Living On Common Ground
Does it feel like every part of your life is divided? Every scenario? Every environment? Your church, your school, your work, your friends. Left, right. Conservative, liberal. Religious, secular. From parenting styles to school choice, denominational choice to governing preference, it seems you're always being asked to take a side.
This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground.
Living On Common Ground
The Sin of Certainty: A Conversation with Pete Enns
"I have no idea what I'm talking about and I don't mind that," admits theologian Pete Enns in this refreshingly honest conversation about faith beyond certainty. This realization brought him not panic or dread, but profound relief—a sentiment that has guided his work helping others navigate their spiritual journeys.
Pete shares how embracing uncertainty transformed his relationship with Christianity, moving from rigid certainty to authentic questioning. As an academic expert in biblical studies, his willingness to acknowledge mystery carries unique weight. We explore his books including "The Sin of Certainty" and "How the Bible Actually Works," which have provided language and permission for countless believers struggling with faith communities that demand unwavering certainty.
The conversation takes a fascinating turn as we examine Christianity's counterintuitive foundations. "How did this crazy story ever catch on?" Pete wonders about a religion centered on a crucified messiah—a symbol not just of death but profound shame in ancient culture. This absurdity becomes one of his most compelling reasons for remaining within the tradition, seeing in it something authentically transcendent rather than merely manufactured.
Pete reflects on finding healing communities where questions are welcomed rather than feared, describing how many people come to "lick their wounds" before continuing their spiritual journeys. He contrasts this approach with religious environments that demand intellectual conformity, arguing that authentic faith must honor experience alongside scripture and tradition.
Throughout our discussion, baseball metaphors (despite our conflicting team loyalties), quantum physics, and reflections on mysticism weave together into a compelling case for faith that "honors your head without living in it." Pete's upcoming project exploring "being Christian after Christianity" promises to further develop these themes of mystery, experience, and authenticity.
Whether you're questioning your faith, healing from religious trauma, or simply curious about approaching spirituality with intellectual honesty, this conversation offers refreshing perspectives on finding common ground across theological differences. Subscribe now and join our community seeking meaningful dialogue in divided times.
Does it feel like every part of your life is divided, Every scenario, every environment, your church, your school, your work, your friends, left right, conservative, liberal, religious, secular? It seems you always have to take a side. This is a conversation between a progressive Christian and a conservative atheist who happen to be great friends. Welcome to Living on Common Ground.
Speaker 2:Do you think if we met today, we would still be friends.
Speaker 4:I don't know, but we're friends now.
Speaker 5:A mom is no less a mom because they are with him, man. So what? We won a few games and y'all fools think that's something. Man, that ain't nothing, y'all. And you know what else? We ain't nothing either. Yeah, we came together in camp, cool. But then we're right back here and the world tells us that they don't want us to be together. We fall apart like we ain't a damn bit of nothing, man.
Speaker 2:For this week's episode. We had the opportunity to sit down and visit with professor, author and podcast host, pete Enns. We discussed uncertainty community and his work with the Bible for normal people. You can find out more about Pete and support the work he's doing on Substack by searching Odds and Ends. A link is provided in this week's episode description. But now just sit back and relax and we hope that you really enjoy the conversation. So, yeah, I'm Jeff and super, really excited to have you on Pete. We're just going to jump right in, if that's all right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's fine, Okay, perfect. So I first came across what you're doing. Oh, it's been a few years now. I went out and I purchased the book Sin of Certainty because I was having some personal issues with how sure everyone was and I felt like it was leading to a lot of problems within the community that I was a part of. But then when I read that, then I was like, well, this is brilliant. And so then I went back and I bought how the Bible Actually Works.
Speaker 2:And then the Bible tells me so. Then I pre-ordered Curveball, which came out. That was last year, wasn't it?
Speaker 3:Uh, 23, february. Okay, all right yeah.
Speaker 2:Time flies and I and I, I bought it and uh, and then I read that you were a big baseball fan and I was like, oh, I like Pete even more. But then I came across the fact that you're a Yankee fan.
Speaker 3:I understand. I understand that I have been doing this.
Speaker 1:It's not for you.
Speaker 3:It's just because it was sitting there staring at me and said please put me on.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Maybe they'll play better now. I don't know what's happening.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, cleveland is about to catch them. Yeah, I know, yeah, so I'm pretty excited.
Speaker 3:The Yankees don't deserve to make the playoffs, let alone the other worlds. They just they're not good enough and the Yankee fans are hoping that all the dark underbelly is exposed. And there's a cleaning house of management, which hasn't happened, and the general manager has been there for 30 years and boone, who I respect, but he's just not winning under him. He's been around for about eight or nine now, so yeah, my wife's from long island oh, really okay, yeah, so she's a big mets fan yeah, but then yeah, but then living here in?
Speaker 2:we live in nashville oh yeah yeah and uh. So it's this interesting thing that happens where everyone from new york, they just automatically become friends because, like, that's their affinity. Yeah, and so some of our closest friends are Yankee fans, which that, yeah, he's all the time talking about how they need to get rid of Boone.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's the general consensus, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, anyway. Anyway, this is not a uh, this is not a baseball podcast I can't.
Speaker 3:If we want it to be, it can't I. I know well.
Speaker 2:Well, we can talk about how we can find common ground, as long as we don't talk about the team specifically.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it's one of the last uh vestiges of tribalism, I would say.
Speaker 3:I know seriously In the.
Speaker 4:West.
