James McGrath: Building a More Expansive Faith Beyond Deconstruction

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[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to the Gravity Podcast, where we host conversations on developing a Christian spirituality, rooted in love that fosters resilient faith in everyday life.
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[SPEAKER_04]: As sure as the sun rising in the east, it's Tuesday, and this is another Gravity Commons podcast.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We're not quite, we're not quite as, I will say, we're not quite as sure as the sun rising in the east.
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[SPEAKER_03]: There are a few times recently even where we've thought, oh, shoot, well, that one didn't work out because something went wrong with the recording or
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[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I guess that's usually what happens.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Something goes wrong with the recording and we're like, well, I guess we're all out of podcasts, so I'm speaking and into existence.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Oh, good.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Manifet.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'm making.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm signing contracts with my mouth.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You know, uh, manifest on, uh, for the universe.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I love it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's great.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, mostly just for you and me and Christy.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Hi, Christy.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Hello, how are you guys doing?
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[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, you're a sometimes I feel a little sheepish because we do this on video.
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[SPEAKER_04]: We recorded some video and I've seldom Showered, you know, by like nine 15 Eastern and Christie is recording this and you're like showered and
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[SPEAKER_03]: You've got to grab legit blouse on and you're blouse in it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I got some meetings today.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I got even some makeup on a little bit today, so wow, it's going to be really happening.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's really happening, friends.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's going to be a great day, 715.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Sometimes during, sometimes during intros we offer like recommendations by way of like what's what's going on with you.
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[SPEAKER_04]: What are you doing with your life.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I'm just curious if you have any recommendations today.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Like maybe a movie you saw that you like the TV series that you're enjoying a book, you're reading, doesn't have to be one of each could just be one total.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So anybody have any rex.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, I have two recommendations.
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[SPEAKER_01]: one.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's called, it's not like that.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's a TV show.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's only like six episodes long or something.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But here's a deal.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I've only in like three episodes in and the first episode was good.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And then the second third episode were like, okay, I'm going to stick with it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: But it made me cry.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's why I said it was good.
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[SPEAKER_03]: My wife's two of those.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, you're both your wives.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm sure, I think.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Anyway, it hits something emotional for me that is powerful.
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[SPEAKER_01]: There's some cheesyness that the guy's a pastor and his wife died.
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[SPEAKER_01]: That's the premise, and that is cheesy.
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[UNKNOWN]: I should have done that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I should have done that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: That never happens.
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[SPEAKER_03]: No.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Sorry.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Go ahead.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I actually appreciate it because he's got some kids and they're all processing the death of his wife differently.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And like one of them is like, I'm not coming in church anymore.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And he lets her, which I feel like in our like, in Christian culture, sometimes it's people say stupid things, you know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so I just appreciate maybe the the posture in which he's trying to parent.
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[SPEAKER_01]: And so anyway, I get nervous recommending it because I don't know how it ends, you know?
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[SPEAKER_01]: episode four, it's like stupid and terrible.
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[SPEAKER_01]: So I can recommend the first three episodes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: First three episodes.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was worth watching.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It was worth, you know.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I also would recommend if you have to get an electrician that you save a lot of money because there's money.
04:11.727 --> 04:18.989
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, like electricians are expensive and they chew up your yard too, which I know is like
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's just, I'm like, oh my gosh, this is a lot.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I love that you said they chup.
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[SPEAKER_03]: You said chup?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Chup, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Chup up your yard.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I felt like I've never heard that word before and I know exactly what it means.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, what's your recommendation?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Untext clues.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, yeah, but what's your, you have a recommendation?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Um, I am thinking through.
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[SPEAKER_03]: that quite a couple while you're thinking.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, go ahead.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I'm reading the first year trilogy by Robin Hobb.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's like an epic fantasy, sort of has our theory and legend themes and it's not said in our world, it's said in our fantasy world, but it's very much like our theory and legend kind of lore and stuff like that and it's really good.
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[SPEAKER_04]: It's a character-driven and introspective, and I just, I like it, there's a, there's a different kinds of magic in it that are not the normal magic sort of, you know, not the Harry Potter magic, I guess you call it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So I'm enjoying that and my wife and I got back into White Lotus recently the series on HBO and we're watching Season 3 and it's just really well done.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it really is.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So well done and Ben, Ben, you'll appreciate this.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I was watching episode two of Season 3 last night.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And there's a character in this, and like, oh my gosh, what is, I know this woman.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Where do I know this woman from?
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[SPEAKER_04]: She's so, looks so familiar to me.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I, you know, got on the Google machine.
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[SPEAKER_04]: She was in the leftovers.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, yeah.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Cari, Corey?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, Corey Kins.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, one of the characters in season three, yes, was one of the main characters in the leftovers.
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[SPEAKER_04]: which is also about people dealing with death.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like you are talking another language because I haven't seen either one of these shows.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Well, the lot doubles is a bit heavy.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And...
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[SPEAKER_04]: It blurs like reality and fantasy enough that you're like, you know, there's some fantasy shows that you're like, yep, this is total fantasy, I get it.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And then there's some shows that are like, okay, this is all real.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And then you get shows like, remember lost, Christy, where you're like, oh yeah.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Is this real or is this fantasy?
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[SPEAKER_02]: I don't know for sure.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yep.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And I feel like leftover is like that.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You're not quite sure.
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[SPEAKER_04]: how to categorize this in your brain so it keeps your brain a little off balance and then it's also super heavy but really good.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Really good.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And why Lotus is pretty heavy too, by the way.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, it is.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's a dark.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's a very dark comedy.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's dark comedy.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like be ready for that.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Be ready for the dark.
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[SPEAKER_03]: but also be ready for the comedy.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like I think it's funny.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It is funny.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So that's a book and a TV show wreck.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Ben, how about you?
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[SPEAKER_03]: Well, I have a couple things.
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[SPEAKER_03]: One, because you recommended the white lotus, it has given me boldness to recommend another dark comedy that Dev and I just watched.
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[SPEAKER_03]: We just watched the second season of beef.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Uh, which is a series on Netflix, um, I have for a beef about people arguing.
08:02.838 --> 08:08.540
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, they've got, they've got a beef, you know, that it's not like, uh, like cow meat.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It's, um, uh, they've got a fight.
08:11.061 --> 08:11.541
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a fight.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And, um, yeah, it's kind of like the white lotus in the sense that like every season is an all new cast.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Like a pretty new, I mean, I guess there's some repeat characters in the white lotus, but there are, I don't think there are any in this second season of beef.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Just really great performances and really good writing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: There are some really, uh,
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[SPEAKER_03]: I don't know, dark, difficult moments, so, you know, be ready for that as you watch it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But I really enjoyed the series.
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[SPEAKER_03]: It ended down actually an interestingly poignant note.
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[SPEAKER_03]: So, anyway, I'd recommend that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: All right.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Great.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I would also recommend, I'd like to make more recommendations.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I'd like to reclaiming my time.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Got it.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Now, I listen to audiobooks, I've stopped listening to podcasts.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I don't listen to them anymore.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I listen to audiobooks, almost exclusively in my car, or when I'm working out.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And too, that I listen to recently that I really enjoyed.
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[SPEAKER_03]: One was called Clara and the Sun.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, these are books you can read with your eyeballs as well, if you'd like.
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[SPEAKER_03]: But they're also audiobooks, and I enjoyed the performance of the book.
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[SPEAKER_03]: which is kind of a sci-fi kind of near future kind of thing.
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[SPEAKER_03]: And then the other book was called Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I really enjoyed both of those books.
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[SPEAKER_01]: All right, either of you guys read them to you.
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[SPEAKER_01]: The Theo of Golden.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's my Alan Levi.
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[SPEAKER_01]: It's good.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I've heard people talk about it.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I think it's good.
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[SPEAKER_04]: What's that that's what?
