Deep Dive
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New Year's Eve, the traditional time of year when some of us make promises to ourselves, when we resolve to be better people.
It could be as simple as smiling more, or as challenging as losing five kilos, or impossible like being nice to Director Mark. I'm a big fan of New Year's resolutions. My argument is fivefold. One, preparing resolutions requires taking stock of the previous year, and that's usually a beneficial thing. Two, preparing
Preparing resolutions involves pondering the good for your body, soul, mind, or relationships, and that's always a beneficial thing. Three, in life, there really are only three modes to choose from. Decline, maintenance, or improvement. And I know which I'd prefer.
Four, I may only 67% accomplish a mere 75% of my resolutions, but that is still a pass. Imagine how little I'd do without goals. And five, writing resolutions is an expression of hope, and hope is better than resignation.
I print out my resolutions each year, usually five or six goals, and I stick them around the office, on my computer screen, inside my prayer book, and so on. I write them in a language no one else around me can read, so they don't know what I'm aiming for. Like one of my 2017 goals, Toetos y Yosofines, telling me to make that year the year of my daughter, Josie.
giving her the time and attention she deserves. She doesn't listen to the podcast, so I'm pretty safe revealing that one. Anyway, here are some stats that director Mark dug up. A recent finder survey found that more than 74% of American adults plan to make a New Year's resolution this year.
And 55% think those resolutions are well within their reach. 26% aren't making any promises. They're the heretics. Forbes magazine reports that only 8% of people accomplish their resolutions. But like I say, it's better to hope than not. And what are the big resolutions? Well, we know.
Polly is an artificial intelligence operated by the market research firm Advanced Symbolics Inc. Over the last four years, she's analysed what 250,000 people have said online are their resolutions, and then she's listed the top 10 New Year's resolutions. Here they are. One.
Well, I've got a resolution to add for you for 2021.
Sometime in 2021, read the Bible. Now, of course, if you're already some kind of believer, this will sound like don't forget to breathe. But maybe today's episode is going to give you some new tools for reading the good book in fresh ways this year.
But I'm thinking especially if you're not sure what to make of Christianity. Perhaps you're skeptical. Perhaps you're just undecided. My challenge for 2021 is read at least 100 pages of the Bible. I mean, this book has shaped so much of our world. It would be great to think that you've got your head around at least 100 pages as an adult with all your grown-up questions activated.
Yes, the Bible is weird. It's got wars, bizarre laws, talking snakes, perhaps even a unicorn or two, slavery, misogyny, and much more. But there is a way to read this stuff, and there's a way not to. And I reckon today's guest can help us with both and make 2021 to Etos Tesbiblu, the Year of the Bible. ♪
I'm John Dixon, and this is Undeceptions. Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new book, How to Fight Racism, by Jimar Tisby.
Every episode at Undeceptions, we explore some aspect of life, faith, history, culture, or ethics that's either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. With the help of people who know what they're talking about, we'll be trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth out. If you're launching out on a quest to read the Bible in 2021, or even just 100 pages of it, I think a good guide would be my mate Dan Kimball.
Dan has a master's in theology and a doctorate in leadership, but he's also the author of several books on church and culture. And his latest is How Not to Read the Bible. I would have loved to catch up face to face with him, but these COVID times have put my American mates out of reach. But we zoomed from my home in Sydney to his home in beautiful Santa Cruz.
I see what looks like a Fender Strat. I can't quite see it over your left shoulder. Do you still play, perform, record? Yes. That's a Fender Telecaster. You only can see the top. If you saw the bottom, I know you'd see it as a Telecaster. But I'm a drummer primarily. So, yes, right in our living room right here, my drums are set up there. Two years ago, I bought a new Ludwig guitar.
solid maple kit. I like a lot of the old, I was played in the Colorado State University. I played in the big band, jazz band for the school. Then I was into punk and rockabilly and I still play, love music. Music's one of my passions today still. And so I can strum guitar a little bit, but I'm really a drummer. He sure is a drummer. Here's a snippet from Dan in his rockabilly mode. Well, you can feel it hanging on the rooftops, making noise.
♪ Hey, ho, let it roll ♪ ♪ Come on little baby, let's go ♪ ♪ Don't know you gotta take me down to a side of town ♪ ♪ Where I can shake it all night long ♪ ♪ You said you tried to dress too good ♪ ♪ Said baby you tried but it ain't no good ♪ ♪ Let's go out and have some fun tonight ♪
Hey, Dan, you subtitled your book, and I'm going to quote, making sense of the anti-women, anti-science, pro-violence, pro-slavery, and other crazy sounding parts of scripture. Before I ask you about any of the specifics of that, what prompted you to confront all of this stuff in such an open way? Because it sounds like you've been hit around the head on some of this stuff for quite a few years. Yeah, absolutely. Because of...
I think just interacting with people all the time that aren't part of churches and especially younger people in the churches, these are the very questions that keep coming up more and more and more and more. And so it's almost unavoidable to be able to not have some sort of response to these questions. And that's why that list in the subtitle there is exactly what the book covers because it
I don't see how, if anyone is a Christian today and these questions aren't coming up pretty regularly, especially from non-Christians or younger Christians, I mean, I'd really ask them to like, please listen, because these are the questions that are being asked. Yeah, but you don't seem to come from a place of annoyance or anger. This is one of the lovely things about what you've always done, but this book, it comes from a kind of humble, gentle place.
