Episode 243: Pete Enns & Jared Byas - Finding Wisdom in the Balance
In this episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared answer questions from community members in The Society of Normal People, pulling on a common thread of how to move beyond dualism and find wisdom in a more balanced perspective. Join them as they explore the following questions:
How do we handle it when an answer is not black or white?
How do you balance trust for the unexplainable with curiosity and rationalism?
What’s the balance between a vertical relationship with God and a horizontal relationship with others? What happens when those are out of sync?
Paul’s writings often include a theme of weakness versus strength. What can we glean from these passages about balance?
How were Pete and Jared impacted by teachings that focused on dualism rather than nuance?
Tweetables
Pithy, shareable, sometimes-less-than-280-character statements from the episode you can share.
It's the rational, analytical part of me, that has taught me the need to embrace mystery in some sense, because a reasoning will only go so far. If you're going to be a person of faith, I think we have to live with that tension. — @peteenns
Recognizing the limitations of our ability to understand is a very healthy thing. — @peteenns
There is a definite difference between uninformed ignorance and the limitations of reason. — @jbyas
Mystery can be a way of getting out of doing rational thought. — @peteenns
Uninformed ignorance can look a lot like bumping up against the limits of reason, if you don't have the tools to understand the difference. — @jbyas
Respecting mystery is as old as the Christian faith and Judaism. — @peteenns
You can afford to wonder about the balance between [a horizontal and vertical aspect of faith] if you're in a position of power and privilege. Exactly what the prophets are talking about. — @peteenns
It’s in the New Testament all over the place, that this relationship with God is meant for an expression amongst people. — @jbyas
I don't think you have to have a relationship with God—in the Protestant conservative thinking of that—in order to love people well. — @jbyas
Dehumanizing is wrong. You should never dehumanize people or try to manipulate them or control them. That's a cultish mentality. — @peteenns
Keep asking the questions. Do it online, do it in your communities, do it in your churches. Keep exploring, because theology is the asking of questions and having the conversation. — @jbyas
We were sort of told that theology is in the answers. But theology is in the conversation and conversation is driven by questions, not answers. — @jbyas
Mentioned in This Episode
Past Episodes Mentioned
[Bible] Episode 176: Jared Byas - The Making of the Modern Mindset, Pt. 1
[Bible] Episode 186: Jared Byas - Making of the Modern Mindset, Part 2
[Bible] Episode 197: Jared Byas - Making of the Modern Mindset, Part 3
[Bible] Episode 209: Jared Byas - Making of the Modern Mindset, Part 4
[Faith] Episode 2: Rhett & Jessie McLaughlin - Finding a Curious Faith
Join: The Society of Normal People community
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Pete
You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Pete Enns.
Jared
And I'm Jared Byas.
Intro
[Intro music begins]
This episode is a little bit different than other episodes, because what we did was we asked people in our Society of Normal People, what kind of questions they have, what kinds of things they want to talk about. And so we got a great list of questions, and, here's the thing, rather than just grabbing random questions, we collected them around what we think is a very clear theme. And I would say it's a theme of balance. So, you know, “if this is true, what do we do with this?”
Jared
Right.
Pete
Kind of thing.
Jared
It's like this-or-that.
Pete
Right.
Jared
Both of these things seem to be present, how do we handle when the answer is not black or white?
Pete
Right.
Jared
It's not this or that. So it's balanced, but it's also wisdom, because we often talk about wisdom as navigating between things that seem like opposites. But basically living in a world where it's not black and white.
Pete
Right. And discerning, like, paths to take with there aren't always clear answers to all these questions. But the questions are very good ones, of this balance and wisdom. And I like balance—you know, sometimes balance is used the wrong way, Jared, at least for my taste, because, "Oh, that's too extreme, you have to be more balanced." In other words, you've got to pull back, which is just a way of saying, "I don't like what you said."
Jared
Mhmm.
Pete
"Come to where I am. And I'm balanced, right?" It's not about achieving some balance where we have, you know, a perfect answer or thinking process about things. But it is recognizing that there are tensions that build up with some of these things, and how do you embrace one thing and not let go of something else that you actually think is valuable? We could call this paradox too or something like that. That's sort of what we're trying to get at with some of these questions.
Jared
Yeah, I like what you said, it's navigating the tensions and that's what these questions all have in common.
[Teaser clip of Pete and Jared speaking plays over intro music]
Pete
“There are people who love people well who are not religious. Now, some would say, God is working through them anyway.”
Jared
“Which is fine.”
Pete
“Which I actually agree with.”
Jared
“Yeah, I think that's totally fine.”
Pete
“But there's no overt attempt to worship God and I will now reflect this. I just think we're overthinking all this. It doesn't even have to go there. Just try to follow God by not being a jerk.”
