Episode 62: Zach W. Lambert - The Lenses Through Which We Read the Bible
In this episode of Faith for Normal People, Pete and Jared are joined by Zach Lambert to talk about the journey from biblical literalism to a more liberative approach to scripture. They explore four harmful interpretive lenses—literalism, apocalypse, hierarchy, and moralism—and offer four healthier alternatives focused on Jesus, context, flourishing, and fruitfulness.
Mentioned in This Episode
Class: Anti-Apologetics 101 with Zach Lambert
Books: Better Ways to Read the Bible by Zach Lambert
Join: The Society of Normal People community
Support: www.thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give
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Jared: [00:00:00] You are listening to Faith for Normal People, the only other God ordained podcast on the Internet.
Pete: I'm Pete Enns.
Jared: And I’m Jared Byas.
Pete: Today on the Bible for normal people, we're talking about the lenses through which we read the Bible with Zach Lambert.
Jared: Zach is the lead pastor of Restore, a Church in Austin, Texas, as well as the co-founder of the Post-Evangelical collective. He's also the author of Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing.
Pete: And and even more importantly, he's teaching our August class called Anti-Apologetics 101: Better Ways to Read The Bible on August 21st from 8 to 9:30 PM Eastern Time, which you can sign up for right now during the pay-what-you-can window at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/summerschool25
Jared: And just a heads-up, we won’t have Quiet Time at the end of this episode. So instead of taking the time to do that, why don’t you just take the class with Zach?
Pete: Absolutely. And for now, let’s just get into this episode.
Zach: If our Bible interpretations are leading to no love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, et cetera, then we should at least at the very least question. If Jesus said, this is the fruit that will be yielded by the spirit, his spirit at work in and through us, and none of my Bible interpretations are yielding this fruit, then there is a massive disconnect.
Pete: Zach, welcome to the podcast.
Zach: Thanks so much, Pete. It's an honor to be with you guys.
Pete: It's, it's great to have you here and especially the topic we're gonna be talking about today. So, so, um, introduce yourself a little bit to our audience and specifically this, your, your personal journey, evolution, whatever you want to call it with the Bible.
So how you became a heretic. Pretty much, that's what I wanna hear. So, yeah. So how did you start-
Zach: My, my heretic origin story.
Pete: How did you get to where you are now?
Zach: Um, well I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and um, I, uh, I joke a lot that the trinity I was introduced to was Father, Son, Holy Bible, not the traditional Father, Son, Holy Spirit.
Uh, the Bible really was like a divine figure in my childhood churches, in my childhood, um, Bible studies, and even in my family. And so the Bible to me was really this like holy and magical and other thing, um, that I was really supposed to submit the fullness of my life to. I think realizing later on that what I was actually asked to do was submit myself to my pastor's interpretation of that Bible. Not the actual text itself.
And so that was a journey for sure. And I have had times in my life where, um, I've really hated the Bible, where I've literally thrown it across the room, um, where I've been so afraid to open it that, uh, I didn't because I was afraid of the, the triggers that I would have or the stories that I would find inside.
[00:03:00] Um, in fact, I, I'll tell a quick story. Do you guys remember the one-year Bible? [Hosts agree.] Um, okay. So I was given a one-year Bible as a teenager, and you know, that was a big deal, not just to read the Bible every day in your quiet time, which, you know, like real Christians did it in the morning. It was like really sad Christians that did it at night. So wake up earlier, early in the morning.
Jared: The, the earlier the better. If it's before sunrise, Jesus really loved you.
Zach: Yeah, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. So I remember before school, one day I opened up my one-year Bible and you know, it was like, there was like a Proverb or a Psalm and then like an Old Testament passed in a New Testament passage and you could get through the whole Bible in a year.
Now it was pretty early on, but I was, I opened up to the, it was the Sodom and Gomorrah story in the Old Testament. And I, I'd heard that weaponized against LGBTQ people like, you know, a lot of us have. Um, but I hadn't actually read the rest of the story, you know, where Lot, his daughters get him drunk and then, you know, have sex with him and then you know, the whole thing. And I remember like that was the end of that part of my one-year Bible reading was like the end of that story. And I closed it in, like, this daze of like, now I'm supposed to go to my chemistry class and like be on fire for Jesus. And I don't know how to do that, you know?
So that was a wild thing where even, you know, as like a 14-year-old being like, okay, this is like recorded as happening.
It's not even necessarily condemned as I just alluded to. Um, this is just something that I was supposed to read, be inspired by, apply to my life and go into my high school chemistry class.
So I really began to have this difficult relationship with scripture. Obviously fast forward. I'm now a pastor in Austin, Texas.
Started a church called Restore about a decade ago, and this book really came out of a pastoral need, um, from our church. And so that's a [00:05:00] little bit of my background with the Bible and how I got to where I am today.
Jared: All, all I heard was that The Bible for Normal People podcast was not adequate for your congregation.
And you had to supplement it with the new book.
Pete: Wow. That's that's a good point.
Zach: We’re off to a good start.
Pete: Thanks for coming, Zach. That was a great time.
Jared: Come into our house with you and that's what you start with.
Zach: You know, I really, I, I, I did everything I could to twist arms, you know, to get them to be Bible for Normal People folks.
And a lot of them were, yeah. You know, but, um. Gosh, it just left a little something to be desired. I'm not gonna say what that was.
