Episode 112: Pete and Jared - How “How the Bible Actually Works” Works

In this episode of The Bible for Normal People Podcast, Pete and Jared talk about Pete’s book, How the Bible Actually Works as they explore the following questions:

• Why did Pete write How the Bible Actually Works?
• What is the point of the Bible?
• What does the ambiguity of the Bible teach us about God?
• What are some examples of different theologies in the Bible?
• What does the Bible teach us about reading the Bible?
• How do Jonah and Nahum represent two conflicting theologies?
• How can the messiness of the Bible actually be freeing?
• How has the Bible been interpreted throughout church history and what can that teach us?
• How do our metaphors for God shape how we read the Bible?
• What are healthy ways to read the Bible?
• How do we limit ourselves in our readings of the Bible?
• Why is leaving room for ambiguity in our Bible reading a more responsible way to read the Bible?

Tweetables

Pithy, shareable, less-than-280-character statements from Pete and Jared you can share.  

• “[The Bible] is a text we get to engage, we don’t control it.” @peteenns
• “The diversity of the Bible tells us that we’re already seeing within the Bible itself people grappling with what the Bible means.” @peteenns
• “I actually think at the end of the day, it’s not so much what the Bible means, it’s grappling with what God is like.” @peteenns
• “We have to be very careful not to impose things on the Bible. All of us do that, I do that, all of us do that. I think we should be at least self-aware of what it is we’re doing.” @peteenns
• “We do ourselves a disservice by this dominate metaphor of God being a parent and us being children, because I think in a lot of traditions we build theological systems for children and then we don’t allow people to really grow up.” @jbyas
• “I don’t think God is out to dehumanize us and to keep us just simple people who are afraid to ask questions or afraid to risk.” @peteenns
• “This whole thing about growing in the faith it involves risk and pain and suffering… and I think just dealing with the Bible is a microcosm of the whole spiritual journey.” @peteenns
• “I think a tolerance for ambiguity is a very important lesson for all of us to learn from.” @peteenns
• “Learning to deal with the ambiguity I think forces you into a position of dependence on God in a good way, in a healthy way.” @peteenns
• “Maybe God is in our midst and values that we’re doing the best that we can and it’s going to be ok. I think the Bible models that for us.” @peteenns

Mentioned in This Episode

• Book: How the Bible Actually Works
• Book: Reflections on the Psalms
• Book: A Year of Biblical Womanhood
• Video: ASMR
• Patreon: The Bible for Normal People

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00:00

Pete:  You’relistening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on theinternet.  Serious talk about the sacredbook.  I’m Pete Enns.

Jared:  And I’m JaredByas.

[Jaunty Intro Music]

Jared:  Welcome,everyone, to this episode of the Bible for Normal People.  A few things before we get started:

First, you’ll notice that my voice is cracking a lot andthat’s not because I’m going through puberty (laughter).  That’s not the reason. 

Pete:  Whatever yousay, Jared.  Okay.

Jared:  I’ve just beensick, so I may be—it may not sound like me, but it is me, for real.

Pete:  It sounds likean NPR episode.  That’s what I think—

Jared:  Yeah.  I’ll try to—

Pete:  Helloeverybody.  Let’s talk about the—

Jared:  So, secondly,just a reminder about our Patreon Campaign. We are getting these transcripts together.  We want to keep the Podcast free, so you cango to patreon.com/thebiblefornormalpeople and help us hit our goal of 1611patrons.

Pete:  Right.

Jared:  In honor ofthe good old King James.

Pete.  Right.

Jared:  And—

Pete:  The trueBible. 

Jared:  The tr-- theone and only.  Then lastly, today, it’sjust going to be you and me. 

Pete:  Yeah, Man.

Jared:  This is it forSeason Three.

Pete:  Unbelievable.

Jared:  Three yearssince we were just babes in the woods.

Pete:  Yeah.  Technically, it was two years ago that we didthe first last episode—

Jared:  That’s true—

Pete:  It’s only beentwo years.  It’s funky the way timeworks.

Jared:  Weird math.

Pete:  Time’srelative, Man.

Jared:  Yeah.  All right. For that, we are going to focus a little bit on how the Bible actuallyworks.  So, this episode is called, “Howthe Bible Actually Works Works.”

Pete:  Get it?  Do you get it?

Jared: (laughter)

Pete:  Do you get it?

Jared: (laughter)

Pete:  It’s soclever.  I’m so happy about that title,but—

Jared:  Okay.  But, we’re gonna talk how the Bible actuallyworks and I’m just excited about it because Pete wrote this book by that title,but we really want to do a deeper dive into some of these concepts and maybeeven respond to a little bit of the pushback. I think, overall, it’s been really good, but there are some things thatwe want to think about and talk about a little bit more—

Pete:  Interact, alittle bit, maybe with some things—

Jared:  Yeah.  But before we do that, maybe just a quickoverview, Pete, of the main points. Then, we’ll go from there and take a deeper diver on this—

Pete:  You mean, forthose who haven’t memorized the book yet?

Jared:  I know.  Those pagans.