Yeah, well, I can say this because I think you and I, we have similar backgrounds, and I would have the same exact questions. So when somebody asks these questions or they're there, I would have the exact same questions. I would want to probably keep away from the church and Christianity. If I saw some of these specific types of Bible verses popping up, I would think it was a crazy book written by human beings to describe an
angry, mean God and a primitive group of people that had all types of bizarre rules and were into slavery and anti-women and everything else. So I write it understanding what it is like looking at Christianity from the outside.
The outside view of Christianity is not great, and opinions of the Bible are even worse. This year, atheist groups funded billboards in the United States which read, Just skip church, it's all fake news. They reflect a growing sentiment that the Bible is anything but a good read.
The Journal of Contemporary Religion published a synthesis of 123 national surveys of the general adult population since the Second World War. For around half of the adults today and two-thirds of the under 25s, the Bible has absolutely no significance in their personal lives.
Why do you think the Bible is becoming more and more controversial and outrageous in the minds of many at precisely the time fewer people are actually ever opening it up? Yeah, I mean, I want to use the cliche perfect storm. It's not all happened at once. It's been kind of a slow, I think, erosion of things that are undermining basic foundations of
of belief. Um, but I'd say this in that, I think what's going on making it easy is that the evangelical church specifically, you know, I'd say more or less would be talking. We've, we've been teaching the Bible and having, um,
the nice stories, the nice Bible verses. We've been sharing the storyline of the Bible and highlighting the nice things. And what's going on now is that there is a biblical illiteracy rate that's rising among Christians. I'm not even talking about people that
aren't Christians, but that are among Christians. So when these things are now being surfaced and pointed out more and more, they've always been in the Bible, but now that they're being surfaced and pointed out, that then it's causing a dilemma because like, I didn't realize those were in there or I just
saw them and ignored them, didn't really pay attention to them. But now that they're being addressed, pointed out, it's kind of almost a shock and undermining people's faiths. And if I'm not a Christian, understandably, I'd be seeing these and I'd be like, there's, I can't believe Christians believe this stuff. So it's kind of like, you know, again, combining right at the same time, biblical literacy and internet pointing all this stuff out. Let me start where you start.
Unicorns. Who on earth thinks there's unicorns in the Bible? And if they're really there, who do you think you are to get rid of those lovely creatures? Yep, unicorns. Well, the...
I didn't realize there was unicorns in the Bible, and I studied the Bible for many, many, many years. And then the guy that cuts my hair, and he's not a Christian, he's 30 years old, and we talk a lot about faith. And then one time I'm sitting in there, and he raises up, he's like, I didn't realize that you'd believe in unicorns as a Christian. And I did not know what he meant.
And he's like, no, I've seen it online. And he was on Pinterest, I think. And signed up, going home, looking it all up. And sure enough, there was a lot of memes and graphics and very humorous things pointing out that there's actual Bible verses with the word unicorn in them. I think there's eight or nine of them. And so it'll say unicorns and have the Bible verse reference on
So, this one was a fairly easy one to solve, but it was then looking at, all right, where'd this come from? Where'd the word unicorn come from? And basically, it was in the 1611 King James translation of the Bible. They didn't know what word to use for a one-horned animal.
And so they chose the English word unicorn. Through time, that word unicorn turned more and more into a mythical creature like we think of today. And it's the wrong English word to use. And that's why today we see wild ox usually, because there were one horned wild oxen at the time. So that was most likely what it's talking about. But it certainly makes an interesting meme.
It certainly catches you off guard saying, I never read a unicorn in there. And when you see this with Bible verses and references, it's very confusing. And that's why my barber asked me about it.
The Bible, of course, was one of the first books translated into English. John Wycliffe in the 14th century had a good go at putting the Bible into Middle English or something like that. And then in the 15th century, the Oxford scholar William Tyndale gave us another great version, though it's pretty hard for an English speaker today to pick it up and make sense of it.
The most famous and enduring English translation is the King James Version of 1611. It's the Shakespeare of Bibles, but like Shakespeare, it's got some oddities and it can be pretty hard to understand, especially when you come to the unicorns.
Anyway, if you're looking for a decent English translation today that strikes a balance between literal rendering of the Hebrew and Greek and contemporary English, I don't think you can go past the new international version, the NIV.
But if you want something slightly more literal and slightly harder English, check out the new revised standard version, NRSV, or the English standard version, ESV. These are all trustworthy English translations. And of course, we'll put a link to all of that in the show notes. One of the interesting things...
You're adamant about, in fact, you've titled chapters along these lines. You say the Bible is not written to us. And then you say, never read a Bible verse. So what are you getting at? Does this mean we shouldn't bother with this old book after all?
Yep. Well, both of those come from different people. The Bible is not written to us, but for us was by Dr. John Walton from Wheaton. And I think he's brilliant in the way that he says you should always be reading the scriptures through the eyes of who they were written to originally to. God inspired, I believe God inspired the Bible when he's writing to the ancient Israelites who are in slavery for 400 years, coming out of Egypt and working through a man named Moses and
that we should be thinking of that context of what was going on through their viewpoint and their understanding. If we try to superimpose our modern lens into the scriptures, looking for questions that the Bible wasn't meant to answer, then we come to all kinds of wacky conclusions. So that, that phrase is very important that it wasn't written to us, but for us, you know, when the book of Romans was written, who was written to the Roman church, right? You know, back in, in the first century. So like,
I think that's, it's forcing, I actually, I love, this sounds, it sounds really odd to say, I actually love the challenges to the Bible today. It's really, really sad when Christians end up seeing them and getting so confused they may abandon their faith.