Pete: But you know, I mean, just all kidding aside, the thing is that what, through struggling with the Bible and through just trying to read it and just doing what people have told you to do, right?
Um, the similarities obviously between us is like, what is this thing, this Bible, right? And how do we read it? You know, and, and you give a plan in, in your book and for approaches that are helpful, for approaches [00:06:00] that are not helpful. And that's, I think, that's, that's a, a, a brilliant thing to do for people to help them, um, maybe even like their Bible again, you know?
Jared: Before we get to that, 'cause you meant, you, you mentioned Pete, the approaches, and we're gonna dive into those approaches because I think they're, they're very helpful and practical. The idea of an approach, and you talked about in your story, wait, maybe it wasn't the Bible, it was the interpretation of the Bible that my pastor or whoever was influential in my life was giving me.
That's a big aha moment for a lot of people to have that distance, that there is a lens through which we are reading the Bible. So how do you help people even recognize that there is that distance, that there is a lens that you are reading the Bible through, that you are filtering the Bible through?
It's hard, ‘cause some people maybe go their whole life and don't realize that fact.
Pete: Those pastors you mentioned, they don't have a lens. They just read the Bible straight. So if [00:07:00] you disagree with their teaching, you're disagreeing with the Bible.
Jared: Yeah. So what's, what's a pastoral approach to getting people to, to get enough distance to see that space?
Zach: Well, to both of y'all's point, I was first introduced to the idea of lenses actually in seminary, uh, in my early twenties at Dallas Theological Seminary. And I was introduced to it somewhat ironically, in that I remember I had a professor who introduced, um, a Justo Gonzalez book.
And he made this comment about like, Hey, just remember this book was written by a Latino theologian, so it probably has some biases to it. You know, he's got a specific lens through which he is looking. Um, but what was interesting is that was never applied to, uh, text written by, you know, mostly men of European descent, kind of like the straight white guy kind of a thing.
Um, and I remember that being a little bit of, like, an indicator of like, okay, well some people interpret the Bible through a lens. Uh, but, but we don't. And I remember a second experience of going into a theological bookstore and seeing sections for like [00:08:00] black theology and feminist theology and Latino Latina and queer and disabled theology.
But there weren't any, like, there wasn't like a white theology section, you know, or like a straight theology section. Um, or a masculine theology section. It was because that perspective was seen as just theology. It was just normal theology and everything else needed a disclaimer. And because of that, I began to realize, okay, well if everybody else has a lens, there's probably a good chance that I have a lens too.
Even though I spent most of my life, like not even really being aware of the fact that I had these internal characteristics that I was like white or male or heterosexual or able-bodied or American or middle class, like I thought all that was just like the, the normative thing and that anything else was abnormal.
And because of that, like you said, like a lot of pastors that I had growing up, I didn't think I was interpreting the Bible at all. I thought I was just learning and reading and teaching the, you know, the [00:09:00] plain reading, the plain meaning of scripture. Um, but then you come to the conclusion that the people you know, they can most understand the plain meaning of scripture by just reading it or hearing it are, you know, ancient Israelites are first century near Easterners, living under Roman occupation.
And even they debated interpretations and texts and things like that. And so what I try to do is share that pastorally with people, share a little bit of my story, and then talk about how if we come to different conclusions, um, then that has to be based on something, and that something is a lens that we bring to the text.
And we all do that based on some combination of who we are, what we've been taught, our experiences, how we see the world, um, and that we don't intrinsically understand, uh, what the biblical author is trying to say. So we have to do some work to get there and how do we bridge that gap, right?
The whole kind of thesis of the book is that we all have lenses and some are better than others, and so we have to realize and, you know, identify and discard the harmful ones, and then [00:10:00] try to find and apply the more helpful ones, right.
Pete: So, uh, let's get into that. What, what are- you list four harmful lenses. So what are they? And let's just, let's just talk about them and give some examples and, and, and let's flesh those out.
Zach: Absolutely. Um, so the first one is this lens of literalism and uh, it really comes down to this like reading every biblical passage as if it must be factually historically or scientifically literal, and missing any kind of nuance or, or genre or context or culture or anything like that.
Obviously, that's one that you guys talk about a ton. Your audience is gonna be incredibly familiar with it. Um, I do think, you know, a, a little bit of nuance is important with this in the sense that some of the Bible is supposed to be literal, right? Like when Jesus said the most important thing is to love God and love your neighbor, he literally meant that.
You know, or the 2000-plus verses about taking care of the poor and oppressed and marginalized, like we are literally supposed to do those things. I think the problem comes when we [00:11:00] take that same lens of literalism and we apply it to texts that are making no attempt to be literal. And so the easiest one, the, the, the thing I use in the book is kind of the Genesis 1-3, the, the creation narrative.
Um, and yeah, I, I quote Pete in that chapter where it talks about, we're, we're asking that section of the Bible questions that it's not intending to answer. Questions like, how old is the Earth or where is the Garden of Eden or, uh, when did the dinosaurs live? Or something like that, right?
Genesis 1-3 is not trying to, to answer that. Um, in fact, I remember that at one time in a, uh, vacation Bible school, um, when I was a kid in my Southern Baptist megachurch, we had a whole dinosaur-themed thing. And I remember being like, well, but there aren't dinosaurs in the Bible.
