Episode 67: Liz Charlotte Grant – The Gift of an Unclear Text

Jared: You’re 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: Together, first and second Chronicles have ruined more attempts to read the Bible in a year than any other force on Earth, and we can understand why. The Bible’s retelling of the rise of the monarchy in the 10th century BCE to the end of the Babylonian exile, in 539 BCE covers much of the same ground as 1 and 2 Samuel and 1 and 2 Kings minus the cinematic bit.

Gone is the battle between David and Goliath. Gone is a showdown between Elijah and the prophets of Baal and King Manasseh, whose wickedness provoked the Babylonian exile in 1 and 2 Chronicles. He is not that bad. In place of high drama scenes featuring highly questionable, but undeniably compelling heroes, 1 and 2 Chronicles gives us genealogies and extensive descriptions of temple building and a God who gives second chances.

Wait, what? Well, if you’ve ever wondered how the Bible’s ancient stories might inform a modern faith, you’re not alone. If you’ve ever struggled to reconcile biblical portrayals of the divine with your own understanding of God. You are not alone. If you’ve ever wanted to rewrite bits of the Bible for the times you live in, you are not alone.

The writers of 1 and 2 Chronicles have been there too. Set aside everything you think you know about 1 and 2 Chronicles and join Dr. Aaron Higashi as he shows us why the most boring books of the Bible aren’t actually that boring, that they are in fact among the most bold and daring books in the entire Bible.

Out October 28th, get a free chapter download right now at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/chronicles. 

Ever wonder what parts of the Bible we’re supposed to follow and which we aren’t? Well, this is the last call to pay what you can for our October class, “The Bible is Not a Rulebook” with our very own Jared Byas.

Pay what you can means you can pay as little as $1 or as much as you want for the class. 

Jared: Absolutely. We’re gonna look at different ways people think about the Bible as an authority to tell us right and wrong, how we’re supposed to follow the Bible and maybe how to shift our thinking about what the Bible is and what we’re supposed to do with it.

So I’ll be teaching that on October 28th from 8:00 to 9:30 PM EST. So mark your calendars and then go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/rulebook. 

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Pete: Hey folks. Today on Faith For Normal People, it’s just me, Pete, and I’m talking with Liz Charlotte Grant about the Bible and reading it and exploring it after old ways of reading just don’t make sense anymore and are not helpful and exploring artistic approaches and midrashic Jewish approaches and all sorts of things.

It was a great conversation. Now, Liz is an award-winning essayist published in many outlets and the author of the book, Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis after Losing Faith in the Bible. That’s pretty much what we talked about in this episode. And just a quick housekeeping note, since I’m hosting today’s episode by myself, there won’t be a quiet time segment at the end, but I hope you enjoy this fascinating conversation nonetheless, and let’s dive right in.

Liz: I mean, I think the fact that the text isn’t clear means that in a lot of ways we get, it’s like God handed us poetic license, all of a sudden we have an opportunity to demonstrate spiritual autonomy as grownups approaching the text, right? We’re not, we’re not kids.

Pete: Welcome to the show, Liz. It’s great to have you here. I’m sure this is like number two or three on your bucket list for the rest of your life. 

Liz: Uh, absolutely it is, of course. 

Pete: Perfect. All right, well, let’s get to it. Tell us a little bit about yourself and really what made you, uh, just say, I’m done with the Bible. Maybe we could start there. 

Liz: I mean, I would say that I completely ditched the Bible, um, but I would say that I don’t believe in it like I used to. 

Pete: Okay, do you get tired of it? 

Liz: Oh, yeah. 

Pete: Yeah. Like, I mean, okay, so talk, talk about, talk about that. Let’s, well, I seriously, yeah. But some people think they, they’re not allowed to.

Liz: I know, right? Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think I ever was in that camp entirely. I, I wanted to like the Bible more than I did, probably. But yeah, I’ve always been interested in the weirdest stories, so. I mean, I think you’re this way, Pete. I mean, otherwise why are you studying the Old Testament? Right? So the weird primordial humans and their interactions with this deity who comes out of nowhere speaking in their minds or aloud? 

We, you know, we’re not always sure, you know, are they on some hallucinogenic drug and then they meet the divine. Do they, you know, there’s all sorts of questions about the scriptures. Yeah. I didn’t think that way when I was a teenage evangelical. Um, but I, you know, I grew up in evangelicalism, uh, Bill Hybels evangelicalism on the East Coast.

Pete: But then what, what is it that, um, at what point did you consciously have in your mind, sort of a shift thinking? I just, I don’t think I believed the stuff the way I used to. And, and, and was there anything that prompted that, that really pushed you towards that kind of a realization?

