Unlearning Certainty - Revisiting our Conversation with Peter Enns

In August last year we had the opportunity to sit down and have a converation with Peter Enns. Peter's insights regarding certainty have inspired much of Jeff's work. We decided to share that conversation with you again. Enjoy.

Every day feels like a forced-choice quiz: left or right, religious or secular, believer or skeptic, my people or your people. We want a different way to live, so we invited Bible scholar, author, and The Bible for Normal People co-founder Pete Enns to help us name what so many of us feel but rarely say out loud: certainty can become a trap, and honesty can be the first real step toward healing.

We talk about why admitting “I don’t know” is not a failure of faith, but a move toward authenticity. Pete connects spiritual doubt to the deeper reality that the world itself is saturated with mystery, from quantum physics to consciousness to the limits of language about God. We wrestle with Pascal’s wager, the role of intuition and experience in Bible interpretation, and why treating the Bible like a simple rulebook often collapses under its own weight.

The conversation gets practical and personal: what happens when certainty-driven communities push back, and what kinds of churches or communities actually make room for questioners. Pete shares why he remains Christian after so much deconstruction, how liturgical practice can “honor the head without living in it,” and why the cross was not just painful but profoundly shameful in the ancient world. That scandal flips power on its head, and it should challenge any attempt to use Christianity as control.

If you are navigating faith deconstruction, religious trauma, progressive Christianity, agnosticism, or just trying to find common ground with people you love, this one is for you. Subscribe, share with a friend who is tired of the sides, and leave a review with the question you are still carrying.

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Transcript

A Divided World And A Friendship

SPEAKER_00 0:02

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. Do you think if we met today, we would still be friends?

SPEAKER_04 0:34

I don't know. But we're friends now.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

A Mob is no, that's a Mop because they're living. Man, so well, 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_03 1:09

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 uh yeah, I'm Jeff. Hi Jeff. And um uh uh super uh really excited to have you on, Pete. I um we're just gonna jump right in if that's all right. Yeah, and then okay, perfect. So um I uh I first came across you what you're doing. Oh it's been it's been a few years now. I I uh I went out and I purchased the book Scent of Certainty Um because I was having some personal issues with um with uh how um how sure everyone was and I felt like it was leading to a lot of problems with within the community that I was a part of. And then but then when I read that, then I uh I was like, well this is this is brilliant. And so then I went back and I bought um how the Bible actually works and then the Bible tells me so.

SPEAKER_06 2:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

Then I pre-ordered Curveball, which came out that was last year, wasn't it? Uh 23, February 23. That's right. Yeah, 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 I like Pete even more. But then I came across the fact that you're a Yankee fan.

SPEAKER_05 3:04

I understand. I understand that. I have been doing this. It's not for you, it's just because it was sitting there staring at me and said, Please put me on. Yeah. I I uh maybe they'll play better now. I don't know what's happening.

SPEAKER_03 3:18

Uh yeah. Well, Cleveland um is about to catch them. Yeah, I know. Oh no, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 3:24

So the Yankees the Yankees don't deserve to make the playoffs, let alone the World Series. They just they're not good enough. And the Yankee fans are hoping that all the d dark underbelly is exposed and there's a cleaning house of management, which hasn't happened. And uh the general manager's been there for 30 years, and Boone, who I respect, but uh he's they're just not winning under him. He's been around for about eight or nine now. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 3:50

My my wife's from Long Island.

SPEAKER_05 3:52

Oh, really? Okay.

SPEAKER_03 3:53

Yeah, so she's a big Mets fan. Yeah, I figured yeah, but then living here in we live in Nashville. Ah, 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, um he uh he's all the time talking about how they need to get rid of Boone.

SPEAKER_05 4:21

So Yeah, that's that's the general consensus, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 4:23

Yeah. Well, anyway, this is not a uh this is not a baseball podcast. It can't we want it to be. It can be. We can probably stuff too. Well, we can talk about how we can find common ground as long as we don't talk about the team specifically. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 4:39

It's uh it's one of the last uh vestiges of of true tribalism, I would say in the West.

