Episode 324: Pete Enns & Jared Byas - A City on a Hill: A Ten Year Retrospective
In this week’s episode of The Bible for Normal People, Pete and Jared reflect on ten years and over 400 episodes of the podcast, revisiting what they thought they were doing and what they now see more clearly in hindsight. They explore themes that have emerged along the way, including the shift from certainty to wisdom in reading the Bible and the move from information to personal and communal formation. They also discuss how these conversations have been shaped by a wider range of voices and why engaging the Bible calls for ongoing discernment rather than fixed answers, inviting listeners to rethink what the Bible is for today.
Mentioned in This Episode
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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.
Pete: Before we get started with our episode today, we wanted to let you know about our April class, “Is This The Apocalypse?” with Dr. Robyn Whitaker.
Jared: To be fair, it's not like we picked this topic for any particular reason. Hopefully a few people will find it relevant.
Pete: Yeah, I hope so. Well, the class is taught by Dr. Robyn Whitaker, an associate professor at the Wesley Center for Theology, Ethics, and Public Policy. She specializes in the book of Revelation and the way the Bible gets used and misused in public discourse.
Jared: Yeah, yeah, yeah. But most importantly, and probably the work she's most known and respected for is Revelation for Normal People.
Pete: That will carry her beyond the grave.
Jared: Exactly. Yeah. In the class, Robyn's gonna cover what's meant by apocalypse and why the language we use matters. How American evangelicals learn to read revelation as an end times manual and why that's a problem.
Pete: How Jewish and Christian apocalypses can be harnesses, texts of hope, not just catastrophe, and how texts like Revelation can help us name and combat evil in times like these.
Jared: So if you've been hearing about Armageddon or the Apocalypse in the news, and you wanna know, well, is this the apocalypse? This class is for you,
Pete: Mark your calendars for Thursday, April 30th, from 5 to 6:30 PM Eastern time, and then go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/apocalypse to sign up today.
As always, the class will be recorded so you can watch it back later if you can't make it to the live session. The cost is pay-what-you-can, $1, $5, $10, $15, or $25 until the class ends. Or even better, join our online community, the Society of Normal People for $12 a month to get all of our classes at thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
10 years ago, we hit record. We wanted to talk to our friends and fellow scholars because we knew the conversations we were having about the Bible and faith were transformative. But for some reason people in churches weren't having the same conversations. There was a disconnect between the rich complex conversations about the Bible that were happening in the university…
Jared: …and what was happening in the pew.
Um, it's just Pete and I today, and we're reflecting on 10 years and over 400 episodes
Pete: A lot.
Jared: That's a lot of episodes. This isn't about a trip down memory lane. It's a way for us to share what we've learned, what we're seeing, and where we think these faith conversations might be headed. Let's get into it.
Pete H: It's not about being right. It's not even about being a good person. It is completely about revolutionizing and rewriting the very place or no place that you view reality.
Richard: We wanted to find one certain absolute, always true level of interpretation, and you know what we did? We settled on the one that was least inspired in my opinion, and the least fruitful.
To head down that road is not gonna bring many people to the experience of the risen Christ.
Sarah: The box you had for God or that you were given for God all of a sudden feels really small, and you wonder if there's more than just this. I think where we really kind of tend to trip over it a bit is we act like it is something to be afraid of or that it is something that is a mark of faithlessness.
And I don’t know, I just, I don't think that that's really true.
Randy: We do need communities. I mean, that's the one thing about the church. If the church could stop being an organization and start being more of a community, I think we would be in pretty good shape.
Pete: All right, so one thing we've been thinking about Jared is, um, you know, what, what did we think we were doing and in retrospect, what were we actually doing?
Jared: Right? Yeah, because I think how we started this podcast and these conversations, now that we've had 400 episodes, 10 years, and we've taken some time to look back, I think.
You can kind of see some trends of maybe what was emerging from the conversations that we didn't really think about at the time. Because at, at the time, I think we thought there's a lot of cool stuff in the Bible that people don't know because they weren't taught how to read it in that way.
Pete: Right.
Jared: Yeah. Um, I think that's what we were trying to do was bring information to the people.
Pete: Yeah. 'cause there's some, you know, harmful ways of reading the Bible too, and try to give different ways of looking at it. And you know, sort of like information in that sense. You're just trying to give people an understanding of the Bible, how it works and all that sort of stuff.
Jared: Well, it just felt like, I don't know how you feel about this. I don't think it was necessarily gatekeepers. I don't, some people I think are explicitly trying to be gatekeepers, but there was just something, something was damming up the flow of information from the universities and the seminaries that wasn't making its way to the pew.
Pete: Right.
Jared: For the, for the everyday person and for us, I mean, I don't know about you. But for me, learning these things was, it was just mind-blowing. It was sort of like, wait. That is not at all how I was taught to read the Bible, but we, the space I was in, I didn't think of it as a threat.
It was like cold water to my thirsty soul.
Pete: Like, liberating, right?
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. It opened the Bible up and it made it more alive and it made it more human and relatable.