[Intro music ends]
[Ad break]
Jared
So the first one is from Meiling. And a few of these actually use the word balance, and this is one of them.
[Reads listener question]: "So, Paul talks about the foolishness of Christ to the wise of the world. Would you connect that to the ideas you have about the sin of certainty? How do you balance trust for the unexplainable with curiosity and rationalism? It feels too easy to veer off into rationalism and curiosity killed the cat land, or swing the other way into blind trust and cultism.”
The way I formulate this question is really mystery versus reason. When do we say "Oh, it's a mystery?" And when is that a cop-out for not using our brains?
Pete
Gee, Meiling, like you've known me my whole life here. [Laughing] And I live with that tension, Jared, I think you do, too. I think for me, one way I bring those two into conversation is, it's the rational, analytical part of me, that has taught me the need to embrace mystery in some sense, because a reasoning will only go so far. If you're going to be a person of faith, I think we have to live with that tension. Right? So how does that relate to the sin of certainty? Yeah, the sin of certainty doesn't mean—I mean, I, you know, wrote book about that a few years ago—but it doesn't mean don't think, it just means not knowing and not being sure—which is to say recognizing the limitations of our ability to understand is a very healthy thing and I think keeping those two things in front of me for me is a very helpful way of proceeding with my existence.
Jared
I have thoughts on this—and I don't think I've really articulated my thoughts so I'm going to be processing out loud here a little bit—but I think there is a definite difference between uninformed ignorance and the limitations of reason. So, I think this is best articulated in the Dunning-Kruger effect. This is a psychological phenomenon that basically says, the more we learn, the more we realize we don't know, which, essentially…
Pete
And the converse.
Jared
Yeah, the other side of that is, people who are barely introduced to a field often have a very high estimate of what they know. So I always think of it in terms of going to college. Your freshman year of college, you're starting to learn things and you start getting a really big head, you think you're smarter than anyone because you're introduced to all these concepts and ideas. And then you get to second year, third year, by the time you go to a master's program, you realize, "Oh, I know very little about this field."
Pete
[Hums in agreement]
Jared
Like your first year in your master's program is very different than your first year in college.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
The first year in college, the Dunning-Kruger effect is in full swing. First year, know a little bit, just enough to think I'm the smartest person alive.
Pete
[Chuckles]
Jared
First year of master's program, "Oh, I realize I know very little even about this one particular field." So, that, I think is different. This uninformed ignorance versus a limitation of reason. And sometimes I think we get those confused. So that whenever we're talking about how do we make sure we're not veering off into rationalism—which, again, I wouldn't articulate it that way. I would say kind of a capital R, or scientism or something like that, where we think we can know everything about everything. And when do we not just trust and end up being in a cult? For me, the difference is this difference between uninformed ignorance and the limitations of reason, I'm always going to use my brain to its max capacity.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
And I realized that when I do that, I'm still going to come to the edge of human knowledge in any particular field, in any particular area, I will be either limited by my own capacity, because I'm just not smart enough to understand or the field itself will be limited. Like, you can take the smartest person in the universe about cosmology and how the universe works, there are still going to be things we don't know. And so, it's a double whammy. Not only am I not that person, the field itself, even the smartest person doesn't know everything. So, but that's not—I think, to your point—that's not the same thing as not using our brain.
Pete
Right.
Jared
And I think people can easily exploit or manipulate mystery and uncertainty.
Pete
Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Jared
Where it's like, we introduce it too soon. It's like, no, no, no, there are answers—
Pete
That mystery God!
Jared
Right. There are answers to this question. And it's almost like this, "Oh, no, no, it's just a mystery." It's like, "No, no, it's not." "Yeah! No, it's just a mystery."
Pete
Mystery can be a way of getting out of doing rational thought.
Jared
Well, it can be a way of getting out of conclusions that we don't want to be true.
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
And I think that maybe is where we have to wrestle with when we talk about, again, balance and discernment.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
And navigating the complexities is this.... Uninformed ignorance can look a lot like bumping up against the limits of reason, if you don't have the tools to understand the difference.
Pete
So, the courage to move forward, using the full capacities of our reason, but also realizing that we're limited human beings, we simply will not know everything. And even what we do know is filtered through all sorts of limiting factors, like just how we were raised, our experiences in life, things like that. And I do believe that in the life of faith, exercising reason is a really good thing. And to do so, with the understanding that the ultimate object is the mystery of God. And I don't think... I have no interest in trying to escape that. I'm very comfortable throwing out ideas. And I think, you know, we joke sometimes Jared, you and I about, "Yeah, we just ask questions, we don't give answers." Well, there's sort of a reason for that, for me. Because, I mean, there's some things I want to give answers to, "I think Paul meant this, I really think Jesus meant that I think this is what's going on and Chronicles" or something. But that's a very different thing than saying, "I am now certain, I have answers to all the core questions of our humanity, and I get God." You know?
