Deep Dive
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Located about 650 kilometres north of Helsinki, Puolanka tends to make headlines for all the wrong reasons. Its steadily declining population and high rate of unemployment are complemented by a 2pm sunset in winter. And yet Puolanka residents are leaning into what many might call a grim situation by making pessimism the town's brand.
That's the beginning of a Canadian broadcast company report from 2019, all about the Finnish town of Peulanka and its title as the most pessimistic town in the world. That's ironic really, given that Finland itself topped the list of the world's happiest countries for the sixth year in a row.
In fact, back in 2021, we began our episode on the good life with reports on Finnish happiness. Driving into the town of Peulanka, motorists are met with large yellow signs. One of them reads, Soon Peulanka. You've still got time to turn around. I love it.
We've talked a lot on this podcast about what it means to live the good life. And this season, we went further and asked about how we combat apathy, the enemy of the good life, that feeling that so often permeates our society, leaving us caring about some things that don't matter and shrugging off other things that really do.
Well, one of our listeners asks, is it ever okay not to be happy and enthusiastic? Is there a place for pessimism outside of Pewelanka? So let's get straight into our Q&A episode. Producer Kayleigh and Director Mark will serve up the questions and I'll try answer them. I'm John Dixon and this is Undeceptions. Undeceptions
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This season of Undeceptions is sponsored by Zondervan Academic. Get discounts on master lectures, video courses and exclusive samples of their books at zondervanacademic.com forward slash Undeceptions. Don't forget to write Undeceptions. Each episode here at Undeceptions, we explore some aspect of life, faith, philosophy, history, science, culture or ethics that
that's either much misunderstood or mostly forgotten. And with the help of people who know what they're talking about, we're trying to undeceive ourselves and let the truth...
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. Our first question comes from someone who calls themselves Puddle Glum.
Is it ever okay for Christians to be pessimistic or cynical about life, the universe, and well, everything? It just seems like Christians are implicitly forced by each other to be super positive and encouraging. Kind of sick of that word. But it doesn't always correspond to lived reality. Would love your thoughts.
Love your work, Puddle Glum. The world needs more Puddle Glums. They're the Marsh Wiggles in C.S. Lewis's Narnia. They're gloomy, but faithful and practical. Look, we're all wired differently. There is such a thing as an extrovert and an introvert.
There are, in the same way, disgustingly happy people and the more pessimistic, perhaps even cynical folks. And both are fine. The Bible does speak of joy, of course, but that's not the same thing as the happiness in the sparky, trivial sense that we often think of the word. Joy in Christianity is more like happiness.
The satisfaction or rest that comes from knowing that despite everything, we are loved by the Creator. I think you can be pessimistic about the world and joyful at the same time. Just as you can be trivially happy without any true joy.
There have, of course, been different communities and eras of the church that have either been overly negative or overly positive. And it sounds like maybe you've come into contact with the second kind of Christian community. And I agree, it can be exhausting to be urged all the time to be super positive about everything because, you know, God's on his throne, etc.,
It's a recipe for crushing the spirit of some of us, especially those who are particularly attuned to the injustice and sorrows of the world. So I say, enjoy your pessimism, but maybe just watch it. Watch that it doesn't spill over into cynicism too often.
And here's one small tip. Apart from trying to find some Christians who aren't sickly happy all the time, I'd suggest open the book of Psalms in the Old Testament and get into the habit of saying the Psalms as your own prayers. Because some of these are full of joy, but a great many of them feature lament, outcry, doubt, and so on.
Praying the Psalms, which frankly is something Christians used to do from the very beginning right up until about five minutes ago in church history. Praying the Psalms builds spiritual muscle memory, you might say, so that we know how and when to express joy and how and when to be a puddle glum. Good morning, guests, he said, though when I say good, I don't.
I might do that again, actually. You make quite a fun puddle glum. No, I'm just trying to think how to be morose. Good morning, guests, he said. Though when I say good, I don't mean it won't probably turn to rain or it might be snow or fog or thunder. You didn't get any sleep, I dare say. And here's another.
The bright side of it is that if we break our necks getting down the cliff, then we're safe from being drowned in the river. This is a question from Jaka, who is hilariously from Finland, and she says the Finns are really not happy. Here's her rather pessimistic question. Hi, John and the team. Greetings from the certainly not happy Finland.