Pete:  For the sevenof you listening, okay.  Maybe the firstthing that I can say is why I wrote it. That’s really a big thing behind the scenes.  It just struck me that the language wetypically use in the world of Evangelicalism or Conservative Christianity oreven in the mainline Church about the Bible, it tends to be very positive andholy.  It’s God’s Word.  It’s God’s revealed Word.  For some traditions, it’s without error.  It’s our faithful guide to practice and todoctrine. 

All those things are wonderful, but the problem that I’veseen and many, many, many other people have seen is that when you actually readthe Bible, you come up against all sorts of challenges to those kinds of ideas.

In fact, there are elements, characteristics of the Biblethat have to always be defended against, put in their place so that ways oflooking at the Bible can remain.

I just thought to myself, these characteristics (and I havethree of them that I list in the book) are not just here or there.  They seem really baked into the pages fromthe very beginning of the Bible to the very end.  You can’t escape them.  In fact, they’re deeply characteristic of theBible itself. 

I don’t think they’re remotely negative.  I don’t think they need to be defendedagainst.  I think these are things thatactually open windows and doors for us to see how the Bible actually works, ifyou’ll allow me to say that.

The three characteristics (I’ll just mention them here) arethat the Bible is ancient.  It’s reallyold.  The Bible is also ambiguous,meaning it’s not a clear book in terms—even if the sentences are clear, theimplications are not clear.  It’sambiguous.  The third, which I think forthe way I think about all this stuff, is the most important and theologicallyfruitful characteristic of the Bible of the three that I’m mentioninghere.  The Bible is diverse.

Those three things are so much a part of this Bible that wehave and whether it’s the Christian Bible that includes the New Testament orwhether it’s the Hebrew Bible, which is just the first part of the ChristianBible, it’s still the same.  I’d like tothink, and I could be stepping out of my paygrade here, but by faith I’d liketo say that this is a thing that God likes and God intends.

Again, I don’t know what God intends.  I have no earthly idea.  I even say that in the book.  But I still think that this is a positivething for the Church, because these characteristics drive us to work throughthis Bible and struggle with it and not treat it like a rule book, but treat itas this unending source of wisdom as we engage with it.

05:02

Jared:  Maybe youcan--just on that point about the ambiguity, I often translate into thinkingabout I don’t know when the Bible’s describing something and when it’sendorsing it—

Pete:  Right—

Jared:  Would that bea good way to kind of characterize that too? Sometimes, we’re reading it and my tradition would go ahead and say,“This is something the Bible’s endorsing.” There’s a lot of baggage to what it’s saying and endorsing.  There’s other things—“We don’t need to listento that.  It’s just describing theancient world.” 

Pete:  Right.  The way it’s often put, again to use thelanguage that inerrantists use, “The Bible is inerrant in all that it affirmsor teaches.”  I’ve had discussions withpeople about this in the past and that’s exactly the ca—“Well what does itaffirm and what does it teach?”

For example, I’m pretty adamant that Genesis Chapter Oneteaches and affirms that there are six, 24-hour days of creation, becausethere’s morning and evening and I think the implication is very clear.  It’s intended to tie with the week and thenthe Sabbath rest that the Israelites have later on in this story.  Frankly, it’s unambiguous.  That’s clear to me.  It’s not ambiguous what they’re intending.

But the implications for us, that’s another thing.  It’s arbitrary to say, “Well, it’s notteaching or intending to say anything like that.  It’s got to have some other meaning.  That’s just part of the ancient world.”  Blah. Blah.  Blah.

Once you start mixing those categories, it’s really hard toseparate them.  It’s hard to know what’sgoing on in these texts.

Jared:  Would it befair to say, then, that whether you say we all pick and choose or whether yousay—you put in this phrase, “It all depends on what the Bible intends andaffirms,” that’s basically putting a layer of interpretation between us and theBible.  What I’m hearing in your book andhow you talk about the Bible, Pete, is wisdom is finally acknowledging andbeing aware and getting really healthy with that layer—

Pete:  Yeah—

Jared:  That layer ofinterpretation and being friends with it and not denying that it’s there.  That’s what I would have grown up with.  “No.  Ijust read the Bible.  I don’t interpretit.”

Pete:  Right.

Jared:  But because itis ambiguous and it is that diverse, we have to interpret it.  I mean, it’s in language.

Pete:  Mm-hmm.

Jared:  Part of howthe Bible actually works is forcing us to acknowledge that interpretative framework.  Part of wisdom is looking at that and saying,“Yeah.  There are some really unhealthyways of interpreting this book and they are probably healthy ways ofinterpreting this book.”

Pete:  It’s not alwayseasy to know which are the better ways and which are not, but that’s part ofthe task of theology and the task of studying the Bible.  This is as old as the Bible itself.

The whole thing about, “I don’t interpret it.”  We do interpret the Bible.  Even if we don’t know we’re doing it, becauseof just who we are and when we live and the questions we ask and ourbackgrounds, that really does affect how we look at texts.  To think of the Bible as this thing that’sjust there, sort of a neutral thing that we have to engage, we’re reading it inEnglish here in America, at least, and it’s not written in English andtranslations have a significant interpretive dimension and scholars makedecisions about which texts are better readings of the Old or NewTestament.  That’s part of our world too.

