Episode 83 - Christian (Part 1)

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the podcast is fun and all but it's not it's not even close to my favorite thing that we do it's not even close for me the beautiful liturgist podcast is an excellent vehicle to be in the same room with you [Laughter] and praise be we have three gatherings coming up before the end of the year we are going to be in london england that's in the united kingdom october 5th and 6th we'll be in minneapolis minnesota that's in the united states on november 16th and 17th and we will be in nashville tennessee meet my triumph return to the southeast november 30th and december 1st so that's the gatherings for the remainder of 2018. that's going to be great those are great cities i like each of those cities very much there's great cities as always will be great patron after parties and for more information or to grab your ticket you can go to the liturgistgathering.com here's my question for you guys what's a more creative cord is this a more creative chord welcome to the liturgist podcast i'm michael gunger i'm science mike um i believe in the big bang theory what was it like to lose god for you i'll start crying immediately as a kid who's going to live my life in the future that you adults are building for me now please you have to learn how to work together right so but it took a long like let like it took a long for you to understand that i was a human yeah i'm gonna say at the risk now of being kicked out of my program more valid than what you've been told first moments the merging of two cells into one multiplying two four six eight dear body i'm sorry and i love you our resistance is resilient they have an editorial review board three there's no date you see four man i gotta say hearing all that just gives me all the feelings i love it i love this community we're in our fourth season of the podcast and for me and i know for so many of you this has been such a journey and such a help in our lives feeling less alone but those of you who are newer to the feed to this little community of ours and this weird corner of the internet i'd love to give you a brief summation of who we are and what we're doing here the liturgist podcast was started by my friend mike mccarth known as science mike and me michael gunger when the two of us met back in 2013 we were both basically atheists who had experienced too many mystical experiences to completely dismiss religion or spirituality as uh worthless to talk about we we still were interested in that conversation but we were also interested in science and we both loved art and we didn't know why the world was so chopped up into camps where you seem like you always have to pick between these dichotomies of science and faith sacred and secular spiritual and natural we imagine a space that could be a safe place for people to be who they are people who might feel spiritually homeless or frustrated to be okay thinking what they think without fear of expulsion or without worrying about being labeled a heretic kicked out of the group we wanted a place that doesn't label people who don't want to be labeled a place that doesn't assume that just because you love god that you need to believe this doctrine or that one vote for this candidate or that one belong to this religious group or whatever we just wanted to take away all those shoulds and musts um that so many communities impose on the people that want to belong somewhere [Music] and that was because that's what we wanted for ourselves we felt lonely we felt alone in our spiritual journeys both mike and i were raised christian but anything that we wanted to work on with the liturgists this idea that we started where we could have a place for spiritual conversation and work to happen that was a little bit more open um we didn't want it to be limited to be called christian it wasn't supposed to be a christian podcast exclusively um and it's not we don't consider the liturgist podcast a christian podcast even though three of the four hosts of season four do currently identify as christian i'm the odd man out there over half of our listening audience does not identify as christian i think this is interesting um you know i mean the liturgist is obviously a pretty christian sounding word and we talk a lot about christian sorts of things on this podcast we talk about church and the bible we did an episode on praying in tongues but one thing we haven't done so far is an episode on christianity itself what is christianity what does it mean to identify as a christian what does it mean to not identify as a christian you know me personally i was wondering can any of our brilliant christian friends or hosts convince me to identify as a christian again so we thought we'd have some fun with it and do a weekly series and this is the first part of that series today and for this first one when i mike and i wanted to bring back one of our one of our favorites and one of the audience favorites rachel held evans welcome to the liturgist podcast everybody rachel are you a christian uh yeah i am a c i am a ch i am a c-h-r-a-s-d-i-n did y'all do that and i have c-h-r-s i did yes h-g-r-t and i will l-i-v-e-t-e-r-n-a-l-o-y that's just spread what what was the the memetic like advantage that allowed that song to spread so far because we we live a different we lived at different points of the world this that's florida wisconsin that song made it all the way protestant monoculture is that the driver wild why are you a christian we like nadia bulls weber and i have an entire conference around that question so why are you a christian and i'm like and every year i'm like oh shit i have to answer this again because it's not really an easy question to answer language please because i think it's like there's so many so many different ways you can answer it you know you can say well i'm a christian because my parents were christians and we were born in a country that is you know inhabited by predominantly christian people so you can like go that direction with it and say that yeah i'm a christian because i was born in a predominantly christian culture you can say i'm a christian because you know somebody told me about jesus you can say i'm a christian because jesus remains compelling to me so it's like i think the question you know why are you a christian to begin with is kind of a different question than why do you remain a christian and what i always come back to you on the at the conference at the white christian conference conferences i always say i'm a christian because the story of jesus is just the story i'm willing to risk being wrong about because i know i could have this all wrong but there's just something about the person of jesus christ that remains compelling to me and that seems very true to me so you know those days when you just wake up and you're like i don't believe any of this is true at all and so yeah i make space for that too yeah and you're a christian mike oh yeah of course total christian and the amazing thing about my christian faith is how universally accepted it is among christians all over america and the world you ask any person identified as a christian is science mike a christian all of them say yes like mike pence would be like absolutely ken ham would be of course he's a christian devoted follower of christ the southern baptist convention of which i was formerly a part of i've done a straw poll and a hundred percent of southern baptists consider me a christian so without any hint of irony controversy i can comfortably claim that label i mean i don't know that if jesus was a real person or not and i'm you know most of the time i i need like either a lot of congregational singing or psychedelics to like be all in on the resurrection but um i'm clearly a christian oh you're in a good zone today without