Speaker 3:There's no question, and it's nothing like the tribalism of British football, for example. Yeah, it's still there.
Speaker 4:But a sublimation of the same instinct I would imagine.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think it is. I think it is. Yeah, I agree, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think it is that I have been labeled. We've talked a lot about labels and things like that, but I've been labeled as a progressive Christian and I push back a little bit against that. I think it has a lot to do with where I live, and so that makes it seem like I'm a lot more progressive than maybe I am.
Speaker 4:Yeah, push back as much as you want, jeff. Yeah, and then?
Speaker 2:there's.
Speaker 1:Lucas.
Speaker 2:Lucas, who uh has been identified as a traditional uh conservative.
Speaker 4:I'm fine with conservative. I'm fine with conservative atheist, conservative, atheist, conservative atheist. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I've argued.
Speaker 2:I've argued that um, but he's from California, right?
Speaker 1:And I'm from Tennessee. Well, there you go.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, so basically we're the same person, but, uh, but, but we taught the. The idea is how do we, how do we bridge um differences, how people that that would appear on paper that they should not be friends or would not be able to get along, how is it that we can do that? And then, so what we do is we talk to different people, we talk about different things, and one of the things I was thinking about is something that's helped me, and so I'd like to hear you talk more about this.
Speaker 2:Is that, for me, what really helped was the ability to fully embrace the fact that I don't really know was the ability to fully embrace the fact that I don't really know, and so, again, it was that sin of certainty that I was able to, and over the time it already started to shed, but it wasn't until I read the book that I was fully willing to let it go. I felt like it was okay for me to not be certain anymore, and so I was hoping that you'd talk more about that.
Speaker 3:Yeah Well, I mean, we have a similar experience, I guess, because I remember vaguely it was, you know, the Sin of Certainty came out in 2014, I think, maybe 15. And I've been on this sort of path since probably the late 2000s, like maybe 2007 or 8, or even a little bit before that. And the relief that came to me, not just I don't need to know everything, I don't need to be certain, but the simple fact that I just sit there and I say I really have no idea what I'm talking about and I don't mind that. I mean, see, the Bible, my field is Bible, right, it's not religion, it's Bible. And Bible is a concrete thing, it's a historical phenomenon. You can dig into it, you can make certain conclusions, draw certain conclusions or based on your assumptions or whatever, and that's that's a different thing. But I'm also a person of faith and there's much more going on than simply the Bible, right, and how you read it. It's what you think of God and what you think of faith and all that sort of stuff. And those are the things that I just I remember sitting in a room once where I used to live and I was just reading something. I don't know what it was. It had nothing to do with anything, but I just sort of stopped and just something welled up from inside of me and what I said to myself was I have no idea what the cross is about. I know what's written there. I also know the various things that are written there. I know the various opinions people have had, but I'm like I don't even know how that works. And what came over me was not panic and dread, it was just oh good, you're being honest, right. And dread. It was just oh good, you're being honest, right.
Speaker 3:And I think that's sometimes the barrier that people feel that they have to look a certain way or put up a certain, you know, just a presentation they give to the world around them, especially at church. And I just I don't believe in any of that, because I think one of my core values is trying to achieve authenticity. I want to be real and and they did so for what I think are very good reasons in their experience no-transcript lines. And then if you do that, well, then God's fine with you. I said that's not God. I don't know what, that is what you just described, but it's not God. So all those things take away that fear that many people have and understand so, about just not being certain, and to me it's a necessary maturation for me, and I think it is for others too. I don't know, I don't really know, but I trust, I explore, I have faith. And if you take hell off the picture, a lot of things change too with this picture.
Speaker 4:Pascal's wager, the wager being just for anybody who doesn't know, the wager being that if God doesn't exist, or if this isn't the right way, let's say if hell doesn't exist, then it doesn't hurt anything to say you believe in Jesus and God and do all the right things, but if it does exist, then that's a real big risk to take. And so the wager being go ahead and, and it's kind of a um, uh, uh, game theory, um, decision, right, you, uh, you, you pick the thing that has the least amount of risk and the most amount of reward, given the variables that you understand, blah, blah, blah, right. And and I, I remember hitchens used to always say that, um, when presented with that question, you know what? What do you think about this wager? And shouldn't you still just fall on the safe side?
Speaker 4:Uh and I think harris has said this also, sam harris has said this also that, um, that he would hope that an all-powerful god, when presented at the end, would care more about, uh, a truth-telling soul than one that kind of, in his words, uh uses kind of a charlatan trick to uh slip in the back door Right, and um, that's kind of what I'm I'm hearing you talk about here is like that that the it's more important to be honest internally. Uh, because, because, because you're the one that you have to live with at the end of the day, your own internal experience is the one that you're going to have to remain with. So losing your soul to protect a potential reward at the end doesn't seem like a great trade-off well, yeah, and it's.
Speaker 3:And I think I agree with you, and you know, I think you probably both have heard how much experience and intuition are maligned in in certain christian circles because, well, that's sinful. You know, you can't trust your own intuitions and your own experiences because they're sinful. Just, you have to trust the Bible. That's usually what it comes down to, and what, of course, is often missed is the fact that the Bible is interpreted by subjective human beings. It's, in fact, a very subjective text.
Speaker 4:Right that it's your intuition that's guiding you to. Whatever your interpretation is of the Bible.
