Episode 303: Pete Enns & Jared Byas – Is the Bible Even Important Anymore?

Pete: You are listening to The Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the Internet. I’m Pete Enns. 

Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.

It’s July, so of course that means us Americans are thinking about America, so why not have a class about it?

Pete: Dr. Jemar Tisby, author of the New York Times bestselling book The Color of Compromise, is teaching our July class, called “American Christianity: How Did We Get Here?”

Jared: Dr. Jemar Tisby, author of the New York Times bestselling book The Color of Compromise. So mark your calendars for July 24th, from 8 to 9:30 PM Eastern Time, when Jemar will walk us through the history of how Christianity in the U.S. got tangled up with race, power, and, very relevantly, politics.

Pete: How did we get the religious right, and its marriage to the MAGA movement? How have black Christians been a part of the story from the beginning? But we’ll also talk about how the black Christian tradition has consistently offered a more faithful, justice-centered vision of the Gospel all along.

Jared: It’s pay-what-you-can until the class ends. After that, it’s $25. And if you can’t make it live, no worries. You can buy it now and watch it back later at your convenience. Head to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/americanchristianity to sign up.

Pete: And if you want a warm-up, our class, “One Nation Under God” with Dr. Samuel Perry on Christian nationalism is available now for purchase, and we’re going to give you ten dollars off for the month of July with code JULY25. 

Jared: So head to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/onenation to purchase the recording, and don’t forget to sign up for the July 24th class with Jemar Tisby called “American Christianity: How Did We Get Here?” by going to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/americanchristianity. 

Pete: Hey folks. On today’s episode, it’s just us. And we’re asking the question, “is the Bible important anymore?” 

Jared: Yeah. And we’re gonna take a couple of different approaches to this.

So we wanna look at that question in particular. Is the Bible important anymore? But then we wanna give a little historical context, because, as is the case for a lot of the episodes that we have, it’s not a new question. And we wanna look back at maybe some of the things in history that show us that it’s not a new question.

But then we need to come back and say, okay, how do we make this more meaningful, if it is important? How do we make it more relevant? 

Pete: Yeah. What is the Bible and what do we do with it? That’s sort of what we’re doing, again, just from a different angle and it’s great. I love it. So anyway, let’s get into the episode.

Jared: The Christian tradition depends on us continuing to theologize and continuing to make relevant these claims about who God is and what God’s like and God’s interaction with humanity. 

Pete: It’s not a matter of “you gotta stick with the original.” That was tried in the early church. It didn’t work. You have to bring something else into it.

You have to, you have to make it meaningful or else it just becomes a worthless book to read.

Jared: Okay, so as we mentioned, we want to ask  the question, is the Bible important anymore? And we get this question quite a bit, and it’s usually in the context of, “I used to have one way of looking at the Bible. It is an inherent guidebook that tells me how to live my life.” Once that starts to crumble, a lot of times people then begin to wonder, is it important at all?

If it’s not this inherent guidebook for answering all of life’s questions, then is it valuable at all or is it important anymore? So maybe you can talk to why we’re having an episode on this and why we think it’s important. 

Pete: Yeah. I, I mean, I just got that, not questioned, but challenged yesterday.

I was speaking in a certain context. I was like, well, if what you’re saying is true, what’s the point of it all? I was like, it’s, it’s not true anymore. And we got into nuances of what true means. But yeah, it’s, you know, we’re, I think people, I, I’m sensing this, Jared, over the past, I don’t know how many years, but more than just a decade, people are, they’re actually taking a step back and looking at the Bible and saying, are you kidding me? 

Like, this is an Iron Age book. And it says weird stuff, and we have to shoehorn it into our lives somehow. 

I, I know many young people who say, this just doesn’t speak to my existence at all.

Yeah, there are verses, maybe the gospel story, we can talk about things like that, but by and large, the Bible, it’s like, what do I care about? A battle? David, and what do I care like the, what do I care about some made up story of creation that’s not scientific? 

Jared: Would you, would you say though that I think there’s a growing divide where I think when there was, I, I don’t know, I may be wrong about this, but maybe five, six decades ago there was a little bit more of a cultural or social function to, you go to church and you read the Bible. 

There was a little bit more of a superficial out growing up. I would’ve called it like the country club version of Christianity. That sort of, kind of brought everyone together. It was more cultural. And I feel like it’s gotten to be this divide where I think more and more people are asking that question, like, well, this seems so foreign, so irrelevant, so out of it. 

But then you also have like, uh, Christian nationalists and others and, and maybe more evangelicals who are like doubling down on the relevancy of the Bible. Not only is it relevant for how I live my life, but it needs to be relevant for how you live your life. We need to have it in the governmental structure.

So it feels like there’s actually a divide on the importance.  

Pete: And so people rebel against that even more. And, and double down on their stance. 

Jared: So we have these two camps that are like, it is the inherent rule book and it needs to be for everyone. And like really doubling down on the importance of the Bible.

And then there are the people who don’t see it relevant or important at all. And I guess maybe we’re asking the question, is there a way, if you don’t hold this view over here, uhhuh, that it’s inherent in the rule book? Do you have to necessarily swing over to “it just seems like an old book?”

You know? 