the joke i said before about i think probably more than half of christians who know i am would say i'm not a christian i think in my experience in skeptical communities probably about half of atheists would say i am a christian but like an okay one they're just and the other half would say that i'm a an atheist who who dresses up materialism in religious language which is like a pretty fair critique because i can wake up in the morning see the sunrise and with all genuineness and all sincerity thank god for that morning thank christ for being in my life and the like weird personal evangelical way i used to believe and then like at one o'clock i'll hear somebody make a theological claim and just be like horse shit how can you believe supernatural things exist that's ridiculous and it's not just like christians that i kind of bag on sometimes like i was listening to a recording of alan watts i don't know if you know alan watts but he's i'm talking to listeners he started down the middle of the road protestant he popularized hindu theology in the west and he said something and i literally in my driving down the the 210 in la went bullshit like it was just too supernatural for me to accept so it it is this interesting thing for me at this point in my life decoupling the the identity or label of christian as some fixed set of theological presuppositions that i hold on an enduring basis which is definitely how an evangelical i understood christianity to be to at this point in my life i call myself a christian because of my identity with this global diaspora of people who hold radically different notions about god and only share in common a particular interest with the historical and theological figure of jesus and no matter whether on a given day i believe jesus was a supernaturally incarnate son of god which is three out of every 365 or if i think jesus is a fascinating metaphor i'm never indifferent to jesus i'm never lukewarm about jesus or the role jesus plays in society and i'm always or almost always hopeful about what the gospel story which is another big word that could be affected a lot of ways but what that story means for this species and its impact on our behavior [Music] i want to hear michael's response to that question [Music] are you a christian the question confuses me it depends who's asking and what you mean but because of that i just would say no mike and i were standing in a parking garage recently after watching a movie and we just stood there for like two hours in the middle of a garage i was like we could go get a drink or something after like two hours like i mean this is fine we're in a parking garage it's good talking about this very question because i'm torn personally with the label i've i've said i have a complicated relationship with the term one because of how associated my career has been with christianity and and feeling like that label has been primarily used as a marketing ploy to turn my music into propaganda by marketing machines and that's not something i was ever interested in that's a hang up that i have with the term on the other hand what you were saying rachel about being raised in a christian culture like if i'm talking to a person from india they're going to think of me as christian regardless of what my doctrines of belief are necessarily just because i'm american you know i grew up in church those are my primarily primary metaphors that i think of with ultimate reality even though i now love the hindu mythologies and the buddhist ways of speaking of reality and all that stuff as well but i don't know i think when we were talking with mike we were talking i was asking like why he calls himself a christian and he's mike talks to jesus he goes to church he loves the bible that's why i hear you guys like rachel you just wrote a book about the bible i wouldn't write a book about the bible [Laughter] i have respect for the bible and i have sentimental feelings about some things about the bible sometimes i love christ i love a lot of christian theology actually if you get rid of the inherent separateness that i think is at the heart of it that there's kind of like a primacy for the human ego at the center i think of the christian faith has come as compared to other some other traditions except more in the mystical if you go into the mystical veins of christianity you can start to blur those lines a little bit but i don't know i think myself five years ago would look at me now and say no you're not a christian because you're not regularly fellowshipping with the christian community taking the eucharist regularly i'm torn because the way i hear people use the term they don't mean what other people mean like i saw maybe rachel i think maybe you tweeted this recently or retweeted it something about like racism cannot coexist with christianity and i was like i like that idea but i think i don't understand it of course it co-exists with christianity christianity enables it uh and empowers racism the way i see it but to me a lot of people speak as christianity as some sort of like ideal rather than what it is christendom the ways of jesus and what it ought to be well yeah if that was what christianity is great and that's where i'm saying i'm conflicted because what are that's who's asking what do you mean what are you actually asking when you're asking the question yeah i was thinking the other day i had the question and i mean i'd like your take on this because i wasn't sure i could come up with a good answer but i was wondering to myself if there if a person can be a christian without being a disciple of jesus because when i think about like being a disciple of jesus means following the ways and teachings of jesus and to me it's almost like in my own life in the lives of the people around me and then in the broader culture sometimes i see those two paths kind of diverging like we all pretty proudly claim christianity as our faith or our religion but then are we actually following the teachings of jesus um and i was wondering to myself can a person be a christian without being a disciple and can a person be a disciple of jesus without being a christian but sometimes i find like if i parse too much with like well it depends on what you mean when you say christian it starts to almost become like it feels to me sometimes disingenuous because i feel like you know somebody from like you said that what did you call it the skeptics community that sounds fun um you know if they were to look at my life you know as somebody who semi worships in a church and prays to god and you know has pretty orthodox christian beliefs they would definitely say like well that girl's she's a christian and for me to be like well you know like to couch it too much almost feels like i wouldn't be being real with them um which is one reason why i don't even have trouble saying i'm religious i know a lot of people say they're spiritual but not religious i mean i think i mean just to be straight with people i'm pretty religious you know i'm religious and not spiritual so yeah i mean that's all stuff that i've been thinking a lot about lately too and also another thing i was thinking about recently was that i've found lately that i've i feel like i have a lot more in common with sort of progressive justice oriented people of other faiths uh sikhs muslims a buddhist um hindus jews than i do with the most conservative side of christianity does that make sense and that's weird to me that's a new space to be in where i feel like i have way more in common with people of other faiths but who have share sort of like a vision for the world and the culture and and for justice than i do with people of my own religion um and i don't really know what to make of that so i don't know why y'all had me on because these are these are questions that i don't really i haven't really