What Part of You Has Come Here to Die? Recovering a Wild Christianity with Martin Shaw

Updated:

Mar 5, 2026

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Published:

Mar 10, 2026

CTR Recovering A Wild Christianity Martin Shaw

“What part of you has come here to die?”

It’s a question that Martin Shaw—one of our great living storytellers—is famous for asking.

Shaw offers these kinds of provocations to a Western world where Christianity has largely been domesticated and desperately needs to recover its wildness.

Prayer doesn’t feel real to you?

Rip up a twenty-dollar bill every time you pray.

On your phone too much?

Smash it with a hammer.

Have something you need to confess but are afraid to tell another living soul?

Dig a “confessional hole” in the ground with your bare hands and shout it into the earth.

In this episode of A Commitment to Reality, Shaw joins Dave Hanegraaff to explore how to recover a wild Christianity in a world where faith for many has become cold, abstract, and domesticated.

Thank you for joining A Commitment to Reality, hosted by Dave Hanegraaff. Follow A Commitment to Reality wherever you get your podcasts (see below for our other platforms) and on YouTube for full episodes + clips: https://www.youtube.com/@ACommitmenttoReality

(Timestamps below.)

0:00 — Intro / Friends in Common Recovering Wild Christianity

2:20 — Belief is cool again—Atheism is for old people

3:45 — Aesthetic Arrest

6:45 — You don’t want persona, you want presence

8:00 — Make a covenant with limit in a culture of excess

13:55 — Growing up the son of a preacher man

17:15 — The cost of becoming religious

23:05 — What is myth? (And why is it not what we think?)

27:30 — On Sectarian Christianity

30:00 — Theology without practice is the theology of demons

31:35 — Night vigils and reclaiming initiation rites

35:50 — What part of you has come to die?

42:15 — His home burned down—Discussion of losing everything.

45:00 — What is a saint?

46:35 — Death — how can we breathe new life into death?

50:40 — The value of a good cry

53:45 — How to tell our stories differently

56:00 — On your phone too much? Smash it

57:10 — Struggling with prayer? Rip up money when you pray

59:20 — Confessional holes—dig a hole with your hands and confess into the earth

1:00:40 — In a world that feels unreal, what feels real?

1:02:30 — Johnny Cash had a Boy Named Sue. Glen Hansard has a Boy Named Grace: Dave tells the story of naming his son Grace.

We are living through one of the most disorienting periods in human history—leaving many to wonder: What is reality? As artificial intelligence accelerates and institutional trust erodes, our shared sense of what is real continues to crumble.

A commitment to reality is a dedication to discerning what is true and developing the discipline to live in alignment with that truth—with reality. This podcast is an apologetic for reality—each episode serving as an intentional act of grounding our existence together as we commit to what is beautiful, good, and true.

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