Liz: You know, it’s so funny because I, I wish I could point to kind of one moment, but I think the fact is that my faith has been in evolution. Evolving for a long time, right? Um, in college, I mean, I think I, I, you know, college was the first time I learned the word evangelical, even though I went to a Christian, a private Christian high school. 

No, it was more an emphasis on the private than the Christians ide of the school. Um, so I, you know, I went to Wheaton College.

And in my first theology class, they’re using the word evangelical and it’s like, oh, that’s what I’m, you never, we never thought to define it before. It was just we are, we’re Christian. 

Pete: Right. 

Liz: And that’s all there is to it. Right. We’re not Catholic, we’re Christian. 

Pete: Yes, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I have students who don’t know much about Christianity and they have a Catholic background and they say, well, I’m not Christian, I’m Catholic.

And I’m saying, I, I wish you wouldn’t say that. It just doesn’t sound right to me. Right. You know, particular flavors for sure. 

Liz: It’s not right. You know, as far as the, the history of Christianity. Um, yeah. But I, yeah, I, I think one of the things that’s so interesting to me is that I think as I started to become, you know, I studied literature.

So I was interested in the, the literature element of the Bible. I was interested in the psychological realism of the characters. I was interested in the words and the artfulness of the text. Um, and I don’t really know if I read it, ever read it like a good inerrantist should. Because I wasn’t interested in that sort of reading of the Bible.

I was always a weird arty kid, and so I think learning, okay, I’m an evangelical, I come from this background, you know, just in college more opened up to me and I read more and I, you know, I got in therapy and that was a big thing. Working through dysfunction in my family background. Um, and that allowed for me to, to recognize the ways in which systems, the systems of my family, but also the systems beyond my family had shaped my understanding of religion and faith in God. I was just seeing this a really different way, um, than I had before. 

Pete: Liz. That is, that is very interesting. That’s not a typical sort of deconstruction story, if that’s even what we’re gonna call this. ’cause you, you just started expanding your thoughts to different areas and psychology helped you understand your existence and why people do what they do.

And you’re pretty smart. You went to Wheaton, the real one, right? The one in Chicago?

Liz: The real one. 

Pete: There are a couple of others out there anyway, the, 

Liz: the quote-unquote “Christian Harvard.” But you know the-

Pete: Yes, I know. So I hear. So, okay. So, um, you didn’t have a stringent, let’s say oppressive Christian upbringing, right? 

And you sort of didn’t even know you were an evangelical until you got to college and you went to an evangelical college with a good academic reputation. Just study literature, but then you started, um, expanding your consciousness a little bit about this text, and I, I’m guessing, I don’t wanna put words in your mouth, Liz, but I’m guessing that you found for yourself there needed to be different ways of coming at this text that would speak to you.

Liz: Absolutely. It is very easy to fall back on the aphorism of reading the Bible plainly. That is an evangelical understanding of the Bible. The Bible is easy to read. God communicates clearly to us. God reaches out to us. Right. The incarnation is, you know. Jesus, God in human form coming down to us.

So theoretically that would mean-

Pete: And that’s easy to understand too, obviously, right? That’s easy. 

Liz: Yeah, exactly right. Yeah. That was very easy for the disciples to understand, as we can tell. 

Pete: Yeah. 

Liz: This is a teaching that’s hard to understand. I mean, I feel like that’s a phrase the disciples are constantly throwing at Jesus.

They’re like, what the heck does that mean? I just have no clue what this man is talking about. Uh, yeah, I think, you know, so much of the Bible is like that and I think there was a part of evangelicalism, there is a part of evangelicalism still that desires certainty above all else. 

Um, and I think my background in the arts gave me a sense that that is just certainly not true. Like that certainty is not guaranteed to any of us. That safety is not guaranteed to any of us. And so then what do you do with that? What do you do with those questions and those doubts and those curiosities? Yeah. Um, I think I’m, you know, I’m a generalist.

I’m a columnist for The Christian Century. I’m not a seminarian. You know, and so coming to the book of Genesis was intimidating to me, but it was also an interesting challenge. You know, to be able to say, what does it look like to read this in a really different way, you know? To put other text ups up against it, to take the Bible seriously as a document.

You know, with its history and context, but also to say, how does that interact with my life right now? 

Pete: Right. 

Liz: If it’s not a science textbook, what is it?

Pete: so, I mean, you came at it then, let’s say from an artistic point of view. Which I think is, I mean, I wanna say for everybody out there that’s, I think you almost have to do that if you’re going to read these ancient texts, which are filled with mythic images, uh, which are not analytical, they’re almost archetypal, you know, kinds of things that, uh, you know, when we look at them from a, that highly rationalistic point of view, um, I can imagine ancient Israelites saying, what, what do, what do you mean?