Jared
Right.
Pete
So there has to be then trust, which [Sighs] is it blind trust? No, it's a trust that I think is learned over the years of realizing how limited we are.
Jared
Right.
Pete
Especially given the topic. We are actually talking about the most expansive topic possible. Bigger than the cosmos.
Jared
I wonder if there's sometimes this defensiveness for people—and this is I'm gonna say this at risk of sounding arrogant.
Pete
[Laughs]
Jared
But I wonder sometimes if the overconfidence, or the feeling that we need to have certainty or know things, is an assumption that the people around us know more than we do. Like, I wonder if there's an insecurity of, "Well, everyone seems to know something I don't know." Because I mean, I felt like that for a lot of my childhood.
Pete
Okay.
Jared
Just feeling like, "Oh, no everyone has- It seems like there's people that I'm around to have certainty, that have not…" Especially if you grew up in an Evangelical tradition...
Pete
They give that impression.
Jared
They give the impression that they do have it.
Pete
Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, gotcha.
Jared
And so everyone's sort of walking around pretending like they know more than they do. Not because they necessarily want to, or because they're arrogant, or anything like that. It's just because I don't want to be ashamed, or I kind of want to keep up with the Joneses, so to speak. And, I just think—
Pete
So there's a sociological-community kind of factor in this?
Pete
Right.
Jared
I think so because what I wanted to—this is the part where I might get in trouble for being arrogant is—I think there's a certain level of education and understanding that comes, where at some point, for me—I'll just say, I won't throw you under the bus—I came to the realization like, "Oh, we're all in the same boat. No one has certainty about this stuff. I can talk to the top physicist-" And if you talk to a true expert, as we've had on the podcast a lot, it can be kind of frustrating because they have disclaimers for everything.
They don't come out and say, "Well, it's definitely this," they'll say, "Well, the archaeological evidence sort of points us in this direction."
Pete
Quit being wishy-washy.
Jared
Right. But that's every expert in the field.
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
That's how they talk.
Pete
They know that.
Jared
Right.
Pete
Right, right.
Jared
And so I just think when you get to—it's almost like we're climbing to the top of this mountain. At some point, if you have the opportunity, privilege, or whatever it is, to get to that in a field, you kind of get to the summit, and you're like, "Oh, that never ends."
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
"Like, we're not certain about this. We just, we have this, you know, pile of evidence that points in a certain way. And we've learned how to read that evidence, but it doesn't give us that certainty that we crave." And I think that for me is where proper humility and mystery comes in. But not before that.
Pete
Right. I think you have to earn the right to get to that point—which, an education can take many different forms.
Jared
Yeah, it doesn't have to be a formal education.
Pete
No, it doesn't have to be it can be just…
Jared
And experience and other things.
Pete
And curiosity and reading or talking or engaging. There are plenty of—and I say this with complete sincerity—there are plenty of educated people in my life who get that education from being humble, thoughtful people, and they read a lot and engage with people a lot. Right? So, that can come from many different ways. But I think sometimes exactly what you're just talking about, Jared, when you're trained to think that all of this church, Jesus, God business is "graspable," in fact, it must be grasped—when you learn stuff, and you try to take that with you, that same mentality, that can drive you absolutely crazy.
Jared
[Hums in agreement]
Pete
That can put so much pressure on you, so much internal turmoil, that "Deep down I know I don't know what I'm talking about anymore but I have to act like I do."
Jared
Right, exactly.
Pete
So for example, the internet. Just kidding. No, not kidding. That's true. You know, you see that with trolls and things like that.
Jared
And I think the trust piece, for me, is trusting that it's okay.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
That I don't know at all. And I think it's important because, you know, what you're talking about, I think a lot for our listeners, and I know for me, coming from a context where it wasn't actually okay not to know. And so for me, trust isn't trusting in some authority to tell me, it's trusting that it's okay not to know. Like, my life isn't going to be over, I'm not going to have some tragedy befall me because I don't know the ultimate meaning of the universe, or what God is always up to. And that's scary.
Pete
Yeah, it is. And also, for me, though, a little reassuring that I don't have to know that.
Jared
Right.
Pete
And I think, again, I think you put it very well, I don't trust God as the authority to give me the answers. I try to trust God, to walk through my life not expecting to have the answers. And there, you know, the cultish mentality, I can see in the question, you know. Like cults sort of do that. Yeah, they do but they don't. I think they're also rooted very much in certainty and now you have the answers in Waco, or whatever it is, you know?
Jared
Right.