Pete: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Jared: And that's kind of what we thought we were doing was bringing that information.
Pete: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jared: But we wanna talk about some, we have a, we have a handful of things that, that we feel like we were, we were actually doing in retrospect mm-hmm. Looking back on it.
Pete: Right.
Jared: And I think it represents where maybe the next 10 years of the podcast is gonna go as well.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: I mean, we'll see.
Pete: We'll see, 10 years is a long time, but of course-
Jared: You’re gonna be, you're gonna be very old.
Pete: And 10, the last, I'm old now.
The, uh, the first theme, and this might be a familiar one, is the idea of moving from certainty about the Bible to wisdom, which is a really different model for a lot of people.
Jared: I mean, I think this is the more, the more obvious one because we have made it, I think, more explicit over time. But I think one of the things that's been, uh, important to recognize, and I think you're gonna get this over and over in this episode, is that we find these things in the Bible itself.
And I think that's important because, uh, you know, if we were taught to read the Bible as a manual of certainty.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: It is a rule book that gives you divine knowledge, straight from the mouth of God. Then you're gonna have a hard time with the concept of wisdom.
Pete: Right.
Jared: But whenever you can see it and you read the proverbs and you read, um, you know the wisdom literature, and you even read the gospels and you read the New Testament, it's when you look closely, this idea of certainty starts to break down.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Right.
Pete: Even when you don't look at it, frankly, that closely, you just look at it from a different perspective. Right? Right. Because when people are taught to think of the Bible as the certainty, guarantee the machine of certainty.
You can't see anything else. So we understand that. So we, I think we've really intentionally tried to sort of move people away from that. How do I put it? Sin of certainty. I think I wrote a book about that, um, to, to, to looking at the Bible as a wisdom text even because you're taking it more seriously when you do that.
Because you're taking to account the Bible's diverse ways of speaking and how it has different perspectives on things.
Jared: How do we, how do we do that when we come to texts in our Bible that don't seem to fit a traditional wisdom lens? 'Cause I'm also cautious of, there are a number of everyday people who will say, oh, the Bible's not literally true.
It's like parables.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Which makes me think they also have not read the Bible. Because there's some parable type stuff. Or it's metaphor or things like that. And then you actually read a large chunk of the Hebrew Bible and you're like, well that doesn't fit.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: So how do, when we talk about moving from certainty to wisdom, we'd also don't wanna make the Bible out to be something it's not in the other way. Where it's just sort of this book of pithy sayings. Or what do we mean in that deep sense of wisdom? And how does the whole corpus of the Bible kind of fit into that?
Pete: Well, what I mean by it is that the Bible, because of those weird things, you've got a whole two books about how bad the kings were in Israel.
I was like, okay, wisdom? I, you know, but that's the thing is, is exploring those texts for that kind of a, let's say, a wisdom trajectory by seeing texts that are very different and disparate and inviting us, us into a conversation with the text. Um, you know. I just mentioned 1 and 2 Kings.
I mean, sometimes I think I don't see any value in this whatsoever.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Pete: And, you know, I'm sure Medieval Allegorists could make all sorts of stuff out of it, but I, I have trouble with it, but the fact that I have trouble with it is itself an invitation to sort of explore and see it from a different angle and maybe learn from other people like ancient church readers, right?
Who, who, who knew all that stuff. They said, this stuff is boring. It's gotta be more meaningful than that. To me, that's, that's a wisdom kind of process rather than thinking of it as being in the rule book, that phrase.
Jared: I think one thing that you're saying, and that's what I wanted to get into, is when you say that, I picture, t's not wisdom within the pages. It is that the pages themselves force us outside of the pages into real life.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: It becomes three-dimensional. Where now we have to decide, we have to discern how we're going to navigate this book in the life of faith in 2026. And I think that's the very thing that I was taught was anti-Christian.
Pete: Right. Right.
Jared: Is, then now we are the judge of it. But I, I think what I hear you saying is, well, when you read the Bible for what it is and you see that there are ancient, uh, morals and perspectives that are just embedded in the text that do conflict sometimes with how we think about the world today.
Pete: Right.
Jared: We do have to become the discerners of that. And that's not a-
Pete: That’s the nasty little secret.
Jared: That's not a bug, that's a feature of how literature works.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: And the Bible is, not maybe just this, but it is literature.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: And so it forces us to be wise. If we were able to keep it smashed down in two dimensions and we just had to read it and do exactly what it said, we wouldn't need wisdom.
Pete: Right. And that's a common conception of the Bible, which I think we've been trying to, um, right. Give a different model for, and I like that. You know, coming out of the Bible, we have to engage this from our humanity. And from our time and from the questions people are asking.
Right. And not try to figure out what they were just thinking. But how, how do we bring this to our existence? And, you know, as our listeners probably know, um, because we've talked about it a lot. This is the history of Christianity and Judaism, in a nutshell. It's, it's trying to take texts that were written for a time, very alien to later, uh, readers, and they said, we have to find a way to make this more meaningful to us in our spiritual growth.