So, you know, how do we actually go about, like, engaging with scripture and dinosaurs in science? And our, our, our kind of main teacher literally said, God buried ancient [00:12:00] dinosaur bones in the ground in order to test our faith. So that when we dug them up and the scientists said, the earth is billions of years old, true and faithful Christians would stand up and say, I don't care what those bones say. It absolutely is not.
Jared: Yep. Classic, right?
Zach: So, yeah, that's the, that's the literalism lens. And you know, I have this, this caveat that I think is really important as well. Um, like, I honestly don't care if somebody believes the earth is 6,000 or 6 billion years old, right? Like, I don't care if you think Adam and Eve were literal people or that they're characters in a mythological story trying to tell a larger, um, truth. What I'm concerned is about taking these matters that faithful Christians disagree about and turning them into this, like, litmus test for true Christianity.
Um, because when we do that, people will self-select out of Christianity and what I would say is for no good reason. Um, I tell a story of a friend in the book who. Was told Christians believe, you know, in, in Jesus's life, death and [00:13:00] resurrection, you know, in the return of Christ and whatever. And then also in, you know, a 6,000 year old earth and whatever else, and mm-hmm.
He went to college, took a freshman biology class and said, I don't believe in a 6,000 year old Earth anymore, and therefore was told I must not be a Christian anymore.
Pete: Right, right. Yeah. That's, that's the, that's the damaging, harmful part of that lens. It’s not, people think something is literal.
And if it's not literal, I mean literally, if, if it, this is not literally true, God doesn't exist. Right? I mean, I hear, I hear that a lot. It's like, it's rather alarming, but they come by it, I, I would say honestly, you know, from, from their influences. And so, to, to open up those dialogues as you're talking about.
I think that's, that's what has to happen. Not further polemicizing. Polarizing.
Jared: Well, there, there is a certain logic to it, and I think that's what it's important to not be a fundamentalist in, in new ways where it's so dogmatic. I mean, I think, if anything, what we do at The Bible for Normal People often is to problematize that, [00:14:00] where it's not one way or the other.
Like you said, literalism does make sense in certain passages with certain contexts, understanding intention. And there's a certain logic to the, if this isn't literally true, then X, Y, and Z follows. There's a whole kind of paradigm of seeing faith through that lens. And so kind of learning to respect that.
But I, what I hear and I appreciate is maybe you can say this differently, within these four lenses that we're gonna talk about and the kind of the four harmful lenses that correspond to that. One of the reasons I'm hearing for why it doesn't really matter to you that much if you believe in a literal 6,000 or whatever, because the litmus test for you is, is this doing harm, or is this helping?
And sometimes some of these are more neutral. It's like, well, it's not really doing harm. It's not really helping, but it's neutral. So is that a fair way to assess that sort of for you? The lens really is what's promoting, um, health and flourishing and what's hurting and causing harm.
Zach: Absolutely. Yeah. And I, I get to this with the, the [00:15:00] final two healthy or helpful lenses that are flourishing and fruitfulness. This idea that Jesus said, I came to bring life and life abundantly. Um, and so our biblical interpretation, if that's Jesus's mission statement, is that we are all experiencing flourishing and fullness of life.
Then our biblical interpretation should be leading to that, not leading away from that. Um, and there certainly are ways that we engage with scripture that ends up being neutral. And yeah, again, I, I don't have, like, a huge problem with that or, or private beliefs that are held, right? Like I don't think that you personally believing the earth is 6,000 years old is like harming someone else, right?
For the most part. What, what happens though is that when you make that a litmus test for true Christianity, or you say as Pete just said, right, like God doesn't exist, then the whole thing is a farce if in fact the earth is older than that, because then all the Bible falls apart.
That's where it becomes really problematic.
Pete: If Adam doesn't exist, then there's no gospel. Yeah. Well, you just painted yourself into a corner there. [00:16:00] You really have. At least in my opinion you have, so anyway.
Zach: Absolutely.
AD BREAK
Pete: Okay, so we have literalism, which, um, another way of putting it is it doesn't respect genre differences, right? Yeah. So, um, what's another harmful lens?
Zach: Yeah. The next one is apocalypse. And depending on your upbringing, um, this may be more or less prevalent for you. It was incredibly prevalent for me and my Southern Baptist upbringing.
And then I went to Dallas Theological Seminary, kind of the home of, uh, along with maybe Moody, Dispensationalism. And, uh, you know, pre-trib, pre-mill, all that kind of apocalyptic stuff. We had all the charts, I still have them in my notes of how exactly the earth would end. And um, I remember like, they showed us pictures of the, the literally described angels, you know, with all the eyes and the swords and the whole thing.
It's the most terrifying thing I've ever seen.
And um, and again, I think that there is some neutrality depending on how this is applied to Jared's point. Right? Like, if you believe that literally an angel will look like that, like, I think that's wild. But it's probably not harming someone else if you believe that the angel will look like that.
Um, but if you believe that-
Pete: Just your kids, maybe, but apart from that right,
Zach: Show it to 'em. I show it to my kids right before bed. Pictures like that, you know.
Pete: You see this, do you see this? Do you wanna meet him?
Jared: And then just say, Jesus is always watching. Lights out.
Zach: All these eyes.
Yeah. Bye.
Pete: Oh, don't go in the closet.
Zach: Yeah. Okay. Anyway, that's where they live. Um, so yeah, I, I, but again, if you're, if you're taking it and you're applying it to these other things, then it can become actually incredibly harmful and, um. I mean, I, I, we don't need to get into this super deeply, but we're seeing the effects of it currently with American Foreign Policy.