It’s almost like there’s ambiguity heaped uponambiguity.  I’d like to think there’s alesson to be learned there for us.  Weshould not expect a Bible that we can access without being conscious of thatfact.  Again, maybe breeding a little bitof humility as a result of that.  This isa text we get to engage.  We don’t controlit.  It’s not just a neutral kind ofputting down of words, the meaning of which is pretty clear and theimplications of which are pretty clear. 

I think the history of Christianity contradicts that prettyquickly, because you have so many different opinions on all these things,Jewish and Christian.  Maybe that’s notthe bad news.  Maybe that’s the goodnews.  Maybe that’s okay.  People accessing these texts in differentways and in different times and places under different circumstances.

09:23

Jared:  What are someof those lessons we can learn?  That’ssomething that we get quite a bit. “You’re tinkering with how people have always read the Bible.”  By that, they mean their tradition and theyassume that their tradition is how the Bible has always been read.  What are some of the lessons we can take fromhow the Church has really—it grew and was thriving in a time when it didn’talways just have one singular way of reading it.

Pete:  Yeah.  People were always debating it.  For me, the really important element here,which I suggested above, is the diversity of the Bible.  It tells us that we’re already seeing withinthe Bible itself, people grappling with what the Bible means.

I’m going to even be more specific than that.  I actually think, at the end of the day, it’snot so much what the Bible means, it’s grappling with what God is like.  Even looking at the different ways in whichGod is portrayed in the Bible by different authors, it’s a lesson that weshould take in and not say, “Oh my goodness gracious.  Here’s a problem.  We need to reconcile these ways of looking ofGod.  There can’t be a major theologicaldifference of agreement between the Biblical writers.” 

But the fact is that there are these disagreements betweenthe writers.  Whenever the Bible was compiled(I’m just sticking with the Old Testament here) sometime after the Exile, thereare people, learned scribes and rabbis who were involved in this process andprobably priests as well.  Whoknows? 

They could read and they understood how you have thisdiverse development of perspectives on God within this sacred text, all ofwhich were worth keeping and all of which were worth cherishing and all ofwhich were worth struggling with as well. 

I find that to be a very important lesson for us as we thinkabout the nature of the Bible, the nature of faith, and whether the point ofthe Bible is simply to give us answers about what God is like or it’s modelingfor us what I call in the book, our sacred responsibility to own this processfor ourselves, to be intimately knowledgeable with this story, this text, sothat we can do a really good job of doing the same thing these texts do, whichis to what I call in the book, reimagine God, to think about God differently indifferent contexts in different places.

An example or two might not hurt here.  For those of you who haven’t memorized thebook, these are examples here.  I thinkone really good example is the book of Jonah, which Jared’s talked about thaton a podcast too.

Jonah is the prophet who is sent to preach repentance to theNinevites.  Nineveh is the capital of theAssyrian empire.  Of course, he doesn’twant to do it and who blames him.  TheAssyrians are horrible.  They are the badISIS of the day.  God wants him to go doit, so he runs away.  He gets swallowedby a fish.  He goes down to Sheol.  He comes back up again.  He’s spit up on the land.  He goes and preaches repentance to theNinevites. 

He says, “Forty days and you’ll be destroyed” or somethinglike that—

Jared:  Well no.  Forty days. It’s a play on words there.

Pete:  Right.  What is that again?

Jared:  Forty days andyou will—what’s—it’s destroyed.

Pete:  Yeah.  Right—

Jared:  But there’s anambiguity in that word—

Pete: Interesting.  Yeah.  Jared can’t think clearly because he has acold and his head’s full of snot right now, so he’s not gonna—

Jared:  No.  But it is (laughter)—because you can read itin one of two ways.  Jonah could say,“Forty days and you”—like conditional or unconditional.

Pete:  Okay—

Jared:  Yeah—

Pete:  All right.  It’s a very short evangelistic sermon—

Jared:  Yeah—

Pete:  That’s thepoint—

Jared:  It’s likethree words or something—

Pete:  Right.  But the thing is that it works.  It works because the king repents and thepeople repent and basically, Assyria functionally becomes a Yahweh nation.  That didn’t happen.  If that had happened, someone would haveheard about it and noticed.  “Hey, didyou notice that the Assyrian Empire converted to a faith in Yahweh.  What’s up with that?” 

That’s a signal, one of the many signals from the book ofJonah that it’s not intending to be historical. There’s a theological message which seems to be God may care aboutpeople you don’t think that God cares about, even your enemies.  This is a very Jesusy, New Testeamenty kindof moment in the book of Jonah.

The point is that two books over you have the book ofNahum.  This prophet (it’s a three-chapterbook) and they are just gloating over the fact that the Assyrians are gettingdestroyed.  God’s response before it andat the end, everybody claps their hands. I sort of imagine a high-five across the world saying, “Finally, theAssyrians are out of the picture.”

The question is which is it. The way I explain it in the book is that the book of Nahum is an olderbook.  The city of Nineveh was defeatedby a coalition of forces like the Babylonians and the Medes around 612BCE.  That’s it.  But Jonah is almost certainly a post-exilicbook.  It’s written after the exile,after the Babylonian captivity.