And the way you do that is through reading somewhat creatively. And I, I would say, again, it's, it's a wisdom move to say, okay, what, how can I read this text given these things that I'm thinking about now and the reality that I exist in? That's where the Bible sort of becomes alive a little bit.
You know, and rather than thinking of it as sort of a depository of, um, of, of, of, of, uh, information that doesn't need interpretation, that's always valid, and you should just read it and do what it says. And the problem is that even, you know, laws in the Bible. They're not clear.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Pete: Keep the Sabbath.
Okay. What does that mean? Don't work. Okay. What's work? Uh, I don't know. 'Cause the Bible doesn't tell you. Right? Right. So you have to apply. That's Judaism. You have to apply wisdom to that. And, and that, that's why, that's how I think the Bible works as a wisdom book to, to get us engaging with the text, but not just bearing our head there as if all the answers are right in front of us, is a, it's not a Bible code.
Jared: Right, right. And I think that what you're saying, I think is really important because I think it's a little difficult for people to grasp when we say we're moving from certainty to wisdom and in our engagement with the Bible, it's not, we're highlighting the wisdom passages. It is there that, that's helpful.
I think it does help to kind of think about the wisdom passages, but what you're saying is the shape that the Bible takes all throughout forces us to have wisdom to engage it. And, and I think that's really important that when we're reading Kings and we're reading Samuel, we're not saying the genre of that is wisdom.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: We're saying in order to engage with it faithfully as a Christian today requires discernment, which is a function of, of wisdom of, of navigating the situation and the circumstances. Reading the tea leaves, so to speak. Understanding the, the social location that we're in and figuring out what it means for us to be faithful now.
Pete: Mm-hmm. Right. And that's, that's always been the way of it. And, and-
Jared: That's, that's what can be frustrating about these conversations, is we're like, we're like emerging with these deep thoughts. It really is just that we've been, we've been shaped in such a way that we aren’t mainstream.
I mean, I think, I just think of when you say what is work. You know, don't work on this Sabbath. Jews immediately started to like, try to think about what does that actually mean?
Pete: We came up like 30 something things of this is work. Yeah, okay, fine. That's great. That's actually a wisdom move.
Jared: Yeah.
Pete: That's not a legalism move.
Right. That's a wisdom move. And, and we have to do that all the time with, with anything, any moral pointing that the Bible does. You know, love God, love your neighbor. Okay. Great.
Jared: Yeah.
Pete: What do, how do I do that? Well, you better just start living and figure it out. And that's discernment, that's wisdom.
Jared: I think that can be frustrating for those of us who grew up in a tradition where we thought we were taught, like we were ahead of the game. We were like the best Christians.
Pete: Right.
Jared: And it turns out, we were stunted.
Pete: Right.
Jared: We didn't, we didn't develop the tools to figure all this out, and it's just the way it is.
We were sort of put over here and held back.
Pete: Right. And, and I think a root of that is, um, again, the return to the old theme. It's a question of what is the Bible and how do you look at it? And I, I am, I firmly believe that the Bible does not allow, if we can speak of the Bible, having a will, the Bible does not allow a simplistic flat reading because it's simply too diverse.
It changes, it's evolving within its own pages, and you have later writers disagreeing with earlier writers, and that's what we have. If that's not a, um, um, an invitation to wisdom, I don't know what is.
Jared: Right.
Pete: And we, you know, we, we've been trying to highlight that, but, um. I don't, I, maybe we don't push it enough. I think when we, when we talk about the Bible and stuff, you know?
Jared: Yeah. I mean, I think that bleeds right into our second theme. Which is moving from this information, which again, I think, I think so what we thought we were giving.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: And then the more we've had guests on, and I, and I would venture to say, the more for me, I'll speak for myself, and then feel free to agree or disagree. The more we've had people of color, the more we've had women, marginalized voices, indigenous voices on the more, this move from information to formation has made sense to me.
Pete: Right, me too. I, I agree with that.
Jared: I think I was like, thoroughly indoctrinated into my Western way of thinking, which is you just have to have right thoughts and everything flows from that.
Pete: Well, the thing is, I mean, I, the irony for me is it's precisely the Western perspective. When, you know, you look at the Bible that way, that actually exposes.
Jared: Right.
Pete: It can't deliver.
Jared: Right? Yes, yes, yes. Yeah.
Pete: There's no way, this is just a, a, an answer book of some sort, right? It's not just about information. But it's information that leads to transformation. But the information itself, it's not Bible verses.
Jared: Right.
Pete: Right. It's, it's part of the whole wisdom dynamic.
Jared: Right.
Pete: And that folds into formation, how we live and, and I think you're right that it's easy for me, I have to speak for myself to just detach myself from all that. And just talk theoretically about the Bible. I love doing that. But I also ask myself, well, who the heck cares so what?
Jared: Right.
Pete: No. And it's like, and sometimes people ask me that like, well, what do I do with it? Like, I don't know.