SPEAKER_05 4:46

So there's no question, and it's nothing like the tribalism of you know British football, for example. You know, it's still there, you know.

SPEAKER_04 4:55

But uh but a sublimation of the same of the same instinct, I would imagine. Yeah. I think it is.

SPEAKER_03 5:01

I think it is, yeah, I agree.

SPEAKER_04 5:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 5:05

So um one of the uh well, the reason I reached out, Pete, is because one of the things that we're trying to do here, um, I don't know if you had a chance to like listen or anything like that, but but uh the our shtick is that I am I have been I've been labeled, we've talked a lot about labels and things like that, but I've been labeled as a progressive Christian. And um and I push back a little bit against that. I think it has a lot to do with where I live. And um and so that that um that makes that makes it seem like I'm a lot more than push back as much.

SPEAKER_04 5:46

Yeah, and then there's Lucas.

SPEAKER_03 5:47

Lucas, who uh has been identified as a uh traditional uh conservative.

SPEAKER_04 5:55

I'm fine with conservative atheist.

The Relief Of Not Knowing

SPEAKER_03 5:57

Conservative atheist. Conservative atheist, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But I've argued I've argued that um but he's from California, right? And I'm from Tennessee. Well, yeah, so basically we're the same person. But uh but but we talk well, 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 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 I and so I'd like to hear you talk more about this, is that um for me, what really helped was the ability to fully embrace the fact that I don't really know. And so it was that it would again, it was that sin of certainty that I was able to and over the time, you know, it had already started to shed, but I it wasn't until I read the book that I was fully willing to let it go. If like 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_05 7:04

Yeah. Um, well, I mean, we have a similar um experience, I guess, because I I remember vaguely it was, you know, the the Sin of Certainty came out in 2014, I think, maybe 15. And I've been on this sort of path since probably the the late 2000s, like maybe 2007 or 8, or even a little bit before that. And the relief that came to me um 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. You know, 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 um uh conclusions, draw certain conclusions or based on your assumptions or whatever, and that's that's a that's a different thing. But I'm also a person of faith, and um there's much more going on than simply the Bible, right? And how you read it. It's 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 uh at my house where I used to live, and I was just reading something. I don't know, 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 know, 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 and I think that's sometimes the barrier that people feel that they have to look a certain way or put up a certain um presentation they give to the world around them, especially at church. And um and I just I don't I don't believe in any of that because uh I think one of my core values is uh trying to achieve authenticity. I want to be real. And um and a fundamental faith uh item for me is I think God can ha God understands that and can handle it. And you know, I'd rather um I know people in my life who not to ramble on here, but people in my life who um were Christian and are no longer and they did so for what I think are very good reasons in their experience. And you know, I've had to ask myself, and it's a pretty easy question to answer, but I've had to ask myself, what is what do I think God thinks of people who are relentlessly honest and examining themselves and moving through this life, changing their minds or whatever, or people who just refuse to feel that prodding that comes up inside of us sometimes that casts certain doubts and what we believe and instead just sort of play nice, you know, and and stay on the beach blanket, color between the 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 understandably so, about just not being certain. And to me, it's a it's a necessary maturation for me, you know, and I think it is for others too, to like, I I don't know. I don't really know, but I trust, I explore, I have faith, and um if you take hell off the picture, a lot of things change too with with this picture.

SPEAKER_04 11:10

That reminds me um of how Hitchens would talk about Pasqual Pasc Pasqual's wager. I'm sure I'm uh Pascal, yeah. Pascal Pascal's wager, yeah. Right. Um uh the wager being, just for anybody who doesn't know, the wager being that's um you know, if if God doesn't exist, or if this if this isn't the right way, let's say if the if hell doesn't exist, uh, then it doesn't hurt anything to say you believe in Jesus and God and and 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 uh 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? 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 uh because you're the one that you have to live with at the end of the day, you know. You're you're the your your own internal experience is the one that you're gonna have to uh the one that you're gonna have to uh remain with. So um losing your soul to uh to protect a potential reward at the end seems doesn't seem like a great trade-off.