been able to settle in my mind and yet i can't i i just feel like it would be disingenuous even on my days when i'm doubting uh and when i don't believe to say that i'm not a christian because it's like it's just not i can't extract myself from it even if i tried those the stories of the bible are they're like the current that pushes me has pushed me through life i don't know it's just not that easy for me to invent new stories i feel kind of caught up in these and so i don't know i feel like part of my work is to reclaim those stories and rethink those stories and what they mean but leaving them just has never felt even possible to me i don't know how to speak any language but this one and i guess there's probably some good and bad things to that but i just feel like i can't i don't know that i could ever step outside of that way of thinking i also appreciate michael that you talked a little bit about your work being part of sort of that machine because i feel that way too and i remember at one y christian event i stood up and part of the testimony i gave was i said i'm a christian because it's in my financial best interest to remain one like that is just the reality i got like i have built a career on writing about my faith so what would happen if it were gone yeah so i appreciate your honesty there because i have i have faced that reality myself and wondered what's the quote about like it's always in a man's best it's not a man's best interest to question her to doubt if his job's on the line so sometimes i wonder how would i would i be thinking differently about things and living differently if so much of my work weren't wrapped up in my faith so yeah gosh you all got into my head real fast that's weird stop i think there's another aspect to the work element that's not just the financial aspect and this was this might even be bigger for me than the financial rewards if i would claim the label christian is just the synergy of being able to be a part of the people that are wrestling with this same story and to hold hands with other people that are in the same narrative that are that are inhabiting the same stories and wrestling with the same passages but all that stuff i think when you share the metaphors when you share a common story in a common pew it gives you some common ground to be able to find synergy with your work even if your work is fairly different and sometimes i feel a little alone with with my current primary metaphors with my current work because it doesn't feel like necessarily part of the christian tradition in the same way that it used to it feels a little bit like i'm shouting into the into the abyss or at the church from outside of the church rather than from within i think there's something about from within that is powerful so that's probably more more even incentive to me is communally socially partnering with work rather than just being a loner with no labels to find common ground with people yeah i think that's really interesting i think you and i probably make roughly equal theologically outrageous statements with similar frequency i would say that i say more outrageous things than rachel more often but i get no heat about the things that i say and i think it's because and it's not disingenuous but because i am so hopeful for the church and pro church that that i give off a very in the camp vibe yeah so it's weird to me like i don't know a lot of people that i literally go speak at like atheist conventions and on stage at conservative evangelical churches and my the intro is like hey this is science mike we don't agree with anything he says but we love his heart um and i think that's very real like if people feel like you're you know what i mean like i i i don't come across often as as like beating the church up yeah you know what i mean even though i say real like every third word out of my mouth is white supremacy if i'm talking about the american church but and then every second word is sexual assault so and another thing i get a lot when people introduce me is you know this is this is science mike i've called his pastor he goes to church every week you know what i mean like there's this weird that i don't actually totally understand but it's absolutely true like if you if you step out like think about our friend rob like he just gets skewered and it's because he gets viewed as an outsider rob is like an orthodox christian like rob bell he's talking about yeah i think certainly between me you and rachel rob would be the most theologically orthodox and but he gets skewed as this like great satan because he he appears to be outside of the the camp i think a lot of it has to do too with where you start like if you start pretty solidly in the camp you get a lot more of the hate as you leave and that's been kind of my experience but then i look back on somebody like jenn hatmaker who really built a reputation and um a career and a ministry in solidly evangelical christian world and the way she was treated was far worse than even i have been treated and that's because she's seen as leaving like to leave is is seen as worse than to be on the outside critiquing which is why like so for example like wendell berry has the same views on you know sexuality as jen hat maker but evangelicals are more than happy to pass his work around and invite him to speak and but it's because he's always kind of been he's never been part of that culture to leave the culture as the greatest sort of sin um especially if it's because you're leaving over you know issues around sexuality or whatever so yeah i think a lot of it has to do with where you start and mike i think you have always from the beginning since since i've been reading your work and listening to your podcast you've always kind of been speaking a little bit even though you go to church and your story is very much rooted in that you're still kind of speaking in some ways from the outside you kind of did your evolving ahead of your publishing and so if but if you dare walk that journey and go on that path with people in tow then they're you're seen as more of a threat i think yeah it's like if if taylor swift does a hymns record if she would ever do that the christians would be like oh my god she's part of us like it would be amazing but if chris tomlin did a love song oh watch out he would be crucial like when amy grant did her crossover but everybody freaked out yeah [Music] for most of my life i identified as christian and that includes the period of time where i didn't even really believe in god but it was easier to say i'm a christian wrestling with doubt rather than to say i'm not a christian anymore and so about a year and a half ago i decided to not call myself christian anymore and it wasn't really a flat-out rejection of christianity and it wasn't about belief it was starting to see religion as as a medium to explore spirituality through and you know why limit myself to just one medium i wouldn't really say i'm spiritual but not religious but i wouldn't say i'm tied to any religion either i'm a christian for for two reasons one that their narrative of death and resurrection is integral to my understanding of reality in two that jesus's identity and work uh of and among the oppressed and the marginalized informs my perspective of justice of goodness and of truth am i a christian i'm really not so sure if i can wear that label anymore which is scary because i i don't know who i am outside of that identity but this year my faith has unraveled to the point that it feels fraudulent calling myself a christian and i feel i feel fraudulent most of the time at the moment i work for a christian organization and i feel like i'm in hiding [Music] my answer changes depending on who i'm talking to i guess it depends on how you define christian so i would say it depends on how you choose to