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[SPEAKER_01]: Theo like the name.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Oh, Theo of golden.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: Got um.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_01]: I thought it was delightful.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So, there you go.
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[SPEAKER_04]: There you go.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Let's turn on every recommendation.
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[SPEAKER_04]: So if you would like something to do in your evening this other than doom scroll social media, there's a plethora of options for you.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Although doom scrolling social media, can we bring that back?
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[SPEAKER_03]: No, that was that really that bad.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yes, awful.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Okay.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Sorry.
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[SPEAKER_04]: You're you're right.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I will concede to bring that back then if you will also concede to bringing back parachute pants and where those
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[SPEAKER_03]: What if I do both at both at the same time as bonus points?
10:54.426 --> 10:56.707
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you're scrolling in parachute pants.
10:57.187 --> 10:58.507
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they would make good lounge pants.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Just lounging.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Games scrolling lounging, swishing, swishing around.
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[SPEAKER_04]: One final recommendation that we have is this interview here with James McGrath.
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[SPEAKER_04]: He is the Clarence Elgoodwin Chair of New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University here in Indianapolis, where Ben and I are.
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[SPEAKER_04]: His blog, Religion Prof, can be found on the Pathios Network.
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[SPEAKER_04]: His previous books include the A to Z of the New Testament, Christmaker, a life of John the Baptist, theology and science fiction, and what Jesus learned from women.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Today we are discussing his latest book Beyond Deconstruction, building a more expansive faith.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Let's get into it with James.
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[SPEAKER_04]: James, welcome to the Gravity Commons podcast.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's a real pleasure to be here and to finally be talking to someone who
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[SPEAKER_02]: lives and goes about life, not that far from where I do the same.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, James and I are neighbors, been also a neighbor here in the greater Indianapolis area.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I've learned to refer to it like that.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, well, James, you tell the story of your own faith journey, a little in this book, particularly about how you encountered what's commonly referred to as deconstruction.
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[SPEAKER_04]: and that's what that's the obviously the focus of the books.
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[SPEAKER_04]: I wonder if you could share a little bit of that by way of introducing yourself and I'll also introducing a bit of the topic when we talk about today.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Sure, thank you.
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[SPEAKER_02]: For longer than the term deconstruction has been used,
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, really for as long as there have been people trying to make absolute sorts of truth claims and treating the Bible in this very modern sort of fundamentalist sort of way, there have been people who once they started looking closely at the Bible, found that it shook all that apart for them and one of the things that has been
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[SPEAKER_02]: particularly effective or notorious, depending on your point of view, for accomplishing that is pursuing an academic degree in biblical studies because you've been shaped by a faith tradition that is taught you to love and value the Bible and that is the merit word of God, so you study it and it blows that whole thing apart.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And so what I realized is that
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[SPEAKER_02]: biblical scholars have been doing this deconstruction thing for pretty much as long as there has been academic biblical scholarship.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And it seemed as though those of us, at least myself, but those of us, you know, because I'm not the only one who have come through that process with what we would characterize as, you certainly not the same faith, but Christian faith, one that we think is actually deeper and more honest and more robust,
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[SPEAKER_02]: share or journey, not as like a the absolute guide.
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[SPEAKER_02]: This is how you navigate these orders.
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[SPEAKER_02]: You know, turn left exactly here, you know, hardest-arboid, you know, when you see this rock or something like that.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But just as an example of how one might do so, and how one might put things together in a new configuration out the other end, if for no other reason that to encourage those who've experienced what can often be quite a traumatic experience,
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, I think some of that trauma that people go through in this process that we're calling deconstruction has to do with their relationship to certainty.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Um, and so I wonder if you can go into this, like, how, how does our desire for certainty and the illusion of certainty?
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[SPEAKER_03]: How does that contribute to our difficulty, the difficulty we have with this process, um, that we call deconstruction, and like you said, it can be really traumatic, but some, some of the ways that people describe it, it can almost be like, why doesn't, why doesn't it feel like a fun discovery time?
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[SPEAKER_03]: And I think part of that reason is our relationship to certainty, we feel like we're not discovering something new, we often feel we're losing something.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And if we can free ourselves from the way for that another way, because I think we all have the instinctive desire for certain day or at least some things that we can claim to.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And
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[SPEAKER_02]: I, I'm not of the view that everything is so absolutely uncertain that nobody can know anything and that nobody can justify having any convictions.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But if we can reconcile ourselves to the fact that something and anything will be less certain than we may have been previously adopted to expect them to be, then it can actually become that fun experience of exploration.
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[SPEAKER_02]: That's, that's why I'm,
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[SPEAKER_02]: not just doing podcast talking about moving beyond deconstruction, but it's still smiling.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Even after having gone through this experience.
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[SPEAKER_02]: But it's interesting.
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[SPEAKER_02]: So I teach a Butler University here in Indianapolis.
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[SPEAKER_02]: And we just hosted a program called Scriptural Reasoning on Campus.
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[SPEAKER_02]: It was mostly educators involved in higher education at religiously affiliated schools.
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[SPEAKER_02]: This is part of education more generally, right?
17:08.420 --> 17:20.066
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not just people who teach religious studies, Bible, theology, who bump up against the fact that students and human beings in general have a desire for certainty, right?
17:20.186 --> 17:32.073
[SPEAKER_02]: If you think you know the absolute truth about politics or economics or history, there's a reasonable chance even if you had really good teachers at a good education program
17:35.136 --> 17:39.117
[SPEAKER_02]: either, you know, somebody got wrong that was teaching you or you got the wrong item, stickers, something.
17:40.157 --> 17:48.400
[SPEAKER_02]: And part of part of why I wrote the book is to help people find their way to that being something that's really positive.
17:48.420 --> 17:54.261
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I learned something new rather than I lost one of my deeply cherished beliefs, right?
17:54.341 --> 17:55.662
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, I'm making progress.
17:55.682 --> 17:56.622
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm figuring things out.
17:56.642 --> 17:59.783
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like I've got a little slight glimpse more of the truth.
18:01.107 --> 18:10.513
[SPEAKER_02]: And so one of the things I found myself talking with some of these other educators about in these past days was the fact that it's not a move from certainty to uncertainty.
18:10.933 --> 18:11.894
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm a re-gozerics process.
18:11.954 --> 18:18.538
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a move from the illusion of certainty, a feeling of certainty, feeling certain, to feeling uncertain.
18:20.099 --> 18:28.165
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think probably the most important step in that process in order to go from it being something traumatic and negative to something positive
18:33.348 --> 18:35.691
[SPEAKER_02]: your situation, your actual certainty is no different.
18:36.532 --> 18:39.355
[SPEAKER_02]: What you have is greater honesty about your level of certainty.
18:41.257 --> 18:47.384
[SPEAKER_02]: And if there's any hope of being certain about anything, it's going to have to start with honesty about how a certain or uncertain you are, how...
18:48.367 --> 18:50.849
[SPEAKER_02]: well-founded, well-grounded, the things are that you believe.
18:51.529 --> 19:07.519
[SPEAKER_02]: And so that feeling of uncertainty is the first step towards actually beginning a genuine, authentic, reasoned evidence-based process of discovering what can I know into what extent, right?
19:07.539 --> 19:14.983
[SPEAKER_02]: As long as we're content with a feeling of certainty, that may be a feeling of certainty about things that we have no business, feel uncertain about,
19:18.533 --> 19:20.875
[SPEAKER_02]: For all we know it might be completely deceived about things.
19:21.335 --> 19:25.959
[SPEAKER_02]: And the Bible warns about the fact that we can be deceived, we can deceive ourselves, others can deceive us.
19:27.020 --> 19:33.685
[SPEAKER_02]: And so there too, there's, I mean, on the one hand, a resource in the Bible, it's like, you're doing the thing that's actually biblical, right?