Intuition Experience And Mystery

SPEAKER_05 13:25

Well, yeah, and it's 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. Uh 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_04 13:58

And um, right, that it's your intuition that's guiding you to whatever your interpretation is of the Bible. Trevor Burrus, Jr.

SPEAKER_05 14:05

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, I say, an evangelical, what's the front wheel? And they'd say, well, it's the Bible. And and um Roar says, No, it's your experience. That drives everything. And if a religion that has an incarnation element to it, if it can 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. 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. 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.

SPEAKER_04 15:24

And they get backed up again, sorry to interrupt, they get backed up at some point and then and then appeal to mystery when they when they run into the the roadblock. I I always think about this where you 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.

SPEAKER_06 15:58

Right.

SPEAKER_04 15:59

Which I think that you could probably just sit in from the beginning. You could just appeal to that mystery from the beginning.

SPEAKER_05 16:07

Oh, sorry. And I no, no, you're 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, the last book I wrote two years ago, um 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, from a scientific point of view. And my point is that, you know, especially with the Einstein revolution, um that, you know, time and gravity are like uh uh and space, it's all like a fabric that gets bent by mass. Like, what the heck is that even about? But that's what it is. You know, I the bottom line is that the the 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. How dare you not have a God who can keep up with that? That God is it's him himself, it's not him, but we we had 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. 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 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 uh I don't know if you've read him, but he's a philosopher sort of polymath kind of guy. Um but he says, all the great traditions have understood this. All the great philosophical traditions in Christianity and Judaism and Islam and 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_03 18:38

Yeah, I I it's been my experience that the uh the more I embrace the unknowing, the unknowable, the larger God becomes, and the more convinced I'm I am that there actually is something. When when 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_05 19:08

Hence the book's title The Sin of Certainty. It can actually take you away, and um, especially if people force it on you, you have to be certain, right? So yeah, I agree with you.

SPEAKER_03 19:18

And then and then I was able to um yeah, just I don't know. Like, for example, I was at a um couple weeks ago, I had the opportunity to be on a panel at a uh an atheist convention here in Nashville. And as I was leaving, uh one of the persons 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 I clearly stated that I did believe in God. And she said, But but the problem with your beliefs is that none of it is actually supported by scripture, which I also which I also thought was very funny to me. But my response was simply okay. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 20:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:05

I I didn't feel a need to defend that. I I want to go back to something um that you said earlier when we first started that we had sort of a similar similar experience with growing up in the church and and then kind of coming to this place where uh be 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. You you talked about being um consistent. We've often talked about this idea of having intellectual honesty. Um but yeah, being a person of consistency um matters to me. But but when you started and 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 uh what what was the reaction that you got from the community that you were a part of?

SPEAKER_05 21:01

Um not good. Uh I mean, you know, I I I don't want to over-dramatize it, but I was coming to some of these thoughts um when I was teaching at uh Westminster Seminary, which is outside of Philadelphia, which is a um 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 one of these, you know, basically make America great again kind of mentalities like let's get back to the original and everything's gonna be fine. Um so yeah, it it in that sense it didn't go well, but um some of my real thinking started when I was sort of free of that. And uh I have just surrounded myself with people who 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. Um I was Calvinist for a while. And we attended a very nice, I mean, not if you 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. And then moved up to the R.

SPEAKER_04 22:37

That's the tradition that I grew up in as well, was Nazarene. Yeah. Yeah. It wasn't specifically 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 uh Nazarene. And I grew up under my senior pastor was um a Nazarene, like he he grew, 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 in uh all the way, so I apologize about interrupting, but um, I just think this I think that's interesting. Um I would I think most people who if I were to describe my upbringing in the church that I grew up in, they would say, yes, you grew up in an evangelical, maybe even fundamentalist, not exactly uh 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 talk, but it's fine if you have these other questions. We're not gonna shut down the questions. You can you can talk about it. Yeah, we're not threatened, you're wrong, but that's okay. No, no, no, we'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 we believe. But I really didn't get the like, oh, we're really concerned about this theological idea you have.