So what?  Well, the sowhat is that during the captivity—you can imagine that you’re carted away to aforeign land.  What happened about ageneration or two later?  These captivescame back from Babylon.  This was in 539BCE.  A lot of them stayed.  They didn’t come back.  They stayed in Babylon.  In fact, Babylon became a cultural center forJudaism for about 1000 years after that. They stayed.  They liked it.

15:17

I can imagine you’re taken captive.  You move away and do you hate it here?  But then, you say, “Listen.  I just met the neighbors.  They’re really nice people.  They want us over for dinner.  They have something called beer for heaven’ssake.  What is that?  We don’t have that kind of stuff inIsrael.  I can’t understand a wordthey’re saying.  They have this weirdlanguage.  But, we’re getting to knowthese people and they’re nice and they want to have a play date with the kidsand it’s just going to be a great time. So let’s do this.”  You makefriends.

When I was in graduate school, I had a similarexperience.  I was told by some of mymore conservative Christian friends, “Don’t talk to anybody.  Don’t learn anything.  Just keep your head down.  Come out safe.” 

But I met people there who didn’t believe anything like whatI believed, but were just wonderful, wonderful people.  I had an experience of meeting theother.  I had to ask myself the question,“What does God think about them?” because had I been born in the countrieswhere some of my classmates were born, I wouldn’t be Christian.  A lot of this is an accident of where I wasborn.  I’m thankful for it, but thereality is that I could have been born someplace else.  My parents were immigrants.  I could have been born in Poland.  I don’t know what I’d be like right now.

Here you have a situation—I’m learning that maybe my view ofwhat God is like has to expand because of my experiences.  I think that’s very much—that’s exactly what’shappening in the book of Jonah.  Jonah,after the Babylonian exile—the book of Jonah is portraying a view of God thatdoes not agree with the portrayal in Nahum. God is for these enemies of ours. He picks on Assyria.  Why not pickon the Babylonians?  Because it’s astory.  We’re picking the ancient enemiesthat we’ve had for centuries upon centuries. He’s making a beautiful theological point.

Jared:  With that,let’s go further with that example, because then for the modern reader, are yousaying, “I’m more of a follower of the way of Jonah than I am a follower of theway of Nahum”?  Or is there a sense ofwisdom in there that sometimes the way of wisdom is to love and forgive yourenemies and sometimes it’s to rejoice that the—I’m just thinking of ISIS—

Pete:  Right.

Jared:  Like thesethings where terrible things happen.

Pete:  Right.

Jared:  Is it thatwisdom thing of we have now stacked up behind us many peoples’ experiences thatwe can draw from at appropriate times?

Pete:  For me, I wouldsay that personally I’m more with Jonah in terms of envisioning and imagining abigger God that I think is supported very much in the gospel.  However, as I’m very quick to tell my friendstoo, I’m not living in Syria right now. I’m not living in some beleaguered country that’s being attacked bypeople where my prayer might be, “Lord, show up with your armies and the Lordof Hosts (which means armies) and take care of business.” 

I cannot say that I would never say that.  Like the book of Revelation.  Our Bible closes with a book that’s likethat.  A beleaguered people want God toshed a lot of blood against the enemies. 

Now maybe that’s not—maybe we have to do more thinking,Jared.  Maybe part of wisdom—I’m justriffing here—maybe part of wisdom is leaving behind that point of view entirelybecause I think of non-violent resistance where people would rather die—theAmerican experience with Martin Luther King Jr. and the impact that that hashad—maybe that’s the course of wisdom. 

I think we’re demonstrating the point, though, Jared, thatit’s not really clear.  The diversityhere is creating an ambiguity that we have to think through theologically andsituationally and be careful how we listen to other people as well who have adifferent perspective on that.  The thingis we’re having a God-centered theological discussion in doing that.

Jared:  That feels(maybe for some people) new and it feels risks and it feels unfaithful to the Bible.  I was thinking of Brad Jersak and some otherpeople we’ve had on, “Yeah.  What we’regetting back to is that the Church has been this place for these conversationseven before the Bible was.”

19:45

Pete:  Yeah.  We do forget that sometimes when Christianshave always believed “X” about the Bible and whatever the “X” is usually isn’ttrue.  We shouldn’t project our ownpost-enlightenment, logical, analytical strictures on an ancient text, which isessential Semitic.  It’s ancient Jewishtext.  We shouldn’t impose those kinds ofregulations and expectations upon a book like that.  It seems to be built, designed if I may putit that way, to generate these kinds of conversations around the topic of whatis God like? 

Again, I think that’s when you come to the gospel.  It’s when you’re treating things in the OldTestament.  Is this the kind of God youcan argue with or complain with?  Or isthis the kind of God you have to cower in front of and not even open your mouthand not even raise your head?  It dependson what text you read.  Is that a goodthing or a bad thing?  I think it’s agreat thing.  It’s not a bad thing atall, because those reflect our experiences.

