of being, because the matter of who we are always precedes what we do. We are either acting and doing out of a false identity and therefore perpetuating a world of brokenness, or we are acting and doing out of our true self and giving birth to God’s kingdom. Jesus once said he only did and spoke what he saw his Father doing and speaking. I believe Christ wants us to share in this same oneness with God. I believe it is possible to think with the mind of Christ, see with his eyes, feel with his emotions, and act with his will. When we are spiritually whole, our words and actions in this world are the expressions of God himself among us.

It seems like lately God has been calling my attention not so much to what I’m doing, but why I’m doing it. I’m learning a lot about myself as God reveals my true motives for my actions in the world. I discovered a paradox about people I know who maintain spiritual disciplines of quietude and listening to God. These people have a great passion for solitude AND a zeal for action. What first seemed contradictory became an intriguing balance. What they discovered about themselves and God in the interior places, they carried with them into the everyday world, allowing these discoveries to influence their actions, dependencies, and motivations.

The implications of being “the body of Christ” on earth is that Christ is present and at work in the world in and through us. I believe the key is dependence upon Christ’s spirit within as the determinant of how we act and what we do, both individually and collectively. It would be a great benefit if communities of believers, in whatever form they exist, encouraged one another in listening to the Spirit within and learning to walk in oneness with God. I don’t think our greatest need is more information about God as much as giving birth into our human experience those things we already know that we know are true.

You have been to South Asia where you saw little girls who were being forced into prostitution? Where was God in all their pain and suffering?

Religion tends to place God somewhere out there or up there in the sky. The religious logic naturally follows then for people to summons God out of the sky to intervene into human affairs, particularly to protect or rescue people from pain and suffering. This seems an odd notion to believe for Christians, particularly since Jesus Christ was divine life clothed in human flesh who saved the world from inside it. As mentioned, the metaphor of “the body of Christ” conveys that the divine life is still present on earth in and through us. Strangely, Christians sometimes fail to realize and live out the implications of the truth that the infinite God is dwelling within us and therefore placing God in close proximity to the needs and problems of humankind.

I hear in Jesus' words “the kingdom of God is within you” that the mind and power of God are within us to both conceive and give birth to his will “on earth as it is in heaven.” I believe Jesus was trying to illustrate this fact in the feeding of the 5,000. A crowd of people following Jesus was hungry, but there was no food readily available. The disciples petitioned Jesus to wave his magic God-wand and miraculously fix it. Jesus essentially responded by saying, “No, YOU fix it.” In the end, they met the need together. In the face of human suffering, we sometimes look into the sky petitioning God to come down and do his God-thing and solve it. Instead, I believe God replies by saying, “YOU fix it.” The reply, however, comes from within reminding us that we move in concert with God as he lives his life in and through us.

One million new girls every year are forced into child prostitution around our world. I locked eyes with several of these little girls, moments before they were auctioned off to the highest bidder to be raped. To be honest, I sometimes wish I could just forget the whole freaking thing and go about my merry little life. I can’t. The God inside me loves these little girls and so they have found a place within my own heart. The common question is, “Where is God in the midst of the pain and suffering of the world?” One day God asked me, “Where are you, Jim, in the midst of the world’s suffering?” The “God and human suffering” question often drifts off into all sorts of theological, philosophical and theoretical debate, meanwhile little girls stand in long lines at makeshift clinics around the world to receive medicines for any number of sexually transmitted diseases.

What the people at the International Justice Mission taught me is that God shows up around the world to bring rescue to these girls and other victims of injustice through the intervention of people like us. I decided in conjunction with this book that I would speak out about this injustice and encourage people to become active in efforts such as IJM. I made a promise to myself about these girls that I would never forget them. This is one way I’m keeping it.

Confronting oppression wherever it exists and bringing rescue to victims of injustice wherever they are is a reflection of the heart of God in our world. God’s kingdom is one of love, beauty, wholeness, freedom, peace, truth, and justice. Some people seem to be sitting around waiting for God to drop it on us. Maybe God wants to give birth to it through us.

Thinking of those little girls I met in South Asia, the next time brothel doors are kicked down by IJM operatives, perhaps one of those girls will ask, “Where is God in my pain and suffering?” I believe the answer is, “God did not send your pain and suffering, but he enters into your pain and suffering and shares it with you. God is here now rescuing you, and he is able to bring deep healing and transformation from within.”

You had a very painful childhood yourself. How have you been able to move past that trauma?

I’ve encountered two dead-end roads as it relates to the wounds of my childhood. One of them is the road of denial, which I found plenty of metaphorical support for in Christianity once I twisted it around to my own dysfunctional liking. Somehow I found in that whole “the old is gone and new has come” theme, permission to avoid facing the hurt and sadness of my past. For me, becoming “born again” meant I could cast off the first 18 years of my life and start over. That worked fairly well for a string of years until those wounds caught up to me in the form of deep depression and self-hatred.

The other dead-end road I went down was the road of acceptance. I found plenty of theological wiggle room to fashion this notion that I would always be a wounded, broken man depending on Christ to hold on ‘til heaven when I would be instantaneously healed and made whole. Eventually I discovered that the God of healing dwelled inside me and desired my freedom now.

What I’ve come to is this: God doesn’t want me to either deny or accept the wounds of my childhood. When I find sadness, brokenness, and dysfunction inside me, I embrace it in order to lay it before the healing love of God. As he brings new freedom and healing into my life, I walk in it. For many years I was a grown up man with this little kid inside convinced he was stupid, worthless, and ugly. I can still vividly remember the first time I experienced God looking directly into the eyes of that little boy and telling him he was loved. What seems to be making me whole is knowing that God loves and accepts me just the same whether I’m living in the freedom he provides or I’m too depressed to get out of bed. My prayer for any person who has suffered from an abusive past of any kind, is that they will see themselves through God eyes and rest in his love.

I discovered the miracle that my pain (though not caused by God) is not wasted. My own healed wounds have become a source of hope and healing for others who carry deep hurt. Frederick Buechner wrote, “Even the saddest things can become, once we have made peace with them, a source of wisdom and strength for the journey that still lies ahead.”

If nothing we do can earn more of God’s love—it is given freely, no strings attached—what compels the people in your book to act with such love and compassion towards others?

Paul spoke of a “mystery” in Colossians 1:27 and described it with these words, “Christ in you, the hope of glory.” I believe the hope of the world is that Christ is in us saving us and setting us free. In another place Paul tried to put words to what it meant for Christ to be his life. Essentially Paul tried describing it by saying it’s like you can’t really distinguish where “your” life ends and “Christ’s” life begins—“it is no longer I who live but Christ lives in me.” 2000 years ago there was Jesus Christ. Maybe now there’s a Rick Christ, Anne Christ, Brian Christ, Connie Christ, and all the other divine nobodies of our world.

Jesus was that seed that fell to the ground and died so the life of Christ could now be multiplied in us. The people who selflessly and sacrificially love others unconditionally and indiscriminately are simply being who they really are in Christ. Thinking about some of the divine nobodies I allude to in the book, there wasn’t anything particularly unique about them that explains how extraordinary they were in their love. Most of them were simply the guy next-door types or the gal ringing your groceries up at the register. Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” These people were simply willing to humbly open their hearts to receive what God wants to give. And what God gives can’t be fully contained within us and naturally spills out on others. Maybe the world needs a few more spills before its eyes are open to the source.

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