First of all, thank you for your excellent podcast. I especially like the kindness, openness and honest search for the truth, which is rare today. Thanks to you, I've even become something of a morning person as I'm excited to get to the car to listen to the podcast on my way to work.
My questions relate to kind of the inverse of the problem of evil. I believe there is evil, partly because of our free will and sin, and because there would be no good story without growth and redemption. How could the afterlife and the new creation be good, given that there would be no sorrow or anything negative? I can imagine the first 50 years would be enjoying the burden-free living, but what about after 1,000 years?
Being a Finn and an enjoyer of the blues, it's quite hard to think of a good life without trouble and hard times to overcome and look back to. How is a perfectly good and sin-free life even possible? The only answer I've heard is that the presence of God would fill us with such joy and understanding that we wouldn't sin anymore. But that was not the case in the Garden of Eden, nor with the people who lived with Jesus.
Lastly, let's say we're somehow different than in Eden and really wouldn't fall anymore for eternity. Why didn't God already create this world to be completely good? I'd be grateful if you'd answer some of my questions. God bless you and keep up the good and important work. Wow, Jaka. Thanks for that. What a monster question. First, thanks so much for listening over there in Finland. But I'm sorry it's not as happy as all the surveys tell us you guys are.
Maybe it's because you're all such deep thinkers like this question. Your question deserves a whole podcast episode. I know I say that all the time and perhaps most questions could do with a whole episode. But you make a really good point that joy is partly dependent on struggle.
I suppose, though, I'd say that there's no reason God's eternal kingdom wouldn't, in a sense, contain struggle. In the positive sense of work that is working in creativity in a flourishing environment.
I mean, according to Genesis, Adam worked the ground prior to the fall. So he's actually struggling with the earth. It's just that this work then became really difficult toil after the fall, you know, the weeds battling against him and so on. So in the same way, I can imagine the new creation still involving effort.
and ingenuity, but without the frustration that tends to undermine so many things in this world. And you know, all the psychological research tells us that this concept of flow, where you're in a pattern of work and creativity and production, is a key to genuine happiness. As for the second part of your question, you know, why in the new creation would there be no sin?
I've always thought that the key to why there's no wrongdoing in the kingdom is that all of creation, including we ourselves, will receive the full outpouring, the enveloping of God's life-giving spirit.
We only have a deposit of that now, a kind of down payment. But in the kingdom, according to the scriptures, everything is going to be fully animated by the Spirit. That's the guarantee of our walking constantly in fellowship with God and with each other and with creation itself.
The question then, of course, is why didn't God start things that way? You know, like just go to the end where we're all animated by the spirit instead of going through all the trouble that we have in this time of creation. The only way I can get my head around this is to think in terms of a story. And the best stories move through a period of tension and battle, climaxing in resolution and relief.
These stories are inherently more satisfying than if a story just started at the happy ending and continued. Of course, the problem with my analogy is that it implies that all this universe is just a story, and that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that whatever it is that makes stories more beautiful for having passed through tension to resolution...
is a faint analogy of why God might choose the path he has chosen for this creation. As the ultimate author, God delights in seeing us delight in his resolution.
Hey, team at Undeceptions. My friend introduced me to your podcast, and I'm a little bit addicted to it. In the recent Crucifixion episode, you briefly mentioned the mothering aspects of God, and I'd be so pleased if you could discuss this further. Thanks, Jen. Hey, Jen. Thanks so much for that. And yes, we'll do our best to keep giving you material to listen to for years to come. Every time our team meets to discuss the next season, we always have too much material, never too little.
The first thing to say to your question is that God obviously doesn't have any sex or gender. Or perhaps the best way to say it is that both sexes, both genders are expressions of God himself. That's probably the more satisfying way to say it. And that seems to be the implication here.
of the first statement about human beings in the whole Bible. So in Genesis 1, it says, "So God created mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created them. Male and female, he created them." It's often pointed out by experts that this seems to be a deliberate departure from pagan notions of the image of the deity.
Because male kings, pharaohs and the like, were said to be the image of the god. But female rulers never were the images of the gods. And our passage democratizes this concept, making clear that it refers not just to rulers, but to all human beings, and not just to men, but also to women.