define the term christian am i still a christian i don't know i guess it depends on what your definition of christian is so i usually ask the question what do you think a christian is and then based on that answer i will give an answer there are lots of christians who would say that i am not a christian but i i would say i'm a christian and i love jesus and went to follow his teachings you know if it's a set of beliefs that you nod your head and say uh-huh too then no if being a christian means that you are a follower of the teachings of jesus and how he both tells us and shows us how to live and treat each other then yes i would absolutely consider myself a christian i consider myself a christian i'd say that i no longer define myself as a christian because i see jesus as the greatest example of what living a life of love looks like the jesus story has been compelling to me on and off over the years but because of spiritual trauma certain expressions of christianity leave me feeling small filled with shame and sick to my stomach and because of that no matter what i believe about god or the bible i continue to strive to be more christ-like every day because of this i don't really have the desire to explore this past further and i consider myself a follower of christ or in other words a christian i hope that in time i'll be more interconnected to the relationship i have with myself others in the divine but for now things feel a bit more separate [Music] it's normal at so many different points in our life to feel like something is getting in the way of being present or happy something stopping us from achieving the goals that we have for ourself or feeling connected to the people that we love better help will assess your needs and match you with your own licensed professional therapist to help you work on all those things you can connect with someone in a safe and private online environment for that reason it's so convenient you don't even have to leave the house and you can start working with someone in under 24 hours when working with someone through betterhelp you can send a message to your counselor at any time and get a timely and thoughtful response plus you can schedule weekly video and phone sessions better help has licensed professional counselors who are specialized in treating things like depression anxiety navigating family conflicts and so much more they're committed to facilitating great therapeutic matches so they make it easy and free to change counselors if needed anything you share with your counselor is confidential so many people have been using better help that they're recruiting additional counselors in all 50 states start living a happier life today as a listener you get 10 off your first month by visiting betterhelp.com liturgists join over 1 million people taking care of their mental health again it's betterhelp h-e-l-p-com liturgists [Music] my christianity in a lot of ways feels a lot like my gender how i see the world as a white woman uh as who was raised in the you know christian tradition i i can't ever imagine completely standing outside of that because it's just too much a part of who i am and we can it's like privilege you know we can examine privilege we can talk about what it means we can be aware of you know how it might be oppressing other people and we can work to stop those things but we'll never just not be privileged when it comes to well when it comes to race or whatever the various identities you're working with so the notion of just being able to step outside of it but but but faith is a little bit different because how you practice is and and what it means to you can be i mean there's a huge range and there's a whole range represented just in this conversation but that's kind of what i mean when i say i just feel like the story is going to follow me no matter where i go i don't know that i can ever just stop seeing the world as as a christian with that language and with those stories so for me a lot of the work is kind of understanding it a bit differently and but still working with those metaphors and with that language i mean there's a lot about christianity that i really love there's a lot about jesus that i really love and i feel like there's much i can learn from people of other faiths and other traditions and understanding christianity in concert with those other traditions i think gives us a more expansive and closer to true understanding of reality and how the world works so but i still think the language of jesus and the gospel and christianity is just always going to be my pride it's like my mother tongue it's just it's i might be able to be conversant in other languages i might even be fluent in other languages but it will always be the one that that most shaped my reality and i just i just see it as impossible to escape that it's sort of like you know there's much has been written about how your mother tongue the language that you're raised in how it actually shapes your view of reality it influences how you see the world um and concepts and so i guess it's just like one of those impossible questions that i never i can't it's not an option to not see the world as a christian to some degree i can become more conversant in the other languages and i would like to be but um that's just it's my mother tongue that's what i'm always going to revert to when i'm angry or sad or yeah so if you compared it to like politics like what if you you're a republican that's just what you've always identified in that's what you were raised with your values you have you share a lot of republican values you believe in theoretically small government you you don't want government control blah blah blah but then now you see what the republicans are is there any god's chosen people because to me that's that's a little bit how i feel about christianity i feel like there's a lot about i love about it there's a lot of of the language metaphors and stuff that that do feel native to to my language to my lexicon but there's something about it in my experience with christianity through the years that feels it is inherently when i say this it's not i'm not talking about jesus's message i don't think christendom understands jesus's message i'm talking about christian dumb as it has developed through to millennia to me it is inherently exclusive as a whole as it's been practiced with most of its practice it has been seen as we are the ones who have the plan the word of god the one incarnation of god has come through this story through this text we're the ones with the secret and everybody else outside of that are the goats we're the sheep and to me if you're gonna ask me like are you a sheep or a goat or they're outside the table or whatever the party the wedding they asked me at the door are you a sheep or a goat i'm like fuck you i'm a goat well you've got your episode title to me it's almost like the because i i believe too strongly in the message of jesus what do you think you're going to ask a goat what is a goat going to say that he or she is let's say i'm a sheep you want to be the in group you want to be to the exclusion of the out group are you going to go out with the guns are you going to leave the 99 to go to the one and to me there's something about that that rings so true to me the actual message of jesus that's saying no i'm inside i'm i'm one of the sheep don't worry i'm not one of those goats i'm like i'm not interested in that division if you're gonna if you need to put me in a camp put me in the outside no it reminds me of that that great line from uh huckleberry finn where huckleberry finn character is being criticized for his you know aligning with the interest of a slave and they were telling him that you know if you do this and if you do that then you're going to go to hell and he has this moment in the story where