But I think Christians should be thinking Christians and be looking this up and understanding this all the more. So in many ways, I welcome these challenges because I think it makes Christians think about what we really believe.
So that statement that was John Walton, the other one was by Greg Kokel from Stand to Reason. And this is our ministry over in the United States. It's a great ministry. And he just always says, like, never read a Bible verse. You know, just always look at the, you know, the paragraph, the chapter, the book that it's in. And where does it fit in the whole storyline? Basic Bible study methods that unfortunately many people don't put into practice. And therefore there's understandably a lot of
crazy sounding things in the Bible. Well, actually, they're crazy sounding things in the Bible, even if you do good Bible study methods. But yeah, but that's what it is. It's really putting proper Bible study methods into looking at the scriptures as they were originally written.
I'm in the middle of my fifth time through all seven seasons of The West Wing, the best television ever made. And you'd agree with that, producer Kayleigh, yeah? Absolutely. And Mark doesn't, but we'll just leave it there. I've got a New Year's resolution. It's cool. But there's one scene in season one that is excruciating to watch every time because
President Jed Butt smacks down a conservative Bible-believing talk show host because of her apparently cherry-picking approach to the Bible. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery, a sanction in Exodus 21.7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another question?
My chief of staff, Leo McGarry, insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important because we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point?
Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you? One last thing.
You cite that famous scene from the West Wing, and it's powerful for some viewers because it highlights that Christians are just cherry picking. You know, they don't choose to obey those laws. They choose to obey other laws.
Yeah. I mean, it is powerful in terms of the dramatic tension that it raises the, and they, from the script writers, you know, who put that together and it was actually, I looked into it, it's based on a real letter that was written somewhere, but, um,
But I would say, I mean, we showed that clip to our church. I remember we ended one of our worship gatherings with that movie clip. And I just looked at everybody. I'm like, how the heck do you answer that? And then I just said, come back next week and we'll look at it. So I just let it sit for a week because I will bet if most Christians even look at that, it's kind of like, how the heck do I answer these questions?
They're quoting Bible verses talking about the scriptures themselves indicate that slavery is okay. You know, sell your daughter into slavery. Uh, you shouldn't touch the skin of a dead pig. So then you shouldn't be playing football. And they talk about that American football, uh,
They have, you know, don't plant crops side by side. They're actually pointing out and reading Bible verses. And the Christian sits there, unable to answer the president, who's the actor in that way. And then they sit down and it goes like, you foolish Christians, don't you even realize this stuff is in the Bible?
You quote all of the nice verses about maybe moral things that you like or whatever it might be. But how do you answer these verses? And then it's like a slam dunk. Christians don't know how to answer it. It's in the Bible. The woman sits down defeated. And it's very dramatic. And I can say this.
If I'm watching that and I didn't know the Bible, I'd be like, those foolish Christians, how can they possibly believe this stuff? I mean, I'd be absolutely convinced because it's using Bible verses, right?
And so how can you argue that when they're quoting the Bible, how absurd and even evil the Bible can sound? So that's why it's such a great clip. But of course, there are total ways to respond to the whole thing. You don't, oh, like we said it earlier, never read a Bible verse.
Don't just pick one up out of isolation. And who was it written to? Was it written to us, to them? When was it written and why? That makes all the difference. And that's unfortunate what the president in that television show clip did not do. And unfortunately, the Christian didn't know how to answer.
Yeah, so answer it for me. What's this business about not touching pig skin and planting crops beside each other and different kinds of threads? All right. I mean, this is, again, it's pretty urgent. I mean, Christians have to be thinking today. I think we just got way too comfortable in just not being challenged by things
the scriptures. I mean, I just, I'm amazed at how little, sometimes many Christians don't think about the very things that we believe. And so like responding to that, it's like, right, where were those Bible verses? He's quoting mainly Exodus and Leviticus.
for those particular verses about the, you know, selling your daughter into slavery or touching the dead skin of a pig. So you shouldn't play football. Right? So they're, they're, they're quoting Levitical laws and instructions to the Israelite people after coming out of Egypt for 400 years in slavery. And God was instructing them to remain holy and pure distinct from the neighboring people groups. Right? So,
Just a quick aside for listeners who might not know, Exodus and Leviticus are the second and third books of the Bible in the Old Testament. They're part of the five books of the Bible known as the Pentateuch. These are the books of the instruction that establish God's covenant with the people of Israel. That's what's going on. It's the specific laws that
into a specific people because all around them were other people that were worshiping different gods. And he was doing, saying some things that sound ridiculous to us today, but they wouldn't have sounded ridiculous to them at the time. Like for instance today, and this is America and I read this, it's I looked it up on like snopes.com to see if it was true. And allegedly this is there's laws in the United States that are still in place that
that will say ridiculous things when we look at them today. There's a law still in place, I think it's in Arizona, that says you cannot keep a donkey in a bathtub. And that's the law. And they've never taken it out. And to us, we go, that sounds ridiculous. Why would they ever have that in there? You go back to when it was written, I think it was in the 1880s or something like that. There was a dam that broke and a flood happened. And some farmer in
would keep his donkey in a bathtub to sleep at night or something, was washed into a giant basin of mud. They couldn't get the donkey out very easily and all this work. And they ended up saying like, hey, you can't do this anymore. So they created a law for a very specific situation in a specific time with a specific people that sounds absurd to us today. Looking back,
But at the time, it was very meaningful. That's what a lot of these laws in the first, the early chapters of the Bible are about. They sound bizarre to us today, but they were very meaningful back then.