I think this is the theoretical basis for being able to say that God is a mother to creation and to us. And every now and then in scripture, you get a clear metaphor underlining this motherly aspect of God. So in the Old Testament book of Isaiah in chapter 49 and chapter 66, God compares himself to a mother.
It actually says, as a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you and you shall be comforted. A related thought is when Jesus portrays God in one of his parables as a woman.
You know the one. She searches the house for her lost coin. And when she finds it, she rejoices and has a party and everything. Now that's in Luke chapter 15. And that character represents God searching for sinners. And in that same chapter, the very next paragraph makes the same point, but does so portraying God as a father with a prodigal son. So it's nice to see both father and mother right alongside each other.
And finally, in Matthew 23, Jesus speaks of himself as a hen. I'm pretty sure a hen is a female bird, right? Who longs to protect her chicks, Jesus says, under her wings. I reckon these passages make clear not only that God is like a mother, but
but that it's also permissible, theologically speaking, to think of and speak of God in motherly terms. With all that said...
I part ways with the full-blown feminist reading of Scripture that says that speaking of God as mother is just as valid or just as regular, just as to be encouraged as speaking of God as Father. I'm not sure about that. Despite the several useful reminders in Scripture that God can be described in motherly terms,
It's overwhelmingly clear throughout the Bible that God wants us to speak of him as our heavenly father. I don't think that's interchangeable with our heavenly mother, an expression you never find in the Bible.
The fact that there are several motherly references to God in Scripture underlines the point that this isn't simply patriarchy that lies behind speaking of God as Father. A variety of biblical writers, including Jesus, are happy for the motherly references to stand. But there is no avoiding that our main form of address to God, and therefore the dominant motif of our imaginings of God, is motherhood.
Our Father in Heaven. Here's a question from Jacob. My question is about what marriage will look like in heaven. I look forward to a perfect intimate relationship with God, and I also look forward to a perfect relationship with all humankind. If you're married here on earth, will you still have that intimate union in heaven? What happens to those that remarry for whatever reason? Will you have two wives or husbands in heaven?
What a cool question. In fact, it's so cool, it's almost identical to a question put to Jesus in Matthew chapter 22. Some theologically-minded folks ask precisely if a man has had more than one wife in this age, what will be the status of those wives in the age to come? Worth reading the passage for yourself. Anyway, Jesus replies that at the resurrection, people will neither marry nor
nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels, in the sense that angels in Jewish thought didn't marry. Now, I don't think this means that I won't have all of the fond memories and sense of intimacy of my marriage to Darling Buff. In the same way, I don't think the kingdom is going to erase the memory and experience of my best friendships in this world either.
I simply imagine that there is no sex and procreation in the kingdom, for whatever reason known to God. And secondly, that all relationships are going to be lifted to a transcendent degree that makes my dearest friendships and even my marriage non-unique, non-exclusive.
Can you all undeceive us about the history of the bubonic plague, particularly the church's response to it? Hey, good idea. We'll log that. History of the bubonic plague, all the Black Death stories. That's a great episode. Kayleigh, can you write that down out of the list? Thanks.
This question is from Paul. How did the early church react to an openly hostile non-Christian society? They obviously survived and eventually thrived. I suspect we're entering into a similar period in Western society, and Christians seem to be up in arms at the temerity of non-Christians who dismiss Christianity.
We all know that there were outbreaks of violent persecution against Christians in the Roman world. But how did the Christians live their lives as members of an unapproved religion? Ooh, that doesn't deserve an episode. That deserves a book.
The very short answer is yes, Christians certainly lived in a hostile environment in those first few centuries. They experienced long periods of relative peace where they were just viewed as idiots rather than a threat. But these periods were punctuated by moments of severe persecution. For about a year in the 60s AD, four or five years in the early 100s,
a year or two in the late 2nd century, early 3rd century, and in the mid 3rd century. And then there was a terrible burst of violence from 303 to 312 called the Great Persecution. We have amazing sources during these periods, including a couple of actual Roman transcripts of the trials and executions of Christians.