Like, there’s a talking snake and a magic tree in this garden. What, what other genre clues do you want me to give you? That were talking, you tell the story.

Liz: You gotta believe, like, the Tower of Babel, like, they didn’t expect that that was a direct history, right? Like, this is a question, what do we do with all the nations of people?

How did this happen? How are there all these tribes? 

Pete: Right? And, and I, I think the, the, to make the assumption as you’re making and as many people make that listen. I think we should assume going into the reading of this text, that we’re not going to be confronting what we call history. Um, we would be accused of being subjective in that sense regarding the Bible, but the same question could be turned to literalists saying you’re making an assumption about the nature of this text.

That frankly seems to fall apart rather quickly once you start reading it, it just gets too odd and too weird and, you know, um, but that’s a matter of, that’s a whole other topic that’s, you know, what’s wrong with the evangelicalism kind of thing, but we, I, let’s not talk about that. Let’s talk about specifically how you went at reading Genesis.

And I know that I want to focus on something, at least at the beginning. A big word for you is midrash. Can you just give our listeners, some of them know what midrash is, but a lot of listeners might not. So can you just give a little quick definition of that? Let’s launch into how that helped you understand or read Genesis differently.

Liz: Yes, absolutely. I think, um, the best image from within the Bible itself, for me understanding the idea of Midrash is Jacob wrestling with God or the angel in the middle of the night getting in the dirt and rolling around and sweating and walking away with a limp. That, to me, is the archetypal imagery that, that, I mean, really it gives me an entire, um, lesson in how to read the Bible, I think.

Um, the Israel, the, the Hebrew people, the Jews took their name from him, Israel. And part of that was this, this call that they felt to wrestle with God and to wrestle with this text. And I think for me, that has been a really, like a North Star as I go into this text to say, you know, okay, parts of this text might be 4,000 years old.

They might be older, you know, they might reference older works. They may, you know, they might not be that old, but certainly these are ancestral texts, right, that have been passed down to us. A library of opinions and poems and songs and faux histories, mythology about the beginning of the world and God’s role and in that, and what, what humans have to do with that at all. 

Um, so a mirdashic approach really kind of takes that idea of wrestling and commentary further, I think than evangelicals often do. You know, because of the enlightenment thinking that we, that so often accompanies our commentary. We kind of, and this is not just evangelicals, right?

This is modernism. 

Pete: Right? Right. 

Liz: We want to be able to categorize, we wanna kind of pin down God on, on a board like a butterfly and study God from all angles. And it just, the Bible doesn’t always work for us like that. Yeah. Right, right. Um, this is why I, I tend more toward a sort of biblical criticism, like a literary critic, you know, like biblical theology rather than systematic theology.

Because I think when you get into systematics, all of a sudden you’re kind of trying to create all these categories. They may or may, may not fit all of the text. Right. So how can you be a little bit more flexible to the words in front of you? Yeah. Um, and so, you know, midrash, there’s a couple different types in the Jewish consciousness, but the gist is there’s sort of law midrash.

And that’s a more straight exegesis of precepts and it’s more of the plain reading idea. But then there’s this entirely different aggadic midrash, um, and those are sort of the expansions. The exploration of white space. You know the words between the letters Yeah. And the sentences and in the margins.

Um, and so, so often it’s mythological and it’s rabbis arguing with each other often, you know, sometimes they’re in conversation, sometimes they’re arguing. Um, I think sometimes because there’s a mythological element to these stories, and I can give you some examples in a sec, but I think sometimes evangelicals think that that is false or that it takes the scriptures less seriously. 

Um, in fact, the Jewish understanding of the scriptures is very similar to evangelicals. You know, there’s a sense of authoritative, this is the authoritative word from God. Um, and they are desiring to understand it so deeply. Even the parts that are confusing or you know, about which the text is silent, you know?

How did Abraham decide to hear the voice of God? And just roll up his rugs and walk out into the desert, right? We don’t know. But the midrash says, well, maybe God had been talking to him beforehand. And there are all these mythological stories about Abraham, um, encountering God as a baby and all sorts of things.

Pete: Yeah. Just, just to be clear, so midrash, at least in that sense, is filling in these silent gaps that people might have questions about. Maybe a good example there too, just to mention it is where did Cain get his wife from? That kind of stuff, you know? Or you know, why did God put a serpent in the garden when it was going to be such a problem?

I mean, did he not know this would happen? Those are, and those are very modernist kinds of questions, I think they’re not midrashic kinds of questions. But the thing is that the text is gapped. It’s got the white spaces in between, right? And it’s like, that’s why it’s a gift that keeps on giving.

People wanna make sense of it for themselves. 

