Episode 338: The Brian Recker and Tamice Spencer-Helms Takeover
In this week’s episode of The Bible for Normal People, Brian Recker and Tamice Spencer-Helms celebrate the podcast’s 10th anniversary by talking with Pete Enns and Jared Byas about how their relationships with the Bible, faith, and certainty have evolved over the past decade. They reflect on the costs of questioning evangelicalism, the ways The Bible for Normal People has helped people hold onto a love for Scripture while letting go of rigid interpretations, and how lived experiences from people of color and LGBTQ+ communities have expanded their understanding of what it means to read the Bible. Together, they explore Scripture as a “means of grace,” the freedom of admitting what they don’t know, and the possibility of having conviction without certainty.
Mentioned in This Episode
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Pete: [00:00:00] 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: Well, welcome everyone to our episode. Today, we're going to talk about a very important topic. Hey.
Brian: Hey.
Pete: Ho-ho. What's-
Tamice: Hold the phone ...
Pete: what's happening?
Tamice: I'm coming in from my ancestors. I'm stealing the mic from a white man for the first time in history.
Brian: I think you guys have said about enough.
Pete: Have we?
Brian: It's been 10 years. I mean, it's not enough words, Pete?
Pete: No, I-
Brian: All right, how much more is there to say?
Tamice: We need to change up the aesthetic, guys.
Pete: I'm shocked.
Brian: Switch it up! You're listening to The Bible for Normal People, the only God-ordained podcast on the internet. I'm Brian Recker.
Tamice: And I'm Tamice Spencer-Helms.
Brian: Hey, everybody, welcome to the podcast. I'm Brian Recker, an author and a public theologian.
Tamice: I'm Tamice, an author, professor, and a doctor of social transformation. What's up, B. Recker?
Brian: How's it [00:01:00] going, Tamice?
Tamice: I'm good. I'm good. I'm tender. I'm tender. It's 10 years for this podcast, and it means a lot to me, this podcast, so I'm, I'm feeling tender. I'm trying not to cry.
Brian: 10 years ago, where were you? I... 10 years ago, I was an evangelical pastor.
Tamice: Yeah. 10 years ago was 2016, and that's when Sin of Certainty came out actually, and that book caught me at a really, really precarious time. And I remember when I saw Pete last, I cried, 'cause I've never actually been able to thank him personally, like in-person, for the work that he and Jared have done in terms of, like, giving me permission to love scripture and not be weird about scripture.
Um, I'm just, I'm excited to be on this episode with you and to really talk to them about 10 years and what this has meant for them.
Brian: Yeah. It caught me at an important time as well. Um, well, in 2016, like I said, I was an evangelical pastor. Trump had just become president. I was [00:02:00] scrambling, trying to understand how this evangelical movement I was a part of got to where it was, how many of the people in my church were going the direction that they were going, which didn't make sense to me.
Tamice: Mm-hmm.
Brian: I was, uh, reassessing faith, beliefs, and didn't have a lot of resources to grab ahold of. And so I started listening to The Bible for Normal People while I was still pastoring within evangelicalism, and I gotta be honest, at first it kinda messed me up. It gave me resources, new ways to think about things.
It injected confusion, but also clarity. Um, and like you said, that book, The Sin of Certainty, also did come at an important time for me. And I can only imagine that over the next 10 years, uh, other folks who are still processing or maybe in a, in a small world, this is the kind of podcast that has expanded our worlds.
Tamice: Yeah. I feel like one of the things I'm hearing you talk about, and I'm thinking about, that election was four years after what really made me start asking questions about my faith and about scripture, which was Trayvon Martin. So [00:03:00] what I feel like The Bible for Normal People did is, like, my deconstruction journey started around realizing that the places that I was in had some subtle elements that were infused into what they were telling me about God and so it felt unrighteous.
But there was something about evangelicalism that had rigor to it that I really loved. And so when I found Pete and Jared, you’ve got Sin of Certainty, and then when Love Matters More came out, I was like, "I can keep the rigor and I can get the righteousness back." And I think that's what you and I have just had so much in common around, is just understanding that righteousness is very clear.
It's not hard to understand what right being looks like in the world. And I feel like so many people have gotten their cues from people interpreting scripture in certain ways, and what Bible for Normal People has done over the last 10 years is given us such a spread to think about how we might reengage this text in ways that make it actually feel more inspired to me.
I think for me, what they did [00:04:00] is they helped the Bible stay inspired for me.
Brian: Yeah. Wow. That's ... I would agree. I love the Bible more now, when I can see it more clearly and I can be more honest about it. It gave me permission to be honest about something that I loved, and I ... When I found that because I was learning things that I was having to screen out because they didn't fit in my paradigm, it was actually causing me to resent the Bible in some ways.