Speaker 3:You cannot escape intuition and experience in, let's say, adjudicating the life of faith. You can't escape that. And you know Richard Rohr, who I like a lot. He's got this wonderful little analogy about a tricycle and it's got three wheels and one wheel is your experience, the other wheel is scripture itself and the other wheel is the tradition that you're a part of. And if you ask, let's say, an evangelical, what's the front wheel? And they say well, it's the Bible. And and um Ror says no, it's your experience that it drives everything. And if a religion that has an incarnation element to it, if it can't handle that, it's not worth much to me. If it can't handle our humanity that Christians believe God was pleased enough to participate in and God's spirit dwells in to say that your intuition means nothing, that your intuition means nothing. See, what that really does is it reduces this is the great irony it reduces the Christian faith to essentially an intellectual exercise that's detached from your experience and your emotions or anything. It's just very logical.
Speaker 4:I say it's ironic because the arguments that are put forth for that are some of the most illogical things that I've ever heard, and they get backed up against. Sorry to interrupt. They get backed up at some point and then appeal to mystery when they run into the roadblock. I always think about this, where you want to participate in this kind of enlightenment level rational argument, because of course that is what is the highest ideal in our particular culture, right? Is this? This? Because we're an enlightenment culture, so you want to participate in that until you hit the roadblock. And then there's an appeal to mystery, right, which I think that you could probably just sit in from the beginning. You could just appeal to that mystery from the beginning words out of my mouth, lucas oh sorry and I know.
Speaker 3:No, you didn't do anything wrong. I'm just saying like we're on the same wavelength here in that respect, because I do think that you know the curveball that last book I wrote two years ago. Um, I I explore the curveballs that have happened in my life that have led me basically to mystery. And you know I have two chapters on quantum physics which I don't understand. You know a chapter on evolution and anthropology which I don't really understand either, not from a scientific point of view. And my point is that you know, especially with the Einstein Einstein revolution, that time and gravity and space, it's all like a fabric that gets bent by mass. What the heck is that even about? But that's what it is.
Speaker 3:The bottom line is that the world we live in and the cosmos we inhabit is so steeped in mystery, whether it's the very largest things we're looking at or the very smallest things we're looking at, it's so steeped in mystery, whether it's the very largest things we're looking at or the very smallest things we're looking at, it's so steeped in mystery. How dare you not have a God who can keep up with that? That God is. It's not him. But we use metaphors to talk about God. Right, god is ultimate mystery, but I think mystery that can be known, just like our creation is a mystery, but we can also know it and perceive it on certain levels. So we're not getting all of the Creator, we're getting, maybe you know, think of a circle. We're getting like one degree or two degrees of an arc, but the rest of it is steeped in things we simply don't understand.
Speaker 3:So who can really understand God? And I know that's anathema to many religious people, but for me that's what keeps me going, the fact that I get to think about these things and try to make sense of it. But the world doesn't hang in the balance with my coming up with the right answers, because we're dealing with something that's beyond us. And David Bentley Hart, who I like a lot, he's a I don't know if you've read him, but he's a philosopher, sort of polymath kind of guy. But he says all the great traditions have understood this Buddhism and anything else. They've understood that God is at the end of the day. What we call God is, at the end of the day, that which cannot be expressed adequately by our thinking and by our words, and I think American Christianity's forgotten that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's been my experience that the more I embrace the unknowing, the unknowable, the larger God becomes, and the more convinced I am that there actually is something, the more certain I was the actual. Let's see how do I want to phrase that? The more I relied on certainty, the less able I was to be convinced that there actually was a God.
Speaker 3:Hence the book's title the Sin of Certainty. It can actually take you away, especially if people force it on you. You have to be certain, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I agree. And then I was able to, yeah, just, I don't know, like, for example, I was at a couple weeks ago I had the opportunity to be on a panel at an atheist convention here in Nashville in attendance, came up to me and she said I believe everything you believe, which I thought was interesting, that an atheist was telling me she believes everything I believe, which I clearly stated that I did believe in God, and she said but the problem with your beliefs is that none of it is actually supported by scripture, which I also thought was very funny to me, but my response was simply okay, okay, I didn't feel a need to defend that. I want to go back to something that you said earlier, when we first started that we had sort of a similar experience with growing up in the church and then kind of coming to this place where you just couldn't, at least for me. I don't want to put words in your mouth, but for me I couldn't um, all of the, all of the, the simple platitudes, the, the answers that I was supposed to have memorized, they just didn't sit well with me.
Speaker 2:You talked about being um, consistent. We've often talked about this idea of having intellectual honesty, um, um, but yeah, being a person of consistency, um matters to me, but. But when you started I'm trying to remember when I read it in the book but when you started coming and dealing with this kind of thing and what, what was the reaction that you got from the community that you were a part of?
Speaker 3:Um, yeah, not good. I mean, you know I don't want to over-dramatize it, but I was coming to some of these thoughts when I was teaching at Westminster Seminary, which is outside of Philadelphia. It's gone through various waves in its history, from 1929 of being staunchly, unapologetically Calvinist to more like willing to engage. And when I was a student there we were more willing to engage. But as I became a professor there, uh, the ground started shifting underneath me and it became more of one of these, you know, basically make America great again, kind of mentalities like let's get back to the original and everything's going to be fine.