SPEAKER_06 24:32

You weren't judged by them.

SPEAKER_04 24:34

Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Anyway, so I just think that's that's interesting. And the the the lick your wounds mentality, I definitely saw people who said that about our church as well. Yeah. That's true. So where they were hurt, they came and they licked their woo wounds, and they they were they said that they were kind of, you know, they were um comforted and healed through that and then moved on.

SPEAKER_05 25:02

Yeah. And and they don't think of that as a betrayal, that's my experience, right? So you know, they um 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 um I there's a story of by um oh gosh, I forgot his name now. He wrote a great book on um John of the Cross. Stephen, oh gosh, he was a psychiatrist. Anyway, he would do seminars on um not with somebody else. Anyway, forget all that. But he he this guy, famous guy, doing seminars in churches and asked to come to one megachurch, and he was presented with this problem. And they said, you know what, we have this church, but you know, we find people are leaving, and they're leaving to go to these like more liturgical churches and sort of this contemplative stuff. So we want you to teach us how to do all that stuff so they'll stay. And this guy said, who's famous, and I wish I could remember his name, um, said what's wrong with them just leaving? You know, why 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. Uh that's new to me. I never heard of this. Um and I had too. And uh and I think that's 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 um what I the way I put it, honor my head without living in it. Right? I'm an academic, and you know, I've been taught that basically Christianity is something you debate about and argue over. And realizing I don't know anything, really. Well, I know I know a lot, but I don't know anything at the same time, um, to to be in a place where the emphasis is not on, say, 45-minute sermons, which are really lectures, there's theology lectures or something. Um 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. You know, and I I sort of like that. And I, you know, I like the 12 to 15 minute homilies because they're they usually get to the point pretty quickly, and and the centering of Eucharist, which is mystery, right? And the mystery of Eucharist is the center of the Episcopal tradition. Um and all that's that has been well life-giving to me, you know, and and 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 and it like it, that's 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, 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 or disciplined or something like that.

SPEAKER_03 28:51

You you you said that you found you know, you found a community where you were accepted. Do you still participate in community with those who still hold on to certainty?

SPEAKER_05 29:04

Yeah, I do. I mean, um I mean teaching at a Christian college will help that too. But I'm dealing with younger people and also some of my colleagues, and that's fine. I mean, you know, there's no arguments, and I I'm careful about remembering that my students are about 45 years younger than I am, and they haven't thought about so and that's fine. Um but they pick up things, you know, we talk about things, and many find it liberating and and some find it a little bit scary, but nobody hates anybody, you know. And and um so that that's that's a good thing, you know. Uh and also uh, you know, I don't mind saying there were people 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 complicency 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, yeah. It doesn't always happen that way.

SPEAKER_03 30:21

Of course.

SPEAKER_05 30:22

Yeah.

Why Stay Christian After Deconstruction

SPEAKER_03 30:24

Yeah, no, I I get that. So uh a friend of ours who um I I introduced her to your stuff, and she listens now to um the Bible for normal people, pretty religiously, uh pun intended. And she um she sent me one of your episodes this morning and asked me to to listen to it because she knew that we were gonna 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. Where uh yeah, right. It's where uh you had done a blog and you asked people like why have they left faith? Oh, yeah. And then you and then you sort of categorized it into five different five things, right, yeah. Right. And they but then you talked about why you remained. And so I was I was interested in that. Like, why 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 I'm okay with not being certain about anything.

SPEAKER_06 31:26

Right.

SPEAKER_03 31:27

Which which I think isn't that sort of basically the uh again, Lucas is our resident expert on this, but isn't that basically the uh the atheist position is that I'm just not convinced?