Um, the way that we engage in interpretations of Revelation [00:18:00] and Israel's role and all of these different things. Like it's, it's affecting how we govern, how we do defense spending, how we do, uh, military engagement worldwide. And so there can be some incredibly harmful things. But my main, kind of takeaway, I think, for the apocalypse lens is that if you believe that Jesus is coming back to kind of torch the earth and to kill all of his enemies, um, then it makes it a lot easier for you to excuse torching the earth and killing your enemies.
You know, if that's who you're following and that's what he's gonna do when he comes back, then that gives you a pretty good, uh, trump card, uh, no pun intended for doing whatever it is that you wanna do.
Pete: It's, it's hard to separate how we read scripture with how we act. I mean, they're, they're related to each other, and of course that's true of all of us.
You know, not, not just some people, but yeah.
Zach: Yeah. Yeah. You can draw a straight line, I think, from how you see God to how you see [00:19:00] yourself. From the way God behaves and your interpretation of scripture to the way that, um, you know, you think that you're supposed to behave right? And this is true, right?
We've seen it. This goes into another harmful lens, the lens of hierarchy. Like, um, the great example of this is like the curse of Ham from Genesis 9, right? That famous story where Noah gets drunk and falls asleep naked, and his son Ham walks in and sees him naked. He goes and gets his brothers, the brothers don't look, cover Noah up, you know, and then Noah wakes up and curses Ham and says, you're gonna be subject to your brothers forever. And then we a lot of times extrapolated that to say, well, uh, black people are actually the descendants of Ham. And so race-based chattel slavery in America is ordained by God.
And we're reading scripture in a hierarchical lens in order to get there. And so again, if that's how you see the way God interacts, that God sometimes curses people based on an accident or their skin color or something [00:20:00] totally outta their control, then we're allowed to curse people based on those things too.
Pete: And it always, I mean, not, not to get sidetracked here, but it always cracks me up that it's, you know, the, the, the cursing of Ham. Ham wasn't cursed, Canaan was cursed. One of his four sons. Because this is all geopolitical.
Jared: Yeah, I was gonna say there's a context for that.
Pete: Our enemies are bad people. The Canaanites.
Exactly right. So it's got nothing to do with black people, even though Ham settled in Africa or something like that. That's according to the ancient way of thinking, but it's just, man, if that's how you take the Bible, it's like, I dunno, that is, that is harmful, obviously. And it's been incredibly harmful and, and, and people have died.
Jared: How do you, though, and maybe this is getting a little deep, um, or taking a left turn. But when we talk about hierarchy, right? So we kind of informally introduce this as that third harmful lens. Hierarchy. How do we distinguish when we're reading the Bible? 'cause I'm thinking of more of a scholarly approach that would say historically, of course we would find hierarchy in the Bible because [00:21:00] that's the context, right?
We have household codes that we find in the New Testament. We have the, there was hierarchy in the culture, so of course we're gonna find it there. How do we navigate that when we're reading the Bible? 'cause sometimes I feel like when we read the Bible, it's like, no, what's really there happens to be what I endorse now.
Is there any way to read the Bible in which we can say, on the one hand, yes, this was part of their culture and this is what it's saying and it's endorsing and we just disagree today? Is that part of your way of reading the Bible?
Zach: Absolutely. I mean, I think depending on the text, and I actually think that makes it more powerful, right?
Um, because if you're saying this was what existed in the ancient time and place, and maybe even was endorsed by people who were in spiritual leadership at the time, but then we see, uh, you know, later on it being subverted. So like, I think you can make a really good case that Paul is subverting household codes in Ephesians, right?
Like he's kind of mirroring the Roman household codes and then he's adding requirements for husbands to be sacrificial lovers of [00:22:00] their wife and children and everybody else in their household. That's actually this subversion of hierarchy that exists and that we can say, well, that's actually closer to the heart of God.
That subversion to move us toward equality and equity is closer to the heart of God than what existed. And that's a powerful application to our modern times to say, what hierarchies are we just taking for granted as God-ordained, but actually need to be investigated, that God would actually push back against in maybe much more helpful ways?
I think it, it's absolutely right, Jared, that we have to say what was going on in the text and maybe if it was even being endorsed, we disagree with it, and we have basis, even biblically, quote unquote, to disagree with it based on subversions that happened.
Pete: Well, I mean, we, we agree with that. I, I can imagine people coming back though and saying, you're saying that one part of the Bible subverts another part of the Bible.
Right? And that's, that is, that's a lot for people to accept. Right. And that's part of, it's so much easier just to [00:23:00] say, well, everybody's on the same page. Nobody's supporting anybody. Even though, yeah, I, I mean, I would just say patently, that's not true. You, you, you see all sorts of movement within the Hebrew Bible and then with the New Testament as well, and, and, and, but that requires a certain flexibility in terms of the nature of scripture that once you see it, you see it, but until you see it, you don't see it.
And I think that might encourage some of the polemic thinking, the black and white thinking, which it's understandable. Absolutely. It's just lamentable at the same point.
Zach: Yeah. And I think that's why biblical fundamentalists fight so hard for the edges of that fundamentalist box to be protected.