Speaker 3:Um, so, yeah, it in that sense it didn't go well, but some of my real thinking started when I was sort of free of that and I have just surrounded myself with people who value that and understand that part of the life of faith. And for me, part of that has been moving to more liturgical spaces. Like I'm Episcopalian, I was Calvinist for a while and we attended a very nice I mean, if you guys know, the Nazarenes, but a very, very nice Nazarene church in my area that understood also things about spiritual journey and I sort of explained myself to the pastor and he said you know, pete, what's great is, sometimes people come here, they just lick their wounds for a few years and then they leave, and that's fine. We've done our job, and that's basically what I did.
Speaker 4:And then moved on. That's the tradition that I grew up in as well as Nazarene. Yeah.
Speaker 4:It wasn't specifically it was an offshoot of the Nazarene church, um called church of God Anderson. It's um out of the Wesleyan holiness movement, but it's uh, it's a sister denomination of Nazarene. And I grew up under my senior pastor was, um, uh, Nazarene. Like he, he grew up, he was from the Nazarene tradition specifically, um, you know, went to point Loma and uh for his seminary and all of that and um, but it and it was it. What's interesting that, when you're talking about that and I don't know where you were going with it and uh, all the way. So I apologize about interrupting, but, um, I just think this, I think that's interesting, um, I would.
Speaker 4:I think most people who, if I were to describe my upbringing and the church that I grew up in, they would say, yes, you grew up in an evangelical, maybe even fundamentalist, not exactly a fundamentalist, but like even definitely evangelical, conservative, uh, christian community and it's, that's true, but it, it did always have that to me. I'm sure everyone's you know, everyone's experience in that church would have been different in some way, right, um, but to me it did always feel like it had what you were talking about, where there was like a, you know, it's fine, we know what we believe here, but it's. But it's fine If you have these other questions. We're not going to shut down the questions you can. You can talk about it. Yeah, we're not threatened.
Speaker 4:You're wrong, but that's okay. No, no, you're not upset about it. We're not upset about it, you know? Um, I shouldn't even say it like that, like you're wrong, that I I never got that. I got definite teachings as I was growing up. This is what believe, but I really didn't get the like. Oh, we're really concerned about this theological idea you have.
Speaker 4:You weren't judged by them Right, right, yeah, Anyway. So I just think that's interesting and the lick your wounds mentality. I definitely saw people who said that about our church as well. Yeah, when they were hurt. They came and they licked their wounds and they said that they were comforted and healed through that and then moved on.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and they don't think of that as a betrayal Right, that's my experience, right, yeah, and they don't think of that as a betrayal, right?
Speaker 3:That's my experience, right, so you know they, rather than thinking of your little tiny church, as essentially this is it, why would you ever leave? You know, why would you get something else? And there was a story of by oh gosh, I forgot his name now he wrote a great book on John of the Cross, stephen. Oh gosh, he was a psychiatrist, anyway, he would do seminars on. No, it was somebody else. Anyway, I forget all that.
Speaker 3:But he, this guy, famous guy doing seminars in churches, and asked to come to one mega church and he was presented with this problem and they said you know what? We have this church, but we find people are leaving, and they're leaving to go to these more liturgical churches and some of this contemplative stuff. So we want you to teach us how to do all that stuff so they'll stay. What's wrong with them just leaving? You know what? Why do they have to stay? And that there's this um, there's this arrogance, really, of thinking that, well, we're it. You know, and it seems like you, lucas, didn't have that experience in that, in that, uh, wesley and anderson, whatever you call it, that's new to me. I never heard of this um, and I had two and uh, and I think I think that's a really healing thing and that's where I felt free to do more. I was doing more reading and exploring and talking with people that led me to a liturgical environment where I learned to the way I put it, honor my head without living in it. The way I put it, honor my head without living in it.
Speaker 3:I'm an academic and I've been taught that basically, christianity is something you debate about and argue over and realizing I don't know anything. Really, I know a lot but I don't know anything. At the same time, to be in a place where the emphasis is not on, say, 45-minute sermons, which are really lectures they're theology lectures or something and to have you read from a book and that's not stilted, that's participating in a communion that transcends your time and place, and I sort of like that. And I like the 12 to 15 minute homilies because they usually get to the point pretty quickly, and the centering of Eucharist, which is mystery, right, and the mystery of Eucharist is the center of the Episcopal tradition, and all that has been well life-giving to me.
Speaker 3:You know and I haven I'm, you know, I haven't done anything for more than a few years at a time before I get tired of it, but I've been part of this since about 2009 or 10. And it's like, yeah, I still like it. You know, it's like it's that stupid. It's something that I look forward to and different things hit me in different ways, but I'm not in a place where I'm judged for being who I am. But I actually value it for who I am and I think people look for that and yeah, I know the accusation well, they're just tickling, itching ears and giving you what you want to say. It's like, well, they're not doing that, but they're accepting me for who I am and they believe that I have integrity and I believe that they do.
Speaker 3:And you know, and there are questioners there anyway, you know, we read the Nicene Creed every Sunday and get them talking about it in like an adult form Sunday school class and they'll say I don't really get this part, I'm not sure I believe that other part and I'll keep saying it because it's part of the tradition, but I want to talk about it and they're not thrown out disciplined or something like that.
Speaker 2:I want to talk about it and they're not thrown out, disciplined or something like that. You said that you found a community where you were accepted. Do?
Speaker 3:you still participate in community with those who still hold on to certainty? Yeah, I do. I mean, teaching at a Christian college will help that too. I'm dealing with younger people and also some of my colleagues, and that's fine. I mean, there's no arguments and I'm careful about remembering that my students are about 45 years younger than I am and they haven't thought about it and that's fine.