Jared: You, you are, you're not just super excited by the information?
Pete: Just by the fact that I said this, you're not just going crazy. Yeah.
Jared: You just get, you just get real excited and then sit on your couch thinking, hmm, that was a good thought.
Pete: But formation means for some people, you know, um, how do, how do I live morally. Other, it's, how do I live in communion with other people?
Jared: Right.
Pete: Matters of justice.
Jared: Right.
Pete: And righteousness. And the biblical sense of the word, not perfection, but just doing the right thing. And, um, that is, okay, I'm channeling James Kugel here just a little bit. But that's why the Bible has survived. It's because it's been about transformation, not just information.
Jared: Yes.
Pete: And that's why, we got Judaism for a minute, but just the history of Christian thought and reading the Bible has been about, what can I get out of the Book of Job? Where it says, like in the second verse, now for Job there were seven sons and three daughters.
There's a whole history of interpretation on that. Like it's gotta mean something. Who cares how many kids he has on a literal level, but who cares about that? It does me no good.
So the question of transformation is what good does it do for other people? And that's a question people are asking.
Maybe more than I have been asking the question. And not to bump you into that, but I think we're in a similar boat there.
Jared: Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think it comes back to the, not just the question of what is the Bible, but what purpose does the Bible serve? What is it useful for?
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: And I think that if, if the Bible becomes a means to a greater end, then we start to think of it more as formation and transformation.
And it allows for more creative readings. 'Cause the whole point is not to get accurate information.
Pete: Right.
Jared: That's not the point of it.
Pete: Well, and, and I think in my opinion, a mistake people make is thinking that simply having information leads to transformation.
Jared: Correct. That’s a modern bias for sure.
Pete: It is. Yeah. And then I, and I, I get it. I've lived it, you know, I went to school for a million years to do this, so.
Jared: Yeah.
Pete: Um, but it's, it's, um, again, the, the Bible itself leads to a wisdom kind of approach, and that is, that lends itself to how we are formed as people and what difference it makes in our daily lives.
And it's, that doesn't come from Bible verses. That comes from Immersement in the whole thing.
Jared: Yeah. We, we've talked about this before, but I, I want you to maybe repeat yourself or think of it differently. I have some thoughts. What's the place, though, of information? You know, we, I do think there's this theme that we've learned, if it may be one of these things, I think we've actually evolved in over 400 episodes is we are interested 'cause we're nerdy, we just like the information.
But to learn like, oh, this, this is how it shapes people and communities. And that, that's really important. Maybe the central thing. But then how do we not maybe, I guess what I'm wondering is. Is this just a hangup? I gotta get over, but I feel like there's still a place for the information part.
Pete: Yeah. I mean, I think that, I don't think we can say yes or no to that. Right? It's, it's like, in places things may be more obvious at different points of our lives and experiences. Some things may be more obvious.
Jared: Well, lemme say it this way, is there a value it whenever somebody's like, um, well, you know, well to use your example in Job.
The seven and the three children. Here's, here's what that means. This is really what it means. And it's like my knee jerk is like, ah, that's, that is not what that means. Right? Yeah. Right. Or, you know, Genesis is a great place for this. People have all kinds of meaning in the first eleven chapters of Genesis or whatever.
And it's like, well this is what God's really, you know, doing here.
Pete: See, discerning that information level is itself an act of wisdom.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Pete: We can't escape that. And information's great. And information has, again, driven me to realize. The more information I have about the Bible, the more I realize it's not something that hands us information.
Jared: Yeah. Right. It exposes its own limitations.
Pete: The Bible begins with two creation stories that don't really mesh together very well. And here they are. And what do you do with that and, and not to have sort of the focus on information being, well, they have to say the same thing. And 'cause the Bible's there to give us information.
Right. Instead, it's there to make us stop and think about stuff.
Jared: Right.
Pete: You know?
Jared: Right.
Pete: Genesis 1 God is transcendent. Genesis 2, God is imminent.
Jared: Right.
Pete: That's, that's how people understand this. These two texts-
Jared: Meaning God is out just to kind of, break it down. 1, God's out there, out there looking down, not really relatable to humans
Pete: Pushing buttons, saying “let there be…”
Jared: Genesis 2, God is walking with them in the garden.
Pete: Yeah. And he's like, makes the man, and he says, eh, that's not gonna work.
Jared: And he says things like, where are you?
Pete: Yeah. But he's, you know, makes Adam and says, that's not enough. He needs company. I know I'll make animals'. That's not working, working. I know what I’ll do.
I'll peel 'em in half and make a woman out of it. And so you, you, it's, these stories are so different and, and you know, as I think it's a wisdom conclusion to say you're reading in those first two chapters of Genesis how God shows up in the text itself and in people's lives. Sometimes God is near, sometimes God is very distant.