Because if you get out there and you start to sense a little bit of nuance or uh, gray in your thinking, then fundamentalism completely falls apart. 'Cause like you said, Pete, once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you know it, you can't unknow it. And so they have to really protect anybody from getting to those edges to say, well, and especially when you point out this is something that we're already doing actually in these other areas, we're just now applying it to this area a little bit differently, then that really starts to mess people up. Right, right.
Jared: Well, let's go through the fourth one because I wanna make sure we have time to flip that coin and go to the positive side of things. So what's the fourth lens?
Zach: Yeah, the last harmful lens is moralism, and again, similar to literalism, um, I understand why people read the Bible as a moral framework or a moral textbook. Um, number one, it's easier just in black and white thinking to say, well, this is a list of do's and don'ts.
Um, but then also there are moral imperatives that exist in scripture that I think are really healthy and helpful for us. But moralism can also go awry. Sometimes it's neutral to Jared's point. And maybe I would say sometimes you're just not getting enough out, like what the text really wants you to get out of it.
You're not reading the Bible for all it's worth, so to speak. Um, but there are other times where it's really harmful. And I tell the story of this woman named Brianna in our [00:25:00] church who had that kind of, that God hates divorce, moral imperative weaponized against her so that she stayed in an abusive marriage.
‘Cause it was like, well it God hates divorce. Right. He, he doesn't love that you're getting abused, but he hates divorce, and the wrath of God from you choosing divorce rather than just kind of dealing with like what's going on in your marriage. Even if it's uncomfortable or even if it's hard or painful, um, you should do the second one because the wrath of God from the divorce thing is so much worse.
And so that's the real, like, dark side of it. And I make the case in the book that it's much more, that, that around divorce. I mean, some of us shrugged that off and you're like, no way people do that. Um, yeah, but I mean, you, you have somebody who's, like, popular as John Piper years ago on, it's still on the internet, on video.
Him saying, you know, if you're getting, uh, verbally abused by your husband or he smacks you around one night, quote unquote, you need to stay with him still, um, because God hates [00:26:00] divorce. And so it's just still very prevalent. I mean, I sat across from Brianna as she wept at a coffee shop in Austin.
Talking about how this had been weaponized against her. Right. And so, yeah, that's a little bit of the moralism lens.
Jared: Let's flip the coin and talk about Jesus here as the initial, maybe helpful lens through which we, because I think this is very important. I think a lot of people know about the harmful lenses.
We, a lot of our listeners have been dealing with those for years and sort of figuring it out, but sometimes they, they kind of bottom out at like, well, I know what not to do, but what do I do? How do I re-engage the Bible? So let's go there.
Pete: And, and you know what, just, it's, we don't have to go into this kind of detail, but it's helpful to know that in your book you sort of pair the harmful lenses with the, with the helpful lenses.
Jared: There's a flip side to each one.
Pete: Yeah, exactly. There's a flip side to each one, so, yeah, yeah. Okay. Go ahead.
Zach: Exactly. And I, I appreciate the way y'all both set that up. Um, and I think that, yeah, Jesus', the, the lens of the, this kind of christocentric lens or this Jesus lens is really interpreting [00:27:00] all of scripture through the life, teachings, character of Jesus based on this, uh, belief that I have, that a lot of Christians share that Jesus is kind of the, the fullness of God in human form, right?
Like both Paul and some gospel authors talk about him like that. And so if we have this idea of, kind of, progressive revelation that Pete alluded to earlier of different things that are happening throughout the text, as we kind of get to know the fullness of God's heart more and more, then Jesus is kind of the closest experience we have of who God is.
And what God is like. And so when we're making interpretive decisions, um, we should use the lens of Jesus. So quick example. You have something like the, um, you know, Jericho and the Canaanite genocide in, uh, the Old Testament, um, where it seems like Joshua has been told by God to kill every man, woman, child, and animal in Jericho.
And then you juxtapose that with Peter being disarmed by Jesus at the arrest of Jesus at the Garden of Gethsemane, where he says, Peter, put away [00:28:00] your sword. If you live by the sword, you'll die by the sword. And so. On the surface, you have two conflicting understandings of how we are supposed to use weapons and violence in the service of God.
Um, like sometimes God endorses genocide it seems like from that story, but then it seems like Jesus is condemning all violence, um, on his behalf. Uh, and so how do we kind of make that interpretation then? I, I'm advocating that we choose to interpret through the lens of Jesus, um, and that then we go back to a story, uh, like the Canaanite genocide and obviously Pete goes much deeper than this, and a bunch of his books on that story, but there are a number of interpretive options that are significantly better than God orders genocide.
Like, um, you know, maybe it was a little bit of an exaggeration about how that war actually went down because it's, you know, a polemic.
Um, maybe it, uh, you have this really interesting text where Joshua, you know, the angel of the Lord comes to Joshua, and Joshua says, are you on our side or our enemy side? And the angel says, neither. I'm on the side [00:29:00] of the Lord God almighty. And so even you have like a little piece of neutrality from God's representative in that text.
So you at least go back and say it can't mean that God orders genocide because we know that Jesus said, if you live by the sword, you die by the sword, so it has to mean something else.
Pete: Yeah. I mean, that's the struggle that people have because again, we have reading it through the Jesus lens means canceling out or, or correcting something that the Bible seems to say elsewhere.
Even though within the Hebrew Bible there's, there's some flexibility about all this stuff about the Canaanite genocide, but it's there. Right. And we can't imagine Jesus saying that. So again, people are in that same predicament then of saying, I, I'm, there's one part of the Bible that seems to be in dialogue with or in disagreement with another, and yeah, that's the barrier I think that people have.