Tamice: That's right.
Brian: Because I wasn't able to handle it with truth. And actually being able to talk about it with clarity and with truth, you're able to love something when you can be more honest about it. And-
Tamice: That's so true ...
Brian: I love that they weren't just permission giving, but there was a reverence for the Bible that I didn't wanna lose.
I never wanted to throw away the Bible. Exactly. I wanna hold it properly and dearly. And so I'm so excited to interview them. We're gonna bring them back on.
Tamice: Yeah, let's bring them back.
Brian: Yeah. We're gonna bring them back on and this is our show. I got some questions.
Tamice: This is reparations, guys. I own the microphone today. I'm the captain now.
Jared: There's, like, a fundamentalist way that ... And then there's the [00:05:00] academic way, which can be just as fundamentalist in a certain way, unless you sort of allow it to be something beyond just the text and have this be this conversation of culture and of relationship.
Pete: It's okay to connect with it in unexpected kinds of ways. For a scholar, that's not always something that you wanna say. That's probably the biggest way, a means of grace. That's probably the biggest change for me over the past 10 years
Tamice: Let's just jump in, B. We got questions for these folks.
Brian: Yeah. Well, first– Pete, Jared, thank you guys so much for having us on here, first of all, to interview you. This is an honor for both of us. We do both have a ton of respect for what you've built here. Um, but this, like I said is our show today, so we're gonna ask y'all some questions.
Pete: Uh-oh.
Tamice: Mm. That's right. And I already got 'em pulled up. My first question, I think I... what I care to know is you're here, you're thinking back to the beginning of Bible For Normal [00:06:00] People, and I wanna know what you all thought you were building then, and, like, what you understand yourselves to have actually built in hindsight after 10 years.
Pete: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I thought we were trying to build a little community when we started, you know, 'cause we knew there were people out there who had the same questions. We just knew it. And so I think- Y- you know, what we wound up doing is that, uh, just a heck of a lot bigger than I thought it was ever going to be.
We didn't really have designs on conquering the universe or something like that. We're close. We're getting there, but we haven't quite done that yet. Right? So, but, um, I, I think it was to build a community and, um, I think we're still in the process of doing that.
Jared: I think you are projecting future aspirations on the past because I don't remember that at all.
I don't remember in the very beginning-
Pete: Oh, you were drunk though. You remember that? That was what happened that day.
Jared: Oh, right, right, right.
Pete: This [00:07:00] was at your kitchen table. At your kitchen table. Your youngest was, like, two.
Jared: No, but I mean, maybe-
Brian: Jared only remembers, like, half of the 10 years.
Tamice: Oh, yeah, no, I wanna know. Yeah. Tell me the origin story. Like, for real, what's the origin story?
Brian: Yeah, what happened around that table? Well, I guess what I remembered was it was more... Yes, I think that as we dreamed a little bit more about it, but I think from the very beginning it was super practical with your agent saying, "I think you should start a podcast."
And as we talked about kinda what would that look like if we did it- Right ... it was this... I feel like it was much more cerebral than that, which was, hey, this stuff that we learned and taught-
Pete: Mm-hmm ...
Jared: in seminaries and graduate schools, hey, I don't remember ever being taught any of that. Like, I went to church my whole life. I was, like, a leader in these churches, and I never heard anything that I learned in seminary being taught. Why is that? And so I just remember we sat, we went to a coffee shop. It was called– Well, this is sad. It used to be a [00:08:00] Saxby's, but then they, like, bought out the franchise, but they didn't wanna, like, pay for signage, so they just rearranged the Saxby's letter and spelled the word Abys, and so it became Abys Coffee.
Yeah. They took the X out, and they rearranged the other letters. So whack. And so we would go to Abys Coffee. After Pete had been resigned from his position, I was being resigned from mine, and we would just go back and forth and have these conversations. But ironically enough, it was at Abys Coffee.
Pete: Yeah. And, and that's sort of the origin story of . . . Sorry, I probably backed up a little bit too much with my answer. That was, like, just getting together and us working together and what do you wanna do? But the podcast itself, I remember that distinctly. Jared calls me one day and he goes, "Pete, on a scale of one to five, literally, on a scale of one to five, how much would you hate doing a podcast?"
'Cause he knows me. And I said, "Actually, I'd be interested if I don't have to do anything," meaning the technological side of stuff, I don't wanna be bothered with that. So, it just started like that. And yeah, you [00:09:00] know, my agent was sort of saying, "That's a good idea. You guys should do that, 'cause a lot of people are doing that."
So, yeah ... I can't say we got in on the ground floor, but we got in pretty early.