You know that that's, that's normal. But you don't get that from just seeking, let's say, scientific or historical information
Jared: Is, this is my theory and I want you to tell me if I'm, I'm off base here, but I've started to use this metaphor of a relationship and so I think there's an importance to self-awareness when we're reading the Bible.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: Because it, for me, it's very different. When a, a Bible scholar, and Jewish scholars are very good at this.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: I trust that they know the context inside and out.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: So when they make a, a, a jump to some, uh, meaning making interpretation that applies to their situation, they're usually very self-aware about what they're doing. They're not saying this is what it originally meant to the original hearers. They are saying, here's what it meant to the original hearers, and that's important. But in order to make it meaningful for me, look at these resonances with my situation. And how it works here.
So I do feel like there's a sense of, and I say relationship as a metaphor because what I feel is, I guess what I feel like can happen is when we make it so that we're not aware of the original intention, we sort of disrespect the Bible and it becomes just part of us.
We don't like the difference, that it was back then. And it had its own thing. We become enmeshed with the text in a way that I think is actually really harmful and it can do harm to other people. When I actually think that what the Bible meant back then was what my preacher or my pastor told me in a megachurch last weekend about good marriages or how to handle your money or these things. Because then it doesn't allow for any difference of opinion.
Pete: Right.
Jared: There isn't a creative flourishing of interpretation that can be beneficial to lots of people in lots of circumstances. It is a locking down, no, this is what it meant.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: And then it sort of makes it, anytime we can kind of crystallize that. I think it just makes it, it kills it.
Pete: Well, and that is in, in and of itself a non-wisdom move. But the thing is that even if you got the meaning nailed down, the question still becomes how does that go into formation?
Jared: Right.
Pete: And it's usually things like, don't do this, don't do that, don't do that.
But it's not as, um, I think deeply enriching and nourishing as taking a different perspective and, and realizing what we're doing when we read the Bible. Which is, instinctively, I think people are looking for formation.
I, I think the reason why some people read it so literally as information is because they actually want to be formed, but the right way.
Jared: Yeah, yeah, they think that certain information is gonna do that automatically.
Pete: Yeah. And it doesn't work.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. And I, again, I think we've talked about that before.
I think that is the modern mistake.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: That information, some kind of vending machine that if you just get it right, you just become a good, wise person.
It just doesn't work that way.
Pete: It's not that easy. It's not that commercial or, or capitalistic to, you know-
Jared: It's like my parents used to say about me, you, you're book smart, but you're not that street smart.
Pete: Yeah,
Jared: Right. It's like you got the information but you haven't learned to, like, live it out in the world yet.
Pete: I hate when people say that.
Jared: That requires experience.
Pete: I hate when people say that. Yeah, you, you're book smart, but you're not me-smart. Well, how's, what’s your smart?
Jared: Oh, I've hit a nerve. A little defensive about that one.
Pete: Well, I grew up too with people, so I know.
Jared: Okay, so trend, trend to number three or or theme number three?
Pete: The third one. The third theme.
Jared: Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, well let's go back. Let's go back. So we've talked about a kind of certainty to wisdom as one of these themes that if we look back on all the episodes we've done, and the journey of The Bible for Normal People, we kind of see this theme cropping up again and again.
And again, some of this is a little bit unbeknownst to us, I think the certainty of wisdom was a little bit more clear to us. But I think this information to transformation or formation, it, it kind of crept up on me.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Like looking back, I'm like, oh man, that really was an important move that I needed to make and I didn't know I needed to make it at the beginning of this podcast.
Pete: And you might say, if we're not doing that, we're not actually reading the Bible.
Jared: Yeah, it, it's become so central.
Pete: Right.
Jared: Um. But the third one is, again, this deconstruction.
We're gonna, I, I have a problem with this from the beginning. Of course I do. Deconstruction to reconstruction. We gotta say it because I think people think about it that way.
Pete: But it's so wrong.
Jared: Yeah. I don't want, I don't-
Pete: let's get a little information-based now and talk to us about what deconstruction and-
Jared: I mean, it, for me, I, I don't wanna go down this rabbit trail again.
Pete: You don’t.
Jared: But I think what people mean to say is from destruction to reconstruction.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Destruction is tearing something down. You destroy it. That's destruction.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Deconstruction has the construction built into it.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: You're deconstructing means you're always tearing down and building up over and over and over again.
That's what deconstruction is.
Pete: They’re not two separate things.
Jared: They're not two separate things. Like, so I think for me, I think what people want to say is, you know, we're moving from deconstruction to reconstruction. I think what people mean, and this is actually gonna be important in a minute, when we talk about certainty tied to this, I think we're just deconstructing, we're entering into a space of deconstruction.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Because what can happen when we, when we deconstruct and then reconstruct is we can reconstruct a new certainty.
Pete: Right? That's what people want.
Jared: And I think for me, the theme that I think a lot of people want is to go from, in this free fall where I've lost certainty and I don't have a grounding to a new sense of certainty.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: And I think we both are adamant that it's probably important to resist that.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Because once we find that certainty, we start defending it again, and then we start hurting other people because it's so important for us to hold onto our certainty. And like you said about the Bible. It just doesn't deliver.