Liz: I think so too. I mean, I think the fact that the text isn’t clear means that in a lot of ways we get, it’s like God handed us poetic license, all of a sudden we have an opportunity to demonstrate spiritual autonomy as grownups approaching the text, right?

We’re not, we’re not kids. We, you know, we have this hard text in front of us and especially, you know, because it’s such an, it’s an ancient masterwork. We, you know, we don’t know everything about it, and we just won’t know everything about it because we, we weren’t there, we don’t have the same culture in history.

Geography, et cetera, et cetera. Um, and so there, there are question marks that continue to surround this work. And it is a beautiful work, you know? And so it’s helped me a lot to think about Genesis in particular, but the Bible as a whole, as a work of art. That just sort of opens up something for me as I approach this text.

Pete: Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s an angle that I think many people don’t consider to be a valid one. ‘Cause it’s, like you said, it doesn’t really lend itself towards the systematization of the text, which is, um, I think a particularly Christian issue. It’s not all Christians, but I, I mean, John Levinson, one of my Jewish professors in graduate school said, for Jews, the Bible is like a problem.

You gotta try to solve it creatively. For Christians, it’s a message that has to be proclaimed. So we gotta have the one message and, and we tend to get very nervous with, um. I think some rather obvious points that Jewish midrash brings up for us and at let, let’s explore that more in Genesis. You had some other stories.

Before we get there, can I back up on one thing? I, I just, as a literary person or an art an artist person, the story of Jacob wrestling, do you have any thoughts or does it not maybe not matter to you? Do you think that the story was written in later in, in light of later, let’s say Israelite realities, or do you think that was the older story that sort of gave rise to Israel’s self understanding?

If that’s not too confusing, an odd way of putting it. 

Liz: That’s a great question. I don’t know the answer. 

Pete: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I mean, I do. I do, but that’s okay. You don’t have to know these.

Liz: Tell me. Tell me, tell me the answer, please. 

Pete: I, I always suspect that the, uh, whatever was there in these ancient stories that were probably told and handed down how old they were.

No one really knows. But, um, I don’t think the Bible was invented, uh, in the year 1000 BCE or something. I think that these stories are much older, but we don’t know what form those early stories were. So my default position on many of these things is what I’m seeing here, especially in Genesis, is writers reworking the ancient traditions in light of specifically the monarchy and then the Babylonian exile. 

And to me as, as a, as a critical scholar, that has always made the most sense to me. But I think that can dovetail and be in conversation with, let’s say, more literary or artistic ways of understanding the text.

Liz: I mean, one of the things I love about that is this understanding that story changes. You know, that stories change according to culture and time and place and people. Whoever is telling, telling a story is gonna tell it a different way, you know? You wouldn’t tell the same story, you know, exactly how I would tell it.

And, and I think that’s fascinating. I think that is worth exploring. And it’s interesting. It doesn’t mean that a text isn’t authoritative. Which is kind of another, you know, and that term is, is tough in progressive spaces because what kind of authority does this text have? Ah, you know, like we, we we’re not sure.

And we’re, we’re still trying to figure it out. You know, God speaks here. 

Pete: Yeah. 

Liz: That’s what I believe. But can I tell you how? 

Pete: Right. 

Liz: You know, can I tell you what sort of God dust is sprinkled in the pages? Of course not. I don’t, you know, I don’t know. Um, I don’t think any of us do, and I think when we try to fill in those gaps with certainty, we make mistakes, you know? 

And we end up kind of bludgeoning people, which is so often what Genesis has been, it’s been this weapon of the culture wars. Right? Absolutely. Instead of this kind of gentle, generous, interesting, generative work of art. Um, right. And I think, you know, in my book, listen, I’m not a, I’m not a scholar.

Which is why I appreciate you and the show so much, Pete, because, uh, you better believe I was listening to some of those Genesis, um, episodes. 

Pete: But you’re here to be you, Liz. You’re here to be you. And bring the stuff that you do that I don’t do.

And that’s, and that’s the thing, like I, I mean, uh, just to pause here on this, um, you know, I think being an academic helps you understand certain things that are of academic interest, like where does the Bible come from? How did the Israelites arise? But the Bible is the people’s book and there’s no stopping that.

Right? It’s always been the case. And people have said the weirdest stuff throughout history about the Bible, so have scholars by the way, but, um, it’s, it’s, it’s a book that’s meant to be engaged by people and by communities of faith, asking questions of meaning. 

And that’s, that’s why midrash is a thing in Judaism because it’s how do we make the text, how do we look at this text and, and, and bring it into the conversation with our own moment, with our own existence? And the church has done that too. I mean, with, with great zeal, with reading Jesus all over the place. You know, in the Hebrew Bible when he’s, you know, in, in a technical, historical sense, not there, but everything is read in light of Jesus.