Jared: Well, at the time, I thought, "Why would we do a podcast? Everybody already has a podcast." Mm-hmm. That was 10 years ago. Little did we know there was gonna be-
Brian: But you had no idea how, how much everybody would actually have a podcast.
Pete: But ours is God-ordained. Ours is God-ordained, so that's enough of that.
Brian: That's true. And it continues to be the only God-ordained one. Mm-hmm. It's wild that no one else has gotten- The devil is hard at work churning out podcasts, so.
Pete: It's really, seriously.
Tamice: Well, I mean, you did start in a place called Abys, so you know.
Jared: Exactly.
Brian: Right.
Jared: That's true.
Brian: I mean... So this podcast is literally from the pit of hell? Is that what I’m hearing from this?
Jared: Yeah, if you read some of the comments.
Brian: Well, you guys both used a phrase about being resigned. Um, and something that has always captured me, Pete, about your story, and Jared, I know a little bit less about your background, but that always resonated with me as someone who was in evangelicalism, had to step down, and I lost a major part of my community.
[00:10:00] I lost a lot of friendships. Uh, when I stepped away and became affirming of queer people, my church took down my decade of sermons off of their website and sent out a church-wide email about me. That kind of stuff is not unusual for those of us who have had these kinds of faith evolutions.
That's kind of par for the course. And Pete, something that gave me a lot of courage in making that step was voices like yours that went before me. Actually, I quoted you in my book, talking about some of this, where you talked about becoming a suspicious character, a rebel, one who could not be trusted to speak of God, lend money to, or even watch your pets.
Um, and I know that you both had to count some costs. So I'd love to hear a little bit about what it cost you, not just in launching the podcast, but in making the transition to even ask the kind of challenging questions that maybe previous things you were a part of were not safe for those questions.
Tell us a little bit about that cost.
Pete: Yeah, I mean, there was a cost. I have to be honest with you, though, [00:11:00] um, I didn't set out to say, "I will now be a courageous person and, and step out and speak my mind." I just literally didn't know how else to live. I'm not really good at faking it.
I believe in authenticity. That's a primary character trait that I value, and I try to aim for that. So, I didn't really count the cost. I just said, "What happening is wrong and I'm gonna stick up for myself." It was after that, after all that was over, the cost was having to rebuild, you know, the deconstruction, reconstruction thing, but having to rebuild essentially a faith.
You know, 'cause when you're someplace where the rules are written down for you very clearly and you sign that every year and you say, "I hate this. I'm so tired of it," and then it goes away, then it's like, then who am I? You know? I I've been a part [00:12:00] of this culture. And both of you, I'm sure, have had the same experiences, and Jared has, too.
What do you do afterwards? And so, that was difficult but also beautiful at the end of the day, and necessary. So, um, I didn't lose family members. I maybe lost some friends, but were they friends? You know, that kind of thing. So, um, we missed not seeing kids at the churches we went to graduate high school or go to their weddings.
Those are the kinds of things. But I thought about that many times. I could not have stayed there for that reason. It would've been impossible for me to bear.
Jared: Yeah. Mm. I mean, I'm just... It's been a while since I've thought about that time, but I remember us meeting together during that time. And there was a lot of fear around, 'cause you, you didn't maybe lose some of those relationships, but you lost your job.
Pete: I lost some money.
Jared: And not only did you lose-
Brian: That's a cost.
Jared: Yeah. I just think that not only did you [00:13:00] lose your job, but it was also at a time when there weren't a lot of jobs out there.
Right. I think both of us, it felt a little bit like we were out alone in the desert of like, just from the job perspective-
Brian: You had to create your own job.
Jared: Yeah. Well, it's like- if you leave, like I left being a pastor, and it's like, it's not like, oh, it was the church culture.
I'm just gonna go to another church. It's like, no, my entire tradition is now off limits. Yeah. That's really scary.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Like, where is the place then? And so, I think that was... Yeah, I, for me, I grew up a little more evangelical than you did, so I definitely lost friendships.
And I was thinking about this 'cause, we had talked about this question previously, and kinda what I wanted to share was I dedicated my first book, Love Matters More, to my mom. And she wrote me an email a year later, and I wanted to quote it. This is what she said. [00:14:00] "I don't agree with a lot of things in your book and feel that is the very essence of where you are in life and in your relationship with the Trinity. There has to be accountability along with love, and there will be a judgment day for all of mankind one day. I will not debate any of this with you and will continue to pray. At least now I know what to pray for." So that's some of the cost for me.
Pete: Mm-hmm. That’s big.
Jared: And that was, yeah you know, a lot of the friends and a lot of the people that I was around, so it was tough. And I think for me, the hardest part was feeling completely misunderstood. The reversal, the 180, of being the one that everyone looked up to and respected because you cared so much about the Bible. You were always digging. There was always another layer to unpack, another commentary to read.