Pete: I, I think of it as more like a spiral. Like, you know, a certainty spiral. Like sometimes you feel more certain about kinds of things, but you're always spinning around and spinning around and you're not standing still. You're actually moving in certain directions. It's sort of like the sun. The sun's moving around. It goes straight.
But, um, yeah, the whole deconstruction thing is, is, is curious and, um, I dunno what you think about this, but when people say, I'm deconstructing my faith, there's reconstruction all over that comment. So, and they think like, well, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm actively, I don't believe this anymore or that anymore.
Well, you're, you're actually constructing something at that point. Right. And, and I think that sometimes is missed, which is why I prefer, and I, I, I don't know if you agree with me on this, this one. But, um, I do think deconstruction is more something that happens to us as a result of experiences.
And, you know, you're in a deconstructive moment when you're absolutely freaking out and you're scared to death and you know everything's gonna change and you don't want it to change. But then you start thinking about, what if I, at that moment, you're not in that deconstructive moment the way people use the term.
Right. You're in a reconstructive moment. And you people get there much more quickly than they think.
Jared: Yeah. I mean, I think of, um, uh, Kierkegaard has this quote that I'm gonna take a little bit out of context, but he talks about, you know, once you're, uh, he talks about it in terms of despair, but I think this, it fits. Once you sort of are aware of the despair, once you're aware of the deconstruction, you're already one step past it.
Pete: Yes, exactly right. Yeah.
Jared: And I think that's important to recognize.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Because that can feel, it doesn't feel like that.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: But I think that's, I, I agree with that. I think that's an important, important part of it.
What, when you say it's something that happens to us, I think more philosophically I would say that, uh, deconstruction is reality. Like, we talk about it as the Bible. The Bible deconstructs itself. You don't have to do that.
All you have to do is have eyes to see it.
Like, think about people who deconstruct their faith.
The faith didn't change, the Bible didn't change. You changed, right? You just started to see things that you didn't see before.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: The reality wasn't, that's still the same.
Pete: So deconstruction is part of being human.
Jared: It's part of being human. It's observing the world.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: And the world is a world of flux and change.
And evolution. And that's scary. And I think there are certain traditions that try to protect you from that reality.
But then for certain reasons and certain people and certain circumstances, they get a glimpse outside of that and then they realize, oh, maybe the world is not as I was taught it was.
So deconstruction for me is actually a process of observation. It's just noticing the world.
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: And you know, that's how it usually starts with the Bible. We notice what's going on.
Pete: Yeah. And I, I do have to. Say that. I'm always sort of taken aback when I hear people on social media saying, you know, deconstruction is bad, don’t do it.
Jared: Thanks.
Pete: As if they woke up, ‘I think I'm gonna deconstruct my faith today.’ You know? The thing is that this is where I would like to see curiosity come into the picture to say, well, why have you changed? It's not that you've changed and now you're wrong and you're going to hell.
Jared: Right.
Pete: What, what made you change?
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Pete: You might be surprised what you hear.
Jared: Okay. I know. We, we just now, you know, we've, we've caveated the idea of deconstruction to reconstruction. However, I do think a lot of people are in that, in that mode. I think for the average person, what they mean is, okay, I've sort of taken all this stuff out that I don't believe in anymore.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: What's left and how do I build on what's left?
Pete: Yeah.
Jared: And I think that's, that's different.
Pete: That’s the move, right.
Jared: And I think that we can get behind.
Pete: Right.
Jared: Like, that's exciting because that's, that's actually anytime somebody, over the years, I'd say over the last 10 years, somebody says, man, I feel like I'm losing my faith.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: I would often say to them, it's hard for me not to be very excited for you, because I know for you this is scary and it's sad.
Pete: What, what took you so long?
Jared: Yeah. And I'm supposed to be grieving with you. But what I know is on the other side of that is, is exciting.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Because there is a world on the other side of it.
It might take you a couple years, it might take you several years.
Pete: Right.
Jared: But that's, that's very exciting for me.
Pete: That’s being human.
Jared: That's the beginning to your point of the reconstruction.
Pete: Right.
Jared: Is once you start going down that slippery slope.
Pete: And I think our last theme in my mind ties to this.
Because you really, I think, need a supportive community. It can be a very small one, but you need a supportive community to be, feel like you're supported and given permission to go through that process.
Jared: Mm-hmm. But what, when we say then we're putting the pieces back together of a faith that now is maybe for the first time truly our own.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Maybe without the constraints of organized religion or these preconceived ideas. What are some tools that we've kind of picked up on that help people in that process?
Pete: Uh, I mean, for me, the big one is finding other people who, who get that.
Jared: Yeah.
Pete: Who aren't trying to judge you immediately for something they themselves don't understand, or maybe they themselves have run away from.
Experience it for a moment and then just double down on the certainty project. So I think finding people who, who support and understand that, and, um, that oftentimes means going to churches that weren't formed in the context of the modernist fundamentalist debates, right. Where you have bible colleges and Bible churches and I know what they're after.
Randy: Mm-hmm.