he says well then all right i'll go to hell because he was so convicted and for him for the character that was like reality he was truly grappling with that as a possibility uh the sort of the paragraphs leading up to that you realize like that's his conceptual world is that his aligning with jim could mean eternal punishment and he was like all right well i'll go to hell and i totally relate to that's one of the reasons why that's one of my favorite lines from that book um isn't that what jesus did isn't that the whole thing like the whole point of jesus he left the glory yeah i just i just read i'm trying to remember who it was that said it maybe it was a moltman uh somebody asked moltman who goes to hell and moltman said christ and i thought that was like a great response you know i mean that's in the creeds that you know he descended into hell but it's a beautiful concept to me and something that i love about christianity to me the most interesting story about christianity's is definitely the incarnation more so than the resurrection although i know the resurrection should be your jam but beating death i don't know but you know the concept of kind of seems like everybody's trying to do that the concept of god becoming a person and the significance of embodiment and just the in the story of the incarnation to me that's the most profound part of christianity is this idea that christ would descend to hell if that's what it took to love you know god's creation and to love the world but you know and i don't necess i don't know that that has to be exclusive though like you know i think that on every day of the week except for tuesdays on the days i believe you know i believe that uh the person god whatever whoever god is uh is expressed to us powerfully in the person of jesus christ and therefore disciple of jesus christ that doesn't necessarily mean that i don't think that god has you know the expression of god is has not shown up in other faiths or in other ways you know i don't know that it's necessarily inherently exclusive i think people have certainly tried to make it but you know frankly like pretty much every faith tradition has some story like that too where we as people like to have in groups and out groups and so we're always going to throw that on to whatever faith we have inherited or are a part of and that's in our culture so i guess it's like the grass probably isn't really greener when it comes to other faith traditions now uh no faith tradition at all maybe that's different but i don't know the in-group out group thing is kind of just a human thing you know and uh christians are bad at it or bad about defaulting to that but so are a lot of people theologically i would i wouldn't agree with you as far as at least buddhism and hinduism those traditions are full of people they're sages and mystics and gurus that talk about christ openly as god but of course in those traditions we all are god but the hindu theology is big enough to include the christian theology within it oh yeah no i remember that like just being in india they would have yeah christ a figure of christ right next to the figures of vishnu and and everybody else so by what i was saying before that i think it's inherently exclusive that doesn't mean i think all christians are inherently exclusive or that all practices of it are inherently exclusive i was talking about again christendom as a whole in the same way that i don't think every republican is racist but i think the gop is now racist as a whole as a as a power system so and honestly don't take what i'm saying to if you were all saying you weren't christians i very well might be saying that i'm a christian [Laughter] you must be a four are you idiot four all the way four on the in the wing pretty fun that's a strong wing my friend [Music] well i have a really compelling definition for who and who is not a christian because i've noticed that every discussion online about christianity rapidly devolves into competing no true scotsman fallacies science no true scotsman or appeal to purity is an informal fallacy in which one attempts to protect a universal generalization from counter examples by changing the definition in an ad hoc fashion to exclude the counter example the following is a simplified rendition of the fallacy person a no scotsman puts sugar on his porridge person b but my uncle angus is a scotsman and he puts sugar on his porridge person a but no true scotsman puts sugar on his porridge this has been science my translator so my definition for a christian is a person who calls themselves a christian i said i'm so glad you said that i totally totally agree because yeah i have the same frustration so i'm a christian because i call myself a christian i'll never you'll never hear me say arch conservative politician blank is not a christian unless that person says to someone i'm not a christian and then if we like start distilling well someone who follows the the life and teachings of jesus christ i have to admit that academically speaking we have an extremely tenuous and limited knowledge of anything the historical figure jesus said or did if anything gets close it's probably the book of james the gospels are pretty far removed a lot of tradition seeping in there which is fine i'm at a point now where i actually appreciate the tradition part of the faith but like something rachel said earlier really like i'm so sympathetic and appreciative and respectful for where you are with your faith michael because after i had a mystical experience when i tried to examine it through christian theology it did it didn't fit at all and i found that it fit much easier with hindu and buddhist i hesitate to even say theology teachings practices but then when i started trying to study the collective works of hindu and buddhist thinkers i was like oh this is going to take four years yeah it's a lie like this like yeah exactly what i'll i'll spend the rest of my life feeling like i'm culturally appropriated and two i will never if i study this the rest of my life be as conversant yeah in a room full of buddhists as i am with literally any christian denomination yeah like who's hanuman again right exactly like i can re i can read it and at this point i know enough of the avatars and the figures to follow along but if i have to turn around and talk about it yeah oh man i'm in trouble but i can talk about the holy spirit and jeremiah and ruth and you know what i mean just all day i know their stories i can grab a bible even today and thumb to that part and there's something like for me who kind of acknowledges either the universal truth or universal ridiculousness of all religions just the one that i can encounter the divine through is the right one for me and for me that is definitely christianity like if i if i contemplate the avatars of hinduism in meditation i don't find myself in the divine encounter if i try to relate to the divine through jesus then it comes so easily to me and i know that's because ever since i was a little kid i've been talking about jesus and well it's because faith is a practice and you have more practice at it like and there's nothing really wrong with that you know that's just that's the language that we have the most experience in and and maybe that's okay you know i don't think i have ever met a person more intelligent thoughtful or helpful than hillary mcbride ever she's an amazing human being she really is and the weird thing for me knowing hillary is how much just sharing a space with her or listening to her has led me to all sorts of personal growth and insight so i'm really excited that we got to make a course with her on managing stress and anxiety called finding calm i'm sure that there are a few people out there listening that have encountered some level of stress or anxiety in the world that we find