There's always something. Yeah. And then being told that I didn't care about the Bible. And that must be... Like, there must be some secret sin or you don't care about the Bible, and it's like, no, the very thing [00:15:00] that you respected me for still is the thing, but now it's the thing that villainizes me. And that was the most lonely part, I think, is feeling misunderstood in all of it.
Brian: Mm-hmm.
Tamice: I remember sitting reading Sin of Certainty, 'cause Love Matters More came to me next. But I remember, and again, I told B, at first, "Captains don't cry, but I'm probably gonna cry." But, like, I remember sitting and reading Sin of Certainty where Pete names the curse of Ham, the way the scripture was used to justify unimaginable things.
And I'm reading this book, and my love for scripture is intact.
Jared: Mm.
Tamice: But my sense of being seen and held by a God [00:16:00] who can say no to absurdity like this, that finally here is a white man who knows his ish, telling the truth. And at that point in my life, because I, we were talking about, like, that came out in 2016.
2012 was really hard for me 'cause I was really discombobulated by the theology at first. And by the time the book comes, I was like, "Here is somebody. I'm not crazy." It just felt so good to not be crazy. And, to just go, there is like so much more happening. This thing is so rich and so, it's so textured that y'all have flattened it, and you refuse to let me question you about this-
Pete: Mm-hmm
Tamice: when you know that I'm human, right? Like, we can look-
Pete: Mm-hmm ...
Tamice: together and know we're both humans. And so this text was used to say that I wasn't. Can we agree that maybe there's some funky things with interpretation? There was like nobody saying that, [00:17:00] and no one sticking to that. And so it just, I feel like both of you, what you've done, is you've provided a place for people to keep that anchor, that rigor.
Like, y'all still can't see me on scripture. Like for real, I still love scripture. And that, I think that is due in a large part to the place that you carved out and the cost. And the last thing I'll say is like that's what resonated, is the authenticity, the humor, and the like, yes, this is absurd.
And we can all agree on that. I'm just super, I'm super grateful for that, and I'm like, I know where I am now. I know that that book was a pastoral gift to me. You talk about this sometimes, Pete, about the, um, the graces, right? Like, that fall, and I think that book was that for me then. Obviously, I've changed my relationship to scripture and stuff, and probably will continue to do that.
But I wanna know about y'all. Like, how has your... In the last 10 years, has your relationship with the Bible or scripture changed at all?
Jared: I think for me, the biggest thing [00:18:00] isn't like the textual insights. I don't think that's been the biggest thing. I think it's cultural, like the cultural insights.
To have people of color, to have LGBTQ+ folks, to shine a light on these perspectives of the Bible that would just never have occurred to me, and just the profound insights at a human level of what this book can be, how it can be read. Not only kind of reading into it, but then to have that reflect back people's lived experiences, has been incredibly helpful to me.
So it's basically allowed me to not live, I think in the academy, there was sort of a one-dimensional way, I, I almost mean that literally. Like, there's one way to read this thing. And then to, like, see that get exploded into a rainbow of different kinds of experiences that interact with this text, um, I think that's [00:19:00] what I learned, was to not keep trying to ask, like, "Yeah, but is that critically acceptable?"
Like, I went from the fundamentalism of historical critical, like, or grammatical historical that's the term. There's, like, a fundamentalist way, there's the right way, and then there's the academic way, which can be just as fundamentalist in a certain way unless you sort of allow it to be something beyond just the text and have this be this conversation of culture and of relationship.
And so all of that, I think, is what's changed for me over the last decade, and it's because of the guests that we've had and their lived experience.
Brian: Now, Pete, you've already known everything about the Bible, so there's no way that you've learned anything in the last 10 years.
Pete: Well, I'm the same yesterday, today, and forever. I just don't change.
Brian: Pete himself is God-ordained.
Tamice: Ain't that just like a white man? They think of themselves as God.
Pete: Okay, well, I'm gonna answer the question really, though. Um, yeah, a lot of what Jared says I resonate with, [00:20:00] too. My relationship with the Bible, it's changed, and I'm trying to actually articulate how.
And, I'm not terribly concerned that I can't quite articulate it the way I want to. Um, I'm far more interested today than maybe I was 10 years ago of
being truly in conversation with the text and bringing my own questions and needs to it rather than keeping those at bay because your job is just to understand it straight. You know, just give me what it means. And of course, we all know that's a highly problematic place to start from because, I mean, do we really know what some of this stuff really means?
And so, I don't wanna talk about getting into contemplative readings or Lectio Divinas, things like that. I'm not really into that, not 'cause I don't like it, 'cause I don't [00:21:00] have energy or time to reinvent myself. But I do see how scripture works as, the term I've been using the last few years is a means of grace.