Pete: Yeah. And I, the thing is that I, I respect people who come to the conclusion. I don’t really know why I’m bothering to read this. Because, largely because of how they were already set up to come to this sort of a crisis. You know, and, you know-

Jared: Well say more about that. Yeah. What, what did you mean?

How is, how are people set up for it? 

Pete: I think it’s, it’s being, you know, taught in churches that your, this Bible is how God speaks to you. And every word has to be understood as being directly from God. And even though things seem to be intention-slash-contradiction, you know, you, those things do not exist.

And. Um, this is, this, this tells us everything we need to know about a meaningful existence. And, and then you read a book of sacrificial laws in the first part of the book of Leviticus, you know, for example. And, but you know, this is, and these are, people have legitimate questions of relevancy for the Bible, and they always have.

I mean, that’s another, we’ll get into that, but they, they have legitimate questions and it’s always been a struggle, I think for Bible readers. Once you start reading it carefully, it’s like, wow, this is so out of complete touch with my existence here. 

Jared: Well, can we say that part of the, part of the blame goes on the Western Protestant emphasis on sola scriptura.

And the rejection of tradition. I, I’ve been more and more convinced over the last five to ten years of us doing this podcast that not only are people set up for failure because they’re told if it’s not inerrant, it’s not valuable at all. But they’re also not given any scaffolding for how this book could be relevant.

Pete: Right, right. 

Jared: Which is what tradition is. Yeah. Like. Like that, the Catholic tradition or even Jewish tradition is generation of generation building a scaffolding for how you’re connecting- 

Pete: Yes. 

Jared: -this text to, and if that bridge or if that, that gap gets too wide, no wonder people are like, yeah.

When I look at what it is rather than the soft landing of, but how did my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents honor a tradition that had been built up from that time of the text to now. So would you say tradition is all, I mean, a rejection of tradition maybe is also to blame in terms of why there’s a bit of a crisis of all this is relevant.

Pete: I think that’s, I think that’s true to a large extent. It’s the, um, the explicit rejection of medieval interpretations. And this is a reformation like John Calvin, for example, right, combined with, I think, the rising tide of what we now call the modern world. And, you know, and not to pick on Calvin, but he’s, you know, he, he wrote a lot and he’s known for this and he, he was a smart guy and all that.

But, um, you know, for him there’s, well, there’s, there’s one meaning to the text. It’s the historical meaning and, okay. I, I get it. I, I disagree. You’ve just thrown basically 1500 years of the church under the, uh, under the bus. But I understand what you’re saying. You’re legally-minded. You’re in this world where science is starting to come up and you know, how do planets move?

Well, there’s one way they move. There, there are laws. And so what are the laws for reading the Bible? And that was, um, I think easier to do in the late medieval period where Calvin lived just with the, with the rise of the modern period. But as time went on, you start hearing about history. You get, you start seeing things right that are like, like flood, like geologically. 

Jared: Well we, we can get into this more when we talk about the history of this question. But it, it, it was an unfortunate time for Calvin to, like, really unmoor us from tradition right before, you know, things like evolution and history, like historical consciousness.

Yeah. That was a, a real, real bad timing. 

Pete: Or, or is inevitable. ’cause you know, he’s a child of his times too.

Jared: That’s true. That’s true. But maybe let’s go back, because I think when we ask this question, is this relevant? Is it important? It may feel like this is a novel idea, a novel question, but maybe we’ll go back to the text itself.

Let’s start there and then let’s come forward and say, let’s situate ourselves here, kind of in history. So, you know, does the Bible itself, because we often, we, we’ll, we’ll go back and, and be surprised that a lot of these questions we think are new actually find it in the text, so I, I mean, in some ways it’s anachronistic to even ask that question.

Because it’s like, well, the Bible doesn’t even reference itself. So if we’re talking about the, the Bible, well, we didn’t even have the Bible.

Pete: The books that became the Bible, right? Or the writing. 

Jared: But what do you have to say about that in terms of this being not a new question?

Well, can we go back that far or do we gotta start-

Pete: No, I mean, it’s, um, it’s baked into what became the Bible. You have these writings that were written at different times, different places, and you know, the, the prime example in the Hebrew Bible is how the Book of Chronicles. Well, the books of, we have 1 and 2 Chronicles.

How they interpret the period of the monarchy. Now that sounds very dry and all, but the bottom line is that it’s a very different take because, I, I, I like to think of the, what we have as the Bible that is actually a tradition. Over time, things were written and things. People had different perspectives and the author of Chronicles had a different view.

We can’t get that detail.

Jared: Hold on, hold on. What you’re saying is really important. Okay. So let’s break that down a little bit more. Is what you’re saying that you, through one important lens, Chronicles is part of the tradition building off of what we have in Kings. 

Pete: Yeah. 

Jared: So say more about that, because I think that’s important to recognize what they thought they were doing isn’t writing the Bible and in some abstract sense, right,  but was building on this tradition.

Pete: Yeah. They, they were, I, I, we would say today they’re doing theology, right? And these are these theological expressions. And because of when Chronicles was written, which probably was like no earlier than like the mid fifth century, maybe the fourth century. And, and Samuel  and Kings are a bit older. 

Closer to the exile, like in the sixth century, maybe early fifth century. Um, they, they, they’re asking different questions of the text. See, that’s the thing. They’re asking the question of relevance. And that’s really huge for this whole thing that we’re talking about today. Like, why read the Bible? It’s a question of relevance.