19:33.745 --> 19:42.492
[SPEAKER_02]: You're questioning God is so important that you're going to prioritize the search for truth and not just take things off you know.
19:43.956 --> 19:55.241
[SPEAKER_02]: on the claim of others, yet we always have this tendency, at least in certain faith traditions, to assume that those warnings are about those other people, because we've already got the truth.
19:56.342 --> 20:09.747
[SPEAKER_02]: But the only way to know that is to be honest about that feeling of uncertainty and embracing that feeling and recognizing that it's going to take more than that feeling in order
20:12.320 --> 20:17.323
[SPEAKER_02]: legitimate, justified confidence in what you believe and what you value.
20:18.243 --> 20:18.583
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
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[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
20:20.564 --> 20:26.807
[SPEAKER_04]: I know we could get down the road of an esoteric philosophical conversation about certainty.
20:29.310 --> 20:44.035
[SPEAKER_04]: But I do just want to like ask how you deal with, you know, the text of Scripture that describes certainty as something to be desired or achieved or attained, you know, being certain of what you hope for and sure of what you're seeing, those kinds of things.
20:44.276 --> 20:53.019
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you think that certainty functions differently for those of us in enlightenment, modern world than it did for, for instance, Saint Paul,
20:53.819 --> 21:00.481
[SPEAKER_04]: do you think that St. Paul was after something that is actually not as virtuous as what you're contending for?
21:00.862 --> 21:02.842
[SPEAKER_04]: How do you make sense of the texts?
21:03.243 --> 21:15.167
[SPEAKER_04]: Because the people who want certainty and who claim it and who build their entire faith world view on it can just pull scripture after scripture about why it's such a good idea.
21:18.355 --> 21:25.859
[SPEAKER_02]: I think those scriptures may not provide quite as much support for their view as they claim.
21:26.239 --> 21:30.021
[SPEAKER_02]: Of course, the fact that you have texts that say you should feel certain.
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[SPEAKER_02]: does not actually provide evidence that those texts are giving you the, giving you the, giving you the truth, right?
21:41.605 --> 21:51.396
[SPEAKER_02]: And so just saying, well, this text says I should be certain, I feel certain about this text and therefore, you know, you can get yourself into that lovely circular reasoning that it's hard to get out of, but that,
21:51.997 --> 22:03.047
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if you're going to, I mean, if you think that your faith is something you should share with others, you have to be able to do something better than circular reasoning, right, to have a really beautiful conversation with someone who doesn't already agree with you.
22:04.087 --> 22:12.335
[SPEAKER_02]: But text like that, you know, thinking about, you know, Hebrews talks about, you know, faith that faith in the Bible is mostly about trust, right?
22:12.915 --> 22:17.279
[SPEAKER_02]: It's rarely talking about, you know, the sent to
22:19.942 --> 22:30.193
[SPEAKER_02]: And when it does, it's like in the letter of James, where he's using that other nuance of faith, that's less of a focus in the New Testament, he says, yeah, demons believe God is one.
22:30.233 --> 22:31.734
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, a lot of good it does that.
22:31.814 --> 22:42.465
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, you know, believing the right things is not presented as something that is either as important or as meaningful or as, you know, central to true faith, right?
22:43.734 --> 22:49.238
[SPEAKER_02]: as trust, trust in the Lord with all your heart, and we not on your own understanding, right?
22:49.278 --> 23:11.894
[SPEAKER_02]: And popular memory verse in conservative churches that say, then follow that up with, but we have the Bible, so we know the truth and are not leaning on, you know, but we're leaning on the Bible, and it's like, yeah, okay, but yet that, that's about trusting in a God who surpasses all understanding and recognizing our own human limitations and the limits of our own understanding.
23:12.838 --> 23:15.560
[SPEAKER_02]: And Hebrews, I think, is talking about that, right?
23:16.000 --> 23:30.371
[SPEAKER_02]: Faith, trust in one who you have reason to believe is faithful, and who transcends your comprehension, but is, yep, it seems capable of bringing things about and ways that you are not.
23:32.697 --> 23:44.926
[SPEAKER_02]: allows you to feel confident about things that are unseen, which mostly is focusing on not on, there's a whole celestial angel with hierarchy and you can know all their names and stuff by some leap of faith.
23:44.946 --> 23:49.449
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a, you know, it's talking about confidence about things that are not yet visible, right?
23:49.489 --> 23:52.531
[SPEAKER_02]: It's about hope for the future, it's about what is possible.
23:53.732 --> 23:57.815
[SPEAKER_02]: And having confidence based on trust in one that
23:58.772 --> 24:02.834
[SPEAKER_02]: Unlike yourself, has the power and the greatness to bring it about.
24:02.874 --> 24:17.061
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think the focus, even in those texts that seem to be saying, you should feel certain, it's more about feeling certain, you know, feeling confident in God and putting your trust there, precisely because you recognize your own limitations.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
24:22.495 --> 24:38.298
[SPEAKER_04]: man I really want to rabbit hold down this because I think part of part of one of one of this seminal moments or liminal moments in my deconstruction was realizing that I had put faith in my faith rather than faith in Jesus.
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[SPEAKER_04]: And certainty was a huge lynch pin in that faith and my faith.
24:46.665 --> 24:53.067
[SPEAKER_04]: The more certain I was, the better I felt, and the more assured I was that I was a Christian.
24:54.588 --> 24:57.849
[SPEAKER_04]: And you do talk about this in the book, and I love the way you talk about confidence.
24:57.869 --> 25:03.792
[SPEAKER_04]: And I think there is, there is a metaphysical crisis.
25:04.916 --> 25:12.401
[SPEAKER_04]: for people who've learned to be allergic to uncertainty or unknowing, to navigate confidence in the midst of that.
25:13.642 --> 25:18.225
[SPEAKER_04]: It does feel like the ground of your being has been wiped away.
25:19.326 --> 25:24.849
[SPEAKER_04]: And you do a really good, delicate, gentle job in walking through that.
25:26.050 --> 25:28.312
[SPEAKER_04]: But there's so much more, so I want to keep moving.
25:29.892 --> 25:45.118
[SPEAKER_04]: You organize the book with a metaphor or an analogy like that deconstruction can be kind of like a house renovation or a house rehabilitation and you use this DIY image to reconstructing faith.
25:45.998 --> 25:47.079
[SPEAKER_04]: Can you unpack a little bit?
25:47.479 --> 25:56.142
[SPEAKER_04]: Why you think that's an apt or good analogy to use for how we find a more livable faith?
25:57.974 --> 26:04.998
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, so I'm tempted to start by saying that you know how we get these great ideas in the bathroom.
26:06.199 --> 26:13.283
[SPEAKER_02]: But actually that metaphor that image started with some actual home renovation.
26:13.423 --> 26:17.606
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the first inkliques of the possibility of writing a book along this these lines was,
26:19.084 --> 26:27.671
[SPEAKER_02]: We decided to redo our bathroom like the tile is old and dingy and so Said okay Get someone here.
26:27.691 --> 26:28.232
[SPEAKER_02]: They'll take care of it.
26:28.252 --> 26:29.052
[SPEAKER_02]: It won't take too long.
26:29.373 --> 26:33.176
[SPEAKER_02]: They pulled up the tile gets what was underneath a whole other set of tile
26:35.065 --> 26:39.148
[SPEAKER_02]: and say pull that up and then there's a little limb and then there's the floor which is not in the grave there's some shape.
26:39.448 --> 27:03.883
[SPEAKER_02]: And before I know it, if I peer through the door to my bathroom, I can see the crawl space underneath and there's all this stuff that was there and I just didn't even really know right and so between that and having a roof rebuilt over our heads and somebody at one point missing a step and this foot comes through the ceiling right you realize that
27:05.518 --> 27:10.442
[SPEAKER_02]: homes are, yeah, and if my wife is listening to this, she's probably traumatized by the memories that this is a okay.