Speaker 3:But they pick up things. You know, we talk about things and many find it liberating and some find it a little bit scary, but nobody hates anybody, you know, and so that's a good thing. You know who were instrumental in making my life a nightmare the last couple of years that I was at Westminster Seminary, who since then have, if I can just put it this way, they've seen their complicity in something that is just wrong and they've asked for my forgiveness and I gladly gave it to them. And we hang out and drink beer every once in a while and it's fun because we have a shared history and we can talk about those things. Even though their views are not where mine are, they understand where I'm coming from and they're not fighting with me and I'm not fighting with them it's great sort of nice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it doesn't always happen that way of course yeah, yeah, no I, yeah, no, I get that.
Speaker 2:So a friend of ours who I introduced her to your stuff and she listens now to the Bible for Normal People pretty religiously, pun intended. She sent me one of your episodes this morning and asked me to listen to it because she knew that we were going to be talking to you and it was the episode where you talk about it's from 2022, so I'm sure it's fresh on your mind. It's where you had done a blog and you asked people like, why have they left faith? And then you sort of categorized it into five different-.
Speaker 3:Five things right yeah.
Speaker 2:Right. But then you talked about why you remained, and so I was interested in that. Like, why are you still a person of faith? Like, why haven't you just said you know what, I don't have to actually believe anything, I'm okay with not being certain about anything, right, which I think isn't that sort of basically the again, lucas is our resident expert on this but is that basically the atheist position? Is that I'm just not convinced.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean yes and no. I mean that's a good question the way you put it. Yeah, I mean yes and no. I mean that's a good question, the way you put it. You know, I have atheist friends as well, you know, and we talk about things or people who are, let's just say, determinedly agnostic. You know, and I've to get to your point, I've called myself.
Speaker 3:I'm an agnostic Christian, you know, or maybe a Christian that embraces mystery, you know, and so, and then the next question usually is well, why stay in any of it? You know, and I think there I probably could unfold a bunch of reasons for that that are meaningful to me. It might not be meaningful to anybody else, but part of it has been my experience of that tradition, right, the. You know what I would call God, moments that I've had, which aren't very frequent, but I've had moments where I just felt man, I just know God's there, and I don't even know what I mean when I say God, but I that's. You know. Peter Holmes, a comedian, says God is the blanket we throw over mystery to give it shape. I don't know if you've heard that expression, I love it, but I think that's true and I say God with you know sort of quotation marks, because I don't know what this being is or if this is even a being. Anyway, that's a whole other question. But so, yeah, I, I just I'm trying. I lost track of the question here, jeff, I'm sorry. Oh, why believe in anything? I think that's part of it is my experience of God and also the communities that I've been in that have been healing communities that are also working sort of in that boat. You know it's the boat of Christianity, along with other boats floating down the river. You know, and that's sort of where I am.
Speaker 3:I think too of you know my life of studying Scripture and its interpretation and what the Christian community has sort of how it's not appropriate is the wrong word how it has creatively handled scripture throughout its history, is actually a very encouraging thing to see, because the church has sort of always known that like this literal meaning. That like this literal meaning. Yeah, it's a given, it has a literal meaning, but that's not what the interesting stuff is. If you want to make this tradition connect, you have to go beneath the surface and get very creative with the interpretation of the text and so sort of our modernist slavish attention to the exact words and what they mean. And they mean only one thing and they can't mean different things to different people. That's part of the modernist mindset which the evangelical and fundamentalist churches have bought into wholesale, and that's why it's hard to get along with them sometimes and that's also why they lose every debate with modernists who aren't Christians. Because they just take that thinking and make it more consistent, I think. Because they just take that thinking and make it more consistent, I think so you know, it's living in those communities. That has helped me as well.
Speaker 3:And also, just, you know, I've read the Bible many times, you know, in the original languages, and I am struck sometimes by how the biblical writers sometimes seem to transcend their own moment in time and to talk about things. I call these mystery passages, you know, passages that aren't. They're not logical, they're not arguments, but I mean something. Like you know, jesus' high priestly prayer in the middle of John's gospel, and it's like you know, jesus is about to be crucified and he prays for the disciples saying Father, I pray that as you are in me and as I am in you, that they be in each other and they be with me, and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 3:That's mystical language, right? You can't really put a head on that. You can't just control that language. It's a very mystical language, I think, of Colossians, whoever wrote Colossians. But for the end of the first chapter that the writer says in his sufferings he is filling up what is lacking in the sufferings of Christ. I have no idea what that means. I know it's very mystical. You know you're participating in the sufferings of Christ and filling up what's lacking in those sufferings by suffering yourself.
Speaker 3:And there are tons of these things in the Bible that some of it's just weird, some of it's like another king who blew it. Do I have to keep reading 1 and 2 Kings? And Chronicles has a whole different take on it. What's going on here? But even that to me, I'm watching. Later, pilgrims of faith in antiquity take those older stories and rework them entirely because their circumstances have changed, right? What's the kind of tradition that's behind all this? Sign me up, you know, because it's our, I think it's our sacred responsibility to think about, to use the Christian language. You know, how would Jesus show up right here and right now? And the answer to that is never diverse, internally contradictory to the point where authors sometimes debate each other in these texts is demonstrating to us and this is the theme of how the Bible actually works that the Bible may be more a book of wisdom that we're supposed to use wisely and appropriate wisely and not just slavish like a rule book.