Pete
And that's not—okay, respecting mystery is as old as the Christian faith and Judaism. It is, it's old. So, this is not new, what we're saying here, it's just a reality, I think, especially for people who have come out of, let's say, very conservative iterations of Protestant Christianity, where—I think you more than me—I wasn't raised that way.
Jared
Mhmm, right.
Pete
I sort of went to church as a Lutheran as a kid. Like, my parents weren't fundamentalist. They were Germans, right. So…
Jared
It's kind of the same.
Pete
Not really. Well...
Jared
In different ways.
Pete
And in different ways-
Jared
Fundamentalist about other things. Other things.
[Both laughing]
Pete
Oh, gosh, anyway...
Jared
But the way I'm kind of formulating it is, trusting that I know enough to be guided, but never enough to blindly trust it.
Pete
Right.
Jared
Like it can be a guide, I think of it like, "it's dimly lit." I mean, this is—you know, Paul talks about this a little bit-
Pete
Mhmm, right.
Jared
-To take him out of context, in some ways—but there's enough to guide but there's not enough to blindly trust. That's—that wisdom. That's the in between of the human experience. And sometimes when we are brought up in a tradition that expects perfection, then we're also brought up in a black and white world where it's either perfection or it's garbage. It's worthless.
Pete
Right, right.
Jared
And that's just not where we are with knowledge. And-
Pete
The only way to do that is to not know things.
Jared
Right.
Pete
I think that sounds snooty. But...
Jared
It is.
Pete
It's just not.
Jared
And I don't think people who even have that framework actually live that way. They live in this gray world of learning and growing, but never knowing it all.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
And that's human.
Pete
At least, sometimes maybe in the quiet of their hearts, that it might not be the impression that we want to give—and I say "we" not just those other people—but-
Jared
Right.
Pete
I understand this. The impression you want to give the people that you've got a handle on all this stuff, instead of saying, "I think this is how it works but I'm not sure." And I'm not starting a cult when I say that, you know. I appreciate this question.
Jared
Yeah.
Pete
Because it gets that core element, an inescapable element, of the nature of faith.
Jared
Yeah, and I can't, I don't think we can move on without acknowledging—just because when we talk about cults, and a lot of what we're talking about—we're dancing around power dynamics, too.
Pete
Uh-huh.
Jared
Because I do think there's a pressure. Knowledge is power. So the more we presume to know, the more we feel in power. And sometimes that's not a bad thing. If we're in a position where we feel like we don't have power, it can be a really good thing to feel empowered by that knowledge.
Pete
Right, exactly, right. Yeah.
Jared
But it can also be wielded as a weapon, and that's where cults can happen. Sort of like, there are personalities and people who are very good at making you feel small and ashamed, if you don't know.
Pete
Right.
Jared
And that's the voice in our head, I think that we need to get rid of. That says, "No, you know, what I do know enough to not be taken advantage of by you."
Pete
Right.
Jared
Yeah. But I can also still not know everything. And those are not mutually exclusive. And so when people come at you and say, "Well, don't you know?" It's like, "No, I don't,” and I'm okay with that, because I do know enough. I trust that about myself. And that's where I think this power dynamic comes in.
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
It's like, "You have the knowledge, therefore you have the power. I don't have the knowledge and therefore I don't have the power." I think that's a troublesome dynamic.
Pete
They just need to teach college students because they have no respect for my power at all.
Jared
[Laughing]
Pete
They love me, they don't have any respect for my power. I have no power. That's...
Jared
[Laughs]
Pete
Anyway, I'll work on that with my team of therapists.
Jared
I was going to say, you just, if you could see Pete's face, he just went—got lost.
Pete
Looking up into the ceiling? "Why? Why?"
Jared
Got very pensive all of a sudden.
Jared
[Sighs]
[Ad break]
Jared
Well, maybe let's move to the second question.
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
And, again, these won't be all the same, but they have a similar beat.
Pete
There's a balance theme to it.
Jared
Again, there's the word in the second one from Shelly, it has the word "balance" as well.
[Reading listener question] And they said, "This is more of an application question. I see many of my former church friends primarily interested in their vertical relationship with God yet unconcerned about the horizontal relationship with others, like social justice issues. Yet we most likely need the Spirit to move us toward those horizontal relationships. What's a good balance? If I can put it this way, Jesus says, the greatest commandment, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength. Love your neighbor as yourself.’" That's that vertical, and that horizontal? And how do we balance that?