ourselves yeah i mean i don't know it's just my hunch i was scrolling through twitter and i thought i feel like some of these people may have experienced a little bit of stress this year but it really is um an amazing opportunity to have how many hours is it it's a lot of hours it's ten sessions ten sessions with hillary mcbride talking about a very needed important topic from somebody who is one of the most grounded calm peaceful presences that i know as well highly recommended check it out findingcalmworkshop.com i mean i guess i can talk about like why did i write a book about the bible i mean why was that still something that i was thinking a lot about and why it still seems like a really important part of being a christian i guess it comes kind of comes back to just what i've been saying before about how we we can't just extract ourselves from our stories and as a christian who was raised in the bible belt the stories of the bible informed a lot of how i thought about the world and how i see the world still and and and the language that i use and and those sort of things and so it's important i think to examine what i really think about the bible you know knowing that the bible has been so abused and used to hurt and oppress and wound and to divide to see if there's anything left worth gleaning from it i think it's an important question to ask i guess i feel like a lot of my spiritual practice my faith practice is looking at the language that i've inherited and trying to understand it better and looking at the stories i've inherited and seeing how i might reappropriate them and understand them for good and use them for good when even the stories that have been used for harm so that's what i kind of set out to do with this project was to take stories especially the stories that have been used to harm and see how they might be used to heal and to do good and how the stories that i grew up with understanding them in new ways is that a project worth taking on and i definitely think it is i think the the most critical thing that i think i encountered as i was doing research for inspired was just encountering jewish interpretations of scripture and trying to engage scripture the way the jewish community tends to engage scripture which is with a lot more play a lot more openness and jews tend to look to scripture into the sacred texts as invitations into conversations um conversation starters not conversation enders christians tend to look to scripture to be a conversation ender well we you see it this way i see it that way here's a bible verse to prove that i'm right uh whereas it's all about the conversation in the jewish community and so just encountering like midrash which is these sort of imaginative explorations of reading between the lines and scripture really sort of liberated me from this notion that the bible has to just mean one thing or point in just one direction that it can actually mean a lot like different stories can mean a lot of different things and that that's that's a cool thing to embrace and when you embrace that then it opens up all these new worlds uh and then just you know reading scripture from the perspective of liberation theologians and from particularly womanist scholars totally changed how i saw stories that i was really familiar with like the story of the exodus or the story of hagar the slave of abraham and sarah you know she's become kind of a central figure in womanist theology which looks at scripture from the perspective of black women and you know pagar was an egyptian slave who was forced into surrogacy and so those stories connect in a powerful way to the stories of many black women and the history of of african-american women and and so her story can be uh faithfully appropriated to lend hope to people who have suffered or are suffering there's a lot of different ways to read the story of hagar not everybody sees that as a liberating story i do in a lot of ways but yeah so i guess the bible is still important to me because it's important for me to understand the stories that shaped my reality even if that means re-examining reassessing them and seeing them in new ways based on the perspectives of other people and just recognizing that this is the language that not just christians but jews speak and so it's being able to to engage those stories with with other people is still an important and worthwhile task and they can point us to to liberation into healing i mean imagine mlk delivering a speech without quoting scripture it's almost impossible you know that was such an important part of that was the he used the bible to give beautiful language to the liberation that he was seeking and leading so you know let justice roll down like water and um you know righteousness like an ever-flowing stream you know the so much of the language of the prophets has become the language of people seeking uh liberation and so you know it's just i just can't throw it out you know like it's it's just seems too too worthwhile and there seems to be too much truth um in the bible to not want to have anything to do with it even though i understand that some people have been so wounded by scripture and have had have so much baggage associated with with it they need you know time away from scripture that they can't even go to it without bringing all of that up but my hope is that we can also see how it's you know you kind of when you go to the bible a lot of it's about what you're looking for if you're looking for a weapon you're going to find a weapon to use against other people if you're going to look for healing you're going to find the bomb you're going to heal you're going to find words of healing and hope so it just seems like we can't really talk about christianity without talking about the bible because the bible has shaped so much of what christianity has become for better or for worse we've it's been used in in healing ways and it's been used in really oppressive ways but just abandoning the conversation around the bible doesn't seem like a good route to me [Music] would you disagree with adding one other group to that of how people approach the bible with i don't think there's necessarily a dichotomy of either you're wounded or you're open i think there's also like a ah yeah for me i'm i'm not like personally that's right i'm not wounded by it anymore i don't have baggage i don't like need time away from it i'm just like it's fine yeah right no i get that like i just don't ever feel that i just don't feel that way about anything i'm not like whatever about anything in life so it's that's more yeah i get that like like kentucky fried chicken bad example most people are going to be really for really okay fried chicken about subway a subway sandwich oh no the most vile restaurant in human reality it's like kind of it's you're going to eat a subway sandwich i've made i will never eat a subway sandwich i forgot that you hate it i think most people would eat a subway sandwich i think that's pretty good i would eat a super sandwich but it's fine it's a turkey sandwich whatever it's for being very gracious about it whatever that is for you there's got to be something oh that i feel we are southern people ambivalence about food is not in our day all right let's go like right food and literature like these are all things like i don't even understand what it's like to be meh about that afford a ford taurus okay yeah i feel meh about that but you're saying the bible is your for taurus okay it's like i get it if you really dig in i could really work hard to find like go through the scholarship and be like wow this was the cultural context for hagar or i could watch netflix and be like you know like bob's hamburgers wow what if you thought about bob's hamburgers bob's ultimate reality i just like that you call it bob's hamburgers not bob's burgers