But yet, Hey, you know what folks? It's there.
Zach: It's there. So we have to deal with it. And I think there's some rich and richness and beauty [00:30:00] to it too, if we really do engage with it. But a, a very direct example of that, to your point, Pete, is you have the Old Testament prophets really spending a ton of time dialoguing, uh, with each other and the people of God about does God desire mercy or sacrifice more than the other one, right?
And Jesus basically directly engages that when he's, you know, here on Earth in the incarnation, he says, go learn what that means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. So you even have an example of Jesus explicitly addressing something that was not solidified, so to speak, by the Old Testament prophets.
Jared: Right. Yeah.
Pete: Good point. Yeah.
Jared: Well that's a, I think that's a good segue into the second one about context, because that we talk about that a lot. I'm not sure people really understand how to do that, but maybe you can say a little bit more about that importance of, of context.
Zach: Yeah. I think doing the best we can to just explore the historical, cultural, uh, context of what was going on, author's intent. Now I [00:31:00] think we have to be realistic too, that we can't always know exactly what was going on in the author's mind or what was going on in a culture that we're a few thousand years and thousands of miles removed from.
Pete: I don’t even know what’s going on in Jared’s mind, quite frankly.
Zach: Apparently, yeah, I'm trying to read his face. It's very difficult. It's annoying.
Jared: Hey, just to be fair, I don't either.
Zach: Um, and, and then I think an under explained or engaged with part of context is literary genre, right? Like a lot of times we read the Bible, like it's one big book, kind of of the same genre, but in fact it's a bunch of books of a bunch of different genres. And that would help a lot, like going back to the apocalypse lens.
If we engage with Revelation, uh, in a healthier way from a genre standpoint of like what this actually is, not something that's predictive of the future, but something that is an unveiling of the powers of Rome and how to live under occupation as a, you know, dissident [00:32:00] follower of Jesus, then that solves like 95% of the revelation problems.
Pete: Yeah. I mean, I have my, my friend, our friend Kent Sparks at Eastern University, he, um, he says the reason people have so much trouble with the Bible is a failure to recognize genre. Not all parts of the Bible meant to be read the same way. So, yeah, exactly.
Zach: Yeah. So that's a huge piece of this.
Jared: Yeah. And then the last two, 'cause you mentioned them earlier, uh, it was a little bit of a, a, a preview of coming attractions. So say more about this flourishing and fruitfulness, because I think this is a very helpful, and I think maybe take a step back before you jump into this.
Because sometimes these, these lenses can feel a little piecemeal. Yeah. And the challenge with that is unless you change your whole paradigm, like what you were saying. Unless you're willing to recognize the diversity of the Bible or recognize that maybe the Bible isn't here to teach us how to live, and that's the only thing that [00:33:00] it exists for.
So that now I have to find it at every corner. Like holistically how we think about the Bible. Sometimes it's a bit of a chicken or the egg where I can't really use these lenses unless I first shift the paradigm. And these last two around flourishing and fruitfulness for me feel kind of paradigm shifting.
So maybe say a little bit more about that.
Pete: And, and also bring in, as Jared is alluding, um, the contrasting harmful lens of moralism. And, and just, just pair those two together so people can really walk away with something.
Zach: Absolutely. I, yeah, I appreciate the way you're framing that too. These are my two favorite lenses.
Um. I think maybe because Jesus in context are ones that are talked about a lot, and so a lot of times we have, you know, a basic understanding of those. But these are also two that are incredibly, like, just pastoral, like these are two that I use every day in preaching and pastoring and counseling and things like that.
Um, the flourishing [00:34:00] lens really does, like I alluded to earlier, come from. These, these kind of two mission statements, so to speak, that Jesus makes. Luke 4 when, you know, he's in the, his syna—his hometown synagogue, and he says, I, you know, I've, I've come to, you know, free the, the slaves and to bring good news to the poor and sight to the blind and you know, all that kind of stuff, right?
It's this idea of, of setting free toward an ideal, and then John 10:10 is even more explicit. I've come that they might have. Life and life to the full. And so flourishing is what God desires for us. And really, I think that's the best explanation of the Kingdom of God. The kingdom of God is a place of mutuality and flourishing.
It's a place where we have deep relationships with God and one another. And where we all have what we need and where we all can step into this. You know, God, God-ordained, flourishing, so to speak. And so what I talk about though a lot in this chapter is the idea of, of liberation theology as the key to helping us move from where we are right now to this flourishing that God intends for us. And so I [00:35:00] go a little bit deeper into liberation theology and how we get there, but essentially the idea is that God desires for all of us to be flourishing. There are things that get in the way, um, which I think is actually the best explanation of sin.
Personal and systemic sin are things that prevent us from experiencing flourishing. And so what does it look like to remove those barriers? And I think that's liberation. It's a setting free. And so connecting that to Bible interpretation, our Bible interpretation needs to be setting us free from whatever gets in the way of us experiencing flourishing.
So to Pete's, uh, question, if Brianna has had this verse about God hates divorce, weaponized against her through the moralistic lens of just like, Hey, this is a moral imperative. I'm sorry, we can ask the question, but is this helping Brianna experience flourishing? Because we know that's God's main desire for her.