How is it relevant to my life? And even people of faith ask that question all the time. And so we have in the Bible itself, this is just one example of, I think people asking that very same question, well, how is this relevant? And so the author of Chronicles, he has his own, um, agenda and I don’t mind using the word.

He has an agenda for writing this. 

Jared: His own take on, well, it’s not even, he has, he has his own agenda, and I’m getting myself all confused in terms of the question of like historicity, right? It’s like, is he trying to do history and he just happens to have a different lens through which, or is it like, no, I’m, I, I’m retelling this to make it relevant to our-

Pete: Well I think history is there for the purpose of retelling it differently. That’s what I think it is.

Jared: So the, the, the making it relevant is the priority in terms of-

Pete:  I think absolutely. With, with both Kings and Chronicles. ‘Cause Kings is not like this neutral account. Correct? 

Jared: Yeah. 

Pete: The author of Kings is asking the question, how do we get into this mess of the exile?

And the answer is, you didn’t keep the covenant with Moses, you, you, your kings, you know, had faults and things like that. Chronicles comes along writing generations after the return from exile and things are not the way they should be. And they’re asking the question, are we still the people of God?

Does God still care about us? And so they write the history in such a way to address that question. And to get into that would be two podcasts. We’re not gonna do that. But that’s, it’s, it’s, to me, a, a classic example of how the Bible itself is a tradition.

Jared: I dunno if this is where you’re gonna go, but the very shape of it that we start with genealogy. In Chronicles, it gives like it’s very material and very practical. That to make it relevant there is genealogy, the names that connect the generations. 

Pete: Well. from Adam to the mid fifth century.

That, that’s nine chapters of names are boring as anything, but not for them. It’s like we’re telling the, we’re telling our story. Point number one, we have a tradition that goes back to the beginning. Even though it seems like we’ve been forgotten by God, we haven’t been. Right. That’s the point that’ll preach as my Baptist friends say.

But you see that’s the Bible. Mm-hmm. They’re asking the same question that my classmates are asking like, what, how do you see God in these stories? It doesn’t make any sense. 

Jared: Well, yeah, I mean, think about that. I mean, I think this is actually, uh, I’m glad we started here because if you think of the people that are being written to in that Chronicles generation, I think it’s, it’s not unhelpful to think us in that situation.

Well, here we are, generations later. How is this relevant to us? The situations have changed. The things that we thought God was gonna do. God hasn’t done the things that we thought were gonna take place, haven’t taken place.

We thought we were gonna be protected in this way. We are like, whatever those questions are that we have theologically chronicles the people living, coming back after this traumatic event. And now generations have even passed since then. And you’re asking like, what’s this all about? 

Um, so it’s just, it’s fascinating to me to see-

Pete: It’s not just curiosity. What’s it all about, but it’s, what does it mean? What does it mean to us? And, and it’s important to, to note it’s not just, you know, secular people who ask that question. It’s people, well, they don’t. Some people are just so outside of the whole Christian universe that the questions that popped into their head, of course it doesn’t.

But for people within the faith tradition, they’re the ones asking this question. Right. ’cause yeah. You know, they’ve been told to read the Bible their whole lives and they did. And like I, this is long and I don’t understand. I can’t make it through 1 and 2 Kings. It’s too tedious.

It’s interesting from a historical point of view, if you’re a scholar, all that kind of stuff, but it’s, it’s, I think it’s hard for people to connect. Now some people say, well, I connect with it. That’s great. Many people don’t, right. And, and the question of the relevance of the Bible is, I, I, I get that question in one way or another for my students on a regular basis.

And I understand what they’re doing. And, and, but it’s not new. See, that’s the thing. 

Jared: Yeah. And I think that’s what a lot of people need to hear, right, is, okay. Like, welcome to Christianity. 

Pete: Well, I mean, just, just for example, you know, the, in the very early centuries of the church, you have somebody like Origen.

Who was an all, you know, he, he would allegorize text because, uh, he lived in that context and, and was working off of other people before him. But the, the idea, for example, you know, some of the violence that happens, was like, how do I relate to this? His approach was, this is not some liberal.

His approach was, yeah, that’s nuts. There’s no way. You know, so, and, and you have to, you should take those texts and interpret them symbolically. Right? That’s what allegory means, symbolically. And it’s like, so here he’s asking the question. That text as it stands, does not connect with anything that I know, as a philosophically-minded Christian, what God is like.

And good for him. That’s, I mean, that, that’s a good question. And this, this continued and, you know, there was a debate even in the early centuries of the church between do you read it like literally historically or do you read it allegorically and they, they couldn’t make up their mind and then eventually what happened is that, yeah, literal is interesting.

But it’s not the most interesting. It’s actually sort of boring when you get down to it. But there are other levels of meaning and they did that for one reason. How can, how can God speak to us through a text that’s not really relevant to us from a historical point of view?

Jared: And, and I think for me, the point is they found a way.

Pete: They found a way. And Jews did too.

Jared: Exactly. So it’s not, and for me, I think the, again, it’s hard to not come back to that fundamentalist framework if that’s what you grow up in. Right. Because then it feels like, well now you’re just making stuff up. Right. It’s like, well, yes.