Speaker 3:And to me, those are just a few things that make me. You know, yeah, I want to be here, you know, and I also understand people who don't. I'm just saying this is for me. I'm not a good apologist, you know, I wouldn also understand people who don't. I'm just saying this is for me. I'm not a good apologist, you know, I wouldn't go out and this is why everyone should believe exactly as I do. I don't like that, but that's, that's where I am. And I've come across many, many people in my life who are like, yeah, that's pretty much where I am too.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. In terms of apologists, I was thinking about Philip Gulley. I don't know if you're familiar with Philip Gulley or not, but in one of his books he talks about the reason that he's a person of faith is because he, just at the end of the day, chooses to be.
Speaker 3:Yeah right.
Speaker 2:I just choose to be, and I've started taking that as my mantra. If someone asks me, I'm like because that's what I choose. As you were talking, I was thinking about a recent conversation that we had with Peter. I almost said Peter Enns, peter Rollins.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sure, yeah.
Speaker 2:And he was talking about this idea and I heard, as you were talking, this came to my mind. He talked about this idea that Christianity is the lived practice and I'm messing this up a little bit but of lack, where atheism is the intellectual embrace of lack and Christianity is the lived experience of lack. And so you were talking about this idea of if it, of if, if it's about experience. There's like this mystical, this um, that I can't quite understand. But sign me up for that. I think that's the way you put that.
Speaker 3:So anyway, right, and that's that's not unheard of in the history of the christian tradition either. That's the thing. People think that everyone was sort of fundamentalist from moses on, but that's not the case, and there have been monastic movements that left the tyranny of the organized religious machine, you know, and went off in their own way to contemplate god, and I think that's why experience is the heart of this. You know, the whole point of the religious journey is to have experiences of the, of the divine, of the numinous. This is what it's about to experience some transcendence in our lives.
Speaker 3:And, like you said, jared, a co-host of the Bible, for Normal People he says the same thing Like why are you a Christian? He says I choose to be Well. Why, well, I just choose to be. He has all sorts of reasons, but it's like, you know, what people are looking for is like I need the iron clad answers for why this is the best religion and no others are good, and that doesn't I just I can't give that. I can't give that. I can talk about things, about the Christian faith that that attract me. For example, I mean one thing about, you know, the cross and all that is here. You have a religion that has its roots in the first century and the selling point was your messiah was crucified on a cross. Come follow us, you know it doesn't?
Speaker 3:it's so counterintuitive, and and I'm attracted to counterintuitiveness because I believe that all religious faiths should be very counterintuitive to how we think and how we live. And um, I forgot who it was, a new testament scholar, um gosh. You know, I'm getting older. I can't remember. I'm glad I can remember my name, let alone other people's.
Speaker 3:But somebody said you know, if you're going to set up a religion in the first century, this is not how you do it. You know you don't say you're Jewish Messiah, who's supposed to, as Luke's gospel puts it in the first two chapters, protect you from your enemies and save you and deliver you from those who mean you harm. That's Zechariah's prophecy after he got his voice back in Luke. That was not the only, but it was a common Messianic expectation among Jews. And here you have one whom Christians claim to be, that very Messiah who is crucified. And so you have God in some sense participating in not just a death but a humiliating death, which I think turns on its head the whole honor-shame dynamic that drives a lot of the God talk in the Hebrew Bible. You know, God gets offended, he gets almost embarrassed by the Israelites. You've shamed me. I have to do something to get my honor back and which, by the way, is a great example of how what we're getting in the Bible is people's understanding of God.
Speaker 3:I think less than God you know, this is too contradictory anyway, but you know so I think those things are, I think, less than God, you know, because it's too contradictory anyway, but you know, so I think those things are to me. They just make me stop and say this is worth looking into a bit more. This isn't the fundamentalism that we see on TV or in the government. This is a deep contemplative and philosophical tradition that knows its roots but also understands that we live in a different time and place and we have to put these pieces together somehow I think it's really interesting.
Speaker 4:I can talk about this forever the um, the. Your point about the uh, the shameful execution, uh, of the historical jesus, I think is really important. I think that gets missed a lot because in the tradition that I grew up in they would have understood. We would have talked about how you know yeah, isn't this interesting? How you know, the Judeans were waiting for this warrior and instead we got the lamb and that was the.
Speaker 4:That was the the um point all along and it was kind of and it was presented and then the cross was about being very um painful and a terrible death yeah, and a sacrifice, right, it really hurt and it and then, and then the whole passion, right, the beatings, the thorns, the cross, it was all very painful and that showed the sacrifice which.
Speaker 4:I think, is that's fine and I really don't want to be dismissive about this. But it was almost presented kind of like the same way that we present, uh, the movie rudy right where it's. It is the underdog story, right, it's the yes, it's the one we weren't expecting, that they weren't expecting, but we understand now that it was. That was part of the story all along and I think the shame part of it I didn't realize, realize that this was one thing that I feel like and you can argue with me on this, but the historian Tom Holland has talked about which is that the crucifixion was a slave's death and it wasn't just it's not just that it was painful because it's exposure and it's a long time to die and all of this, but that it was an acceptance. Everyone knew if you're being crucified, that means that you are the lowest of the low you are. It is an acceptance by the society. Nobody gets crucified except for these terrible people.
Speaker 3:Really terrible Right. Yeah, nobody gets crucified, except for these terrible people.