Fortunately, we in Australia can still keep our donkeys in our bathtubs. So I'm really sad for you Americans. But that just raises the question, if you're not going to obey those laws that you say were for a specific time, what about all those other laws that are right alongside those laws? Because that's the point of that West Wing thing, about sexual ethics. So therefore, they must just be discarded as well.
Yep. Well, when you're looking at the Bible storyline, this is, again, the title of the book is how not to read the Bible. You want to be reading it through the storyline and the lens that it is from Genesis through Revelation. And you need to be looking at the Old Testament laws were written to the people of Israel in that specific time.
Then what you'll see is you go through the New Testament and you'll see Jesus and then post-Jesus. And then what were the moral ethics and laws that continued that, like, just because it said do not murder in the Old Testament, we're not then saying, okay, you can murder today.
So you have to be looking at what did continue in the New Testament. What were the moral and ethics and all different things that were continuing through the New Testament? It's not that difficult to find. And you just have to look into what ended with Jesus, what continued with Jesus. And many of the moral and ethical laws continued in that way into the New Testament times. And you just see that when you study and do your homework into looking at it.
Leviticus chapter 25. Your male and female slaves are to come from the nations around you. From them you may buy slaves. You may also buy some of the temporary residents living among you and members of their clans born in your country, and they will become your property. You can bequeath them to your children as inherited property, and you can make them slaves for life. But you must not rule over your fellow Israelites ruthlessly.
Ephesians chapter 6. Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. Obey them not only to win their favour when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
Okay, so one of the things that you do find in the Old and New Testament is slavery. Surely this is, you know, one of the most obvious failings of the Bible. We know, you and I both agree that slavery is pure evil. Doesn't the fact that the Bible, you know, seems to endorse slavery
that it's just a time bound human and frankly, morally corrupt text. Yep. Again, I, anybody that sees this or in America, when you know the history of how even churches and Christians use the Bible to back up the evil of slavery and the usage of slavery, it,
It again is not reading the Bible correctly. And even, and so everybody that does know there has never been a uniform, like everybody believes that's true. There's always been people saying that's not true. But with slavery, when we say the word slavery, we always look at it from our own, an American lens, at least I'm talking about,
the evil of kidnapping Africans and bringing them over against their will in bondage slavery in America. That's generally the image that comes to our mind: evil, horrible. And here's the part about that: the Bible condemns that type of slavery. Kidnapping slavery is outright condemned. In the Old Testament, it was even under the death penalty. So when you look at slavery, kidnapping slavery against their will,
The Old Testament said that deserves death. It is evil and wrong. What you then see, though, in the Old Testament, like remember the saying, never read a Bible verse or who was it written to? Who was it written originally to? And you'll see that when we think of slavery today, it was different than what was going on back then.
It was a father, you know, there's the example that in West Wing, that when they talk about a father selling their daughter into slavery, and he talks about that and jokes about it. And side note, going back to that West Wing clip, here's the something that's so important that anyone listening to, I plead with you to put the effort into things. So many things seem very true at a surface level.
and we react to it, and of course, like, oh, look at that, it's horrible. We need to be thinking and going past the surface level into what's behind it. In that West Wing clip, when they talked about the football that we talked about in the dead skin, skin of a dead pig, which comes from the Old Testament laws, it is true that it said, don't touch the skin of a dead pig. And there were various reasons for that at that time.
The New Testament, we can eat pig, we can touch the skin of a dead pig. There's no law that didn't carry through. But here's the part about it, is that then the president in that movie clip, I'm sorry, in the TV show clip, he actually then equates it with footballs, right? And he's like, so that means I can't touch a football because it's a pigskin, right? This is what I don't understand. Now, everyone's there absolutely like...
oh my gosh, you can't play football. Footballs are not made of pig skins. Footballs were never made of pig skins. It was a nickname that was derived. They used to have, it was a pig bladder that they'd blow up in Europe and then they'd
covered general with deer skin. And then, you know, through time, it changed to what we have today. It's either cow hide or some sort of rubber. And it's never pig skin. But here's what I don't understand. So that whole argument about don't touch, you know, we can't play football, it's not even just biblically inaccurate. It isn't accurate with what a football is made out of. So that's back to the West Wing argument.
pigskin thing, but back to the slavery, it's the same thing. Words, you have to look into what was going on. We have to be thinking, and slavery in the Old Testament times was more, and you can study it and you can look into it. God never once said, He isn't the one who created slavery.
And people back then would sell themselves. It's horrible for us to think about it today because we have, in America, we have social security. We have different systems in place to care if you're, you know, if you were a widow and you had no way to get money and poverty, there's ways to help with this more here. Back then, if you were in money, you could sell your, you'd end up going into prostitution. There's all types of things that could happen.