People have talked about how Genesis 1 and Genesis 2 presenta different God.  I think that’strue.  Right at the very beginning of ourBible.  Chapter 1 is the sovereign,above-it-all God who speaks into existence. He’s sort of a cosmic, button-pusher and everything falls intoplace.  It’s exactly the way it shouldbe.  It’s perfect. 

In Genesis 2, He takes a stroll in the garden.  He asks Adam, “Where are you?  Haven’t seen you in a while.”  God walks in the garden.  Even if that’s used somewhat metaphorically,it’s still a different portrayal of God than just a voice speaking up in the heavens. 

God finds things out in the opening chapters ofGenesis.  When you get to the floodstory, God regrets, He laments what has happened.  That implies a sense of surprise.  Think about that.  “I’m so sorry about that because it caught meoff-guard.  I didn’t realize this wasgoing to happen.  Making humanity is notreally that great.  I have to drowneverybody.  Now, that’s what I have todo.”  Which, by the way, is a veryancient conception of God.  That’s one ofthe three points I make.

That’s a portrayal of God there that is not reallyconsistent with the other portrayal of God in Genesis 1.  I’m not making this up.  People talk about the transcendent God andthe imminent God in Genesis 1 and Genesis 2. One of the reasons why you have this ambiguity at the beginning isbecause it’s setting up the entire story, because you meet this very imminent,human-like God who gets talked out of things, who has a temper that Moses hasto calm Him down in Genesis 32 and 33. But other times, you have a god who even the temple cannot hold—theheavens and the earth can’t even hold this god. 

Which is it?  Is itone or the other?  Well, it’s both.  Sometimes, we connect better with one andsometimes, we connect better with the other. Sometimes, we need to hear about one more than the other.  I think, Jared—in my opinion (this is areally blanket statement), but if you’re listening here (if you haven’t fallenasleep yet), which connects more with you? Is your experience more that you have trouble thinking about God asreally imminent and with you and a part of you and next to you?  Or it is easier for us to think of a god whois sort of up there and out there someplace, like a platonic god who isdetached from this earth that we live in.

I think it’s more that. I think more Christians are comfortable with a god who is sort of upthere and makes cameo appearances.  Weneed this god of Genesis 2 and Genesis 3, who interacts with us like acharacter in the story.

That’s the incarnation. That’s Jesus.  That’s aconcretization of this god that we can talk to and refer to and argue with andcry with and all those other kinds of things. I think the ambiguity, the diversity, I think it’s fuel for theology.  It’s fuel for (MUSIC STARTING) alsoappropriating the text for ourselves and nobody asked me, but I wouldn’t haveit any other way.

23:48 (Producer’s Group Endorsement)

25:01

Jared:  It’smessy.  Sometimes we want to have ourcake and eat it too.  We want to havethis transcendent God, but the one who is with us and we don’t want it to bemessy.  The Bible shows us those all gohand-in-hand here.

Pete:  Yeah.

Jared:  Just acorrection—you said Moses in Genesis 32, but I think you meant Exodus 32.

Pete:  Oh yes.  Exodus 32. 

Jared:  I have a kindof a broader meta-question here. Sometimes we say, “Well, given all this, then how is God behind this?”because there’s this view that God dictated it. You’re saying, “Well, the Bible is ancient, ambiguous, diverse and wedon’t need to think that that makes it any less divine.  God could easily have made it so that this isthe kind of book we have.  Why do weassume it has to be contemporary and unanimous and perfect, or whatever thatmeans?”

Is this a question—I guess my question is, “Is it just byfaith?  What way is God behind any ofthese writings?  Is that just a faithquestion?”

Pete:  Yeah.  In a way, yes.  But also, it’s something that is confirmed byhabit and by community and over time. It’s not a logical, “Here’s how I know that this Bible, exactly the wayit is, comes from God.  That’s mystarting point and if I don’t start there, everything else falls apart.”

Maybe you have to get to that point.  Maybe through struggling with the text.  Also, through struggling with voices of thepast who have also struggled with this text. Because we’re part—when we start dealing with the Bible, we are part ofa community, not just a synchronic community, not a community that’s right nowat the same time as us, but a diachronic community that goes through time. 

Of course, not everyone’s going to read ancient church orthe Medieval church or the Reformation church. That’s not the point.  But thepoint is that we are actually in this very long conversation, diverseconversation over this text and to me, that’s messy, but the messiness, for me(I can only speak for myself and I’ll speak for you too, Jared) is a freeingthing.  It’s not, “Oh my goodness,gracious.  Now what do we do?”  It’s like, “Thank goodness I don’t have tohold all this stuff together and have this perfect knowledge of this text,which seems set up to not let us have (laugh) that kind of a grasp of it.”

The Medieval period of the Church, lasting roughly athousand years, there was a very popular way—the normal way of looking at theBible was a four-fold method.  There werefour ways of looking at the text. There’s the literal way.  Therewas an allegorical way, which sometimes means talking about Jesus, butsometimes it just means jumping off the page and going someplace else to see adeeper spiritual meaning.  There was amoral meaning.  What does it mean tome?  How does this affect how I live?  Also, how does this—what does this tell meabout the whole Christian story that’s going to end one day when the worldcomes to an end and God judges everyone? How does that work? 