Pete
The balance, I think, is actually part of the scriptural tradition. You just mentioned one thing, the prophetic tradition is all about the vertical, the proper worship of Yahweh—which in those days meant, you know, not having high places or things like that—but how that is tied to treating your fellow Israelites justly—all the minor prophets do this kind of stuff. Isaiah does it, they all do it. On some level, they all do it. You can't... Your failure to appreciate the vertical means the horizontal is falling apart. If you think you're doing the vertical great but you're not doing the horizontal, you're not actually doing it. So, it's the embodiment of all this and I think that's the inevitable dynamic of faith that both of those things are present. So they don't need to be balanced. [Laughs] They are the balance, right?
And she mentions that there are people who are only concerned about the vertical and the horizontal is like, "Well, all this social justice stuff, or wokeness stuff or whatever we want to talk about, this is not important. What's really important is worshiping God." Whatever that means in that context, maybe even going to church and you know, certain churches and doing certain things or youth groups or whatever that means, but the element of taking care of your neighbor who's in trouble, that is worship. You can't separate the vertical and the horizontal. They don't have to be balanced. They have to be recognized as playing off of each other.
Jared
Yeah and it immediately makes me think of 1 John in chapter four. It says, "Whoever claims to love God but hates a brother or sister is a liar."
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
"For whoever does not love their brother and sister whom they have seen cannot love God, whom they have not seen."
Pete
"I love you, I'm just not going to support government programs to help you."
Jared
Right.
Pete
Right. That's I mean, that's the way it goes.
Jared
That's usually it. Yeah.
Pete
"I love you. But you know-"
Jared
"Not in a way-"
Pete
"-Racial tensions or economic differences are not what the gospel is about." Have you heard that? I mean, I've heard that many times. The gospel is not, oh, I don't know what the Beatitudes say. [Laughs]
Jared
Well, there's a way to run roughshod over all here and now, present day ways, practically, of loving our neighbor. And that is the trump card of Heaven and Hell, that's how it was presented to me. "The best way I know to love you, all this stuff is ephemeral, it's temporary, it's going to go away. The best way—"
Pete
"Polish the brass" [unintelligible]
Jared
Right. "The best way to love you is to get you into heaven. And the only way I know to get you into heaven is to get you to understand Jesus the way I understand Jesus and say a prayer accepting that Jesus."
Pete
You nailed it. That's right. That's exactly right. So, “all this other stuff is not important.” But I think that people typically saying what you just said are themselves not suffering.
Jared
Yes, it's a privilege.
Pete
You can afford to wonder about the balance between the two, if you're in a position of power and privilege, exactly what the prophets are talking about. The people who aren't privileged.
Jared
And the language of that kind of argument, what it does is it actually eradicates the horizontal. The relationship between neighbors and subsumes it under the relationship of the vertical, meaning, "the only way I know to love you well, is actually to focus on God." And then in that way, you're erased, like you're invisible.
Jared
"But I'm hungry."
Jared
Right.
Pete
"And I have no place to live."
Pete
I know, that's so...
Pete
"And I can't get a job."
Jared
It doesn't necessarily have to be an either/or. But I do feel like in some traditions, it becomes an either/or of like, with this idea of like—you just saying, "but I was hungry." I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, that's another place in scripture," like it's in the New Testament all over the place, that this relationship with God is meant for an expression amongst people.
Pete
Right. I think part of the notion that these are two things that have to be balanced, I think, comes from—you know, you did your series on The Making of the Modern Mind—it comes from an overly intellectualized version of the Christian faith. Which is I think much of conservative Protestant Christianity is very into—I don't think their arguments are good. I don't think they make points that, to me, are persuasive. But they are all about making points and thought, and how do you think this? And how do you interpret this? And what do you say? What's your doctrine of this, your doctrine of that? That is what introduces the very, "Well, how do I balance this with this other stuff?" “Well, who cares about the marginalized, you know, it's just having right doctrine.” I think there's stuff in the Bible about having doctrine, but not helping other people. Right, James?
Jared
Right.
Pete
You know, "Just believing, you know, is great, but show me your faith without works. I'll show you my faith by my works." And I know there's some tension there with Paul. Gotta love the New Testament, people arguing with each other, but still—and that's a very Jewish way of thinking that James is highlighting there in the epistle. So, it's a fantasy to think they have to be balanced.
Jared
But, and I want to go, I want to take one more shot at this line of thinking, and then I want to maybe jump to a different part of this question. And that is, you know, Shelly said, "We most likely need the Spirit to move us toward those horizontal relationships." I just want to challenge that because that line of thinking is what led me to think, when I was younger, “atheists can't be good. All atheists are horrible people” and the only reason we're not all just out, murdering people and having orgies on the street, like, it's the purge…
Pete
[Wheezes laughing]
Jared
…365 days a year is because of Jesus.
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
And the Bible. Because what that does, one, is it puts people in a frenzy politically.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
Like it's very practical, like—
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
—that's why we have to have the Bible in school. Because without the Bible in school, all these bad things happen because without like- As though Christianity is a damn, that's holding back all of human evil.