It's true that throughout history, there have been very different concepts of slavery, which have all gone by the same word. The transatlantic slave trade involved capturing unsuspecting Africans and putting them into forced chattel slavery, where the slaveholder literally owned the human being.
Interestingly, the Bible explicitly forbids kidnapping and slave trading. In the Old Testament, the principal form of slavery that's referenced, and the slavery Dan is talking about here, was a little more like the English indentured household servant in the 18th and 19th centuries. And it was often a temporary economic decision to sell oneself into slavery to avoid absolute poverty.
The Roman slave system of the New Testament period was less clear-cut. It certainly could include the worst kinds of slavery, like the transatlantic slave trade.
But it was also often more like the household servant system in England. Slaves in important households actually wielded an awful lot of power. They could be doctors, teachers, scribes and official heralds. The response of the New Testament writers to all of this was mixed. It forbids slave trading.
urges slaves to gain their freedom if they can, but it also tells slaves to live honorably as slaves if they can't find their freedom. As I've said in a series of Undeceptions singles on this topic a couple of months ago, the church of the first few centuries only slowly developed a full-blown critique of slavery.
So, selling yourself into a slavery role, and the word is actually more about being a servant back then, and it was a different form entirely of bringing yourself into that situation. But God still was making corrections and making it better for people.
So, I mean, that's a very, you could spend an hour just on this topic, as you know, but it was a different form of slavery, not how we think of it today. The New Testament, again, way later, thousands of years, a couple thousand years later. So then you go into what was going on there. It was not race-based. It was Greek people and Roman people with their own fellow people that were, that people were called slaves and
And it was, you'd have doctors, you could have lawyers. It was people that, it was an entirely different system. I've read up to a third to a half of Rome were slaves at that time period. It was an entirely different type of slavery. And we put our modern mindset into it. But here's what I do know is that it was still
a dominant person over another, and you see through Jesus them whacking it as equal, moving it as equals in God's sight, but not one over the other in value or worth. And so, and you see the early Christians who were then going against slavery when it was becoming, I mean, I could talk on and on about this. I'm sorry, I just rambled here, but it's such an emotional issue.
because it's such a evil thing and to accuse God of it is so misunderstanding what's talked about in the scriptures. And it's really terrible when people pull out that verse and,
I understand why they do it and put it on billboards. There's been billboards where they'll put the slavery verses and say, look at you Christians are God. And it's just, oh my goodness, I wish they would think. It's accusations both ways. Christians need to know their Bibles. And if you're going to use the Bible, if you're not a Christian, please do your homework to use it well also. Slavery is only one of the difficult topics I raise with Dan. After the break, I ask him about Old Testament genocide, biblical genocide.
This episode of Undeceptions is brought to you by Zondervan Academics' new book, ready for it? Mere Christian Hermeneutics, Transfiguring What It Means to Read the Bible Theologically, by the brilliant Kevin Van Hooser. I'll admit that's a really deep-sounding title, but don't let that put you off. Kevin is one of the most respected theological thinkers in the world today.
And he explores why we consider the Bible the word of God, but also how you make sense of it from start to finish. Hermeneutics is just the fancy word for how you interpret something. So if you want to dip your toe into the world of theology, how we know God, what we can know about God, then this book is a great starting point. Looking at how the church has made sense of the Bible through history, but also how you today can make sense of it.
Mere Christian Hermeneutics also offers insights that are valuable to anyone who's interested in literature, philosophy, or history. Kevin doesn't just write about faith, he's also there to hone your interpretative skills. And if you're eager to engage with the Bible, whether as a believer or as a doubter, this might be essential reading.
You can pre-order your copy of Mere Christian Hermeneutics now at Amazon, or you can head to zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions to find out more. Don't forget, zondervanacademic.com forward slash undeceptions.
68-year-old Tirat was working as a farmer near his small village on the Punjab-Sindh border in Pakistan when his vision began to fail. Cataracts were causing debilitating pain and his vision impairment meant he couldn't sow crops.
It pushed his family into a financial crisis. But thanks to support from Anglican Aid, Tirat was seen by an eye care team sent to his village by the Victoria Memorial Medical Centre. He was referred for crucial surgery. With his vision successfully restored, Tirat is able to work again and provide for his family.
There are dozens of success stories like Tarat's emerging from the outskirts of Pakistan, but Anglican Aid needs your help for this work to continue. Please head to anglicanaid.org.au forward slash Tarat.
You admit in this book that you were once dumbfounded when a smart young woman
hit you up on the question of the Bible's misogyny. So can you tell me about that encounter? Because I found that, you know, I related to it when you described it in the book. Well, like you and me, like I didn't grow up in a church. I didn't know much of the Bible. I then started to read the Bible and
And I got involved in a great church, and then I was in a house, and there was a bunch of college-age women and guys in this room. And we're learning about what the church believes, and it only had male elders in this particular church.
And so they had Here's Why, and they just listed the scripture references. They didn't write out the actual verses. So as good students, we're like, all right, let's read them. So I can still remember sitting there
And, you know, first Corinthians in chapter 14, when it says women should remain silent in the churches, they are not allowed to speak, but must be in submission. As the law says, if they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home for it is a, it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church. And I just remember sitting there and I'm like, I,
I didn't, I kind of forget that's in the Bible. And then I'm like, that's in the Bible. And I'm like, how did I kind of miss that before? And then they're all looking at me. I'm like, I don't know how to answer this. And I really want to like hide behind the couch and wait till they'll go away because I,
This sounds weird, but I was embarrassed at two levels. One, how it was coming out of the Bible, saying women can't have to submit, can't speak in church, it's disgraceful. And then I was embarrassed that me as a Christian didn't know how to respond. I think I had read those verses before, but it's kind of like, somebody's got to figure it out. And then I just kind of skimmed past it. I was a pretty new Christian at the time.