Like Eucharist or like baptism, or like listening to a hymn that just makes you stop in church or something like that. And for me, scripture acts that way. It's not the thing that tells me what to do. It's a means of grace where, it's a means by which I can connect with the Spirit without worrying about whether I have the proper exegesis of this text.
Sometimes I read texts that have I know nothing to do with what Paul means, for example. But it still means something to me, you know. And if I can just, I don't wanna, um, burden everybody with this, but this is actually relevant to me, very relevant. I have, uh, a picture of my three kids who are [00:22:00] now, 38, 36 and 33.
This is back over 30 years ago when they were, like, six, three and one, in a hayride someplace. We're getting a Christmas tree or pumpkins, I don't know , but, um, I have on the back of that written out Ephesians 3:14-19, which begins, "For this reason I bend my knee before the Father from whom all nations derive their name."
And, all families, not nations, it says families, right? So, I read that and something hit me because we were going through a very difficult period, my family, and I thought I was losing everything. And so I wrote that on the back of the card. Whatever Paul, whoever wrote Ephesians, whatever they meant by for this reason, it was the argument they're coming up with up to that.
But for me, for this reason, that was my kids. For this reason. Um, every family derives its name, even mine. I know he doesn't mean family. [00:23:00] I know he means nations. I don't care, right? It hit me and I thought to myself, "This is how people have been reading the Bible forever," right? And that's okay. It's okay to connect with it in unexpected kinds of ways.
And, for a scholar, that's not always something that you wanna say. You wanna just have a handle on it. So that's probably the biggest way, a means of grace. That's probably the biggest change for me over the past 10 years
Brian: That was, yeah, uh, that resonated a lot with my spirit. It kind of made me cry there for a second, Pete.
I really appreciate that. In many ways, I think this podcast has been a means of grace to people. And, and you've given permission to people to experience God in a way where they didn't have to run it through the approved hierarchy in order to get the authority to just simply receive that connection, that moment of connection like the one that you just described.
And I find that when we remove some of those [00:24:00] barriers of hierarchy and, and we're able to actually just receive God's Word to us. I can think of a very specific moment that I received God's Word to me from some of your words. I had, you know, in my deconstruction, I remember a moment where I was afraid maybe I was gonna become an atheist, and actually, there's nothing wrong with that.
I have many good atheist friends, and if that is what happened, that would've been fine. That's not what happened. And one of the reasons for that was that I didn't need to ditch God. I just needed a new god. I needed a better God. And I was struggling with a God who would command a genocide. Um, I didn't like the God of the Bible because he was an authoritarian punisher in certain places, but I needed all of it to say one consistent thing.
I thought it all had to be the same consistent picture of God. And when I realized, and part of your words were helpful in this in helping me see that actually, just because this part of the Bible describes God as commanding a genocide, that doesn't mean that that's who God is. And, both your podcast and, and your book, The Bible Tells Me So, specifically the genocidal [00:25:00] God, un- deconstructing that god helped me hold on to God.
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Brian: And I have a better, richer relationship with God because of God's Word to me that came through your helpful words in deconstructing that image of God. And so I'm curious with you guys, as you think about your relationship beyond the Bible with God, with the Church, with Christianity, how have you seen that evolve?
And I know this is quite a personal question. This is more the question of your own spirituality, and there's no right or wrong answers here. Um, like I said, I just had atheism on the table for a minute. Um, but as you look at the last 10 years, were there moments where you were like, "I don't really, this doesn't seem that important to me.
I wanna throw this away altogether," or, "Actually, this feels more important than ever"? I mean, how, how has that journey been for you with God and faith?
Jared: I mean, I think back to sort in the beginning, we can use biblical language. Um, yeah, for me, I think in the beginning it was- I don't know, I don't wanna [00:26:00] s- I don't wanna sound trite, but it feels like, eh, we all go through that atheist phase, you know?
It's like, but that's kind of how I feel. I actually remember once as a pastor getting up and I was preaching through something, I don't know. But for some reason I said, like, this experience of maybe it was Good Friday and, you know, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" kind of moment, and saying, "You know what, guys?
It's okay to not believe. It's okay to not believe." Mind you, this is, like, a evangelical mega church, so if you wanna know why I got resigned, there's a couple of these examples. But, uh, so one of the moments I said, "You know, I don't know if I believe" It actually was right after I read Jerry Coyne's book Why Evolution Is True, which totally rocked me.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: And I was kinda dabbling. I was like, "Eh, I don't know." But that was the moment where my default was evolution and science are pretty reliable. We kinda always have this, like, default position where it's like the paradigm shifts, and it was after I read that book that I was like, "Oh, from now on I'm defaulting to whatever this is.