That’s how you keep traditions alive, is you figure out a way to keep the tradition alive. Again, it’s such a different way of thinking that I think is hard for people.

And some people don’t and they just say, “well eh, it’s not that important to me. I’m just gonna leave it behind.”

Which I respect and understand, for sure. Um, but there is, for those who, who do want to do that, it just takes a lot of mental and emotional work to see that there is a framework that not only allows for this, but celebrates it. And, and ultimately I would say depends on. 

We, the Christian tradition depends on us continuing to theologize and continuing to make relevant these claims about who God is and what God’s like and God’s interaction with man.

Pete: Yeah. I mean, James Kugel talks about that a lot. How, you know, my doctoral advisor has been on the podcast a couple times, but he, he, his big thing is that it’s, well, he, he puts it this way.

What makes the Bible the word of God isn’t the words on the page, it’s the interpretation given to the word. Which might not make a lot of sense to a lot of people. It might be sort of off-putting. But his point is that the, the reason the Bible has survived is ’cause people have decided to take it and bring it into their existence.

And so what used to be a story about a very plain thing now becomes something very deep and symbolic. Because we don’t live in those times. Right? I mean, people say today, first of all, the Bible’s so ancient. It’s so from a different time. Most of Christian Jewish history has had the same struggle.

Even, even within just a couple of hundred years of, like, the exile, you have Greek influence. Now all of a sudden Jews are living in a Greek speaking, thinking, philosophical, scientifically minded world, and they’re like, they’re grappling with the text. 

They even change things in the text to make it make more sense to them.

You know, it’s just, it’s amazing to me. 

Jared: And even, I mean, thinking of the early church, even, even Saint Augustine acknowledges, I think in City of God or one of these books. Uh, the influence of Plotinus on him. Like he, he is like actively trying to make- he’s kinda like, oh, Plato had some really good things to say.

Pete: Yeah. Yeah. 

Jared: Um, why wouldn’t we as Christians, like, figure out how these things match up? Um, and same with, uh, Aquinas in the whatever, 13th century. Who was like, Hey, this Aristotle guy, uh, got a lot of good things to say. Yeah, now we gotta change some of Aristotle because we gotta make it Christian after all.

But that’s, again,  in the culture. It’s so Aristotelian. 

Aquinas is like, this is how we make it. Whenever the water I swim in is Aristotelian philosophy, and I want to be Christian, I figure out a way. And then I write 5,000 books on it. 

Pete: He’s not just doing it ’cause he wants to be clever.

Jared: Right. 

Pete: He’s doing it because he’s, he’s, there’s an impulsion to. This tradition has to remain mine. And the way I do that is to converse with it from my own cultural context. 

Jared: Yes. Right, right, 

Pete: And that’s why, you know, and I have to tell you, Jared, I I, I equivocate on this a little bit because, you know, when I hear people saying crazy things on TikTok or whatever, I wanna say to myself, have you paid attention to the original context of this text?

You, you haven’t, and you just, you should make, you can’t just make stuff up. On the other hand, right? People have been engaging this text creatively since the very beginning. And, and what’s the difference about, what’s the difference between them doing, you know, that what they’re doing, the antiquity and maybe like, let’s say hot-button issue a Christian nationalist today interpreting the Bible in such a way that it speaks about America, right?

What’s the difference between those? I think there is a difference, but it’s, it’s not super clear. It’s not obvious. It’s not a matter of, you gotta stick with the original, right? That was tried in the early church. 

It didn’t work.You have to bring something else into it. You have to, you have to make it meaningful or else it just becomes a worthless book to read.

It’s an artifact from the past, and if you, if you believe God speaks somehow to you and your community through and in and around this text, you’re gonna be very motivated to look deeper. And, and, and, you know, I know it says this word. But it’s really referencing this concept or idea.

You know, I, I, to me that’s fascinating to see that. The willingness people have had to be creative in their engagement of the Bible precisely to answer the question that people are still asking today. Is this text still relevant? And I guess the answer might be, go ahead. Give it a shot. 

Jared: Right, right.

Well, before we move on from, I think we, kind of moving toward this, how do we make it meaningful for our time? I think before we move on from the historical, we, we’ve talked about how the text, um, how the text has been kind of utilized in this way. But I think the other part I wanted to make is just in the history of Christianity too, the text didn’t have the place that it does for a lot of us. 

And I think about medieval practices in particular. Where there’s lower literacy, right? So it sort of necessitates, we’re, we’re a very literate culture. So when we say, is the Bible important, I think coming from a context where it was like the most important.

The tendency is to feel bad if the Bible plays less of a role. But again, for me, that’s not like a liberal, like if we look at the history of Christianity, the Bible meaning me reading a personal Bible, it translated into my language, was not the centrality of faith that the Western evangelical tradition has made it out to be. 

So in the medieval time, you had hundreds of years where people weren’t reading this text for themselves. It was the Bible in the context of church life. There were priests and others who could read it. And they read it in Latin.

And they read it as part of the sacraments and they part, uh, part of church life, they often had it depicted on stained glass for people who couldn’t read. And you see the narratives up there. So it was a part of life, but it wasn’t. It wasn’t the central part of Christianity. 