And that’s Christian midrash that’s reading creatively and, and seeing how we can draw these two universes together. So, and I, and I don’t think that’s the, the property of, let’s say, professional exigeses or theologians. I just think that we, we have a background where we can add some substance to it and say, you know, I hear what you’re saying, but that’s been a big pitfall in the past.

We might have to avoid this, that, or the other thing. So I am, I am, I mean this sincerely, uh, you know, some of the biggest, uh, advances in biblical scholarship have been by non-academics. I mean, the whole thing about who wrote the Pentateuch was started in the 18th century by a doctor. Literally a physician.

Liz: Oh that’s great. 

Pete: Now, of course he knew Hebrew, which helps. But back then they didn’t watch tv. They just did stuff like that.

Liz: Yeah, they were pretty bored.

Pete: That’s why, and I’ve, and I’ve learned, and I continue to learn from people with no academic background. 

Liz: And obviously I agree. I, I, you know, I wrote this book. Right. Yeah. I think for me, questions of historicity, of, you know, who wrote what, when. Those are not my questions. Those are somebody else’s questions. My questions are why are we here? 

And how has this text been read? And then how does that impact us as people even now?

And so, you know, those bigger questions of the text, you know, what does God think of us? Why did God make us? I think so much about Genesis is focused around those questions, like, you know, when the Hebrews were writing about the origin of the world, they wrote a poem. You know, they wrote a poem.

That was the first thing. That’s how the Bible starts with a poem. 

Pete: And that annoys me so much. ’cause I don’t like poetry. 

Liz: That’s, I mean, that’s fair. 

Pete: How dare the Bible, how dare the Bible not be legalistic and all that stuff in the beginning anyway. Yeah, right. Exactly. Wrote a poem. 

Liz: I mean, it gives us so much space, right?

It gives us space to say we don’t exactly understand it, and we weren’t there. 

Pete: Right. 

Liz: And there are questions that remain, right? And one of the things I’ve loved about physics in the past, say, 20 years, is that we continue to learn new and new things about the origins of the universe and realize just how little we know actually about the universe.

I think the statistic is like we know about 5% of the universe. 

Pete: Right. 

Liz: And we know a lot. Right?

Pete: And, and, and the more we, we, who’s we? Those guys, those, those smart people who do math. Um, the more they study, the more that a hundred percent increases. It’s a bigger hundred percent.

So we know in a way, we know less and less. And, and for me, that’s not, um, well, okay. And that’s why the Bible’s right. We have to go back to the Bible. ‘Cause the Bible’s certain. No, it’s, it’s telling us something about, I think what God is like and, and mystery becomes, I don’t know for you, but mystery for me has become a very important word over the past maybe 15, 20 years.

And I revel in that. I’m so happy that I don’t have that chance at figuring stuff out. All we have is, well not all, but what we have is this text compiled over probably a millennium or so of people’s journeys, of faith, of trying to articulate for themselves what this mystery is. And, um, you know, it’s been said that, uh, the word God is a cloak we throw over mystery to give it a shape.

I think, uh, Pete Holmes just said that in a comedy routine, but I, I think that’s a brilliant way of putting it. And, and we’re all in the same space. Now, what facet of human existence is going to be well-suited to ask questions of that mystery? 

And it may not always be the analysts, right? It’s the artists who are, I think, more in tuned with myth than many people are, they’re, they’re asking about meaning and big questions, you know? And that’s, that’s why I think this, I’m, I’m, I’m glad you did this, you know, it’s, and, and I love the book. I even endorsed it as I recall. So, um. By the way, the book is, we haven’t talked about that yet.

Liz: Thanks for that, by the way. The endorsement. 

Pete: You’re welcome. So anyway, that’s, that’s the book, uh, Knock at the Sky. And, um, so anyway, uh, and, and the way you’re coming at it, this is the thing about authority. It’s a kind of authority that you are taught, ’cause you want to understand the text and then bring it into conversation and, and, and, and to a, a deep conversation, even a challenging conversation with your existence.

And other models of authority, I’d say are more judicial models of authority, legal models of authority, which I think have their place for some things. But to think that the biblical text is exhausted by that kind of authority, I, I think ultimately that’s what drives people away. ‘Cause it just doesn’t work for them.

And not, not because they’re weak, but because it just doesn’t make sense. 

Liz: Well, and it’s, it’s an authoritarianism. An interpretative authoritarianism. Right? Yeah. There’s one single way, and if you don’t fall in line, then what does that mean about you? Right. You’re, it’s a, it’s an issue of belonging then.

Right? Right. Instead of, you know, what does, what does this text invite us into? You know, what is God inviting us to here? What are our ancestors, you know, one of the things I love about what you said, you know, over a millennium, this was compiled. And then beyond that, people continued to write and copy and hand it down to their children over and over and over again until it got to us.