27:11.263 --> 27:13.564
[SPEAKER_02]: Sorry, darling, if you're listening to this.
27:14.285 --> 27:20.430
[SPEAKER_02]: But houses like worldviews provide this illusion of certainty.
27:20.530 --> 27:21.951
[SPEAKER_02]: It's like, you know all this stuff.
27:22.311 --> 27:31.499
[SPEAKER_02]: All of this is set, and you can just feel confident and live here comfortably until suddenly you realize that water's been dripping, and this whole thing is rotted.
27:33.720 --> 27:35.421
[SPEAKER_02]: You're going to have to tear it down, right?
27:35.441 --> 27:38.863
[SPEAKER_02]: Or you're going to have to move out for six months while they try to salvage it or whatever.
27:39.924 --> 27:46.668
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's why, on the one hand, I think that the imagery of building and houses in the Bible, it's like,
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[SPEAKER_02]: There's building on the rock, versus building on sand, but there's also this possibility of building with less than solid materials that Paul uses, right?
27:57.462 --> 28:05.545
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the fact that you've got a, your foundations are in the right place, still doesn't mean you're building something, you know, stirred and steady and trustworthy on top of it.
28:06.566 --> 28:17.090
[SPEAKER_02]: But also, you're just like with houses, if you actually honestly take a look at the things that it would be easy just to neglect,
28:17.949 --> 28:20.691
[SPEAKER_02]: And don't just assume we'll be fine because it's been fine.
28:20.731 --> 28:21.531
[SPEAKER_02]: It's always looking fine.
28:24.553 --> 28:39.101
[SPEAKER_02]: There's a reasonable chance that your experience of living in this home, the house will adapt, and you will be able to do repairs and improvements and adjustments rather than reach the point where the whole thing starts collapsing and it's really too late, right?
28:39.121 --> 28:46.705
[SPEAKER_02]: Because a lot of what makes deconstruction traumatic is precisely the fact that you're told this thing is trustworthy and so you keep
28:47.565 --> 29:05.616
[SPEAKER_02]: just coming up with these ad hoc ways of propping things up and of explaining difficult these away until finally it just gets too much and then it's not just that one thing that pushes you it's it's the whole weight of these things that have been piling up and so I think that you know that's why I think DIY is a
29:06.942 --> 29:14.525
[SPEAKER_02]: metaphor and apologies, not just about life, but to anyone who's actually had some experience of this and it's bringing to mind some of those things.
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[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I recommend that if you've never been through that then go watch the classic movie with Tom Hanks on the Money Pit over back in the 80s, that's one that it's like, yeah.
29:28.755 --> 29:32.777
[SPEAKER_02]: That's that's why when we got hired the contractors and they said, yo, this this will just be two weeks.
29:33.097 --> 29:33.377
[SPEAKER_02]: I knew.
29:33.417 --> 29:35.478
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's not going to be two weeks.
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[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, that's helpful.
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[SPEAKER_03]: I appreciate that.
29:40.341 --> 29:42.902
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, one of the things that you explore in this book.
29:43.443 --> 29:45.363
[SPEAKER_03]: Your chapter faith at explorers.
29:46.564 --> 29:47.264
[SPEAKER_03]: No pun intended.
29:48.585 --> 30:06.939
[SPEAKER_03]: And you talk a little bit about how ancient cosmology of the world of the Bible, how it's so much different from our sort of modern cosmology now informed by science and technology and a bunch of other things that we know now that we didn't know back then.
30:08.600 --> 30:15.644
[SPEAKER_03]: And you talk about this because, you know, for many modern science has created a problem for those who want to be faithful to the scriptures.
30:15.664 --> 30:22.227
[SPEAKER_03]: And I think I feel like I talk about this with people in our church almost every week.
30:22.908 --> 30:27.150
[SPEAKER_03]: There's some sort of interpretive people are having trouble interpreting a text of the Bible.
30:27.730 --> 30:30.532
[SPEAKER_03]: And a lot of times it has to do with
30:31.412 --> 30:36.877
[SPEAKER_03]: feeling like I'm supposed to adopt the ancient cosmology in order to be faithful to the scriptures.
30:36.958 --> 30:41.962
[SPEAKER_03]: Like I have to believe that, you know, we just preached, you know, ascension.
30:42.643 --> 30:46.467
[SPEAKER_03]: And so, you know, the ancient cosmology, that's where God lived.
30:46.487 --> 30:47.027
[SPEAKER_03]: God lived up.
30:47.928 --> 30:56.416
[SPEAKER_03]: And, of course, now it's space travel, we know, okay, God doesn't live up, and we've got different metaphors from maybe thinking about where heaven is and that kind of a thing.
30:56.936 --> 31:04.343
[SPEAKER_03]: But anyway, I'm fascinated with this issue, I think, because it presents itself for a lot of people who are deconstructing to think that.
31:05.423 --> 31:09.987
[SPEAKER_03]: If I move beyond the ancient cosmology, am I moving beyond faith in God?
31:10.848 --> 31:13.710
[SPEAKER_03]: Do I have to adopt ancient cosmology to believe in God?
31:13.730 --> 31:15.872
[SPEAKER_03]: So anyway, that chapter, you talk a bit about that.
31:15.912 --> 31:30.244
[SPEAKER_03]: I wonder if you can say a few things about how we navigate the tensions and the conflicts sort of culturally metaphysically between the pre-modern and modern understandings of how the world is and works.
31:30.884 --> 31:31.765
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, thank you, I think.
31:32.518 --> 31:40.500
[SPEAKER_02]: When it comes to expressing Christian faith in the present age, that really is, in a lot of ways, the most kind of crucial question.
31:41.240 --> 31:50.082
[SPEAKER_02]: Because there's no way to disentangle the expression of faith that we find in the page of the Scripture from the view of the cosmos that they held, right?
31:50.182 --> 31:54.743
[SPEAKER_02]: And so God seeded on high, right?
31:54.763 --> 31:58.885
[SPEAKER_02]: Jesus ascending up into this language is there.
32:01.256 --> 32:21.039
[SPEAKER_02]: I think the first thing that, you know, often I try to tell people is that if they think that, you know, they hold a biblical literalist view, and they've been managing hang-off and reject science here there, elsewhere, in the interest of preserving the gospel that's appangled with that ancient cosmology, you haven't.
32:23.301 --> 32:39.773
[SPEAKER_02]: And whether it's meteorology and do you check in the weather report and not just accepting that, even if you still believe that God sends rain on the chest and the unjust, that your high and low pressure systems and humidity might have something to do with it and not competing explanations.
32:40.313 --> 32:45.777
[SPEAKER_02]: The fact that you talk about everyone who believes in his heart,
32:46.427 --> 32:54.655
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, when I want to say his or her heart and already there, you're sometimes getting into, yes, right, dodgy ground with some of some people, but I'm happy to go there.
32:55.055 --> 32:56.737
[SPEAKER_02]: But the heart, you know, it's like,
32:59.097 --> 33:00.418
[SPEAKER_02]: You'll say it's a metaphor, right?
33:01.219 --> 33:03.040
[SPEAKER_02]: Paul didn't know it was a metaphor, right?
33:03.120 --> 33:10.426
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, there was a debate, you know, I think between sort of Plato and Aristotle about, you know, is it the heart of the brain?
33:11.227 --> 33:13.609
[SPEAKER_02]: And Paul seems to have gone with Aristotle, right?
33:13.629 --> 33:14.770
[SPEAKER_02]: And Aristotle was wrong, right?
33:14.790 --> 33:17.792
[SPEAKER_02]: Thinking was happening in our heads and not in our hearts.
33:18.553 --> 33:27.600
[SPEAKER_02]: People didn't know that yet, but the fact that the literal truthfulness of the anatomical understanding that was at work there,
33:29.073 --> 33:33.961
[SPEAKER_02]: It's something you can no longer hold doesn't mean that the underlying meaning has to be completely discarded.