SPEAKER_05 31:41

Um Yeah, I mean yes and no. I mean that's a that's a good question the way you put it. Um you know, I have atheist friends as well, you know, and 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 I've called myself I'm an agnostic Christian, you know, or maybe a a Christian that embraces um mystery, you know, and and so and then the next question usually is, well, why stay in any of it? You know, and I think there they're I I probably what 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 the 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 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, Pete Holmes 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 I think that's true. And I 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 um so yeah, I um I just I'm trying I lost track of the question here, Jeff. I'm sorry. Oh, why why I believe in anything? Um I think that's part of it is my experience of God and um 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 the boat of Christianity along with other boats floating down the river, you know, and I and that's sort of where I am. Um I think too of you know, my my life of studying scripture and its interpretation and what the Christian community has sort of how it's appropriate is the wrong word, how it has creatively handled scripture throughout its history is actually a very um uh encouraging thing to see because the church has sort of always known that like this literal meaning Yeah, it's it's it's a given. There's 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. Um so uh, you know, it's it's living in those communities that has helped me as well. And also just, you know, I I 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 um I mean something like uh, 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. That's that's mystical language, right? You can't really put a head on that. You can't you can't just control that language. It's a very mystical language. I think of you know, Colossians, whoever wrote Colossians, but umward the end of the first chapter that um 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. And um, 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 first and second kings? And then 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? And so for me, if that's the kind of tradition that's behind all this, uh sign me up, you know, because it's our, I think it's our sacred responsibility to think about, you know, to use the Christian language, you know, how would Jesus show up right here and right now? And the answer to that is never. Well, here's a Bible verse. The answer is how are you in and deep communion and conversation as a person, authentic person living now with this ancient tradition, which is manifold, diverse, internally contradictory to the point where authors sometimes debate each other in these texts, that is 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. And and to me, those are those are just a few things that um that make me, you know, I yeah, I I 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't go out to, and this is why everyone should believe exactly as I do. I 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_03 38:01

Yeah. Yeah. In terms of apologists, I was thinking about Philip Gully. I don't know if you're familiar with Philip Gully or not, but uh 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_06 38:15

Yeah. Right. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 38:16

I just I just choose to be. And I've started taking that as my um sort of my mantra. If someone asks me, I'm like, because I that's what I choose. As you were talking, I was thinking about uh recent conversation that we had with Peter, um, I almost said Peter Enns, Pete uh Peter Rollins.

SPEAKER_05 38:32

Yeah, sure, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:33

Yeah. And uh and he was talking about this idea, and I I heard as you were talking, this came to my mind. He talked about this idea that Christianity is the um is the lived practice, and I'm I'm messing this up a little bit, but of um of lack, where where where atheism is the intellectual embrace of lack, where and Christianity is the uh the lived experience of lack. And um and so you were talking about this idea of of the of if if it's about experience, there's like this mystical that I can't quite understand, but sign me up for that, I think is the way you put that. So anyway.

The Cross As Shame And Reversal

SPEAKER_05 39:15

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 fundamentalists from Moses on, but that's not the case. And uh 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 the whole point of the religious journey is to have experiences of the of the divine, of the numinous, you know, this is this is what it's about, um to to experience some transcendence in our lives. And and um like like you said, I mean, Jared, you know, Kodas is the Bible for normal people, he says the same thing. That like, why are you a Christian? He says, I choose to be. Well, why? Well, just 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 ironclad answers for why this is the best religion and no others are good. And um, that doesn't I I just I can't give that. I can't give that. I can I can talk about things about the Christian faith that attract me. For example, I mean, what 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, 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, my you know, I'm getting older. I can't remember. I'm glad I can remember my name, let alone other people's. But uh somebody said, you know, um, if you're gonna set up a religion in the first century, um this is not how you do it. You know, you don't you don't say your Jewish Messiah who's supposed to, as Luke's gospel puts it in the first two chapters, um, 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. Um that's that is was not the only, but it was a common messianic expectation among Jews. And here you have one whom Christians claim to be the 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 um, which by the way is a great example of how what we're getting in the Bible is is people's understanding of God, I think, less than God, you know. Um, but you know, so I I think those things are to me, they're 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 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.