And so for some reason we have this ancient text, of course, parts of it, you know, we had to really dig up in the sand and try to piece together. It got to us pretty ragged, let’s put it that way. The fact that these things were preserved at such great cost and effort. I think it is worthwhile to ask.

You know when, when you think about, why would progressive Christians even still read the Bible? Our ancestors have something to say to us. You know, they found this text important and so what can we find in this text of God and of ourselves? And I think that that’s a, a motivating reason to keep reading.

Pete: Yeah. And, and you, it seems like you don’t make a hard distinction between the Bible as the ancestors have something to say to us and the Bible, maybe God the Spirit has something to say to us. Those two things, that’s not an either-or. 

Liz: Yeah, I think they, they play together. Yeah, I do. 

Pete: That’s deep stuff right there, Liz, part of this, it’s, that’s really deep stuff you’re saying there.

Liz: Part of that for me is, you know, I’m probably a natural charismatic, um, or at least I used to be, I don’t know what I am now, to be honest. Um, still figuring that out. Yeah. P-C-U-S-A, but that’s kind of frozen chosen for me, I don’t know. Um, but I think, you know, the openness to mystery, to the unknown, to questions and curiosity. 

You know, I think so many of the questions of our, of our lives actually revolve around death going, kind of what actually happens. Then, you know, um, we ask questions about our origin because we’re actually really curious about our death, right? Like, why do, why are we here at all?

Right? And what am I supposed to do with my time? Um. And I, I think, you know, the, the openness in the Bible, the fact that it’s not an in-Genesis, the fact that we don’t know exactly the cosmology of the world, we cannot pin it down. I think that’s very compelling and interesting. 

Um, and so, you know, I think being able to kind of draw in, you know, in my book I draw in a lot of science stories and psychology and I, I talk about, I talk about the fine arts, I talk about silence. John Cage has a piece in which he sits at a piano and plays nothing for three movements. You can imagine how that went down. 

Pete: I’ve written that. I’ve written books like that. 

Liz: It’s very tempting. Who would give you a book deal for that?

That’s my question. Um, but I think, you know, some of these things that we experience in our own lives, they have something to say and kind of to be put in conversation with the biblical text. You know, that’s kind of, one of my goals is to allow you and invite people to kind of take their own experiences and their own inspirations and kind of put them next to this ancient text and say how do these interact?

And how does this feel differently with this story of dark matter right next to it or this, you know, the third man syndrome, you know, how does that interact with the story of Jacob, for example, you know? Who was Jacob wrestling with? We’re not really sure.

And does that intersect with some of these other things? Right. 

Pete: I don’t know, Liz. You’re sounding really liberal right here. I’m getting very uncomfortable now because you’re not saying all the right things. I’m sorry. 

Liz: Same with my family members. It’s okay. 

Pete: I’m being sarcastic folks.

I’m very sorry. I really am sorry. But, um, you know, the, I, I, I think you would be told, let’s say by loving evangelicals who like you and love you, but just disagree with you, not not bad people, right? Who would say, it seems like you’re letting your own personality and your own thoughts and your own intuitions and your own experiences really shape this whole thing.

It has to be shaped by the objective word of God that tells you what you need to know, and then you have to fall in line with it, not be in conversation woo-hoo with it. Right. But actually to be in, in, um, in conformity to let, to conform yourself to what is written in the text. And I understand that. I know why people say that.

And it’s not the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. You know, I, it makes some sense within certain parameters, but, um, respond to that. How do you think through that issue of life? ‘Cause people have heard, you know, I’ve heard from my kids, like we heard in church all the time, you can’t trust yourself.

You can’t trust your intuitions, you can’t trust your experiences. That’s evil. You’re sinful. Um, we’re not, ’cause we’re telling you how to understand this text. Right. But, uh, and it’s, it’s, I think it’s, that’s it. I, I wanna, I’m gonna ask you to talk about that because that is such a big thing for people to almost feel like they’re betraying God when they ask questions of meaning for them in this text. So how do you respond to that? 

Liz: I mean, I have had, uh, concerned persons reach out to me, which I actually really appreciate because-

Pete: I like the way you put that. Concerned persons.

Liz: Concerned persons, um, genderless persons.

I think, I think it comes from a place of genuine concern. Yeah. And so I can see that. I mean, the thing that’s tough is we fundamentally will disagree at the end, right? Even if I explain myself well, so that can be challenging to know kind of what’s their tolerance for agreement and disagreement?