i don't actually watch the show i could have picked a show that i watched rick and morty rick and morty way easier i could find so much more spiritual content quickly for me enrique that's probably true for like i mean because every faith tradition including christianity has different like all these different facets to it and so like sacred texts aren't your thing that's cool like there's like mysticism has never really been my thing like the i mean i try really hard to get into the women mystics in particular but like i'm reading julian of norwich and i'm like oh wow this woman has encountered the divine there's not a doubt in my mind it's amazing then she says that i'm like she's a crazy bitch like that [Laughter] she got a little taste of the plague and then this happened but like so like i have never really had a strong mystical connection to my faith and i think it's because it's just we're all made a little bit differently to you know like i'm a literature person i studied literature in college and so i think sometimes i we we we also we retreat to a little bit of what's safe too and so for me like intellectualizing christianity and my faith through scripture and through the sacred text and then understanding them and studying the context and getting all into and what are the different themes sometimes that's actually it's both great because i think that i was kind of made that way and that's the way that i encountered the divine is through engaging in beautiful words and literature and uh but also it can keep it all at a safe distance for me because that's where i'm comfortable i'm comfortable in that conversation you know i will talk for hours about like the cultural context of the household codes of the new testament and how it relates to the greco-roman culture and how that you know how that affects our understanding of wives submit your husbands and all that like i love that stuff um and i think it's both great that that's a way for me to encounter god but it's also i sometimes use it because it's the safest yeah and then i just go and i watch some bob's hamburgers and [Laughter] i think so much of it is aesthetic preference yeah oh yeah absolutely yeah it's aesthetic preference and aesthetic preference as it derives from safety and sometimes i think there's a value pressing beyond what we're comfortable with or safe with and i say that very hesitantly because i don't want anyone to ever make me do that you know what i mean like don't make me approach faith in a different way i don't know i was thinking about rachel earlier talking about midrash and and trying to approach finding a redemptive perspective on scripture through the ogs of our scripture like i've tried to stop using the terms old testament and new testament because of super sessionism in christianity supersessionism is a theological view on the current status of the church in relation to the jewish people and judaism it holds that the christian church has succeeded the israelites as the definitive people of god this has been science my translator but i once just before i left tallahassee i got to go this amazing interfaith panel on marriage equality and basically this evangelical pastor went on this speech about how clear the bible is and that it to question that as to question god's authority and just like made his definitive case on what the bible says about marriage and then even though it wasn't his turn to go next a rabbi on the panel goes hold on and just goes on the most amazing recitation from memory of like every passage in the old testament that mentions marriage and then explains the context of all that and at one point he said and to say that marriage is a covenant before god is ridiculous we all know that marriage started out in the bible as a business arrangement and just like goes through all like beautifully rigorously eviscerates the pastor's point and then looks at the pastor and the pastor goes well i guess you've made your stance very clear and sits down and the rabbi goes well i wouldn't have said all that unless i wanted you to respond and it was just like that immediate difference in how we approach the scripture and i think part of what some of us who come back and enjoy the bible again it is precisely because we learn to see it as an invitation into conversation and contemplation and not a tome yeah of answers and and codes that's that's exactly it's been it's every encounter i've had like just every passage that i've wrestled with if you go into just the i mean it to call it a library is an understatement just like years centuries of worker like i used to think i'm the only person who had an issue with abraham sacrificing his son and what is this about turns out there's like volumes and volumes and volumes of jewish readers wrestling with that very question in some really imaginative and honest and truthful ways and they're not threatened by the fact that a lot of them have come away with different perspectives on it you know it's just that's not a big deal it's not about getting to this single one meaning that we're all gonna defend at all costs and we're gonna fight about it it's like we forget sometimes the jesus was a jew so like to understand because i was once challenged by a famous pastor's wife she kind of cornered me and she was like well the problem i have with your work is that why do you keep writing about the jewish perspective on things when we're not jews we're christians and i was like well because jesus was a jew like and so how jesus engaged scripture you see it once you start to just dip your toe into rabbinic tradition you see that like oh jesus was a rabbi and he was talking about all this stuff the way rabbis talked about stuff um or at least what the traditions we have around what jesus taught as a rabbi a paul was a jew and so and jesus and paul was engaging scripture in a very jewish way too and so when he talks about adam and eve like he was never trying to say that those were literal people like that was just like that's not how that was that text was being engaged in second temple judaism from what i understand so um yeah it kind of clears a lot up when you just spend a little time with the people who've had scripture a lot longer than christians have um and you know the people who you know share the faith of jesus which is yeah judaism so yeah man it makes such a difference i'm no bible scholar but i did hear nt wright disagree with you on that one it was at a biologist conference and and somebody asked like well didn't paul think that adam and eve were literal people and he did this whole thing that basically answered yes all thought they were literal people i don't know about that well that was the argument though i don't know he gave a whole thing that it was the that that the early church would have believed that they were real people but it was in the context of evolution so it was a very confusing answer well with a lot on the line like a lot of baggage yeah because it was like it was a conference for evolution like for christian associate and somebody asked yeah well depaul and he's like yes he so i g i don't know if he was being like kind of brilliant being like so paul was wrong he didn't say paul was wrong right i say paul was wrong paul [Laughter] this would not be news like news flash but i think i don't know that it has to be either or i don't i don't think i think i could take paul on a debate on any ethical issue if we had a face-to-face encounter why why can't you believe something is literal and hold it loosely sure yeah right like yeah and then like i think the broader point is that the way that paul wouldn't be engaging those texts is not really the same way evangelicals in the united states of america engage through this text with like this very strident literalism um so even if he thought adam and eve were