Pete: But that's often the place where it's very difficult to be, to be honest, I'm not, I'm not judging all those churches, but I think people understand. There's a tendency there.
Jared: You know, I can get a little protective though, because I think early on I was more patient when people were like, I've started to question, but I really need this, I value this community.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: I don't wanna lose my friendships.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: I've gotten a little bit more like, when you're in a vulnerable place like that, don't be around people you can't trust, like, I've just seen people get really hurt by like, I think I can trust them. I think they're a safe place.
They still go to my old church, but they're like good friends of mine. And they, you kind of come out, you kind of open up about these questions, and then you get excommunicated or shunned, or they stop talking to you.
Pete: Right.
Jared: And it's just more painful. And so-
Pete: Well, it is, I mean, we've lost, um, friends, and kids graduating high school and college and weddings and stuff like that over the years. And I, I don't take that lightly.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Pete: But there's no way I could survive there. I just can’t.
Jared: You know? But I think to your point of like, and the sooner the better to be around people who get it.
Pete: And even if you do it on the side a little.
Jared: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
Pete: Or join Society of Normal People.
Jared: Yeah. Right.
Pete: Hey folks,
Jared: Hey folks, for, uh, 12 dollars-
Pete: Go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join. Um, but you know, to find some sort of community and, and I think a live community is best. I mean, people you actually hang out with and have a, you know, a beer with or go out to barbecue or something.
Those churches are out there, and some of them are more the, um, the, you know, the, the post-deconstructionist evangelicals. They do that sort of thing. But, you know, I've landed in an Episcopal world where they're like, what are you talking about? That's the dumbest thing I've heard of, because they just, they don't breathe that air.
And it's, and it's, it's reinvigorating not to, um, uh, think of yourself as abnormal.
Jared: Yeah. And in some ways I think those communities can be really healing because I think there is definitely a place to, to commiserate and to connect with people who relate to your story. And I do think though, over time, that can start to, uh, be a more wholly negative space.
Where there isn't a lot of grounding to build from. And so I do think like an Episcopalian, uh, tradition, or these longstanding traditions where it's, it, yeah. It takes you, it takes you aback. Or it might be a little embarrassing at first, but eventually you are refreshed by the fact that they're like, I don't know what, who taught you that? That sounds silly.
Like, oh, okay. It just kind of can help you move on.
Pete: Famous pastor who? I've never heard of this guy. I mean, the first time people said that to me, like I mentioned a couple names, so like, I have no idea who you're talking about. I was like, oh.
Jared: But it helps you realize that-
Pete: That's out there.
Jared: Yeah. It helps you realize that, you know, I, I've said this a couple of times, but growing up very evangelical. We thought we were like the center of the universe.
Pete: Well, you were in Texas even.
Jared: Yeah. Well, that's a whole different thing. I mean, Texas is the center of the universe, but you know, evangelicalism maybe not.
So, uh, no, my point being, having that can be so refreshing because you feel so small.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: You feel like you're the crazy one. You're the, you're the weird one if, you know, I'm stepping outside of this bubble, but you don't realize it's a bubble. You think you're stepping out of the, the world.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: And then to go and realize, oh, most people don't know who this is.
Like, oh, that was a very small part of the experience of being human.
Pete: Yeah. And, and I, and again, I think that really, it's interesting how these themes really flow together. You know, because, you know, um, I, I think in the West we tend to think of ourselves as individuals on an island and just brains that have to be processed.
This doesn't work without community, real community, and, and it's hard for people to get there. We've talked to many people, who say there is no church within a thousand miles of where I live that I can possibly go to. And like, yeah, that, that really is not, not good. I'm really sorry about that. Can't fix it.
But, um, I think no religion, but the Christian faith certainly, doesn't work if you think of yourself as an individual. The universe doesn't work that way. Everything's connected, right? We're all connected. Everything's connected. And to think that it's just me and my Bible in the morning, and I'm gonna figure out with God is, is, uh, naive and stunting if it, if that's your process for your whole life.
And, and usually in my opinion, it's some sort of pain or trauma that pushes you out of that, where you need other people to survive.
Jared: Mm-hmm. Right.
Pete: You know, and I, and I think the Christian faith is, I think all religions do that.
At least the ones we're thinking about.
Jared: So that's the fourth, we haven't named that explicitly, but that's the fourth theme here, is this individual to communal experience. And I think that's, if there's a second one that I feel like I've learned the most on, it's that one is the value of doing this together.
I mean, I think we've said it, you used to say this more a couple of years ago, but like that is doing theology. Sitting around and figuring out life and how God and, and our faith and, and Christ like fit into all of this matrix. It's not having figured it out that's faith. Yeah. It's the figuring it out together.
Pete: The faith is figuring it out. That's right. It's, it's, it's arguing, it's debating, it's disagreeing. It's being unsure that that is the journey of faith and that is doing theology. And if we think that theology is, well, Chapter one, doctrine of God, right? And there it is. That's, I think that's really insulting to the creator of the multiverse.
I just, I'm just gonna go with that.