Mine is actually very high. Theirs might not be, right. I, I know you’ve experienced that Pete, at Westminster and elsewhere. Um, one of the concerns that people bring up is sort of a hierarchy of texts, you know? When you’re putting all these different things right next to the biblical text and interpreting, not just from commentators, not just the biblical text, but kind of using these other stories to interpret the Bible.

All of a sudden this becomes like, oh, this is a really, you know, postmodern, um, yeah, non-objective, highly personal, uh, accounting of God, and all of a sudden I’m a universalist, right? Now that is not actually true of me. Um, but I think there is this fear of is isogesis that comes up, um, right.

Isogesis is very much, you know, reading, uh, like a personal reading of the text. And yet I think one of the things that I came back to over and over as sort of a guiding point for interpretation was this idea from Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg. Those who don’t know her, I recommend every single one of her books.

Okay. Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, she is a Midrashic scholar, mostly a scholar of Rashi, who is one of the most, um, quoted of the Rabbinic Scholars. Um, and she takes this iso scholarship approach in her own writings and has done kind of writings on most of the Torah. She herself is Jewish. 

And she describes it, she says, “my mode of inquiry was closer to the rhetorical than to the methodical. In terms of Gerald Bruns’s distinction, the rhetorical having no greater ambition than to discover what can be said,” and she suggests the aim of interpretation isn’t merely to domesticate. To familiarize an ancient book.

It is also, and perhaps more importantly, to make strangeness in certain respects, stranger. Which is to say, approaching the text from an isogenical point of view means that you don’t really read any text. You don’t arrive at one clear interpretation, but the whole point is to muddy the waters, to actually kind of bring up the incorrect interpretations.

So there’s this sense of, you know, there’s almost no, and in fact, I kind of believe that there’s almost no wrong way to read the Bible. Which I know is a heresy in most places. Um, I would say the one wrong way is to read it as if it’s meant to be a weapon against people. Because it was meant to be a gift to us.

Direction and guidance and wisdom and presence. And so when it’s used as a weapon, I would argue that it’s, that’s probably the one truly wrong way to use the Bible.

Pete: I agree with you that, um, and again, that’s, that’s, this is the kind of authority that the Bible has when you look to it, to, and when you’re done. You’re not so much saying, and now I have unlocked the mystery and it is mine, and I will now use it and tell other people about it. I mean, not to sound sort of namby-pamby and, but it’s, you’re more left with a sense of like, oh boy, wow.

You know? Yeah. I mean they used to call that awe, you know, and yeah, and, and it’s an awe that isn’t derived from, I now have unlocked the answer to everything. It’s more, this is so much bigger than I ever could have imagined. You know, isn’t it? Wouldn’t it be ironic, Liz? I think, I think this is sort of what you’re saying, that the purpose of the Bible is actually not to give you to that narrow path where you will understand everything, but it’s so convoluted.

It’s so internally contradictory and weird. It’s like that’s never even an option for us, you know? Yeah. So how do we access this book in a meaningful way and, um, there are multiple ways of doing that. And I think, you know, your approach is, is, um, actually reminds me of the medieval period too. When, when, uh-

Liz: Oh, thanks.

Pete: Yeah. Well, no, that’s a good, that’s a, that is a compliment, right? 

Liz: No, I, I’m, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, me, it’s not, mine’s not very allegorical, you know, so that’s the one downside. 

Pete: But, but medieval interpretation, whether Jewish or Christian, um. You know, the literal meanings that Yeah, it, it’s there, it’s important, blah, blah, blah.

It’s also the most boring, you know, if you want this exactly, if you want the text to be relevant to you, you have to engage it on a very different level. You have to almost seek your answers in the text, but the text isn’t even talking about it. So there’s, yeah. Maybe not allegorical, but, a moral meaning, you know, like, how is this relevant for me and how, how does this explain my existence?

Liz: Right. Right, right. I mean, Genesis, you know, it, genre-wise, there is a lot of history, um, and narrative. At least let’s say narrative. Yeah. Um, whether it’s history is up for debate. Right. But, um, the one thing I would just add to that. I think I, I have also come to understand that interpretative, the interpretive process is not an individual one.

Um, one of the things that I was really determined to do in this study was to seek out voices other than those that I had already heard, right? So let’s say the dead white guys, okay? Those were the ones that I was more familiar with from my training and background. And so I said, okay, I wanna hear from anyone else.

I mean, I am open to whatever that looks like. Um. And I can kind of weigh it and disagree, but I wanna put those other things in conversation because we have done such a poor job creating kind of a democratic reading of this book. The way that we have interpreted this book has a hierarchy to it, right?

Like, whose voice and interpretation matters the most. Who gets to say what the right interpretation is, right? This is kind of all the questions of inerrancy are kind of swirling around this idea of who has authority, right? You know, the Chicago state authority comes up, that word comes up three or four times in a few paragraphs. I mean, it’s just the thing that they are thinking about is like, who is in authority? 