33:34.683 --> 33:40.893
[SPEAKER_02]: It just means that you will think about this using your brain rather than your heart in a different way.
33:42.278 --> 33:45.460
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not going to be exactly the same as the way Paul thought it.
33:45.500 --> 33:49.964
[SPEAKER_02]: There's no way of getting back to that through some leap of faith or act of the will.
33:50.664 --> 33:59.110
[SPEAKER_02]: But that's okay because they were expressing their faith in God through their understanding of anatomy and of the cosmos.
33:59.971 --> 34:02.152
[SPEAKER_02]: And when we see that, they're doing that.
34:02.192 --> 34:08.997
[SPEAKER_02]: When we see that Paul talks about multiple heavens in a way that you don't get in the
34:11.180 --> 34:17.387
[SPEAKER_02]: because the Greeks had been doing this astronomy thing and had some better ideas about the embaltable heavens each moving independently.
34:18.208 --> 34:21.631
[SPEAKER_02]: Just just like, okay, yeah, think about this differently.
34:21.692 --> 34:30.021
[SPEAKER_02]: He used different language, not, he was not wedded to the scriptures that he had over-against ongoing observation of the natural world.
34:30.661 --> 34:31.082
[SPEAKER_02]: And so,
34:32.676 --> 34:47.040
[SPEAKER_02]: I think, not only is it possible, it's necessary and it's liberating, even though it's also unsettling, to realize that we have no choice but to find new ways to express our faith, right?
34:47.140 --> 34:57.102
[SPEAKER_02]: It always feels, again, it's that comfort, it's that illusion of certainty, it always feels more comfortable to be able to say, well, they've, others have figured this out already and I'm just going to believe what they came up with.
34:58.201 --> 35:12.313
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, but the richness and the rewarding character of making something your own and finding a new, genuinely contemporary and nonetheless authentic way of expressing it, so much more rewarding.
35:12.773 --> 35:12.973
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
35:14.094 --> 35:23.962
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I think there is some, I was thinking about how that is the implicit theology for anybody who believes you can preach a sermon.
35:25.652 --> 35:25.852
[SPEAKER_03]: Right?
35:26.392 --> 35:41.776
[SPEAKER_03]: Because we're assuming that this letter, let's say we're going to preach from Romans, this letter that Paul wrote to specific people that are all dead, we're assuming that God is speaking not to them anymore through this letter, but to us.
35:42.576 --> 35:49.098
[SPEAKER_03]: And so we have to, you know, anybody who reads an English translation of the Bible believes this, you know, implicitly,
35:54.039 --> 36:07.013
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, even if you believe in a fairly robust version of the inspiration of Scripture, that inspiration came through a very specific human language that has to be translated because we don't speak it.
36:07.898 --> 36:12.780
[SPEAKER_03]: You know, and even that, there's a work of translation that there's this distance, right?
36:13.340 --> 36:15.780
[SPEAKER_03]: And so why wouldn't there also be cultural distance?
36:15.820 --> 36:18.401
[SPEAKER_03]: Why wouldn't there also be metaphysical distance?
36:19.242 --> 36:25.003
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, sometimes that helps people that I'm talking with, to think, oh, I already believe this, actually.
36:25.483 --> 36:25.764
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
36:25.844 --> 36:36.707
[SPEAKER_03]: If I believe God can speak to me through the scriptures and through somebody, through a sermon, if I believe God is actually talking to us, well, then I already believe that this distance must be crossed.
36:38.046 --> 36:41.471
[SPEAKER_03]: And so why not cross it, you know, play around.
36:41.971 --> 36:46.077
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's, I think when you can find bridges, people realize what I've,
36:47.082 --> 36:52.844
[SPEAKER_02]: I've actually taken steps in this direction already, and it was okay, and it's, you know, my world view is not collapse.
36:53.344 --> 37:12.890
[SPEAKER_02]: My congregation does not have exactly all the same problems that the church and current had, and I can be grateful for that first of all, but also I could, you know, I could read that letter and find it meaningful across the distance of time and space and of, you know, different contexts, right, not just different of, you know, historical setting culture, you know, and so on.
37:14.471 --> 37:15.893
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's good.
37:15.913 --> 37:29.605
[SPEAKER_04]: I think if I were to name another key question or obstacle that people encounter in their faith, it's the problem of evil and suffering.
37:29.746 --> 37:34.190
[SPEAKER_04]: How can God be good and powerful and genocide?
37:34.370 --> 37:38.013
[SPEAKER_04]: As genocide be happening, when Christians who are being killed are praying against it,
37:39.074 --> 38:05.518
[SPEAKER_04]: And I just know illusions here, I'm not certain nor do I want to be that you can resolve the problem of your own suffering for us in six minutes, James, but I know this isn't going to go away with one podcast, but I know you have some compelling things to say about it in your book, and I wonder if you would share how you make sense of a good God in the face of ubiquitous evil and suffering.
38:07.882 --> 38:23.279
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I don't know one hand, I think that even if we had a whole other podcast, you're trying to sort of make sense of evil and suffering, you're treating it as a theological riddle to be solved rather than something that...
38:24.771 --> 38:42.281
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, it's like, say, I don't understand, but I know what I'm called to do is to offer compassion in the midst of this suffering and to work for justice and against, you know, genocide, I think often, you know, the approach that, you know, centers at hunger for certainty, you know, treats, you know, I mean,
38:43.448 --> 38:46.749
[SPEAKER_02]: problematic about evil in the world becomes less.
38:47.109 --> 38:51.551
[SPEAKER_02]: But these horrific things going on and more that I don't know how to make theological sense out of it.
38:52.871 --> 39:04.655
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I think the one good first step is to engage with the fact that that very reaction suggests that when Jesus taught us to prioritize, maybe he's not being prioritized when you have this dog
39:13.084 --> 39:20.830
[SPEAKER_02]: But unlike some of the things that we wrestle with at our contemporary world, that's one that is actually there within the Bible.
39:21.750 --> 39:41.064
[SPEAKER_02]: And on the one hand, it inspired theological developments, when they had people not just suffering, despite seeming not to deserve it, but being single out, and from martyrdom, because they were seeking to remain faithful to what they understood God to God when others were not.
39:42.000 --> 39:46.525
[SPEAKER_02]: at the cost of their lives and these people were being killed and others were carrying on barely.
39:47.586 --> 39:53.552
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what gave rise to the conviction that even death will not prevent God from rewarding people, right?
39:53.632 --> 40:00.078
[SPEAKER_02]: And so the problem with evil has been generative of theological creativity and innovation in the past.
40:00.979 --> 40:05.343
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not sure that even, you know, positive and after life of rewards and punishment makes, you know, the
40:06.480 --> 40:14.706
[SPEAKER_02]: the brute horrendousness of some of the things that happened to the world, you know, not a problem anymore, right?
40:14.726 --> 40:19.029
[SPEAKER_02]: Just because, well, everyone's going to be happy, you know, that's going to be rewards and so on.
40:19.089 --> 40:20.230
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
40:20.290 --> 40:29.536
[SPEAKER_02]: What I think, you know, I find, I keep coming back to is then the appropriateness, the need for it to have an element of mystery to it.
40:30.276 --> 40:34.419
[SPEAKER_02]: Because I really do think that that's the focus in the book of Job, right?
40:36.520 --> 40:40.421
[SPEAKER_02]: stuff going on, the celestial realm, the jub and his friends, none of them knows anything about this.
40:41.541 --> 40:43.482
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think there's a lot of humor in there.
40:43.502 --> 40:52.264
[SPEAKER_02]: And so if you miss that and treat this all, you know, a very, very serious way, you know, you just end up with a different sort of dog that isn't that I don't think is what the book is aiming for.