And if it's not, then actually that's probably a poor, uh, understanding and interpretation of God hates divorce. And so I connected a lot to that specific thing to this idea that what was divorce, and this also brings in the context lens, right? What was divorce in, um, the ancient world and in the first century world in this kind of totalitarian patriarchy where women who were, uh, divorced most, most of the time, I mean, almost everything in scripture, directive against divorce is to men.
Um, because men were the ones that could initiate divorce. Women were often left out in the cold, sometimes resorting to prostitution, or most of 'em were homeless if they were divorced.
And so if that's true, then like the reason God hates divorce is because it got in the way of people's flourishing when they were just cast aside by men for no good reason. Yeah. But in this case, for Brianna, actually divorce would lead to her flourishing because she was trapped in a deeply abusive marriage through the lens of moralism. You know,
Pete: I don't know exactly. You're going on and on about this flourishing stuff. God doesn't care about flourishing. He wants you to obey the [00:37:00] law, and if you don't, there's gonna be a lot of wrath coming down. That's see a, again, we're back to the same problem, which, which you, I know you appreciate.
It's the, I guess the problem of multivocality in the Bible, right? It's, it's the problem of there being, um, different, and in some cases, I'm gonna say competing narratives being given in the scriptural witness itself. And I think, and that's , Jared said, the chicken and the egg problem again.
We're, we're back to that. I, I, I think it's, you know, we're not gonna, we don't need to solve that here. It's just, it's good to put out there. You know? Does God want flourishing? I think God does want flourishing for humanity, for creation. I think you can see that in the Hebrew Bible as well.
But you got these moments where it's like, God just doesn't seem to care about anybody flourishing about anything. Right? But, but why are those stories being told? What are those genres? What's the historical context? All these things come into play that require some [00:38:00] patience, some investigation, and that's sometimes harder than being moralistic or literalistic or apocalyptic.
Zach: Absolutely. Yeah.
AD BREAK
There's just a, a, a fundamental difference in what you're saying, like, God is all about, and even who God is versus how some people might say- like, a really common refrain in the churches of my childhood and, and, and of my adolescence and even in a college were: God exists, or, or excuse me, we exist to glorify God.
Like that, that is our, that is why God made us. That is our entire purpose is to glorify God. Right? And so if that is your, your, you know, your kind of foundational paradigm for what God wants, right, is to be glorified specifically as you mentioned through the obedience to his rules and law.
Then it's really difficult to kind of break through if that's [00:39:00] your fundamental understanding of who God is and what we're supposed to do rather than “God desires relationship with us and that we all flourish.” Because those are really two totally different paradigms. And so you almost have to kind of deconstruct that understanding of God before you're able to engage with scripture in some of these different ways.
Pete: And I can see maybe Jewish listeners saying flourishing and law are not opposite ends of the spectrum. They, they can and probably should work together. 'Cause you flourish when you live according to God's ways. But some of those laws are weird. You know, it's like we're, we're back in the same discussion of like, what do you do with some of these?
Jared: Well, I, I, I, I'm glad you said that. 'cause that's where I was gonna go, is that the challenge becomes, a lot of theologies will conflate those, where it's not, it's not flourishing over here in obeying laws. I think, I think Judaism has a really good way of doing that, but I think fundamentalism does it as well where fundamentalists will say no the way to flourish is to obey the laws and the commands and the rules.
I would, I kinda get away from the laws [00:40:00] and the Jewish things. It's usually like this cultural set of rules. Like I don't think in Leviticus it talks about not listening to Jay-Z, but here I was as a 16-year-old thinking that was the rules of God. But I think that's the, the, the challenge then becomes, it goes one step behind that that says, and who are you to say that flourishing- you're challenging, God's definition of flourishing is the problem.
That's what a fundamentalist would say. Like, we have to get our definition of flourishing from the Bible. And then to do that, they privilege certain texts rather than other texts about what flourishing is.
And you're, you are privileging the liberative, uh, the texts and rather than other texts to define what that flourishing is. I think of, um, John 8:32. I'll often say, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free. That was used so much when I was younger to talk about why you get, just get to say whatever you think is the truth.
It doesn't matter how it makes people feel, it's because I'm [00:41:00] setting you free by telling the truth. But I like to flip it on its head and say. You shall know the truth and the truth will set you free. If that's true, then if it's not setting you free, it's not true.
Zach: Amen. Yep.
Jared: And so that's just that word, reading the same passages through very different lenses and definitions of flourishing.
'Cause I don't think fundamentalists are anti-flourishing. They're just gonna define it in a very specific way that I'm gonna disagree with.
Zach: Yeah, no, that's exactly right. And I think there is, I, I love that point. Um, there is an unnecessary, it's almost a semantic conflation of like law connected to Judaism and rules that happened.
Because I'll tell you the rules that existed in my Southern Baptist megachurch childhood had nothing to do with Jewish law. I mean, it was like, it was, don't listen to Jay-Z, you know, I mean, it was burn all your CDs in general. There was no dancing, no alcohol. I mean, it was all of these things.
That maybe you could find some scriptural basis for- you at least had a proof text here or there. But in reality it was not anything that God had ordained for [00:42:00] us to experience flourishing because I actually totally agree. I think that, that following the way of Jesus does lead to flourishing and I think, you know, Jesus says if you love me, you keep my commands.