Pete: Mm-hmm. 

Liz: And generally it’s them. Right. 

Pete: Right, right. 

Liz: Um, and I understand the appeal of that, but I, I’m here to say, I don’t think that that is necessarily what the Bible is trying to do, um, the Bible.

Pete: Now they’ll say the authority is the text, but it very quickly comes down to their understanding of what the text is sort of metaphysically and what their understanding of passages are, and basically it comes down to a systematic theology of that. Yeah. I didn’t mean to interrupt you, but I can imagine some people saying, well, yeah, they’re just, they’re just, they’re not, they’re not the authority.

They’re, they’re seeing the Bible as the authority. That, that’s very slippery between those two concepts because unfortunately it’s our way of understanding it. 

Liz: Unfortunately it’s not as, as clear as that. And, um, sometime we can have a whole conversation about inerrancy, Pete, ’cause you and I have talked in the past about that.

And it would be fascinating to talk about that summit. I know that’s your favorite thing to talk about. Um, I think you know, it, it’s just a challenge though when you think about, um, how do you approach this text, not just as an individual but in a community? What does it do to kind of widen the table of interpretation and say, okay, I’m gonna spend time with a womanist.

I’m gonna spend time with disabled theologians and queer theologians. I’m gonna spend time with black liberationist theologians. Latin American liberationists. And just to say kind of what did these different voices add to the discourse? What are we missing about this text, you know, if it really is this complex and wide.

If itself within itself is an ongoing conversation, then what does it look like for us to mirror that approach in our current interpretation? I think that’s what we see in the text. There’s so many different voices. There’s so many different books. You know, there are, they disagree with each other about, about things. 

They, they, um, have conflict. They have issues with themselves, each other, God, everybody. Right. I mean, there’s, there’s so much conflict within the scriptures themselves, and I think that is a model for us. Right. You know, if, if you’re saying that you take Biblical interpretation seriously, if you take the Bible seriously, I think you need to take seriously that the Bible disagrees with itself.

Pete: Absolutely. Yeah. 

Liz: You need to take seriously that it’s a conversation 

Pete: That is, I mean, I’m gonna say that is an obvious point. That needs to be made again and again and again. And I say that because it’s, it’s very hard for some people to hear. Now there’s some people who are not ready to hear that and that’s fine.

But there are some people who are right on the edge saying, I’m gonna fall one way or the other here. And I think that’s actually very encouraging for people to hear, you know, who, who, who are in that place where this is gonna help them to stay in that, um, that conversation with this tradition?

Liz: Absolutely. Yeah. All of the Bible requires interpretation and so it really is a matter of, you know, in community with people you trust whose lives look like the person they’re following, supposedly, Jesus. Um, I think that is kind of, you know, taking a, an approach of humility and saying, how can I take in even more insights from other people who are genuine humans?

I mean, all of us have something that I think we can add to the conversation here. And that doesn’t mean we all get, you know, weighted the same. And that’s okay. Um, but everybody should get to speak. Everybody should. It’s okay, you know, for everybody to have an opinion and a voice.

And sometimes we see things in a text. ’cause of our particular situation that somebody else wouldn’t see. And absolutely, it’s there. It’s in the text, right? It was there the whole time and we just overlooked it. Yeah. Um, and so I am really advocating for both the spiritual autonomy to do that work to kind of own your own perspective and voice and the humility.

To do that in community with other people who probably know a lot more than you. Right. Or who have a completely different take on the same scripture. You know, what does that teach you about God and about yourself? And about how you can be a human that looks like Jesus in this world.

Pete: I was gonna ask you if you had any closing thoughts about what to take away from all this, but I think he just did it. You nailed it. That’s really great. So yeah.

You know, you’re advocating, um, a certain freedom in, in looking at the Bible and engaging God. And, and, and again, not to be too simplistic, but not from a, um, a perspective mainly of some type of fear, but from a place of, of wonder and, in that sense dependence, and that is, that is an authority. Um, when, when you give yourself over to that.

It’s, it’s a mystery that can be known, but it’s, it’s a mystery nonetheless. And, uh, so thanks for writing this book, which I really enjoyed. When did it come out? What month did it come out? 

Liz: January. 

Pete: Oh, way back in January. Boy, this has waited too long to do this. So anyway.

Liz: You know what, it’s a pleasure to get to talk to you whenever it happens.

Pete: Yeah, I gotcha. So, right, Liz. Well. Thank you for being here. It’s been wonderful. You’re welcome. I’m glad we had the chance to talk a little bit more about your wonderful book. 

Liz: Thank you Pete. I’m so glad to be here. 

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