I think that’s a beautiful thing.  It’s not just one meaning.  It’s multiple meanings.  As far as I’m concerned, the Bible demonstratesthat already for us.  It’s hard to gettwo authors to agree on a lot of things.  

Jared:  Can you say alittle bit more about that?  What do youmean “it’s hard to get two authors to agree on the same things?”

Pete:  Just becausethere’s such diversity in the Bible.  Youdon’t have to look hard for it.  That’swhy it’s such a problem in apologetics. It’s not hard to find it.  Youcan’t get out of Chapter 2 and you already have a major difference in how theCreator is being portrayed for us in these pages—

Jared:  That’s whythat Book of Bible Difficulties islike a thousand pages.

Pete:  How manyvolumes?  (Jared laughing) That kind of abook comes out of a mentality that is expecting a certain kind of Bible forphilosophical reasons.  If God hasinspired this book, it needs to act a certain way.  C.S. Lewis has a great comment.  In his book on the Psalms—

Jared:  Is it Till We Have Faces?

Pete:  No.  It’s a book on—

Jared: (unintelligible)

Pete:  --the Psalms.  He says, “We should never presume uponScripture that it has to act a certain way, especially if after reading it, wesee it’s not acting that way.”  I’mparaphrasing a little bit, but maybe we can put that quote up—

Jared:  Yeah—

Pete:  I will findit.  We’ll put the quote up in the (UNINTELLIGIBLE).  The thing is that it’s—we have to verycareful not to impose things on the Bible. All of us do that.  I do that.  All of us do that.  I think we should be self-aware of what it iswe’re doing.  When I choose to highlightin how the Bible actually works, these characteristics of the Bible’santiquity, its ambiguity and its diversity, that’s my way of trying to dothat. 

You asked me, “How is God behind that?”  My answer is, “I have no earthly idea.  I’m a person. I don’t know how these things work.” I’m just working from the bottom up and saying, “This is what I’m seeinghere,” but I’m doing that from a position of faith, not a position of, “andtherefore, God does not exist.”  I’m notsaying that.  I’m doing this within thecontext of faith and faith community and all that kind of stuff—

30:36

Jared:  Well, you usea helpful word when you talk about freedom. Sometimes, you said it comes from a place—these other ways ofreading—that the Bible has to look a certain way.  Sometimes there’s this ethical dimension thatwe’re also afraid of the freedom that it gives.

Pete:  Yeah.

Jared:  Because thenwe’re scared that someone’s going to read it wrong.  What happens if someone reads the Biblewrong?  It comes from agood/protectionist mindset and there’s a certain freedom, but it is a terriblefreedom, because like you said, we don’t have a choice.  We have to read it somehow.  There is an interpretive framework.  So it’s this terrible freedom.  We have the freedom, but we wish we didn’t,so we create these constraints and then we say that’s from God.  But I think this freedom part is reallyimportant.

Pete:  That isactually imposing something onto God at that point.  We’re making God out to be a helicopterparent, making sure, “Okay.  Listenguys.  I can’t leave you alone for verylong.  I don’t trust you to figureanything out.  Here’s this book that’sgoing to answer all those questions for you. You just have to be really careful to read it and make sure you followeverything it says.” 

What’s the experience many people have?  “I tried that.  I tried reading it and following what it saidand I don’t know what to do anymore, because I don’t want to do most of thestuff that it says to do and some of it contradicts other stuff.  So what do you do?” 

Rachel Held Evans’ book, TheYear of Biblical Womanhood,” she tried to live according to the biblicaldictates of what it means to be a “woman.” Although, they aren’t actually biblical dictates.  They’re biblical dictates readliterally.  That’s really what she was after. 

The Bible’s just too diverse for being smushed like thisinto this safe thing and then saying, “God wants us to have this safething.”  Good parents don’t protect theirchildren in ways that are unhealthy for them. You do protect your children from—the analogy breaks down at somepoint—but you’re going to hold your kid’s hand when you cross the street ifthey’re two years old.  I was just withmy granddaughter and I had to do that. I’m not going to let her go.

As a quick story, there was at one point little Lilah, whois just over two, had her finger pinched inside a little bucket where there wasa toy in it.  She started whimpering andcrying and she looked at her mom, my daughter, Lizz, who didn’t come rushingover to help her with the bucket.  Sheleft her there and said, “Oh Lilah, are you okay?  What’s wrong?”  And Lilah then, got up the strength to get upfrom where she was and walk over calmly to Lizz and then Lizz helped her withrelieving the pain on her little finger.

To me, that was a beautiful picture of what it means toparent well that lets children experience things because they grow from thoseexperiences.

Jared:  The only thingI think that with a lot of these analogies, we do ourselves a disservice bythis dominant metaphor being a parent and us being children.  In a lot of traditions, we build theologicalsystems for children—

Pete:  Yeah.

Jared:  --and then wedon’t allow people to really grow up. What is Christianity? For me, the natural development of kids grows fromrules with wisdom.  What’s appropriatefor a six-year-old to allow or not allow them to do is very different thanwhat’s appropriate for a sixteen-year-old and different than what’s appropriatefor a 28-year-old. 