So now it's years later. You sound pretty confident that Christianity isn't just a boys' club. So why not? Is this just because you now are a leader of the boys' club? And I can say this very, very strongly, and I –
I could never, I mean, if you knew me, I could never, I would dread to ever mislead people from scriptures and teaching. I would never want to mess somebody up, you know, with their emotions or their lives. And this, these verses about women, you know, if this was demeaning women, you know, who are beautifully created in God's image and
And there's have gift and everything to think that, that this, that there's a religion that would demean them, squash them, see them as something unequal can't speak in a church, you know, like,
I would never want to steer someone into something that was absolutely destroying them. I'm getting into a big topic here. But basically, when you look into that, it's the same thing. It's not just the surface reading. Let's press pause. I've got a five-minute Jesus for you. Actually, I don't. I want to hand over to my friend, Laurel Moffat. That's Dr. Laurel Moffat.
There's no question that women were important to Jesus' ministry and the record of it. There's His mother, Mary, who sustained His life in utero and helped bring Him into being. There were the women who financially supported His travel and ministry. And there were the women who watched His crucifixion and those who arrived at His empty tomb. There's His mother, Mary, who sustained His life in utero and helped bring Him into being.
There were the women who financially supported his travel and ministry. And there were the women who watched his crucifixion and those who arrived at his empty tomb, prepared to see and to touch his dead body, only to be the first to learn of his resurrection. But their presence alone doesn't tell me how he related to women. Was he nice or bossy? Was he intense or mean? Was he overbearing?
I went back to stories that I thought I knew so well I was beyond surprised. But no matter how many times I read about him, he always surprises me. Recently, it was the way he interacted with a small-town widow that got me like an arrow to the heart. It goes like this. He's on his way into this town, Nain, with his disciples and plenty of hanger-ons.
They're walking up to the gate where they meet another crowd coming out of it. A funeral procession. They're carrying a coffin. A young man in the town has died. He was the only son of a widow. A nobody. She's crying. She's on her way to bury the last person she had left in the world. Where I'm from, if you happen to meet a funeral procession, you pull your car over to the side of the road, you stop,
and you wait for every car in the pass, and then you go on your way. I was expecting Jesus to do something like that: move aside, let the mourners pass, avert his eyes, or mumble his condolences, and then continue into town. Maybe he'd bring a casserole over later on. Instead, he breaks into the funeral procession. He tells the widow, "Don't cry."
And then, even stranger, he puts his hand on the coffin and talks to the body inside of it. People don't usually do that at funerals. He tells the young man to get up the way you might speak to someone who's slept too long. The man gets up, and Jesus gives him back to his mother. In doing this, he turns a funeral into a birthday party. And what's more, he's given the widow her life back. His compassion for this woman is more than platitudes.
He's moved with love and pity for her, so much that his heart leaps out of his chest and comes alongside hers in her grief. He cares about her and her sadness. He cares about each of her tears. He sees her and how it's not just her son that's died, but her hope as well. And then, at his word, all hope leaps to life. I find him time and again like this in his interactions with women, and men too for that matter.
He treats women with kindness and respect, with no expectations of them to be anything other than themselves. He sees them as they are in their being, not by their appearance or their status or lack of it, or their family connections or their role, or by virtue of any cultural norm or practice. He's delightfully free of ulterior or hidden motives.
He doesn't want to make money out of anyone, control anyone, persuade anyone to do something that they don't want to do. He is instead the loving Lord with us. He's for us. He cares about our sorrows and tears, our joys and our hope. He cares about our lives. It's His pure, unmediated presence
and the gentle arms of his heart reaching out that gets me every single time. The famed and now deceased atheist Christopher Hitchens was no fan of the Bible, though he'd clearly spent a lot of time reading it. He told Vanity Fair magazine that one of his greatest objections was its apparent sanctioning of violence, even though the Ten Commandments instruct otherwise.
Number six, thou shalt not kill. Almost immediately after the events at Sinai and the delivery of these instructions by God from the top of the mountain, Moses orders all his supporters to draw their swords and kill all their friends and brothers for their profanity.
I would say out of, in my life, if someone was to ask me, what's the most difficult part of the Bible, you know, and I would say it's definitely the violence specifically in the old Testament more. I mean, there's violence in the new Testament that we don't talk about as much, but it's,
This is probably what I would become an agnostic about. I don't think I'd have become an atheist to become an agnostic of some sort, but it's hard to admit, but I do admit it. And this is the same thing. There's no softening in the Old Testament that God used violence to accomplish things. God ordered the killing of people to accomplish things. That is factual. You can't explain it away.