And that's another one that's often weaponized. It's like, listen, you, you guys are all talking about loving Jesus and you know, loving each other. But Jesus said if you actually wanna love me, you keep my commands, but you gotta keep reading. He said, my command is this. Love one another as I have loved you.
That's the whole thing. Um, and so I think that it's, it's helpful to say, yeah, we're supposed to obey and follow the way of Jesus, which is this way of love. And I think that love sets free. And we, we should talk about not just what we're set free from, but what we're set free to. Set free to this idea of loving God and loving others.
Um, and that's really what fruitfulness is, is the last lens, right, iIs to say Jesus said, you'll know my followers by their fruit. Um, you know, you have Galatians that says, the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, [00:43:00] faithfulness, generalness, and self-control. And so again, this is a very pastoral thing for us and our community here, um, because one of the questions I get all the time outside of the theological and social stuff is basically just like.
Am I being a good Christian? And how do I know? I, I want to follow Jesus. How do I know if I'm doing well? And so this fruitfulness lens was developed really pastorally to say, well, Jesus said you'll know them by their fruit. Here's what the fruit of the spirit are. Are, and so are your beliefs and behaviors leading to more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, et cetera, in you and in the world?
And if they are, then that's the work of the spirit of God. Because it's not the fruit of human effort, it's the fruit of the spirit of God at work. And conversely, if our Bible interpretations are leading to more of that, then we should lean into them. If our Bible interpretations are leading to know love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, et cetera, then we should at least, at the very least, question them, at the very least, reengage them and say, if [00:44:00] Jesus said, this is the fruit that will be yielded by the spirit, his spirit at work in and through us, and none of my Bible interpretations are yielding this fruit, then there is a massive disconnect.
Pete: Well, okay, listen, uh, just in, in the, a couple minutes that we have left, maybe just one more question.
I can imagine people out there listening and saying, you know, I, I, I want help to, to maybe move away from some of these lenses that I'm beginning to recognize now are harmful. What's a good place for them to start? I mean, there, there is your book as well, obviously, but, um, help them pastor. Yeah. Where, where do they go?
What can they do?
Zach: Um, I get this question sometimes about like, what should I deconstruct first? You know? Um, and, uh, and I, I really do, I think there's a number of ways you can start, and usually you don't get to choose. It just kind of happens to you, right? But I do think that engaging with inerrancy, the concept of inerrancy, um, and moving away from it is actually what unlocks, and we've already alluded to this, but [00:45:00] it unlocks a lot of this, right?
And if you grew up in more conservative branches of Christianity like I did, chances are you've heard about inerrancy, and it, almost the way that it's taught, feels like this is the paradigm that all serious Bible people and serious Christians have used. But in, in reality, the doctrine of an errancy is relatively new.
You know, really kind of like formulated by like Bebe Warfield and Charles Charles Hodge in, you know, kind of like the, you know, late 19th century, but then formalizing the Chicago statements in the seventies and eighties. But really when we peel back the layer a little bit on what those Chicago statements on an errancy were, they really were just saying, 'cause there weren't, it wasn't just one.
Most people think there was just a ‘78 one on inerrancy. There were actually two more about biblical interpretation application in ‘82 and ‘86. And when you take them all together, they teach that someone's Christian faith is really only as good as their commitment to this version of inerrancy. Right?
And their commitment to this [00:46:00] version of inerrancy is only as good as their commitment to the biblical interpretations promoted by the statements authors. And that includes everything from, like, scientific theory to marriage and divorce, to just war theory. I mean, all that stuff is in there. And if you deny biblical inerrancy, they explicitly say in the preamble to the first statement, you are denying Christ.
And if you're able to peel that back and say, like I said at the very beginning, I'm not pushing back against God's word or scripture. I'm pushing back against one narrow interpretation of it. And that has been labeled though as just actually reading scripture, you know, for all that it's worth, inerrancy.
And if you're able to deconstruct that a little bit, then I think it actually opens up the, your ability to engage in a much more healthy way. And then I'll leave you with two really quick pastoral things for that. Once you do that, I would say if you can engage with humility, knowing that you don't have everything figured out, and you need to learn from others, from scholars, from [00:47:00] historians, from people past present, and people you know moving forward in the future.
And then the second thing is, if you'll do this inside of some healthy and diverse community. You will have such richer engagement with the text because people will be bringing their lenses, their interpretations, and you'll be able to do that in community. Whether that's like through, you know, The Bible for Normal People as a community or your local church context or whatever.
But if you have that healthy and diverse community and you have that humility, then I think you really can engage with much, you know, not to be too on the nose, but better ways to read the Bible.
Pete: Well, it is a process, right? It takes time.
Zach: Absolutely. But thank you, Zach.
Pete: But thank you, Zach,
Jared: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thanks so much for joining us.
Zach: Yeah, it's a pleasure to be with you guys. Thanks for having me on.
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 Faith for Normal People. Don’t forget you can catch our other show, The Bible 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, Lauren O’Connell, and Naiomi Gonzalez.
[Blooper clip plays]
Pete: And as we're winding down, we will say something clear like we're coming to the end of our [00:49:00] time. One more question. Okay. And that usually means don't give a 10 minute answer.
Zach: Yeah. Okay.
Jared: I know.
Pete: You’re a pastor, you know, you know how this works.
Jared: Yeah. Um, yeah, but he's a pastor, so he is most likely to offend the, the time limit here.
Zach: He literally gave me a mic. He literally sent me a mic, so that's terrible idea.