You would hope the natural development is you moving awayfrom dictating and having rules and consequences to wisdom.  What’s a better decision or a worse decisionfor you?  As a parent, you get less andless control.  But if we have wholetheological systems that keep us as children and God’s always the parent andwe’re still little children, if we have that baked into the system, then itmakes sense that we would see the Bible this way.  It makes sense that we would have churchesset up this way.  It makes sense that wewould have these.

So what does it look like where we have a Christianity wherewe are adults—

Pete:  Yeah.

Jared:  So.

Pete:  Where we’reactually preparing our children for adulthood.

Jared:  Right.

Pete:  Right.  And not—

Jared:  Maybe God ispreparing us for adulthood.

34:58

Pete:  That’s just it.  That’s the analogy.  A significant number of my students where Iteach, they actually struggle with that, because we talk about things in ourintroductory Bible class.  They’re notreally daring things.  It’s just—have younoticed Matthew and Mark tell this story differently?  People thought about why that might be thecase.  Students are enlivened by that, believeor not.  They’re like, “Oh my goodness,gracious.  This is nice andcomplicated.”  But the question is “whydidn’t anybody ever tell me this?”

I’m remember when I was in graduate school, John Levinson,whose been on this podcast, he said, “There’s no adult who has a seven-year-oldknowledge of math.  There’s no adult whohas a seven-year-old knowledge on anything.” But for some reason, when it comes to religion (he’s talking about hisJudaism too), “there’s some reason when it comes to religion, it’s a good ideato keep children safe and protected where they don’t have to think forthemselves.” 

I don’t think God is out to dehumanize us and to keep usjust simple people who are afraid to ask questions or who are afraid to risk.  I think this whole thing about growing in thefaith, it involves risk and pain and suffering. I think just dealing with the Bible is a microcosm of the wholespiritual journey because all those things are there.  There are Biblical characters that experienceevery emotion under the sun, including being sick and tired of God.  It’s all there.  It’s modeling for us something that, Jared,you were saying before, wisdom is really what it’s modeling for us. 

You cannot use this book as a safety net for your life.  It’s going to push you out of the nest, so tospeak, and you have to explore and you have to take risks and you have tofigure things out.  That sounds likesecular advice—“you mean, don’t go to the Bible for a verse”—it’s exactly whatI mean.  Don’t go to the Bible for averse.  Use the brain that we’ve beenblessed with and think about it with humility and not with pride.  Sensing that that very act, the presence ofGod is there with you as you’re doing that.

“How will I know if I get the right answer?”  You won’t.

Jared:  Right.

Pete:  Right.  That’s life at that point—

Jared:  Mm-hmm.

Pete:  A tolerance forambiguity is a very important lesson for all of us to learn.  I don’t like—I would love to have a lot ofthings cleared up, quite frankly, but I don’t. Learning to deal with the ambiguity forces you into a position ofdependence on God in a good way, in a healthy way of faith and trusting God andnot feeling like “I can trust God up to a point, but eventually, I need it inwriting, so I can see in front me that will actually give me the answers tothis.”

I think the entire Bible is set up to discourage that kindof mentality.

Jared:  Mm-hmm.

Pete:  Which is theirony.  I don’t think what I’m doing inthis book is unbiblical.  I think it’sdeeply biblical.  I think other ways areactually unbiblical even though they claim to be based on the Bible and itsinerrant teachings or what God wants for us, by giving us this book. 

Jared:  You mentionedwe can’t really ever get to certainty. But I think there is some comfort in knowing that we’re standing on theshoulders of this great tradition, where some of the things you’re talkingabout actually has been practiced—

Pete:  Mm-hmm—

Jared:  Are there someexamples that you might have to help us root ourselves in that?

Pete:  Yeah.  In a way, just put your finger down anywherein church history and you have people who are reimagining God for their contextand owning that responsibility.  For me,the clearest early example is the gospel itself.  The New Testament is reimagining God, just asJudaism had been doing before the gospel came around.  This isn’t the first time it’s happened.

When you align the Creator and the One who chose Abraham tobe the father of Israel—when you align this one with the shame of the cross andthe Messiah is someone who dies for some reason.  That is a different way of thinking aboutGod.  That’s unique.  That was driven by the experiences of thepeople who were writing the Bible.  Thatwas their experience of Jesus and so they wrote about Jesus that way. 

God is portrayed in ways that are sometimes very similar tothe Old Testament.  Sometimes not similarat all.  Which is an example of thisdiversity within the Bible, now including the Christian Bible.  But it’s not a matter of Old Testament versusNew Testament.  It’s a matter at lookingat some of these developments about how God is portrayed within the OldTestament and then seeing the New Testament maybe picking up some of thosetrajectories, but also, doing some things that are really fresh and differentand sometimes difficult to understand where did this come from.

40:06

I think the New Testament writers were grappling with thatstuff too.  How do we wrap our armsaround a crucified and risen Savior? There’s no exegetical, hermeneutical handbook to go to, to understandhow this works.  So they wrote what theywrote. 