40:53.545 --> 41:00.887
[SPEAKER_02]: But jub spends all these pages and pages complaining that he doesn't deserve what he's been put through, right?
41:01.027 --> 41:02.627
[SPEAKER_02]: And say, you know,
41:04.590 --> 41:18.794
[SPEAKER_02]: sure not perfect, you know, but if I try my hardest, you know, what kind of God would single out the person who's trying their hardest to do what's right for all this suffering, right?
41:18.814 --> 41:19.874
[SPEAKER_02]: There's still a problem here.
41:20.775 --> 41:21.875
[SPEAKER_02]: And in the end,
41:23.151 --> 41:29.513
[SPEAKER_02]: So God shows up and talks about the weather and talks about mountain goats and it's like what the heck is this thing, right?
41:29.973 --> 41:36.615
[SPEAKER_02]: And I think the key to understanding that is that this is a book in the Wisdom tradition which didn't appeal to divine revelation, right?
41:36.655 --> 41:44.158
[SPEAKER_02]: They observe nature and there's like, yeah, look at the ant you sluggered You know, and learn lesson from the, you know, the movies of the field and so on and so forth
41:46.096 --> 41:52.578
[SPEAKER_02]: And God shows up and doesn't reveal anything, just points out all this stuff in nature that doesn't fit into these nice neat packages.
41:52.638 --> 41:55.420
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, here's, okay, let's start with this stuff you don't understand, right?
41:55.440 --> 42:03.783
[SPEAKER_02]: You know where the store houses are for the snow, and then talks about, you know, do you feed the young deer, you know, do you care for the young deer?
42:03.803 --> 42:04.843
[SPEAKER_02]: Do you feed the young lions?
42:05.323 --> 42:06.284
[SPEAKER_02]: What are the young lions eating?
42:06.344 --> 42:07.604
[SPEAKER_02]: They're eating the young deer, right?
42:07.624 --> 42:13.846
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, this whole world is, you know, not a nice, pretty place where there's no one deserves suffering and everything is.
42:16.974 --> 42:33.310
[SPEAKER_02]: The book suggests that there's possibly a reason why that sort of universe would be created by a good God, which is if everybody gets sort of instantaneously rewarded and blessed, every time they do good things, right?
42:33.330 --> 42:41.538
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, ask my students this, how many of you would help little of ladies across this treat more than you do if every time you did so $50 bill appeared in your wallet?
42:42.480 --> 42:45.922
[SPEAKER_02]: And hands go up and I'm like, OK, would it still be a good deed?
42:46.603 --> 42:48.844
[SPEAKER_02]: And they're like, no, all right.
42:49.505 --> 43:00.932
[SPEAKER_02]: And so unless there's a universe in which we actually have to, before we're going to do a threat, have to do it despite not it benefiting us.
43:02.093 --> 43:05.555
[SPEAKER_02]: That's the only kind of universe that can work towards a kind of more formation.
43:06.900 --> 43:13.443
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, and I'm not suggesting that, you know, Job still has the problem of, it reflects an ancient cosmology, and ways of thinking about God.
43:13.483 --> 43:15.284
[SPEAKER_02]: And so, you know, those problems don't go away.
43:15.304 --> 43:17.525
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm not saying, well, just look at Job and all the problems go away.
43:17.865 --> 43:29.850
[SPEAKER_02]: But I think, you know, the book of Job, like so much biblical literature, is wrestling in a much more serious way with these issues, and ways that still, you know, have something to say to us, even as we do it in a new way, at our own time.
43:30.853 --> 43:50.674
[SPEAKER_02]: that I think is a lot deeper than what people who read and say, yeah, well, you know, they read and they think, oh, it was all Satan's fault or all of this or, you know, they have these superficial engagements with the text, as though it's solving the problem rather than saying, here's why there might be a universe in which the whole thing is so, so complex that you can't tie it up in a nice neat package.
43:55.608 --> 44:13.210
[SPEAKER_04]: You know when I thought I had the problem of evil and suffering leaked, what the result was, I was not able or willing to be of really any help or good to people who are suffering.
44:15.855 --> 44:18.997
[SPEAKER_04]: you know, I wasn't very compassionate.
44:20.298 --> 44:35.349
[SPEAKER_04]: There was no vision of co-suffering love, or lament, or implication, or any kind of response to evil that we see commended or even commanded in the scripture.
44:35.969 --> 44:36.370
[SPEAKER_04]: And so,
44:38.631 --> 44:43.016
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that the evil and suffering often push people out of the faith.
44:44.457 --> 44:51.384
[SPEAKER_04]: And one of the reasons, maybe we can wrap up with this is because it introduces doubt, right?
44:51.444 --> 44:54.627
[SPEAKER_04]: And this is the other side of the certain de-conversation we were talking about earlier.
44:55.653 --> 44:58.897
[SPEAKER_04]: And I'd love to hear your thoughts as we conclude James about doubt.
45:01.219 --> 45:08.227
[SPEAKER_04]: Many of us come out of religious systems that treat doubt as a threat, or as something as wrong.
45:10.429 --> 45:17.977
[SPEAKER_04]: What are some ways that you've learned how to move into Christian faith that treats doubt not as a threat, but as a as a companion?
45:20.780 --> 45:33.863
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think we can actually sort of just say away from Job nicely, because the end of the book of Job, I mean, I think it's comedic, but it's profound at the same time, right?
45:34.943 --> 45:39.304
[SPEAKER_02]: Job's friends have been defending God, or really defending their doctor to about God.
45:39.324 --> 45:43.005
[SPEAKER_02]: They're, you know, and so have been insisting that Job, his sons, you know, they,
45:44.179 --> 46:04.584
[SPEAKER_02]: they must have deserved this or it will be okay or these trite answers and God shows up and personal says, okay, you don't have this thing, you don't understand the way the world works and then at the end says to Job's friends, I'm angry with you because you haven't spoken of me what is right, the way my servant Job has.
46:05.764 --> 46:07.024
[SPEAKER_02]: Job is complaining, right?
46:07.044 --> 46:08.605
[SPEAKER_02]: And Job was saying this doesn't make any sense.
46:09.487 --> 46:19.431
[SPEAKER_02]: And that honesty apparently is talking right about God in a way that having a nice neat theology that explains why it's all your fault and God is off the hook does not, right?
46:20.331 --> 46:23.032
[SPEAKER_02]: And Job is doubting the traditional wisdom, right?
46:23.473 --> 46:26.434
[SPEAKER_02]: He says, I set these things, I believe these things, right?
46:26.454 --> 46:32.136
[SPEAKER_02]: You're not telling me something I don't know, but my experience has shown me how is wrong.
46:32.796 --> 46:34.437
[SPEAKER_02]: And so I need to rethink this, right?
46:35.017 --> 46:38.239
[SPEAKER_02]: And sort of doubt about the traditional wisdom
46:40.980 --> 46:45.202
[SPEAKER_03]: We mentioned earlier the warnings as scripture about not being deceived, right?
46:45.222 --> 46:47.863
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, it's even, you know, trust not every spirit, right?
46:47.903 --> 46:49.684
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, never mind, trust not every person, right?
46:51.125 --> 46:53.186
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's there in the Bible.
46:53.826 --> 46:59.609
[SPEAKER_02]: And not trusting, you know, not simply accepting without thinking, without questioning, without evaluating.
46:59.949 --> 47:00.910
[SPEAKER_02]: And that's, that's doubt.
47:00.970 --> 47:02.130
[SPEAKER_02]: That's what it means, right?
47:02.210 --> 47:05.132
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not delivery trying, not to believe.
47:05.192 --> 47:05.532
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not.
47:06.935 --> 47:11.781
[SPEAKER_02]: not wanting to believe, it's saying, and this is what I think it could be a positive thing of the service of faith.