Pete
Yes, exactly right.
Jared
And then what it does is it demonizes people who don't believe in God, because once you have that as the narrative, you run into people who don't believe in God, and you're like, "Oh, I can't trust you."
Pete
"You're just one step away from utter chaos."
Jared
Right. Well, and…
Pete
In our culture.
Jared
I'm thinking of our Faith for Normal People episode with Rhett and Jessie.
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
Where Jesse said she was scared once Rhett said, "I don't think I buy into all this."
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
She was on her toes because her tradition taught her to think that now Rhett's gonna become a horrible wretched person.
Pete
Right, right.
Jared
But she also trusted him because she knew him. She loved him. She knew him. And so for a while there's this tension of like, which is going to win out? And it turned out, no, he's a good guy.
Pete
Right, right.
Jared
And so, I just think that narrative of “we need the spirit, we need a relationship with…” So there may not be balance, but I would also say, it may not even always be connected. I don't think you have to have a relationship with God in the Protestant, conservative thinking of that in order to love people well.
Pete
[Hums in agreement]
There are people who love people well who are not religious. Now, some would say that God is working through them anyway.
Jared
Which is fine.
Pete
Which, I actually agree with.
Jared
Yeah, I think that's totally fine.
Pete
Yeah, but there's no overt attempt to worship God and “I will now reflect this.” I just think we're overthinking all this, it doesn't even have to go there. Just try to follow God by not being a jerk. That's really what it comes down to, as far as I'm concerned, which is hard, by the way, trust me.
Jared
So, I want to broaden this, though, real quick. Because for those of you who are listening—and in my brain, it's not always so specific to religious expression. And what I mean by it is this: there's often a tension between the contemplative life and the activist life.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
And that's what this question made me think of. There are those who lean more toward activism…
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
…which I would consider that horizontal relationship. They're out there saying, "The best expression of my spirituality, even if it's not religious—not maybe specifically Christian—but my good in the world, my meaning comes from activism. Going out on behalf of those who, you know, the marginalized and the oppressed, and doing good, political change, political action." And then there are those who are saying, "No, my life doesn't lean toward using that energy to make changes outwardly, but changes inwardly. Contemplative life is about changing me inside to become more content and more at peace on the inside." Now, I think historically, those have been opposed, I think, more and more. I think of Richard Rohr, the Center for Action and Contemplation. And in that way, I see that being more of a polarity. And by polarity, I mean things that seem to be at odds with each other but actually mutually reinforce each other.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
And those do seem to be, when you broadly define it, I think, more connected in the sense that it's kind of the idea of a mother who needs to put her face mask on when pressure decreases in an airplane so that then she can put the face mask on her child. That is, I think that relationship between contemplation where I have to be at peace with myself in order to bring peace to others, that seems to be in a good relationship and in that sense, I don't think they're opposed. But they can be in tension because how much time are you going to spend toward contemplation or how much—
Pete
Well, we're humans.
Jared
Right, there's a limitation of energy.
Ad Break
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Pete
I want to move on to another question here, Jared, so okay, this is—it has to do with Paul. This is from Chris: [reading listener question] "One of Paul's favorite contrasting metaphors is the idea of weakness and strength. What can we glean from these passages today that would teach us something in a modern context? I used to default to ‘lean on Christ’ but I no longer know what this looks like post-deconstruction. I would argue I don't truly know what it was prior either, just going through the motions."
Jared
And this fits in this theme, because again, we have this weakness versus strength, this, how do we balance these things?
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
And my first stab at this is, I think the contrast here is: when do we trust ourselves? When do we trust others? And we can put God in that other category. What does it mean to, you know—again, not to keep picking on this refrain—but I grew up in a tradition that said, "do not lean on your own understanding." And so there was this built in culture where we don't trust our own feelings, we don't trust ourselves, we lean on Christ. That weakness is strength. The more I don't trust myself, and the more weak I am, the more God can shine through me and show God's strength.
Pete
Mhmm.
Pete
Mhmm. Right.
Jared
Again, this is where people who are really sincere got burned the most in that tradition. Because I do think wisdom would maybe call us to discern where sometimes we need to trust more in our own intuitions, and our own gut, and our own stuff.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
And sometimes we don't need to do that. We need to lean on a community or discern within other people's opinions what the right thing to do is. And so that's why this fits. It's this weakness versus strength, I think fits into this larger paradigm, which I think is what Chris is talking about around, "Can we trust ourselves? Or do we trust Christ? What's the difference between that?"