Speaker 4:Really terrible, right? Yeah, yeah, you could be a murderer. You're not going to get crucified. You could do a lot of terrible things and not get crucified. You'd have to be someone who was, and to your point, it was the humiliation of it. And so, to your point, this is not a way to start a religion, because it's not an underdog story. It is taking someone who the society has not said you're a sad sack that we're oppressing. The society has said you are the person we hate because you are a bad and you're making the religion out of that, and so I think that's really interesting, and your point about flipping on its head, that kind of honor society shame thing, is really interesting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, that meant a lot to me once I sort of stumbled on that, and this is why that meant a lot to me once I sort of stumbled on that, and you know this is why, you know, mark's gospel has been called an apology for the cross. Mark's gospel centers on and people who really know Mark have told this to me but I'm not just making this up, but how Mark's gospel is saying no, no, no. The crucifixion is not harmful to the notion of Jesus as a messiahship, it's actually the core of it, right? So that's very counterintuitive. It's taking this thing that is anything but honoring and saying what makes Jesus the son of God or the Messiah is that act. It's not the resurrection, it's the crucifixion that makes it that, and that's an interesting twist to things from a historical point of view.
Speaker 3:And then you have Paul in Romans who says I'm not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, it's the power of God for salvation, first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. And I don't know about you guys, I was always told when I was younger well, that means you should never be ashamed or afraid to talk about Jesus on the lunch line or something. You need to say it. But Paul's not afraid. He's saying I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Why would he be ashamed? Because of how it started. In a sense, he's got to sell to people right, to Jews and to Gentiles. This Jewish guy who was crucified is your Lord right? I mean, that's got to be.
Speaker 3:How did this ever catch on? I sometimes think to myself, how did this crazy story ever catch on? And I think the linchpin there is resurrection, faith. I do think many people think this without a notion of resurrection, which I'm going to just say is a mystery to me also, along with atonement and incarnation, all that kind of stuff. I don't understand any of it. But resurrection, I think, is the reason why Christianity continued. People believed that and it sort of led it to flourish until it got co-opted by Rome in the fourth century. And the rest of it is history, right. But yeah, so I think the counterintuitive nature of it to me is just a fascinating thing to think about and it moves me actually to think about it. It's just like this is not a logical system. It became that In the New Testament itself, david Bentley Hart uses this language. The New Testament is a Jewish apocalyptic text. The end is coming, it's around the corner. Don't get married, paul says.
Speaker 2:You know, don't do it.
Speaker 3:It's just hang in there, right.
Speaker 2:That's very.
Speaker 4:Sorry, go ahead it didn't end there?
Speaker 2:No, it didn't end there, right yeah.
Speaker 3:Because you know Jesus didn't come back Right and so we got to settle in for the long haul. And in the meantime Jews are like, no, we're not going to believe this stuff. It becomes a Gentile movement by the rebuilt because you know God is going to return to his throne and all this kind of stuff and to turn that into basically an afterlife journey where it's all about. That's what salvation really became at that point. It got sort of shifted to a realm that wasn't so Jewish, to be quite blunt about it.
Speaker 4:Right, it became more Gentile, more philosophical, so I find that fascinating, Bart Ehrman's entire argument that Jesus the historical Jesus was a Jewish apocalypticist right, that that was his, that his message was, and this is his argument, but that his message was you know, the end is coming. Everything that is high will be brought low, everything that is low will be raised up. You can tell who is evil because who's in power. You can tell who's good because who are the oppressed, and then they will be flipped. And that's his argument. And so I think that's very interesting. And I remember also when I was in college yes, I was a freshman in college and I remember the first time anyone that I respected said well, you know, all of the New Testament writers, they all thought Jesus was coming back in their lifetime.
Speaker 3:That was the point, and so you have to realize that and when they didn't have to scramble in 1 Thessalonians. Well, here's how it's going to work.
Speaker 4:Right Anyway, yeah, so yeah, yeah. No, they believe that yeah. And so it does put it in a completely different light, I think, because now we know, quote unquote, we know the rest of the story, right?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:We know the cross. You know you were saying when you were growing up, the I'm not afraid or I'm not ashamed of the gospel thing was like. For me it was it's important to not be afraid of being like considered a square, being considered like a dork, right, that's? The threat is that you're going to be ashamed of talking about the fact that you're a Christian because people are going to think you're nerdy or you're a dork or whatever, right, and so you get over that, whereas what you're talking about is like, no, I'm not ashamed of it, because it's an execution chair, and who would worship an electric chair as their symbol? Right?
Speaker 3:But the cross is now in a place of honor, it shows up in places of honor, and so it's very difficult to understand that when you're looking at that, you're looking at something, something that should be a symbol of shame, you know, and in terms of how they thought of it at the time, and so that's, yeah, that is interesting to recover, as others have put it more eloquent than I, um to recover the offense of the cross and not, and that in that sense the cross becomes very central and not sort of as an element to a legal process of a transaction, but it becomes the deep mystery of the Christian faith, along with incarnation, I would say and one that we try to live into and try to understand and try to embrace and let it affect how we live.
Speaker 3:And the offense of the cross can help jumpstart that, to really come to terms with it. And you know, as Paul says elsewhere about you know, in the cross Jesus is parading down the streets, the powers that be in a humiliating sort of parade, rather than the other way around. It's the whole flipping right, um, and, and the cross is almost, it's god putting his money where his mouth is. You know, in a sense of talk about flipping tables, talk about flipping ideas and and um, uh, and expectations. You know of what true religion looks like, and I'm not on the soapbox but when you turn that into a source of political power over other people, you haven't just lost the plot, you've buried it underground under layers and layers of crap when I came across your stuff, it provided me language for what I was experiencing.