It is true. God used violence for our salvation. The cross with Jesus was a violent act. It was a torturous, violent act that through that violent act that people did to Jesus, but God allowed it and Jesus willingly accepted the death of Jesus for our salvation. And so, yeah,
This is where what I'll say is that it is definitely difficult. It is hard to understand fully, but this is the best way I can explain it, you know, without going into all the different ones. There's a lot of broad brushing that God just randomly killed people and it was all race based or, and that's so far from truth when you actually study it.
you'll see that he did have people killed, but there was a lot of hyperbolic war language going on. And because when you study the Barry's people groups, they didn't all get wiped out. When he's saying, like, wipe them out, what you'll see is not all of them were wiped out because right afterwards, you'll see that there's some that are living. And that's like in a football game or...
soccer or something. It's like, you know, we killed them all. You know, we killed them or something in the game. You're not meaning that literally. You're using a figure of speech to talk about something. But what you'll see here is it's like military strikes were going on and certain, you know, the leaders and the soldiers and certain people, there were things that were done strategically for reasons. But here's what I do know. Every single time there is a pleading and a warning to please change your ways and
please, you know, and I don't have time to go into all the different reasons of why these were happening and what was going on, but God was always pleading with people and giving them warning. Please turn from these evil, evil things that you're doing and turn this way before violence had to happen. And you'll see that you see God's character there of compassion, forgiving, slow to anger. Like you'll just see this
And it was never just a genocidal maniac, you know, just kill him and kill him. It was always for a specific reason. And I'm convinced that's what's going on with the Bible.
Because if you only see those stories and you don't see the God of God interacting with human beings from Genesis to the end of Revelation and his love and compassion and wanting people to know him and wanting people to save and how much forgiveness is going on. That's God. Like that's God. And I know is loving and compassionate and slow to anger and forgiving and filled with grace and.
And yes, there were times if you just pulled out those little scenes, like you'll be like, he acted with violence here. It's hard to understand why, but that's part of the story. The full story is he's a God of love. And that's my faith and trust in him, even though there are violence. And if you only look at those little pieces, you got scary Mary, you got scary God, rather than looking at the real God of the whole Bible.
But if that stuff is really there and it is really there and you're not trying to hide from that, why isn't that a kind of justification? Why couldn't a Christian today or a Christian church take that as justification for, you know, righteous, holy war today?
Yeah. Well, the easy answer on that is Jesus. Jesus said, turn the other cheek, love your enemy. He had, you know, it was, you never see that ever instilled in the New Testament as something that Christians should be doing if you're following there. And you'll look at it. It was only in specific places God did this. And it wasn't like the whole storyline of God. He was like just killing people all the time.
So, you know, the New Testament is very clear. We should love our enemies, pray for enemies. And, you know, it's saying, you know, God is not, Christians should not resort to violence as a, like a holy war act. You do not see that as commanded in the scriptures at all in his name. So with all of these complicated problems and terrible reputation, why bother reading the Bible, even a hundred pages in 2021? Yeah.
Well, you know, you and I could talk about the wonders and grace of God forever and ever in our lives. And I did not know before I read the open the Bible. This is for anyone that I.
that God knows me and he loves me. And that's not a cliche. It's not like, you know, some brainwashing cliche thing. Like, you know, it's not self-help talk. It's if there's a God and he's communicating what he has through the scriptures and the whole storyline, despite and the sin, the times when I go against him, that's what sin means. When I go against his guidance and I hurt myself or other people, that there's, he has love for me.
I'm of great value to him and I have worth. And when I start seeing myself like God has made us, it changes how I view myself. It changes how I view people. I want to do others like I would want them, the great command of helping other people. And it is, I would encourage anyone to look at the story of God. And then specifically the easiest way is go to Jesus and
It's great to know the backstory because Jesus didn't just come out of nowhere and understand God's love for you, his purpose. And these aren't cliche words. I feel like I'm saying, you know, each one of these is powerful. And when I understood God loved me and who he was, I wanted to know him. And the more I wanted to know him, that's why I started getting into the Bible because
And as a non-Christian, I just said, if I'm going to believe this stuff, I got to know what the heck this book says. I want to know like what, and it's not a book, it's a library of books. I needed to know what God said. Um, I love the Bible because it helps me understand God more and it helps me want to know him more. And the more I know about God, the more I love him and the more I'm so grateful that he's a God of love, forgiveness and peace. And, uh,
I would beg anybody to please give the Bible a chance. Start in the New Testament, you know, but the Old Testament is really important too. But man, when you get to see Jesus, God in flesh and Jesus in that way, read him and it changes your life. My life was changed and it still is. I can't imagine my life if I didn't read the scriptures and have God know who God was and Jesus through the scriptures.
The Bible is a literary classic, perhaps the literary classic. And like many other works in the literary canon, the Bible can be hard going. It requires thoughtful reading at a slow pace, preferably with a few footnotes helping us bridge the cultural divide.
But eventually, its subtle logic and moral power creeps up on you. And you may even find yourself agreeing that no one can claim to be an educated Westerner until they've read the Bible.
I had a similar experience when I first read Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities. One of the ten novels Simon Smart from the Centre for Public Christianity challenged me to read on my 40th birthday. I wasn't a big fiction reader. I swallowed my "I only read true stories" pride and sat down one lazy weekend to give it a go.
The book opens with that intriguing, unforgettable line, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. But after a couple of pages, I was pretty sure I was going to hate this. The sentence structures were complex, the language unnecessarily verbose and sometimes even foreign. And the historical setting, London and Paris at the dawn of the French Revolution, was an alien place for me.