Pete
Yeah, I mean, one of my children had an experience years ago with a mentor—a trusted mentor, good person—who wasn't particularly religious and one of my children said that, "I just want to trust Jesus for X, Y, and Z," and she was told, "You have to learn to trust yourself." And we've had a chance to talk about that since then, and I think my approach to that was, "I'm not sure if those are mutually exclusive." Trust myself? Well, what if we're human beings who have experiences, and intuition, and thoughts, and impulses that are—and insights and things like that, and we have to trust ourselves. I mean, how much damage has been done to people by being told, “You can't trust yourself, but you can trust me.”
Jared
Right. Well, that goes back to that first question that we had around mystery and reason.
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
It's like, "Oh no, you can just trust me, I know more than you."
Pete
The man behind the curtain, kind of thing. And, you know, abuse comes from that and tremendous harm to people. And I think just a dehumanizing—you know, one thing... You know, we're on TiKToK now, as you know.
Jared
Right.
Jared
Mhmm. As everybody who listens to us knows, I'm sure.
Pete
Everyone—But so, you know, I follow a couple of atheist TikToks. And I think that's a theme, where “I was told my whole life that what I thought and felt and experienced didn't matter. I just need to stay in line.” Like, yeah, I don't blame you for getting out of it, right? That's not a humanizing... and something that's not humanizing is wrong. You should never dehumanize people or try to manipulate them or control them, that's a cultish mentality.
Jared
Yeah. It also reminds me of the work of Kenneth Pargament, who is a psychologist.
Pete
Uh-huh.
Jared
I read a couple of papers he wrote, I don't know, probably 15 years ago, because...I mean, if you want the whole backstory, I was leading a group around God's will. I was leading a small group when I was a pastor, on God's will, and I was using Kevin DeYoung's, isn't he the Reformed guy?
Pete
I think so.
Jared
Yeah.
Jared
He wrote a book on God's will and we were using that and I didn't like it that much and so I started doing some other research at the time, and I came across Kenneth Pargament and he did research on how people describe their relationship with God when they're in a crisis. After interviewing all these people, there were three real clear themes. There was a group of people who would say, in a crisis, they went into "Jesus take the wheel" mode. Meaning "my hands are off of this, God has to do something, it is not in my power to do anything, please, Jesus take the wheel." Then there was the group on the other side, who said, "God hasn't done anything, I'm pretty angry about that. I'm going to do it all myself, I'm putting it all on me." And then there was the group in the middle that said, "In the midst of a crisis, I need God's help to discern the way forward. But ultimately, it's my responsibility." And his research indicates that the outcomes were much better kind of mentally and emotionally for the people who took that third route. And for me, I just have—
Pete
The balanced route. [Chuckles]
Jared
The balanced route! And again, I'm, you know, careful about that. Because again, in the political sphere, the center is not always the right thing. But in this case, that really struck a chord with me. Here I am talking about it 15 years later, because it's so practical. It doesn't have to be just in a crisis.
Pete
[Hums in agreement]
Jared
It can be in anything, this relationship is more of a partnership where the Spirit of God is working within my reason. But ultimately, it's my decision. Ultimately, it's my responsibility.
Pete
Working mysteriously, I mean, not to throw that word around. But—
Jared
Yeah, you have to know what that means, I don't even know what that means.
Pete
What does it mean for, like, how does God relate to us? I don't know, really. I mean, not to get too—
Jared
You don't have like, a voice in your head all the time?
Pete
I do, but I don't think it's God, it's my own.
Jared
You learned a long time ago that's not God. [Laughing]
Pete
[Laughing] That's my voice because it drives me crazy. Yeah. So...
Jared
Yeah, what does that even mean?
Pete
What does it even mean—
Jared
What does it mean to partner with God? Or to-
Pete
And that really comes down to, what do you think God is?
Jared
Right.
Pete
I mean, all this stuff—and we're not getting into that today—but that itself is an ongoing theological task to try to understand the relationship between God and world, God and us, and just God and everything, right? And we have, I think, sometimes, who doesn't have poorly formed notions of that? I know I do. But those can lead us in directions that are not always helpful, where we have these dichotomies and then we seek balance for them, right. So—
Jared
And sometimes our habits are just hard to break.
Pete
Oh, yeah.
Jared
I know someone who they... Whatever you want to say, had a faith shift, deconstructed away from a view of God that like, God intervenes on behalf of people regularly. And yet still, when they pray, they pray as though that's still true.
Pete
Right, right.
Jared
And it's a real, these are just hard habits to break. Because I think it's so deeply ingrained, that idea of: what are we talking about when we're talking about God? And I think you raise a great point. Not only that, it's not just abstract, but how does God relate to us? When you get down to the mechanics of it, is it a voice? Is it a feeling?
Pete
Is it our intuition?
Jared
Right.