[00:27:00] This makes a lot of sense to me." And so I got up and preached that next Saturday or Sunday or whatever it was, and I said, "Yeah, I don't, I don't... Like, today, I don't know if I believe any of this." And I said, "But that's okay, because that's what community is about, is because right now you're gonna believe on my behalf.
That's what showing up is about." And then I said, "Next week I'll probably be fine, and I'll believe. And then maybe you won't believe, and then, and then I'll believe on your behalf, and that's, like, what makes the body of Christ so beautiful." And so that's kind of... That is a good example of where I was at the time, of just kinda like, "I don't know.
I'm just gonna go along with it and trust that being part of this community is gonna take me some place good and beautiful." Um, and so kinda working through that. And then I think- Over the last 10 years or so, it's sort of like where, where is all this going? And this is gonna be a future podcast episode.
But I do think I sort of grasped this thread. I would call it, it's the mystical thread, mysticism. It's a little bit of the Richard [00:28:00] Rohr- track that a lot of people got on. Um, and I think of Carl Rahner, you know, who said, "The future of Christianity will be mysticism or it'll be nothing," or something like that.
Brian: Mm-hmm,
Jared: And so it's like this personal experience with the divine, and that's like looking inward and that mystical approach, and I tried that on a little bit. It didn't really work for me. I came out of a charismatic background, so I sorta tried that on for a little while and was like, "Eh, I don't like it."
Historically, on this podcast I get, you know, annoyed when Pete talks about mysticism, or any of our guests. But so I tried that on for a little bit.
Tamice: I am the Black modern mystic, Jared- ... and I am so offended right now.
Jared: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm trying to be authentic. Uh, I thought this was a safe space.
So I tried that on, and then, you know, it's like, okay, but there was this other space called, like, the social justice space, and again I'm making these titles up as I go. And, and I try that on for a little bit, and that doesn't fit. Now, again, I'm [00:29:00] not, I'm not against mystical experiences or mysticism or contemplation, and I'm not against social justice, obviously.
But as this, like, new identity for what we're gonna fill our bucket of Christian identity with, neither one of those fit really well. And I think right now I'm in a space of saying, "What are other options for that?" And I don't know the answer, so I'm in a space of not really knowing. Um, but have gone through a couple of these iterations over the last 10 years, and just sort of saying, not that I don't have an idea, I just don't know if I have the words or concepts for it yet of what, what the bucket of my Christianity is gonna be filled with.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: Um, and I'm just still searching that out.
Pete: And, and God's not saying, "You better get the answer right-
Jared: Yeah, I'm not too worried
Pete: about that ... immediately." I mean, o- Yeah ... once, a- as, as glib as it sounds, once you sort of take hell off the table-
Jared: Right.
Pete: like, what Jared's experiencing is more like I can hear the Spirit saying, "Yeah, go for it." Yeah. [00:30:00] Figure it out. Yeah. You know, the wisdom track instead of just read the Bible and find the right answers, you know? Yeah. Um...
Tamice: Mm-hmm.
Jared: I'm more of a pragmatist, so that's what I'm trying to figure out.
Pete: You are very pragmatic, yeah.
Jared: Is, like, the pragmatist Christianity. Where's that group? We need that support group.
Pete: Yeah.
Tamice: I tried to,. . .This is like, I'm like, "Oh, my gosh, I didn't give y'all this question," but this is a question that Tamice has for Pete and Jared, because I think I'm trying to figure this out myself, which is why I keep saying post-Christian, 'cause I wanna get over the closure.
I just feel like I wanna provide spaciousness for the fact that I'm gonna change my mind, and I'm gonna grapple with things. And, like, there was something that Pete mentioned earlier about, like, you know, you have to get a handle on it, and it just, it feels so funny to me to think that we could get a handle on an ocean.
Like, that makes no sense. Mm. So, like, how do you say, "I'm keeping my history. I'm keeping my tradition. I'm keeping the scripture, and I'm gonna [00:31:00] change my mind a lot, and it's real nice out here." Like, it- Mm-hmm ... it doesn't feel, um, I, I don't mean woo woo, like spirituality. Do you know what I mean?
I feel extremely tethered, but, like, something that says the universe is still unfolding. Like I am still unfolding. Everything is still unfolding, so how can we, like, let go of closure?
Jared: Right.
Tamice: And, like, or the need to capture. Mm-hmm.
Pete: Right.
Tamice: I don't know what we do, but I think that I'm excited to go with you all here.
Yeah. Because I'm asking these very same questions, and I use “post” to be like, "I don't wanna talk about it."
Pete: Mm-hmm. "
Tamice: I don't know, so it's post." But, I mean, what are y'all's thoughts on that?