47:12.001 --> 47:23.994
[SPEAKER_02]: It's saying, understanding as accurately as I can, whatever it is that it's possible to understand about God, including understanding the limits of my ability of to understand and
47:25.523 --> 47:30.847
[SPEAKER_02]: how to make sense of myself in relation to a God that's transcends my comprehension.
47:31.527 --> 47:38.793
[SPEAKER_02]: That's so important and so important not to allow myself to be deceived or deceive myself that I'm going to ask hard questions.
47:40.094 --> 47:50.782
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to ask, you know, follow a question that I'm going to look for evidence and I'm going to ask, you know, what's the basis for that claim?
47:51.342 --> 47:52.383
[SPEAKER_02]: Where did you get that from?
47:53.192 --> 47:55.913
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, okay, you always heard that, you know, you've got it from this other creature.
47:55.933 --> 47:56.654
[SPEAKER_02]: Where did they get it?
47:57.254 --> 47:58.254
[SPEAKER_02]: Tracing things back to their sin.
47:59.015 --> 48:03.757
[SPEAKER_02]: All of that is, all that's meant by doubt, but it's a positive thing, right?
48:04.197 --> 48:06.478
[SPEAKER_02]: It's a tool in the search for truth.
48:06.658 --> 48:08.599
[SPEAKER_02]: Doubt is not an end in itself.
48:08.939 --> 48:11.400
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not as though it's like, I'm not going to believe anything.
48:11.761 --> 48:20.565
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, I'm going to put my confidence, you know, when it comes to assertions about the world, about history, about God, about anything.
48:21.405 --> 48:32.146
[SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to put my confidence to the, you know, in an appropriate measure to the evidence available and to, you know, how much it justifies feel absurd about this thing.
48:32.992 --> 48:37.876
[SPEAKER_02]: And I'm going to demand evidence because this is that important, right?
48:38.136 --> 48:51.026
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not, I'm not going to believe it's, I'm going to believe, I'm going to seek good strong reasons for what I believe and I'm going to be open to changing my mind because as a human being, it's always possible I could be wrong.
48:51.727 --> 49:00.694
[SPEAKER_02]: That's humility, that's something that's woven into, that's woven deeply into what the Bible teaches us, what Jesus teaches us.
49:02.480 --> 49:14.324
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, you know, the story that comes to mind, James is Thomas, you know, doubting, doubting Thomas, who sometimes uses a foil, and Jesus does, in a way, review him.
49:14.624 --> 49:22.767
[SPEAKER_03]: He does say stop doubting and believe, but I also see this welcome, this openness that Jesus has to his doubts, right, to his questions.
49:23.787 --> 49:29.869
[SPEAKER_03]: He doesn't say, your questions are dumb, he says, come and see, put your hands here.
49:33.048 --> 49:37.271
[SPEAKER_03]: which is remarkable because there are other places, you know, the resurrected Jesus says, don't touch me.
49:39.112 --> 49:39.932
[SPEAKER_03]: Don't hold on to me.
49:40.633 --> 49:42.534
[SPEAKER_03]: But for Thomas, he's like, okay, touch me.
49:43.354 --> 49:44.295
[SPEAKER_03]: Like, come here.
49:45.435 --> 49:46.496
[SPEAKER_03]: Get your questions answered.
49:46.816 --> 49:48.057
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's, let's wrestle this out.
49:48.077 --> 49:49.598
[SPEAKER_03]: Let's, let's have it out, you know?
49:50.258 --> 49:52.459
[SPEAKER_03]: And then the end result is, now stop doubting out.
49:52.679 --> 49:54.380
[SPEAKER_03]: It's also fine, it's fine for you to doubt.
49:54.900 --> 49:56.121
[SPEAKER_03]: It's also fine for you to have faith.
49:56.161 --> 49:56.842
[SPEAKER_03]: So have some faith.
49:57.922 --> 50:03.325
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyway, that's interesting encounter for me to think about through that lens of what you just talked about there.
50:03.786 --> 50:09.969
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think Jesus being compassionate to Thomas who's getting it's like, he's the only one according to the story who wasn't there.
50:11.150 --> 50:16.713
[SPEAKER_02]: And anyone who's hearing it's like, we saw it's like, wait, you want?
50:19.038 --> 50:19.818
[SPEAKER_02]: Is this a problem?
50:19.838 --> 50:20.518
[SPEAKER_02]: This is not funny.
50:20.819 --> 50:21.819
[SPEAKER_02]: This is what he did.
50:22.399 --> 50:25.920
[SPEAKER_02]: And so he doesn't get something extra.
50:25.940 --> 50:31.822
[SPEAKER_02]: He gets the chance to experience what the others did, so he's not left out in that way.
50:32.602 --> 50:35.383
[SPEAKER_02]: And it's not, you know, well, you know, sort of.
50:36.003 --> 50:45.207
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, to you because you had doubts when you hadn't seen the way the others, you know, who are sort of criticizing you and giving you a terrible nickname that you're going to be stuck with for the rest of history.
50:46.367 --> 50:58.572
[SPEAKER_02]: It's, you know, more blessed are the, you know, blessed are those who have not seen it, you know, there's a blessing, you know, if you can, you know, find your way to this, you know, and you haven't had access to this kind of thing and yet.
50:59.797 --> 51:11.863
[SPEAKER_02]: You have other experiences that rock your world and you come to believe through, you know, despite not having this kind of direct experience of encounter with the risen Jesus, there's something blessed about that, but
51:14.080 --> 51:29.822
[SPEAKER_02]: There's also a place for recognizing, we've been through a lot, and I really can't get what these people are talking about, how can this be true, and if this is true, why would everyone but me being
51:33.103 --> 51:44.047
[SPEAKER_02]: So I think recognizing that there are some legitimate questions that would pass through your mind if your talk is, and Jesus doesn't sort of rebuke him for thinking those things.
51:44.127 --> 51:47.228
[SPEAKER_02]: He offers him an opportunity to have what the others have.
51:48.208 --> 51:48.408
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
51:50.129 --> 51:53.070
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, that's maybe a good place to wrap up.
51:53.710 --> 52:15.377
[SPEAKER_04]: I'm struck by the fact that how often doubt drives the plot of scripture and how doubt becomes the epicenter of ground zero for revelation and healing and new beginnings and transformation and how I think one of the things I'm taking from your book
52:18.158 --> 52:36.207
[SPEAKER_04]: I need the opportunity to change our relationship to doubt, right, and not see it as the problem or the thing to solve, but as the arena of encounter with the living God.
52:36.927 --> 52:38.228
[SPEAKER_04]: This has been so rich.
52:39.108 --> 52:45.811
[SPEAKER_04]: Before we go, I know you blog from time to time, and I want to give you a chance to tell
52:47.880 --> 52:53.866
[SPEAKER_02]: You used to do it much more often than keeping it up in place.
52:53.906 --> 52:56.848
[SPEAKER_02]: Need to get back to it doing it at least not more regularly.
52:57.869 --> 53:04.115
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, I think one reason why I've gotten in a few more books written the fleet is because you know, I chose it which things to it.
53:04.536 --> 53:10.241
[SPEAKER_02]: But yeah, it's online in most places including my blog, which is on the pathus website is
53:12.092 --> 53:19.380
[SPEAKER_02]: religion prof, sort of all one word if you type that in and say no when Google asks you Did you mean religion space prof?
53:19.861 --> 53:34.316
[SPEAKER_02]: You'll find me you could also sort of type in my name and anything related to religion You'll you'll find me and Yeah, like you I feel like these things are are so important and really wrote this book wanting it to be helpful in a resource to people and so
53:35.427 --> 53:46.636
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, if you're reading it and something's being full to you, you know, I've loved the encouragement, but if there's something where you're like, okay, but I'm still wondering about this, you know, finance social media, and if I can answer, I will.
53:47.337 --> 53:47.597
[SPEAKER_04]: Hmm.