Pete
[Chuckles] right?
Jared
And for me a lot of how I've learned to be talking about this—just being part of a Mennonite congregation—for me, it's very communal, it's within the group.
Pete
Well, that's a very important point. Not just individual, right. Yeah, yeah.
Jared
It's not really an individual thing. And that's been important.
Pete
Well, let me say one more thing there. I think that the "Jesus take the wheel" approach isn't always wrong.
Jared
Hot take! Hot take from Pete Enns.
Pete
Yeah. I think sometimes people are just, they're so beaten down, they just don't have...They don't know what to do next.
Jared
Well, think about it in the context of like a 12-step program, that idea of surrender, that "my life is unmanageable."
Pete
Yes, right.
Jared
That is that moment. You don't have to say "Jesus take the wheel." It's the function of it. It's the point is to say, my life is unmanageable.
Pete
Yes, yeah. And then the 12 steps go on to take accountability.
Jared
Yeah.
Pete
And before- That's why those two things aren't...
Jared
Right.
Pete
The one can lead to the other. And that's really what I'm after.
Jared
You mean it's a process. Yeah.
Pete
It's a process, it's not the way I approach every decision.
Jared
With wisdom.
Pete
“God, please give me that parking space, so I can make it to the movie on time.” Or “I want to get that sale at the mall.” You know, I mean, I'm joking. But there are many people like that.
Pete
Right.
Jared
Well, and when I was a kid, the more you asked God to do in the little things, the more spiritual you were.
Jared
So, to ask God, literally to give you the parking spot…
Pete
Mhmm.
Jared
…was a sign of spiritual health, because that means you were thinking about God in the minutiae of your day, which is the point.
Pete
And that's very much a pre-modern understanding of God up there in the sky looking down, which has been made very difficult since the 19th century at least, if not before.
Jared
Right.
Pete
Right. I mean, way back, I mean, the people were talking about this stuff, but just for us, in our context, it's hard to think that way. And all these sort of tentacles reach out and strangle you if you start thinking along those lines and—what if we take off the table that God is sort of like Alfred the Butler, who if you ask him enough times nicely, he'll have to do something for you.
Jared
Right, mhmm.
Pete
And I know that Jesus has the widow's mite, you know, and the woman insistent on this kind of thing and I understand—I think that's part of speaking to deeply marginalized people, saying God cares for you.
Jared
Right.
Pete
And I don't think we should ever let go of that. But we're talking about something different here. We're talking about a lifestyle where maybe you don't trust yourself, and you don't take—that's different. That's not being done and out, or being persecuted, truly persecuted. It's, you just think that the way to go through life is like, "I'm nothing, I'm empty. I'm sinful. I have nothing to offer this." And I think that's against the biblical witness as well. But anyway.
Jared
Yeah.
Pete
Yeah.
Jared
Yeah, I think we should be done.
Pete
I think so. I think we've pontificated…
Jared
I think we've, and I think that was great.
Pete
I think we've pontificated enough here, folks. But yeah. That was fun. First of all, shout out...I appreciate- There's so many thoughtful people in the world and they don't let us forget it. They keep asking us questions, you know, and—
Jared
And most of them are part of the Society of Normal People.
Pete
But it's nice being a part of a community that asks questions like this.
Jared
Yeah.
Pete
Which are the same questions that we ask and other questions, you know, and, you know, a safe place for people to just express themselves.
Jared
And this is, again, this is a call—it sounds like we're trying to sell Society here—but I think in general, it's just a call to say, keep asking the questions. Do that online, do it in your communities, do it in your churches. Keep exploring, because as—you know, Pete, you often say—theology is the asking of questions and having the conversation.
Pete
[Hums in agreement] Yes, right.
Jared
And that's hard to put our arms around because we want to get to a landing place. We were sort of told that theology is in the answers. But theology is in the conversation and conversation is driven by questions, not answers.
Pete
Alright.
Jared
Alright. Thanks, everyone.
Outro
[Outro music begins]
Jared
Well, thanks to everyone who supports the show. If you want to support what we do, there are three ways you can do it. One, if you just want to give a little money, go to www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/give.
Pete
And if you want to support us and want a community, classes, and other great resources, go to www.TheBibleForNormalPeople.com/join.
Jared
And lastly, it always goes a long way if you just wanted to rate the podcast, leave a review, and tell others about our show.
Outro
You've just made it through another episode of The Bible for Normal People! Don't forget you can also catch the latest episode of our other show, Faith for Normal People, wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People podcast team, Brittany Prescott, Savannah Locke, Stephanie Speight, Natalie Weyand, Stephen Henning, Tessa Stultz, Haley Warren, Nick Striegel, and Jessica Shao.
[Outro music ends]