And so I think also, I, I just think it’s important that we, it’s you’re able to have permission to not make that binary choice and say, I don’t know, maybe for some Christians, your Bible, where the place that the, the, the role it plays in your Christian life is you still go to church and you found a very liturgical church who does a gospel reading every week.

And you’re doing just as much or more Bible than most Westerners in the history of Christianity. 

Pete: That’s a good point. You don’t have to, like, read it from cover to cover every year and on your own decide, you know, how can I make this relevant to myself?

It’s, it’s, it’s maybe just relax. 

Jared: And the church calendar, I think, isn’t it every three years? You’re reading the whole Bible in church. Isn’t that the point of the liturgical calendar? Yeah. 

Pete: Yeah. 

Jared: Is there’s cycles and so they’re reading it and you’re-

Pete: And they don’t read all of it. Some stuff they keep out, they leave out like the really bad stuff, they’re just like, oh, I’m not gonna help.

Which I love by the way. It’s like that’s asking the question of relevance too. Like why should we bother? Well, there’s some things we’re just not gonna read in church. Yeah. I’m sorry. We’re just not gonna do that. Right. Yeah. 

Jared: So I just think, I think just as, because I know we’re talking a lot about, and the whole point is to talk about the Bible and what role it plays in our life, but I think it’s also important to put it in the context of, hey, yeah, you go to church.

If you go to Episcopalian church and they do a gospel reading and a, whatever, prophet reading and things like that, you’re getting the Bible read to you largely in the same way that most Christians would have.

Pete: That’s true. But we’re still dealing with what we talked about before, a lot of viewers-slash-listeners who have a Protestant, evangelical or fundamentalist background, right?

And they’ve been told that every word of this is relevant for your life. That’s why you have devotions. It doesn’t matter what chapter you’re in. 

Pete: You read it and you say, what is God telling you right now about how to live your life? A lot of pressure and then sometimes you, you read through whole sections, it’s like, I have no earthly idea and I’m, the more I think about it, the less I care.

I don’t really understand why I’m even asking these kinds of questions. Right. It’s just important to know that that’s an old question. There, you are not weird. You’re not alone. You’re not faithless. The very fact that we’re even asking the question of relevance is something that only people of some level of faith would even bother asking.

You know, and I, I, when I first really began to understand that, I just said, well, that’s a relief. You know? Do you have your morning devotions tonight? No. Why should I? Nope. Are you, have you read this thing? You know? 

Jared: Yeah. Well, it’s not, it’s letting go of the, I mean, this is maybe a harsh way of saying it is like, once you give yourself permission to let go of the facade, it’s like, I don’t have to pretend that it is this thing. Like, are you having your devotions? No. What? That doesn’t make any sense to me. But it’s hard when you don’t feel like you have the authority. There’s this pressure in these situations where it’s like social pressure. I don’t know enough.

To be saying like, I feel like people, I get to, I, you know, this reminds me, this is a little off topic. But, when I was younger, I was a pastor. I would go to, like, bars, my family likes to go to the bar, whatever, drink and hang out, and, uh, and I would go back to tech. You know, being in Pennsylvania near Philly, that’s not a problem at all.

But going back to Texas all of a sudden, people would come up to me, like my mom’s friends or whatever, and they’d be like, hi, I’m, I’m a little bit, uh, appalled that you’re a pastor and you’re in this bar drinking. 

You shouldn’t be doing that. And I would be, like, scratching my head like, you’re here.

What are you talking about? But it is this like, we feel guilty about it. Yeah. But we’re gonna do it anyway because we actually don’t think it’s wrong, but we think we should think it’s wrong. There’s just multilayers of, like, guilt. And like, but a lot of it is because you were told by an authority figure, this is what you’re supposed to do. 

And if you don’t go to seminary, you don’t have a PhD in Bible, you don’t have that perspective to be able to give yourself permission to say like, no, you know what? I’m good. I don’t need to do that. And that’s okay. So you end up saying, I’m just not gonna do it ’cause it seems really irrelevant.

Right. But then I’m gonna like, feel bad about it. Or lie to my parents or my pastor about it. And I think that’s what you’re talking about. It’s like, can we, uh, can we move past that in, in terms of our relationship with the Bible? And just let it be whatever it needs to be for you.

Pete: Mm-hmm. And, and again, to realize that the question is an ancient one. And even though, you know, I think today we’re living in, in a different world, the past a hundred years or so. You know, we have mass communication, we have, um, people can’t stay in a bubble in our culture. And, and so you see things that you hadn’t seen before that maybe expedite the process a little bit, and, and accelerate it. 

And, and that’s true. Uh, but the fundamental question of what does this text mean? And again, assuming there, that the person asking it is actually maybe hoping for some relevance or whatever. But even if they say, I don’t see any relevance to it at all, I think people have to come alongside and say, we understand this is this and this is not a new question.

That doesn’t mean it has an easy answer for you. Just asking the question doesn’t make you some sort of a heretic, right? Where God now is, “how dare you ask that question of me. Don’t you trust me?” It’s not really you that much, it’s how they talk about you in this text. 

You know, like it just seems weird, and Origen would say you’re right.

Jared: Okay. Well, and we, I wanna make sure we have time for this. Let’s maybe to talk about the future here a little bit. Like, so what I’m hearing us say, this is an old question, and it’s okay if you’re asking that question, and it’s kind of okay however you want to answer that question. YBut for people who do wanna make it relevant, and for maybe the, the broader “we” as Christians in, sort of, this task, how do we do that? 