Pete: Well, it's very different to have a spiritual stance where the grasping of the right answers is everything, and that's all you know.
And then you come to a place where I don't know everything, and I never will. And, um, I, I mean, it's [00:32:00] actually, it's my life as an academic that brought me to that place because I was seeing things like you can't reconcile these things. These are too odd. You just have to sort of let go, um, answering questions.
There are many things from a historical point of view we will never, ever be able to answer from the Bible. There's no data to work with. So lighten up, you know? Maybe these stories weren't even written for that reason. Maybe they were written to help inspire people or move people or motivate them or whatever.
And, um, so yeah, I think once you have a different mindset, that freedom you're talking about, to me, is that that lack of feeling guilty or shamed because you're saying, "I don't really know the answer to this, and I'm fine with that, and I don't think I have to know the answer to it." I mean, what pleases God more, the person who says, "I can get all the answers to this," or those who say, "I just don't know, but I'm gonna keep walking anyway," right?
What's [00:33:00] the better way, path forward? For me, it's the latter. It's not, it's not the former.
Brian: I know we're almost out of time. As we just finish up reflecting on the last 10 years, why do you think this work still matters? As you look back over the last 10 years, how does it matter differently now than maybe it did when you first started off? And how might it still matter into the future?
How has that sort of changed from the way you look at it now to the beginning, and how do you see the next 10 years?
Pete: How does it matter differently? That's a very interesting question, a very interesting way of putting it. Was that your question, Tamice, or was it yours, Brian?
Tamice: I love that Pete thought it was my question. It was.
Brian: It probably was.
Pete: I don't know.
Tamice: But I like the assumption that, look, somebody's been doing the work.
Pete: Well, um, but it, [00:34:00] you know, in terms of how it matters differently, it's a hard question to answer for me. It still matters. I think it matters more bigly than it did 10 years ago because things have changed.
It matters differently over, you know, the last 10 years, and because it's expanded, 'cause I've changed, but it still matters to me that what we do because I think we're trying to build community for people. And, you know, what you were saying earlier, Tamice, about how feeling like you had permission or I, I'm not sure what word you used, we get that all the time, and we still get it.
And that's, and I'll be very candid, that's why we're interested in expanding. Not, you know, having a staff of 500 people, but just we're trying to reach people who we know are out there who would benefit just from maybe a little bit of calmness, a little bit of honesty and integrity and authenticity.
So, that matters to us, and I'd say for me at least, [00:35:00] that vision is stronger than it was 10 years ago, and it's because I keep hearing things from people. I keep hearing the same problems, the same complaints. Yeah, I get it, they're there. Um, we've been talking about that for 10 years.
Others have been talking for it much longer than we have, others for not as long, but we're all doing it. We're all doing the same thing. And that matters. That matters very much to me. I know people in my life who I wish had been introduced to a different kind of faith, right? And, um, to help other people, uh, not have to have experiences of faith that land them in therapy by the time they're 20, you know?
Tamice: Mm-hmm.
Pete: That’s how I think it matters. I think it still matters, and I think it'll continue to matter as long as we can keep this thing going.
Jared: Yeah.
Brian: And because fear-based high control religion is not going anywhere, unfortunately. They're pushing it and doing it in tandem with Christian nationalism and [00:36:00] authoritarians.
Pete: Well, I think that also means the death of Christianity in America. I think we're living in the twilight of Christianity. It's gonna have to be rebirthed differently. And, I know David Bentley Hart just said something publicly.
Brian: One-up him.
Pete: No, well, he said something like, "I hope it all just burns to the ground and starts all over again," 'cause we've screwed this up so imaginably. We can't possibly fix it. This is a re-envisioning, a reimagining that has to happen-
Tamice: That's right ...
Pete: from the ground up. Not the top, down. It never works from the top, down.
Brian: May it be so.
Tamice: I'm still gotta say this part. I cannot help but think about Ezra and Nehemiah and how Bible for Normal People... You know, it, like, I keep thinking about them trying again, and they're working with what they have to rebuild this temple and to remind themselves of the word. And I'm getting tender because I think we [00:37:00] will look back at this podcast and y'all's work and the things that you have put out into the world as foundational, I mean, it's foundational for me and Brian out here, right? Like there's something very powerful about what the two of you created that I think needs to be named publicly, and that, in the midst of this collapse and just the absurdity of what people are saying Christianity is and what the Bible sanctions, the fact that there is a witness, I see the kindness of God because God will always give a witness to truth.
And you've got 10 years of a corpus of a whole other option that can keep the rigor and the honesty and the authenticity, and I just have to say thank you for the ways that you kept me. I was kept by your work-
Pete: Mm-hmm ...