real people which i don't i just don't know about that but um i don't know that were peop the whole literal person debate is not a thing right right not culturally a thing that's an odd but historical figures if there were historical figures that were based in a historical lineage that christ needed to be the second adam because this was literally a lineage because of the fall that christ needed to fix that whole thing oh yeah but see the fall and all that that we get that from augustine and then we're back into oh boy then we're in the weeds but oh dinner destroyer wrote a really good one i'm gonna let you fight with mr wright himself cause i don't care we're talking about bob's hamburgers right now would not be the first time i disagreed with into your right i mean if nt wright thinks adam and eve were literal people he's lost me well that's that's what i'm saying was he's basically flat earther careful you're gonna lose your pro church correct well i just mean they're equally scientifically valid ideas adam and eve are real people the earth is flat they have the same amount of credibility in the scientific community fair enough i do enjoy it if i can get both of you uncomfortably quiet i was trying to decide whether to get into augustine and how he ruined christianity because i think that your problem is not with jesus michael your problem is with augustine that's probably right yeah he kind of well he gave us this whole notion of the fall and and like the whole idea of original sin and all that stuff that's that's augustine that's not jews don't interpret it that way and the eastern orthodox church doesn't interpret it that way either they don't believe in original sin the way a lot of western christians do so well that's a whole that is a whole other we are down the rabbit hole it's actually even augustine augustine i don't know how you say his name um even some of his stuff though if you get rid of even hell everything you take away to me the inherent separation between god and creation between creator and creation and christianity is gorgeous theologically but the the christian story is about trying to bridge the gap between god and creation with the ascertation that creation and not god created the gap and so i actually see a great similarity in the metaphor of waking up from sleep in hindu theology as i do in soteriology and salvation in in both ways it is a way of becoming aware that one does not have to be separate from god and that that is not the normal state to be in that's why i'm saying it's a cr the christian all of it is gorgeous if you get rid of fundamentally is creation in its essence fundamentally separate if it is then now we've got the problem of evil if it's not hinduism doesn't have the problem of evil because it's god that's it in christianity it's god and not god ultimately and when it's god and not god then i was like what about them what about the goats if you get rid of that at the end it's just god then there's no problem and you can go through the adventure and you can go to hell you can't like unless you're an atheist and you're just like that's ridiculous well then call it all the universe whatever you want to call it like that's another story but it's the same one thing seamless one thing i would want to add to get it bring back around to like are you a christian yeah and just basically like comparative religion really i mean i spent some time in india and you know if you you talk with folks in india you know a country that's culturally hindu it's subjected to the same bullshit that christianity gets subjected to where it's used to divide i mean the caste system is no joke uh you know the folks yeah yeah like the folks i was spending time with were people who were low-caste and that was not not a good situation and their faith had been used to to keep them there and and so it's sort of like we just we encounter the problem of people being shitty no matter what faith tradition we we come from and even in buddhism and you know they're there's week the human capacity to distort good things and to make them divisive is is depressing but it exists everywhere pretty equally but that's see that's awesome that's a strike against christianity though right because then it's like well then why isn't christianity better like it's true i would actually push back on i think christianity actually does a better job than hinduism and buddhism or social issues the separateness inherent at it is actually it's like to me it's that tension between the kingdom of god is here the kingdom of god is at hand and the kingdom of god is here right it's both if you know fundamentally that it's all perfect and part of that perfection is you need to make it better that tension is to me why i still love christianity and i think actually christianity having this like drama of oh it's separate we gotta heal creation we need to get shalom back is better for the world theologically you just can't that's what i'm saying you don't like believe if you believe that then you get in trouble if you believe either one you get right i like the dance i like the tension between it and i think they balance and complement well there's really a lot of anti-goat bias in the new testament or in the christian scriptures because biologically speaking especially for domesticated mammal goats are pretty incredible they're very intelligent highly curious adaptable they have excellent balance they can fit many ecological niches they can thrive on the sides of mountains and in grasslands it's really a strange animal to pick as a bad example even if you're thinking as in an agricultural framework as those authors were comparing goats versus sheep as livestock sheep were pretty shitty animals to deal with and if you had some goats they you know just make sure they can find water they'll take care of themselves they'll produce a lot of milk so the kids are all right the underlying narrative is one about dependence there but it's a strange thing to be like well if you're a good person it means you're just a terrible form of livestock i mean it seems like for the liturgists uh one of our core values is being pro-goat literally and metaphorically we talked really early in the conversation about the role doubt plays in our faith and i get a lot of emails from people saying how do i deal with struggling with doubt i don't struggle with doubt at all i thoroughly enjoy it and so maybe if we get away from the idea of having to escape doubt as some advocate of our faith and embrace it instead you might not only sleep better you might actually feel closer to a god you're not sure if you believe in oh man doubt is like is loose hands that's what it is it's like not gripping and not grasping and suffering from fundamentalist like attachment doubt is is like being free that's my walk-in song [Laughter] yeah you just kind of have to make friends with it with the doubt it was like i fought it for so many years because i thought it was sort of antithetical to faith but really it's just it's a part of it i know not everybody has that experience but for me it's like well that's not going to go anywhere i can't think of my way out of this i can't read my way out of this which is what i always try to do so i guess we'll just have to be pals me and my doubt and we are now and it's cool we have a pretty good relationship it shows up you know sometimes in a big way sometimes in small ways but we're cool and it's i think it's made me a better christian at least more honest [Music] rachel held evans new book inspired can be found everywhere books are sold thanks so much to rachel to greg nordin for making this episode happen thanks to our patrons your hosts have been science mike and i'm michael gunger we'll release part two of the christian series next week with jennifer knapp thanks for listening everybody