Fortunately, my edition of The Tale of Two Cities included a lengthy introductory essay from a Dickens scholar and copious footnotes throughout the book explaining unusual terms, cultural peculiarities and historical references. I dutifully read the notes, all of them. It was a classic after all. I felt it was my intellectual duty. I slowly began to appreciate Dickens' style and intent, but honestly,
Even 80 pages in, I saw this as a worthy book, but not something to be relished. I can't say exactly where everything changed, somewhere around the middle of the story, I think, but I distinctly remember putting the book down after a brief installment and wishing I had more time to keep going. I was hooked.
I had grown fond of the unusual rhythm of the language. I was fascinated by the historical details. And above all, the story captivated me. It is a moving human plot and an insightful portrait of the universal theme of sacrifice and renewal. I felt I had been repaid for my effort with interest.
After reading Dickens, I resolved never again to mock a classic without first reading it, slowly and in its entirety. I'm glad my literary friends were patient with me through my dogmatic non-fiction years. At times, I must have sounded to them like the 15-year-old kid in English class. Shakespeare is stupid.
And that was once me. Some people approach the Bible that way. They've never read it, at least not slowly as an adult with some technical assistance. Yet just like the proverbial 15 year old, they know it's stupid. But there are reasons this book has influenced our culture, arguably more than any other text. There are reasons it continues to sell more copies than any other book every year.
The most important and rewarding literary works often require something from us before we reap the benefits. I guess it's in the nature of a timeless work to seem at first less immediately relevant, less temporal. But my experience with Dickens has taught me that the payoff can be surprising, far exceeding the effort.
Every thoughtful adult should read the Bible, at least 100 pages of it, at least the Psalms and the Gospels, preferably with some interpretative aid close by.
Even if it begins out of a sense of cultural and intellectual duty only, that's reason enough to open a true classic, doubly so in this case. The patient and attentive reader of the Bible will be repaid tenfold. MUSIC
Well, if you're ready to make reading the Bible your New Year's resolution, then we've got some great links for you in the show notes. You'll find there an easy program for reading the whole Bible in a year in bite-sized chunks. You'll also find my top 10 Old Testament and top 10 New Testament passages if you just want to take the 100-page challenge. Hey, and Undeceptions now have T-shirts. Yay!
Oh, wow. Where's mine? I've got one. It doesn't fit me. I haven't got one at all. Oh, you don't have one, Director Mark. Oh, what an oversight. What an oversight, that is. These are top quality teas in medium and large that will help you promote the show and do your own bit of undeceiving. So head to the website or the show notes for the details.
And if you've got questions, I'd love to hear them, and I'll have a crack at answering them in an upcoming Q&A episode. You can tweet us at Undeceptions, send an email to questions at Undeceptions.com, or record your questions over at Undeceptions.com, and we'll play it on the show. Just go to the website, scroll down, hit the record button. And while you're there, check out the growing Undeceptions library. And if you're on the hunt for other good podcasts, check out the other shows in the Eternity Podcast Network, like...
with all due respect with megan pal totois and michael jensen lastly let me encourage you to stay to the very end of today's episode remember that call out i made a few weeks ago for laments well some songwriters have sent me just that
Next episode, it's our final show for the season and we've left one of the hottest topics to last. How to stop racism in 67 minutes or less. See ya. Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dixon, produced by Kayleigh Payne and directed by the wonderful Mark Hadley.
Editing by Nathaniel Schumach. Special thanks to our series sponsor... I couldn't make it. You couldn't hold it, could you? Editing by... Editing by Nathaniel Schumach. Special thanks to our series sponsor, Zondervan, for making this Undeception possible. Undeceptions is part of the Eternity Podcast Network, an audio collection showcasing the seriously good news of faith today.
Before I go, I want to give a shout out, this episode, what else could it be, to the Bible Society, one of the oldest continuously existing organizations in the world. On 7th of March, 1804, at a meeting of around 300 people at the London Tavern, yes, a pub, William Wilberforce and his colleagues formed the British and Foreign Bible Society. Now they're in 200 countries.
Wherever you are in the world, just Google Bible Society and consider donating to their worldwide project of making the Bible accessible to every person on the planet. Brought to you by the Eternity Podcast Network.
In episode 28 of this season, Discordant Religion, with the wonderful professors Jeremy Begbie and Kirstie Bilehartz, we lamented the lack of laments in Christian music today. In most cases, Christian music can be a bit too triumphant, happy, a little short on the sort of songs the Bible itself contains that reflect the sadness of the world.
The Lingering Questions. So you might remember I called out to musos in the audience to rectify the matter. And we had a great response. Clinton Bergsma from Western Australia offered something. So did Ben Haygood from the US and Andrew O'Dell, also from the US. So here's Instruments of Peace, Dance and Advent. Sad Face On.
Make us instruments of your peace. Where there is hatred, there's your light. Make us instruments of your peace. Pride and prejudice shall cease. All my dreams are shattered, O give your light to me.
Not sure of tomorrow, I'm living day to day. Trusting in your goodness, my God, please guide the way. Can I boast of my weakness? Will your power strengthen me?
Let me dance on broken feet and sing through tears of pain. Let me fly with wounded wings and pray. Sufficient care may we so can. Worldly and capable hands. But the world seems different.
In agony, darkness is in from all around. And we fight to keep our hope from drowning. Come Lord, quickly come to help. Gracious Lord.