How do we move from, we finally have given ourself permission to say, yeah, it’s not relevant. But I don’t wanna stay there. I kind of wanna make it meaningful. 

Pete: Right, 

Jared: What do we do? Tell us, Pete. Save us, Pete.

Pete: Well, I can only speak from my own experience. And I would say finding a community that understands that question is very important. ‘Cause, you know, on your own, it’s sort of like it gets old, it gets boring and you get confused or whatever. But you just don’t feel supported. And you know, again, I, this is sort of simplistic to say, because all churches and all traditions have their strengths and have their weaknesses.

But I found that what you just said before, Jared, is moving into some sort of non-biblicistic space. In other words. And again, this is difficult for some people to hear, I think, but to, to not be a part of a congregation that does not let you ask those questions. Which are essentially, for the most part, conservative Protestant denomination.

I’m not condemning them. I mean, some of you might be, as I’m saying this. Go ahead, Pete. Condemn it. I don’t want to, I don’t, I don’t know enough. I’m not gonna condemn whole denominations. But those that have come out of the modernist fundamentalist debates of the late 19th and early 20th century, that’s baked into their DNA to make sure you never say, I don’t understand the relevance of the Bible for my life. 

Liturgical context tend to be either more understanding or completely open to that idea, and they don’t make, uh, the, the complete acceptance of everything in the Bible, the center of their faith, you know, like, you know what we believe?

I always go to those things, you know, number one, the Bible’s, the errant and fable, word of God is meant to all that kind of stuff. Okay, that’s great. Other churches, like, that’s like down further and they don’t put it that way, you know, they’re, they’re more practice oriented. 

A lot of early Christians were, by the way.

And, and it, it just, it, it’s a different vibe where you can feel free to ask questions. You know, in my Episcopal church, we read the Nicene Creed every, every week and, but you should hear people talking about it afterwards. It’s like, I don’t like get half of this stuff. But I mean, they understand it. It’s like, right, is this, is this really true?

And I know people are, like, shocked. The Nicene Creed? You’re, you’re, you’re calling to question this? They’re trying to understand the relevance of that. Right. But they feel free to ask the question. And no one is gonna come to them and say, how dare you? You dog of a – you know? It’s just, and, and I think sometimes people who are asking that question today, they’re, I think they’re looking for some affirmation that what they’re experiencing is valid.

And there are church traditions that they’re already there and they’ve been there. But you know what, they’re still Christian. Now some might say you’re not really a Christian unless you think a certain way. Well, but they are. Just show up to these places. And, and watch, watch what they do, watch what they say.

And, um, sure. It might mean expanding your consciousness a little bit from something you’re not used to, you know? Maybe robes or smells and things like that. But, um, but yeah, there are church traditions that are not beholden to that, the, the excusing my metaphors, the, the DNA of this modernist fundamentalist war, which many Christians are still fighting with relish.

But more than a century later. 

Jared: Yeah. I have, I have four practical points, I think, for people in terms of if you want to make this relevant and meaningful. And, and what you just articulated. I’ll say it in, in one sense and maybe a little harsher, and I think that’s divorce ourselves from inerrancy uhhuh, which is just, it’s no longer compelling and it, it comes with a lot of baggage.

From what you’re saying is from that theological tradition, because you’re not gonna find a place that’s gonna be open to questions, and, and give you space to figure this out. And also just kind of in, I would just kinda say in your own thinking, like, where do you still have inerrancy?

Or it’s almost like a picture and then the negative of the picture. So, you can get rid of an inerrancy, but then the flip side, the negative of inerrancy is then feeling like, well then it can’t be meaningful at all. Because that’s the other side of the story that I was taught in the inerrantist tradition, is it is either this or it is garbage. 

And so I think for me, divorcing ourselves from an errancy as a concept is gonna be a good way to go, if we wanna make this relevant and we wanna make it compelling. Um, so then second. Do you mind if I just go through these? 

Pete: No, go ahead.

Jared: And you can comment, commentate, commentate, comment [Jared proceeds to humorously trip over his own words] commentate, comment, commentary, ate, comment. I think commentary-ate is, is the official, so the second thing, besides divorcing ourselves from an errancy, which I think is important, as a first step, but I think secondly, um, focusing on the fruits of our interpretation.

So you said it in, in, in episodes and I think a lot of our guests have been saying it, is think about how this might motivate or inspire loving and positive action. So being able to focus on the fruits of the interpretation. What, what does this interpretation motivate in me? Excite in me? Compel us to, as a community of faith? Helps bring that relevancy, um, to the, to the surface. Because it really is asking what’s the fruit of this. 

Pete: Which is different than for some traditions. The fruit of it is getting people to make a decision for Christ or something. And that’s the pressure.

Jared: Which, again, goes back to “to divorce ourselves from inerrancy.”

Pete: That’s rooted in an inerrantist way.

Jared: And not necessarily an inerrantist way, but usually it goes hand-in-hand. 

Pete: It’s, it’s rooted in a particular way of reading the story, right. And what words like hell mean, right. All that kind of stuff, but, yeah. Yeah.