Just right after that, the early church moved from a verySemitic and apocalyptic mindset, like “things are going to end pretty soon” toa more philosophical and Greco-Roman mindset. That’s what gives us things like the church creeds where they werearguing about theology because the “kingdom of God came and it’s sort of here,but it’s not really here fully, because Jesus hasn’t come back and the endhasn’t come and so we’re sort of in this holding pattern.”

John Caputo, the philosopher, says, “the church is planB.”  Plan B means, “We’re going to behere for a while.  How do we make senseof what it means to be a follower of Jesus when the story went a certainway?  How do we live that storyhere?”  In the early church, creeds cameout of that.  They were important thingsto talk about philosophically, about the nature of God and the nature of Jesusand the church. 

All that’s fine.  It’swonderful.  It’s not the high-water markof the history of the church, but it’s a moment that reflects the time andplaces.  Pick your guy.  Luther did what he did because of hissetting.  He wasn’t reproducing what theBible said.  He was engaging it andreinterpreting it, quite frankly—

Jared:  Yeah.  I was thinking even if you think about thattime of the Reformers and how much juris prudence and thinking about law—

Pete:  Yes.

Jared:  --was cominginto the culture.

Pete:  Yeah.

Jared:  It’s no surprisethat a lot of these guys were doing theology in that context.

Pete:  Also, theenergy that was there for Calvin and other Reformers to really know your Greekand Hebrew and get back to the original sources—that was not a major emphasisat all in the Medieval period.  For some,it was, but you don’t usually go around and learn Hebrew so you can read theOld Testament better.  But—

Jared:  That actuallycame out of the culture—

Pete:  Yes.  (Unintelligible)

Jared:  That was a Renaissancething—

Pete:  Right.

Jared: (Unintelligible) back to the sources.

Pete: Right.

Jared:  That couldhave been seen as a pagan influence.

Pete:  Oh yeah. 

Jared:  (Laughter)Back then—

Pete: Absolutely.  You can talk—

Jared:  I thinkactually Erasmus got in trouble for that—

Pete:  Yes.  He did get in trouble for that.  But he was actually a hero at the end of theday.  It’s all sorts of examples likethat.  In other words, the point is thatwe can go to almost any place in the history of the church and any place in thechurch right now globally and we can see people appropriating the story indifferent ways depending on their experience.

We’re back to Richard Rohr and the analogy we use five timesevery episode which is, there’s a tricycle and the front wheel is experienceand the back two wheels are tradition and Scripture.  It’s experience that actually drives ourtheological thinking.  That’s a scarything.  I know that. 

I don’t how else to explain this stuff.  Maybe God is in our midst and values thatwe’re doing the best that we can and it’s going to be okay.  I think the Bible models that for us.

Jared:  Right.

43:29 (MUSIC STARTS)

Pete:  On that note, Ithink we’ll bring this to a close.  Whatdo you think, Jared?

Jared:  I think it’stime.

Pete:  How’s your throat doing?

Jared:  It’s justdoing so great—

Pete:  How about singa little song for us, right now—

Jared: (Whispering) I mean, it’s fabulous right now.

Pete: (Whispering) I can hear that.  Anyway, so—

Jared:  We’ll justhave a whole ASMR.  You know that thingon YouTube?

Pete: No.  What’sthat?

Jared:  Where peoplewhisper and they touch packaging and stuff and it gives you the tinglyfeelings?

Pete:  I have no ideawhat you’re talking about.

Jared:  Oh man.

Pete:  I need to goon—

Jared:  Yeah.  Look it up. ASMR—

Pete:  Go on theGoogle Net or something—

Jared:  Yeah.

Pete:  --and figurethat one out.

Jared:  They whisperand they open packages of MacBooks and it creates this tingling sensation forpeople.

Pete:  Really?

Jared:  They’ll justlisten to it for a long time.

Pete:  Okay.  That’s crazy.

Jared:  We’ll have todo a whole episode with that.

Pete:  What a horribleworld we live in.  (laughter)  Anyway. Okay, maybe we should stop the episode so I can go on and do that stuff—

Jared:  Maybe youshould do it.

Pete:  --or whatever—

Jared:  Yeah.

Pete:  Okay.  Anyway, thanks again for listening,folks.  This is the end of the season forus, right Jared—

Jared:  Yup.

Pete:  This is the endof Season Three.  Really, it’s gone soquickly, these three seasons.  It feelslike we just started yesterday.  It’sbeen great.  Wonderful.  Thankful to all of you for listening andwe’ll be back after a break.  We alwaystake a little break that goes about six weeks, right—

Jared:  Right.  Somewhere in there.  We’ll see you for Season Four.

Pete:  Season Four.

Jared:  In themeantime, really take time to process everything you’ve learned this year.

Pete:  Yeah.  Get back to us.  There will be a test in February.  Also, don’t forget our campaign.  We mentioned the Patreon campaign.  That’s—we really want to launch this stuffbecause we think—we know that a lot of people would like it—the transcripts.  That helps them a lot, so we want to do thattoo.

Jared:  Allright.  We’ll see you guys in a littlewhile—

Pete:  All right,folks.  Thanks for everything.  See ya.

45:16

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