SPEAKER_04 42:54

I think it's really interesting. I could talk about this forever. The um the your point about the uh the shameful execution uh of the historical Jesus, I think it's really important. I think that gets missed a lot. Uh-huh. Because in the tradition that I grew up in, they would have understood, they they we would have talked about um how, you know, yeah, there wasn't isn't this interesting how um, you know, the Judais were waiting for this this warrior, and instead we got the lamb, and that was the 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 um you know the whole passion, right? The um the beatings, the thorns, the the cross, it was all very painful. It and that showed the sacrifice, which I think is that's that's that's fine. Um, and but it was 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 that this is one thing that um I feel like, and and 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 it is uh an acceptance by the society. Nobody gets crucified except for these terrible people.

SPEAKER_05 45:06

Really terrible, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:07

Yeah. You you could be a murderer, you're not gonna get crucified. You could you could do a lot of terrible things and not get crucified. You'd have to be someone who was, and and to your point, it was the it was the humiliation of it. And so to your point, this is not a way to start a religion because it's crazy. It's not an underdog story. It is taking someone who the society has not said uh you're a sad sack that we're oppressing. The society has said, you are the person we hate because you are bad.

SPEAKER_06 45:48

Right.

SPEAKER_04 45:49

And you're making you're making the religion out of that. And so I think that's really interesting. And your your point about um flipping on its head the kind of honor society shame thing is really interesting.

SPEAKER_05 46:00

Yeah, I mean, that's that meant a lot to me once I sort of stumbled on that. And um, 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 um harmful to the notion of Jesus as a messiahship, it's actually the core of it, right? So that's 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.

SPEAKER_04 46:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 46:48

And, you know, and that's that's an interesting twist to things, you know, and and from a historical point of view. And then you have, you know, Paul and 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. That's right. You you need to say it. But Paul's not afraid. He's saying, I'm not ashamed of the gospel. Right. Why would he be ashamed? Because of how it started. Right. He's got to, 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? That's, I mean, that's gotta be 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. It's it's I I do think many people think this without a notion of resurrection, which I'm gonna 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 incarnate um but uh uh resurrection, I think, is what is the reason why Christianity continued. People believe 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 um yeah, so I think that the the this the counterintuitive nature of it to me is 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. You know, it became that. You know, this 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. You know, don't believe it. It's just hang in there, right? That's very sorry, go ahead. It didn't end there. No, it didn't end there, right? Yes, 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 gonna believe this stuff. It becomes a Gentile movement by the second century, uh, very much um in conversation with Greco-Roman philosophy, all of which is fine. But that's sort of where it went. So when salvation means being delivered from your enemies and and and being preserved so you can, you know, uh uh participate in this earthly kingdom that's going to be rebuilt because you know God is gonna return to his throne and all this kind of stuff. And to turn that into basically an afterlife journey, right? Where um it's it's all about um 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. Right, it became more gentile, more philosophical. So I find that fascinating. Yeah, and that's you were gonna say something. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_04 49:56

Yeah, I well, I was just gonna say that that is um it that goes right along with Bart Ehrman's um entire uh 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 uh, you know, the 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 uh 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 we would, you know, that that's his argument. And um, I so I think I I think that's very interesting that and 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. That was the point.

SPEAKER_05 51:00

And so you do have to realize that they just have to scramble, and first Thessalonians is like, well, here's how it's gonna work, you know? Right. Anyway, yeah. So yeah, yeah, no, and then they believe that, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 51:11

And that 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? Yeah, we know the end. And so again, it's it's similar to the the issue of the cross. Um, 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 it for me, it was it's important to not be um afraid of being like considered a square, be can being considered like a dork, right? That's the threat, is that you're gonna be ashamed of talking about the fact that you're a Christian because people are gonna think you're you're you're nerdy or you're dork or whatever, right? And so you get over that. Um whereas what you're talking about is like, no, you I'm not ashamed of it because it's an execution chair, and who would worship an execution, you know, uh an electric chair as their symbol, right? But the cross is now in a place of honor in uh in many, you know, 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 like something that should be a symbol of shame, you know, in in terms of how they thought of it at the time. And so that's interesting.

SPEAKER_05 52:33

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 uh of a transaction, but it becomes the deep mystery of the Christian faith, along with incarnation, I would say. Yeah. And one that we try to live into and try to understand and try to embrace and let it affect how we live. 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 um, 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 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 r true religion looks like. And uh not to get 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.