Jared: So I think focusing on the fruits rather than, um- again, for me, reading the Bible was often an exercise in reinforcing what the Bible is, reinforcing, uh, what I’m supposed to believe.

Rather than talk thinking about, okay, what does this reading compel us to do? Or what’s a reading that would compel us to love our neighbors better? Um, so using it more as fuel for the fire. Um, so that’s, that’s two, I think three, kind of going to that point about medieval Christianity.

Using it alongside other sources of information. Right? Like that can help make it be relevant when you’re asking very curious questions of what does the Bible and science have to do with each other? How do we figure out what the proper place for that is? 

Pete: Oh no, I’m on my own! I have to read the Bible and figure it out.. 

Jared: Right. So I think putting it in its proper place that, you know, Wesleyan quadrilateral. Let’s put scripture alongside experience, tradition and reason. And have it play a place but not be the main event. I think that will be helpful.

It’s more sustainable in my experience, um, for being able to do that. And then the fourth thing was continue to encourage and explore creative readings that respect biblical scholarship, but maybe go beyond what’s in the text. I mean, I think that’s another way for me that it’s remained relevant.

You know, we still have guests on where we are like, oh, I never thought of that before. 

Like, there’s a hook, there’s a little nuance in this text that does allow for some really creative reimagination that actually sparks interest in me. 

Um, and like you said, we were talking about earlier.

In the liturgical readings, I think you probably have, we call it a cannon within a cannon, right? Each of us probably have those books that do that more for us than other books. Like I find myself going way more to certain books and other books. I’m like, eh, I don’t, I’m not gonna, I don’t know what to do with that.

Pete: And there, there’s a long tradition also, also in the church of these creative types of readings. Where, um, I mean, you sort of, and speaking, you sort of leave your, the left brain and tame it for a minute. And, um, I mean, I’ve come to express myself in that respect to say, I think of the Bible as a means of grace, which means just something sometimes happens when you read it and sort of like Eucharist or baptism if you’re an adult baptism, you know, it just like, you can’t really put your finger on.

Rachel Held Evans used to talk about the Eucharist and, and the effect it had on her. The doubts and stuff, and all the struggles were left to the side. You just see something and, um, I just, I mean, just very briefly, uh, this is something relatively recently, the past few years, but, um, having some struggles in my family.

And I have three adult children who I love and, um, you know, feeling despondent about what’s happening and, and other sorts of things I want to get into, but. I, I stumbled upon Ephesians 3:14, and I have that, I have a couple verses written on the back of a picture that has my kids when they were seven, four, and one 

Uh, going to get a Christmas tree or something.

And on the back of that, I, I wrote out by hand, “for this reason, I bend my knee before the father, from whom every family on heaven and earth derives its name.” Now, whoever wrote Ephesians, it probably wasn’t Paul, but it’s like for this reason, well, that’s his context before that. But for me, the, this reason was the picture, the kids on the other side.

And family- I know he doesn’t mean nuclear family. He means probably nations are things like that. But that didn’t matter, because, and it was meaningful to me. Mm-hmm. It became very relevant to me, and I know. I’m breaking 80 rules of, you know, evangelical interpretation.

But it doesn’t matter at that point. See, so that’s why I think that point that you made about exploring creative readings, not just because, you know, maybe ’cause you, it, you, your, your soul depends on it almost. You know, it’s not just like a creative exercise. Like, let me see what weird thing I can say.

Which happens in a lot of Bible study. You know, but. I think the Bible works well as a companion to difficulties or to sufferings and just, just participate in the church’s history with lecture of Davina, or other kinds of methods. That, they understood that. See, that’s the point. They understand this stuff.

You know? Yeah. And we’re like, I don’t know about this book. It’s a little irrelevant. Just read stuff from the past and you see it, you know.

Jared: And seeing that broader perspective of you, your, it’s not your job to be the biblical scholar who’s toeing the line of biblical scholarship.

I think of, um, Tevye in the Fiddler on the Roof, who’s often just, like, botching context and saying, “as the good book says” and “tradition,” and it’s just like, but I, I always was so compelled by that because it’s such a sweet, leaving at the door. Like this matters to me. 

Like for Tevye, it’s like “this text matters to me.”

And you know what, like, I’m gonna let the rabbi roll his eyes and say, that’s not what that means. Who cares? That’s the rabbi’s job. You toe that line, that’s great. But for me, I’m gonna say “as the good book says,” yeah. Like, I’m gonna make it relevant. 

And it’s like, yeah, it’s gonna rip it outta context, but, and that’s where for me, the focusing on the fruits is important because like you said earlier where it’s like, where do we draw the line between a Christian, Christian nationalist interpretation and how, what they’re doing with the text versus, you know, your Ephesians quote on the back with your family or Tevye.

It’s like they’re not causing harm. They’re actually engendering compassion, and love or, or, uh, whimsy, and fun and joy. Like these are positive things. So it’s not the thing in itself, it’s what, what is it producing? And that gives the freedom to be creative.

And I think that makes it relevant if everything is so serious, that it’s like, well, I can’t apply it to that because that’s not the grammatical historical, historical context and, I don’t know, Greek and Hebrew. You’re gonna be so scared to even do anything with it. Right, right. It’s like, well, where can we be playful with this?

‘Cause that’s when we can make it relevant. 