53:48.778 --> 53:49.658
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, they're a listener.
53:49.678 --> 53:55.683
[SPEAKER_04]: If you've taken nothing from this conversation other than say no to Google, it has been productive listening for you.
53:55.703 --> 53:55.803
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
53:56.764 --> 54:02.289
[SPEAKER_04]: The book, again, is beyond deconstruction, building a more expansive faith, James.
54:02.369 --> 54:03.970
[SPEAKER_04]: Thanks so much for being our guest today.
54:04.531 --> 54:06.551
[SPEAKER_02]: Oh, and it's been a wonderful conversation.
54:06.611 --> 54:07.012
[SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
54:07.272 --> 54:15.573
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, that's fun.
54:16.393 --> 54:17.774
[SPEAKER_04]: James has a charm about him.
54:20.074 --> 54:21.774
[SPEAKER_04]: Like a sweetness of spirit.
54:21.794 --> 54:25.075
[SPEAKER_04]: Do you like to catch that?
54:26.575 --> 54:27.696
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I like him.
54:28.396 --> 54:28.976
[SPEAKER_02]: I like him.
54:29.016 --> 54:29.616
[SPEAKER_02]: I like him.
54:30.463 --> 54:35.846
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, and you know, I was looking for a charming and sweet people to hang out with here in Indianapolis.
54:36.567 --> 54:36.787
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
54:37.247 --> 54:39.909
[SPEAKER_03]: So maybe we'll get some time to do that.
54:40.609 --> 54:52.717
[SPEAKER_04]: One of the, one of the things that we didn't get to talk about in the interview, but he talks about in his book is that he gets specific about how many of our, um, many of the listeners here.
54:52.737 --> 54:54.879
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, I should say that.
54:55.859 --> 55:00.042
[SPEAKER_04]: I have friends who were like group and mainline churches and went to mainline seminaries.
55:01.262 --> 55:06.605
[SPEAKER_04]: And the word deconstruction is actually, um, they experience it as negative.
55:07.126 --> 55:07.366
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
55:08.026 --> 55:18.632
[SPEAKER_04]: You know, um, and, and so they, they were like a why I grew up living the Bible and living Jesus and like the seminary and people are like trying to destroy my faith.
55:19.333 --> 55:20.754
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
55:21.034 --> 55:22.094
[SPEAKER_04]: And that may be you, listener.
55:23.203 --> 55:24.764
[SPEAKER_04]: Right.
55:25.304 --> 55:41.772
[SPEAKER_04]: I think a proponderance of our audience is our people who maybe had an opposite experience where deconstruction was not a welcomed visitor, but they wouldn't wish away where they are now compared to where they used to be.
55:42.269 --> 55:42.449
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
55:43.810 --> 55:44.050
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
55:44.571 --> 55:44.951
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
55:45.191 --> 55:45.872
[SPEAKER_03]: There are different.
55:46.292 --> 55:48.954
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, it just, that's the slippery nature of the word.
55:48.994 --> 56:06.627
[SPEAKER_03]: I think there's a more modern, a more recent, I should say, a more recent use of that word that is often used by people coming out of the evangelical church that predominantly does not necessarily mean throwing away faith.
56:07.474 --> 56:15.870
[SPEAKER_03]: whereas there was a way of using that turbine a more academic way coming out of the main line 50 years ago.
56:16.631 --> 56:17.834
[SPEAKER_03]: That did imply.
56:19.053 --> 56:25.615
[SPEAKER_03]: this Bible stuff is silly, you know, like that's the subtext is like nobody believes in God anymore.
56:27.595 --> 56:36.797
[SPEAKER_03]: That kind of sneering attitude about faith is a lot of what some of our main line friends experienced.
56:37.157 --> 56:41.098
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's what was called deconstruction for them.
56:42.759 --> 56:44.079
[SPEAKER_03]: And yeah, it was damaging for them
56:49.400 --> 57:00.127
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, a more recent way of using that word has to do with what we talk for James about Yep Yeah, I do hope we get together with him soon.
57:00.747 --> 57:02.948
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll talk Make that happen.
57:02.968 --> 57:04.149
[SPEAKER_03]: You have zest with that guy.
57:04.809 --> 57:05.230
[SPEAKER_04]: I do right
57:06.840 --> 57:20.483
[SPEAKER_04]: I don't know, he's got like a, you know, honestly, uh, Ben, I tend to have a more kind of like a personality, you know, or maybe it's then call a, call a, call a, call a, are you saying that your tummy hurts?
57:21.323 --> 57:23.724
[SPEAKER_04]: No, no.
57:24.824 --> 57:31.745
[SPEAKER_04]: Um, but I, I think, uh, people who have kind of a sweet joy about them, um,
57:36.911 --> 57:38.093
[SPEAKER_03]: I just want to sort of kryptonite.
57:38.193 --> 57:40.376
[SPEAKER_03]: I just want to keep you like them to be around them.
57:40.736 --> 57:48.546
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm like, you know, if there's a virtuous energy vampire for sweet, nice people, that be me.
57:49.147 --> 57:52.972
[SPEAKER_04]: I just want to like trade on the operating system they're running on.
57:53.202 --> 58:01.205
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, yeah, I think that could be, you got me thinking about what we do in the shadows.
58:01.565 --> 58:03.785
[SPEAKER_04]: I knew the danger of bringing that up for you.
58:06.006 --> 58:08.227
[SPEAKER_03]: Because that character calling is so funny.
58:09.247 --> 58:18.169
[SPEAKER_03]: But, yeah, if you don't listen or I apologize about this insider banter here, but the energy vampire, he doesn't suck your blood.
58:18.329 --> 58:22.110
[SPEAKER_03]: He sucks all the energy out of the room and sucks people's energy out of them.
58:23.230 --> 58:24.231
[SPEAKER_03]: It's a really funny character.
58:30.592 --> 58:35.456
[SPEAKER_03]: Like an upside down energy vampire because you don't you don't taking their joy from them.
58:35.696 --> 58:35.976
[SPEAKER_03]: Right.
58:36.077 --> 58:38.438
[SPEAKER_03]: You don't feed off their energy and then they just fall asleep.
58:38.558 --> 58:39.960
[SPEAKER_03]: They're infesting you there.
58:40.020 --> 58:42.301
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, they're the joy is multiplied.
58:42.742 --> 58:42.942
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
58:43.442 --> 58:50.648
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah, I'm talking about this in spiritual direction today with a directee and their work was to
59:01.419 --> 59:05.626
[SPEAKER_04]: is contagious, and to enjoy it.
59:06.588 --> 59:06.768
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.
59:07.129 --> 59:08.411
[SPEAKER_03]: Enjoy his meant to be enjoyed.
59:09.553 --> 59:10.294
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
59:10.514 --> 59:11.195
[SPEAKER_03]: It's abundant.
59:11.756 --> 59:13.199
[SPEAKER_03]: You get more of it when you give it away.
59:13.599 --> 59:13.840
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah.
59:14.361 --> 59:14.561
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah.
59:19.875 --> 59:23.779
[SPEAKER_04]: Okay, that's it, except for this reminder, Ben.
59:24.580 --> 59:31.566
[SPEAKER_04]: Ah, remember that the urge to sing the lion's sleep tonight is never more than a whim away.
59:34.950 --> 59:35.851
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll keep that in mind.
59:36.071 --> 59:36.892
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, keep it in mind.
59:37.192 --> 59:37.392
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes.
59:37.832 --> 59:38.053
[SPEAKER_03]: All right.
59:39.134 --> 59:41.696
[SPEAKER_03]: All right, listener, apologize that that's now going through your head.
59:42.997 --> 59:43.298
[SPEAKER_03]: Peace.
59:49.667 --> 59:52.548
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for joining us for this episode of the Gravity Podcast.
59:53.368 --> 59:55.949
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