Jared: You don't think Francis Turretin nailed it?
Pete: I don't think anybody nailed it.
Jared: The columns of scholastic theology?
Pete: All our language falls short. Um, I'm, uh, the, the, the older I get, the more I think, yeah, this is pretty obvious. And you start reading people, like, Christians have always said this. It's like you cannot capture God in your words, but they're useful and they're helpful, but you cannot take them too seriously. You, you need some check and balance. It lets you fall in love with your own words. And that's how, you know, narrow denominations or churches begin.
That's how cults begin.
Jared: Well, and speaking of how these themes really overlap and, and flow together, I think you can't do formation without community.
Pete: Right?
Jared: Because it's in that friction. It's in the lived experience that you start to gain wisdom.
Pete: It's not where everybody dresses the same and believes the same stuff.
Jared: No.
Pete: Doesn't work there.
Jared: It is not. Unfortunately, that would be-
Pete: I'll take your word work.
Jared: Interestingly, maybe, I'm just thinking this on the fly, so maybe it's not right. But looking at these different themes, I think when we talk about reconstruction, we've already built in some pillars of that, which is wisdom, formation, community.
Right? Like those are some of the pillars of this reconstruction.
Pete: Right? Exactly. Yeah. Now some people do it alone. And, and I understand that too, but I, I think, I think it's good not to do that alone. You know, if you, if some people are just introverts, they don't like people, they can't, they can't go to church.
So going to any church is toxic for a lot of people. So they have to find community some other way.
Jared: Exactly. Exactly. I don't think that community equals church.
Pete: Right.
Jared: I think community equals other people.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: In whatever form or fashion that family, friends, organizations. I mean, even local community.
Just going into your own neighborhood. Um, and so it can look a lot different, it can have your two best friends and you hate all other people and you don't see anybody else. That's fine. That's still community.
Pete: Well there's support and, and, um, where people can breathe a little bit and, and be authentic and, you know, even if other people say your authenticity is sin, you don't, you don't live there.
Jared: Right.
Pete: You, you go someplace else.
Jared: Yeah.
Pete: And unless people think, oh, you're just saying anything goes, whatever you want. No, I'm saying you have to trust your own head and your own heart and your own experiences, and I think assume that the spirit understands what's going on here. We're not trying to pull a fast one on God or Christianity.
Jared: Right.
Pete: It’s like, what you just said that last 10 years have made no sense to me of what we've talked about here and, and, well, you know, instead of being kicked out to and ask the question, well, how come, let's, let's, let's, let's see what's going on here. That's support, but that doesn't usually happen in the churches that cause the reason for the quote deconstruction to begin with.
Jared: Right. Yeah.
Pete: But we need that community, I think.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Pete: Well, you know, that's, that's a rundown on the last 10 years and sort of what we learned and, uh, the, the next 10 years are gonna be even worse. I mean, even better.
Jared: I, I, I think what it's done for me, this conversation is energizing, like, talking about these pillars, more about wisdom, more about formation, more about community.
Like let's dig into some of that embodiment and, and what does it all, what does it look like? Yeah. I think if I can maybe be a little vulnerable for a minute. I think I'm a little scared of the next 10 years. Because as we said, this isn't, this isn't my strong suit. Um, but I think we can learn together.
Pete: Yeah. And one thing we've learned from our listeners and people who've commented to us is exactly that. Like, they're asking those questions too. They're not sort of in the space of quote, abnormal people like us, right? They're, they're in the space of normal people and that it really matters.
And the fact is that it matters to us too. Right. We can just keep it at bay a little bit longer. Yeah. But at the end of the day, it just gives way anyhow.
Jared: Yeah, exactly.
Pete: So that's, we're gonna try to be more, um, aware.
Jared: Yes.
Pete: Right. And intentional. I don't really mean intentional, but more aware of the kinds of things that people really are thinking about.
And asking about. And we are too. We just have been sort of keeping it a little bit, maybe again, under wraps a little bit, and it pops up every now and then.
Jared: Yeah. I mean, I think it's, it's. We wanna, we wanna lean into the Genesis 2 God a little bit.
Pete: Right.
Jared: Walking in the garden, that embodiment.
Getting a little dirt on our shoes, you know?
Pete: But we're reminded of the Genesis 1 God who is transcendent and beyond our words, and we can't just control this deity.
Jared: Alright, thanks everybody.
Pete: Thanks.
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 wanna give a little money, go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/give.
Pete: And if you wanna support us and want access to our library of over 50 classes, plus bonus episodes, an ad-free podcast feed, 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’re just made it through another episode of The Bible for Normal People.
Don't forget, you can catch our other show, Faith for Normal People, in the same feed wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was brought to you by the Bible for Normal People team.
[Blooper Clip Plays]
Jared: Your cadence is gonna be totally different in about 10 seconds.
Pete: I'm not gonna let you judge me. I'll go back to the beginning. Okay. Right. Ready? I’m the animated.
Jared: Yeah, exactly. This is loosey goosey.