Tamice: in some very important ways.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Tamice: And I know that the listener is [00:38:00] experiencing that.
I know me and B have talked about that, but I'm just super grateful, and I have to name that. And I think your work is foundational for what comes next. I really do.
Pete: That's very kind of you. Thank you.
Jared: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. I mean, my hope in terms of it mattering and why it matters differently now is I think more and more, at least for me, the work is not really about...
And maybe, to me, this goes to what you were saying. It's not necessarily, uh, Christianity, not Christianity- these binaries I think don't hold much for me anymore. But I do think the binary that's helpful to me now is certainty and confidence, and how do we have confidence without certainty?
How do we have conviction without certainty? Because I think that's been so-
Come on, Jared Byas.
Jared: . . . tied together for so long that we've been duped into thinking that if we don't have certainty, then we can't act. We can't have [00:39:00] conviction. We can't have values. We can't act on behalf of those values.
We can't have passion. And so to continue the work for me, what matters differently is to keep painting a picture of how to have conviction and passion, but without the certainty. Because I think if you look, the certainty follows over the borderlands of these binaries. The certainty follows you into your fundamentalism, into your atheism, into you supporting the Democratic Party or the Republican Party.
The certainty tends to follow us because I think that's really what we're addicted to in a lot of ways, and I think that's the hard thing to get rid of. So... that, I think, is what kinda matters for me, is continuing to be creative and imaginative in what a, a, a life post certainty looks like.
Pete: Mm-hmm.
Jared: And seeing how maybe the oppressive force, one of the main oppressive forces, is this need for certainty, which comes out of a, a tenderness and a softness to our fragility. Um, and, and how can we- Yeah ... hold that space for people [00:40:00] who their certainty is a mask for fear, uh, and a mask for feeling fragile in a fragile world, and how do we have the courage to have conviction and confidence, not because we've substituted that certainty, but because we've learned to live without it?
Pete: Mm-hmm. And how to get, how to get people there.
Jared: Yeah.
Pete: Right? And, I sort of think you can't get anybody there.
Jared: Right. No.
Pete: There has to be a crack, there has to be a reason for asking these questions, and once they do, then you can have that conversation, once you're not afraid anymore.
Right? I think fear is still key to all this stuff, in my opinion. Probably a little simplistic, but once we move beyond You raise your kids differently if you're not concerned about them not making a profession of faith when they're 15 'cause they'll go to hell when they die.
Tamice: That's right.
Pete: You raise your kids differently. You think differently about them, right? You, you love them differently. [00:41:00] You, you interact with them differently. You have to trust God differently, not just with a specific outcome, but, like, who the hell knows where their lives are going, right?
That's a scary proposition, especially for Christian parents who have been told, you know, "Your kid's not quite right here in Sunday school. They're asking questions." You know?
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Brian: Yeah.
Tamice: Guilty
Pete: . . .but we do that. We do that. And, I think to change things really, um, it just takes a re-envisioning of everything.
And, in other words, people are afraid. You can't just keep throwing the same stuff at them. You have to say, "Look at this vision over here for what you're even talking about, how different it is, how big it is, how beautiful this is."
Jared: Mm-hmm.
Pete: And to find a way, and you don't do that through polemics on social media.
You don't do that through calling people names. You don't do that through whatever. You do it just by doing it. And by showing it, and [00:42:00] maybe even with a little humility, you know, but always authenticity, all that. And, that can make a difference, especially now. We're just, you can't yell loud enough to get people to listen to you.
You just have to act it. You have to live it, which is, of course, much harder, isn't it?
Brian: That's a good word, Pete. I'm hearing you say that fear shuts us down, creates compliance, and it causes us to be addicted to that fear and that certainty, but that people can be struck by grace and can unlock a more expansive way of being.
And- Mm. That's what happened for me, in many ways, and to me, and there were many players in that, right? God works in mysterious ways, but you have no doubt been, uh, both of you in this podcast have been a huge part of that for so many of us.
Tamice: Absolutely. So for a future free from fear and free from addiction to certainty and we look forward to the next 10 years of The Bible for Normal People.
Tamice: Indeed. Thank y'all so much.
Pete: Yeah. Right, honest moment here, folks. We've been making this podcast for 10 years, and one thing that's hard is [00:43:00] hearing from our listeners that they don't have anyone to talk to about it. The podcast goes out to thousands of people, millions over the years, but then there isn't often a place to process and talk about it.
Jared: That's why we built the Society of Normal People, because we wanted there to be a place where the conversation doesn't just stop.
Pete: There are about 1,500 people in the Society already who didn't want the conversation to stop either. We hope you'll join them.
Jared: The link is in our show notes, or go to thebiblefornormalpeople.com/join.