Pete: Right. And, and just, I mean, just to wind this down, just, just-

Jared: And we’re just getting wound up,

Pete: And we’re getting wound up, but just to, to remember, you know. A thousand years of interpretation in the Christian Church, medieval interpretation had four levels.

There’s the historical meaning, the literal meaning. So my, my point is that, you know, yeah, I gave this story about Ephesians 3:14. I’m still a biblical scholar, so I, I want to understand history and context.

Jared: But you’re putting that in its place.

Pete: I’m putting it in its place.

Jared: Down here in the history of interpretation.

Pete: It’s, it’s like, well. I guess if you have to stay there, you can, but there’s so much more interesting stuff there. There are moral meaning. What does it mean to my life?

Jared: Well, just real quick, wouldn’t you say that in the medieval, in early church, that was almost the more base-level, immature- that’s a starting place.

Pete: It’s important. It’s the starting place. It’s important though-

Jared: But as you grow, you actually learn these other-

Pete: Well the others are supposed to be built on it. Yeah. But I don’t think they’re building anything on it. I think they’re like going off. It’s a stratosphere. 

Jared: Okay, keep going. So the end of a moral, right?

Pete: Yeah. There’s a moral, there’s a moral meaning. What does it mean to me? There’s, you know, reading the Bible from the church is like. How does this help me understand something about Jesus better? 

Jared: Kind of that christological. 

Pete: Yeah. And then the other is, you know, like, how does this explain the big picture of our existence?

And where’s all this going? It’s like darn it all, if that isn’t like genius almost. And like, you know, but that historical meaning, they’re all saying like, yeah, it’s important anyway. Yeah. Go do their thing, you know? And it’s, it’s, um. You know, Gregory the Great, the first monk who became Pope, around 600, wrote a commentary on the book of Job, and it says at the beginning, at chat, verse two, now seven sons were born to job and three daughters.

He goes, what does that mean? That means seven sons and daughters. Two sentences. Who cares? That’s boring. Uh, then he says, well, the seven sons, it’s, well, that’s four plus three, and four is apparently the first even number, two doesn’t count in math for some reason. And three is the first odd number. These are sacred numbers.

So three plus four is seven, but you know what, three times four is 12. This represents the apostles, right? That’s what this, the who, who go, he says who’ll go about preaching manly. Right? Right. And it, this is, this is the seventh century, folks usually got a break, but you know. Then the, the daughters, the three daughters.

What do you think three represents? The Trinity, of course. You know, so, but my point is that I, I, I would never do that. But I understand why he’s doing that. ’cause he’s saying this is not relevant. Who cares how many kids he had. It’s got to have a deeper meaning to us. And so he goes into more of an allegorical kind of approach to it.

And I understand that this has been the impulse of people of faith since the verdict. 

Jared: Yeah. And I think that is the impulse too of, you know, growing up charismatic in a very, um, apocalyptic-heavy household. Where that was precisely why it was so compelling to think we were living in the end times.

Just because it made the Bible relevant to us now, and there were all kinds of codes. I had a book called the Bible Code. Where it was, like, unlocking the deep mysteries and it made it so personal and relevant. It’s like, well we’re in the story now in a radical way. And again, I wouldn’t espouse that is maybe a particularly helpful way of approaching it. 

But the impulse was there to say like, yeah, there are these ways to try and make it relevant. And I think that’s important. 

Pete: And I, I think to acknowledge that the Bible can be a means of grace differently for people.

And, and you know, we won’t get into this, we have to bring this to an end, but. Are there boundaries? Yeah. What are there? I’m not sure. We can talk about it another time. We can play with boundaries. 

Jared: But I, I think there are boundaries, and I think it is- 

Pete: the ethics of it. Boundaries. 

Jared: We could talk about it, but I do think that’s why I added in my list, focusing on the fruit, right?

Because there is something about the ethics of the reading that are, it’s important. For me, that plays into the boundary, right? It’s like, yeah, we can do that, but if it’s causing harm. We should-

Pete: Well, Augustine, if your interpretation promotes love, it’s a good interpretation. Yeah. If it doesn’t, it’s a bad interpretation.

That’s another old dead guy. 

Jared: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Alright, well let’s end with quoting St. Augustine, after we skewered Calvin all. See ya. 

Jared: Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you wanna support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give. 

Pete: And if you wanna support us, and want an all access pass to our classes, ad-free live stream of the podcast, and a thoughtful community of people asking tough questions about the Bible and faith, you can become a member of our online community, the Society of Normal People at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join  

Jared: And lastly, it goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review and tell others about our show. In addition, you can let us know what you thought about the episode by emailing us at info@thebiblefornormalpeople.com  

Outro: You’ve just made it through another episode of the Bible for Normal People. Don’t forget you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team: Brittany Hodge, Joel Limbauan, Melissa Yandow, Tessa Stultz, Danny Wong, Lauren O’Connell, and Naiomi Gonzalez.

Pete: don’t hear where it’s a commentary is a commenter. Not a, not a commentator. Not a commentator, but we say commentator. It’s actually not right to say that. Oh my gosh. And I learned that in graduate school, but I’ve never once said commenter. 

Jared: That’s right. Well that I know it’s, anyway. Alright. Anyway, 

Pete: that was irrelevant.

So very important. That’s definitely not relevant for people’s lives, right? There’s important thing to take out this.