Speaker 2:And then you talk. You talk about losing the plot here. It sort of helped me. I don't know if I want to say regain it, I don't know what I want to say here, but it helps me. It helped me become a better person, maybe to be a person who was more open to other people and other ideas, and it just gave me a new perspective on not just my faith but the faith of everyone around me, or even the lack of faith of people around me. So I know what I got out of reading and listening to your podcast and all that kind of stuff, but I do want to know why do you do it?
Speaker 3:Do what?
Speaker 2:Why did you set out to write? Like to begin to write and to share these things and to do your podcast.
Speaker 3:Oh well, here's a little secret. You ready? Yep, it's just me journaling out loud.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 3:I process that way and I do, and not only that, but I do also want to I hate the phrase hold space for, but that's sort of what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to let people know there is a big space out there of people who think like you do and you're not alone and there is a community for you. And that's one reason why we created the Bible for Normal People intentionally to foster some sense of community and to present them with information like, well, here's another take on this old thing. And wow, that makes sense. I didn't know you could think about it that way. And I said, well, you can, in fact, most people do, frankly. So you know, and, and that helps people, and I and I think that, um, you know there's, there's a pastoral dimension to all this for me.
Speaker 3:You know, I'm not a pastor. I never will be ordained, although the tax breaks would be great. I actually have too much respect for the ordained ministry to sort of talk about it flippantly. But I'm sort of like a chaplain in a sense. You know, when I talk to people or engage with them online or answer emails, and I think I feel good about that role, you know, and those are all reasons why I do it. I'm trying to clear my own thinking and, in doing that, maybe help other people who are interested in it, you know, and not shove it down their throats.
Speaker 2:Well, it's been very helpful for me. It's been very helpful for our community. We've used several of your Bible studies the Bible for Normal People for discussion groups that we have.
Speaker 3:Oh, like the commentaries we have, yeah, like.
Speaker 2:Bible for Normal People Romans yeah, we did Revelation, and so the people that you've started bringing in and writing it has really helped us create, like this whole community where people like you said we've found that a growing part of our group is people that are just looking for a place to lick their wounds and say it's okay. And so it's been very helpful for that. Are there any new things that you're working on right now? So it's been very helpful for that. Are there any new?
Speaker 3:things that you're working on right now. I've been really active on Substack. I'm having fun on Substack, I have provocative notes and some provocative posts, but everybody's happy because it's a self-selective group. So I'm doing that sort of stuff. I've begun thinking about I haven't started it yet, but it's in my head and I've jotted down some notes and I've talked to some people about sort of on a theme of being Christian after Christianity and what that looks like and it's going to be. I mean, if I write this, it would be very much about that sort of mystical turn.
Speaker 3:And there's a famous quote you guys may know it by Karl Rahner, the Catholic theologian.
Speaker 3:He was part of Vatican II and back in the 60s he said pardon the sexist language the future Christian man will be mystic or he will be none at all. And what he means by mystic is basically a person of experience, right, where the faith is more learned and lived than simply lectured. And he's responding to things like the Holocaust and things like the explosion of scientific information and all sorts of things like that, and saying that the Christian dogma I think I can put it this strongly Christian dogma does not adequately address all these things and maybe we're finding out that God is maybe beyond all those kinds of petty discussions and dogmatic arguments that we have and instead, you know, to remain Christian means you need to get in touch with your experience as a human being and then in a sense, commune with God, um, rather than reducing it to a system of thought, for example, which is again part of the modern disease that really began during the reformation. That's a bit simplistic, but that's.
Speaker 3:That's sort of the the um we've been in that, I agree for a few hundred years, you know, and so yeah that's what I think.
Speaker 2:Well, you write it and I'll read it.
Speaker 3:I'm gonna try to write it and you know, if I, if I do, I I think I will. Um, once I catch the fire. I have to catch the fire and it's right now it's starting to glow a little bit, but I've been thinking about this for over a year and I have to. I have to wait for the right moment, but it's not going to be long. It's going to be um, I don't have the book here. Rowan williams has a couple of nice short books on christianity and stuff. I wanted to be very readable, very small and not not technical at all, but just, we got to think differently about god. We have to think differently about faith we have, differently about the bible and, frankly, just differently about what it means for Christians to show up in the world around us, you know, and that would mean transcending maybe some familiar language that we have, but all that language is born out of its own cultural moments and we have our own to deal with. And so what's going to happen?
Speaker 2:Oh, I could talk in another hour about that, but we're up against it and so I thank you so much for joining us. I've been looking forward to this for several weeks now and it's been great Thanks.
Speaker 4:What's that? Wait, what's the name of your sub stack? Is it just your name?
Speaker 3:It's called. You can find it by my name.
Speaker 1:Odds and ends e-n-n-s very good, which very well done. Yeah, that's well done, clever. That was my idea, so just my thoughts about stuff.
Speaker 3:But I have a weekly thing on wednesday that, um, first one of the month is free everyone. After that you have to have a subscription, like minimum five dollars, which a lot of people give. Yeah, but the notes that I put, they're public to anybody and I put out, sometimes two or three a day, at least a few a week. Very good, cool.
Speaker 2:Thanks, All right guys Great to meet you, Pete.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, see you Pleasure.
Speaker 2:Thanks.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to Living on Common Ground. Please follow wherever you listen to your podcasts and share it with your friends. You can also find a link to our social in the description. The more people we have living on common ground, the better the world will be.