Building A Home For Questioners

SPEAKER_03 54:00

So when I uh came across your stuff, it provided me language for what I was experiencing. And then you talked you talk about losing the plot here. Um it sort of helped me I I don't know if I want to say regain it. I don't know what I want to say here, but it um it helped me um it helped me become a better uh a better person, maybe, to to be a person who was more open to other people and other ideas, and 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? Do uh why do why did you set out to write, like to begin to write and to share these things and to do your podcast. Oh well, here's a little secret. You ready? Yep.

SPEAKER_05 55:04

It's just me journaling out loud. Okay. I process that way. And 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 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 and to present them with information like, well, here's another take on this old thing, and wow, that makes sense. I don'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. You know, I'm not a pastor, I never will be ordained, although the tax breaks would be great. I just I I actually have too much respect for the ordained ministry to sort of talk about it flippantly, but um I'm sort of like a chaplain in a sense, you know, when I talk to people or engage with them online or or answer emails, and um and I think I I feel good about that role, you know, and um that's that those are all reasons why I do it. I'm trying to clear my own thinking and in doing that, maybe uh help other people who are interested in it, you know, and not shove it down their throats.

SPEAKER_03 56:38

Well, it's it's been very helpful for me. It's been very helpful for our community. Um we've used uh several of your Bible studies, Bible for Normal People, uh, for uh uh discussion groups that we have. Oh like the commentaries we have and um Yeah, like uh uh Bible for Normal People, um Romans. Yeah, um we did yeah, we did uh um Revelation and so the people that you've started bringing in and writing, um, it has really helped us create like this whole community where um people like you said, w we've found that uh we a growing part of our 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?

Odds And Ends And Next Book

SPEAKER_05 57:26

Um I've been really active on Substack. I'm having fun at some Substack. I have provocative notes and some provocative posts, but um everybody's happy because it's a self-selective group, you know. So um so I'm doing that sort of stuff. Um I've begun thinking about um 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 uh sort of on a theme of uh being Christian after Christianity and what that what that looks like. And it's it's gonna be uh it would, I mean, if I write this, it would be very much about that sort of mystical turn. And there's a famous quote, you guys may know it, by Carl Rahner, the Catholic theologian, he was part of Vatican II, and um back in the 60s he said the the pardon the sexist language, the future Christian man will be a 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 and and lived than simply lectured. And and he's responding to things like the Holocaust and things like the explosion of scientific information and and um you know all sorts of things like that, and saying that the the Christian dogma, I think I've put it- 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 that's sort of the the um we've been in that school for a few hundred years, you know. And so yeah, that's what I think. Well, you write it and I'll read it. I'll 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 gonna be long. It's gonna be um I don't have the book here. Roman Williams has a couple of nice short books on Christianity and stuff. I want it to be very readable, very small, and not not technical at all, but just we gotta think differently about God. We have to think differently about faith, we have to differently about the Bible, and frankly, just differently about what it means for Christians to show up in the world around us. Yeah. You know, and and um and that would mean uh 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 gonna happen?

SPEAKER_03 1:00:44

So I could talk in another hour about that, but we're up against it. Yeah, so I thank you so much for uh for joining us. I I've um I've been looking forward to this for several weeks now. And it's been it's been great. Thanks.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:59

What's the wait, what's the name of your substack? Is it just your name?

SPEAKER_05 1:01:02

Uh it's called you can find it by my name, but odds and ends, E-N-N-S, not E-N-S.

SPEAKER_04 1:01:08

Very good.

SPEAKER_05 1:01:08

Which I'm just clever. Yeah, it's well done. That was my idea. So just my thoughts about stuff. But uh 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, uh, but the notes that I put they're they're public to anybody, and I put out sometimes two or three a day, at least a few a week. So very good. Cool. Thanks. All right, guys. Good to be. Great to meet you, Pete. Yeah, yeah. See ya.

SPEAKER_03 1:01:38

Pleasure. Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:43

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.