And the evidence tells a pretty consistent story. Some Christians gave up on the faith and many faced hatred, torture and death with a kind of cheerfulness that reminds you of what Jesus urged in the famous Sermon on the Mount. Rejoice, he said, when people say all kinds of evil against you.
Now, Friedrich Nietzsche thought that the early Christian ethos of humility and non-retaliation in the face of persecution was really just the result of what he called a slave morality. He reckoned Christians were mostly poor, beaten up, slave-minded people. And just like when you mistreat a dog, over time it becomes servile. In the same way, he reckoned Christians adopted a servile posture in the face of persecution.
I reckon the evidence suggests the opposite. When you read the transcripts, the Christian letters and so on that we have from this period, what seems to have inspired Christian cheerful endurance was the conviction that they had already won.
They were the death and resurrection people. Their Lord had been crucified by the Roman powers, but he had been raised to glory. And now that was their story. Christians faced their hostile environment with this weird combination of supreme confidence and cheerful humility.
It wasn't the confidence that led to a sense of entitlement or to punching back, as you sometimes see today. That's often actually insecurity, not confidence at all. It's the brashness of a bully. Now, the first Christians had a confidence that God had everything in control.
And their only task was to stand up in public and serve those around them and suffer joyfully. I think I've said it before on the pod. The early Christians believed Christ had given them just four tools to do the work. Prayer, persuasion, service, and suffering. Prayer, persuasion, service, and suffering.
And they reckoned these were the only tools necessary to do God's work in the world. And with just those four things, they turned the world upside down. Who knows what the relevance of all that is for us today? I hardly know anything after about the year 600. Hey John, this is Thomas from Sydney. I had a question about miracles from the bead episode.
So I believe that Jesus did perform miracles, but personally I've been skeptical of anything related to miracles after New Testament times. Reason being is that my understanding is that the Bible is perfect and that it is complete. I've always thought that of course God could perform miracles these days, but why would he need to if we had the Bible? How are we supposed to view these claims of miracles today? Thanks, and looking forward to seeing you at the upcoming Undeceptions conference. I'm sort of with you.
I'm a bit skeptical about miracles after the New Testament. I say this not because I don't think miracles happen at all. The New Testament itself does urge us to pray for each other to be healed. That's in James chapter 5. So that tells me I shouldn't rule them out if I think the Bible is true.
But it's actually the Bible itself, with a bit of church history, that makes me think miracles like we see in the life of Jesus and his immediate circle of apostles just won't happen after the period of the Gospels. The striking thing when you move from any of the Gospels, which are replete with miracles, to any of the 20-plus letters of the New Testament is
is just how little mention there is of miracles in the letters. Yes, I can think of two or maybe three references if I squint. One referring to the apostles' performance of miracles as a sign of his unique apostleship. And there's another that speaks of the gift of doing miracles in 1 Corinthians.
But what's far more striking is that there's almost no expectation in these 20 or so letters that Christians are going to see miracles in the ordinary course of life. And this pattern is repeated in the writings of the Christians in the generations after the Apostles.
In the so-called Apostolic Fathers, for instance, in Justin Martyr, in Irenaeus, there's almost no hint that Christians should expect miracles in the ongoing life of the church in anything like the degree you find them in the Gospels. So that raises the question, why is there a cluster of miracles in the life of Jesus and his immediate apostles, which is not there repeated in the New Testament letters or in Christian history?
I think the answer is in the meaning attributed to the miracles of Jesus. They are only partly acts of compassion, and they're certainly not the launching of a faith healing project or anything like that. They are mostly called signs. That is, they are pointers to something in particular. And the particular thing the miracles of Jesus signify is the kingdom of God.
On one occasion after he heals someone, the officials accuse him of sorcery, and Jesus replies that he's doing these works as signs, quote, that the kingdom of God has come upon you.
Now, the kingdom of God was a standard Jewish idea. I'm sure I've talked about this lots on the pod. At the climax of history, according to ancient Jews, God was going to prove himself king over all creation by healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, raising the dead, and overthrowing evil and all of that.
If you've ever wished the Almighty would do something about the mess in our world, you have in a sense wished for what Jews called the kingdom of God. But here's the thing. Jesus said his healings and exorcisms were little microcosms of that future kingdom. They were previews of God putting everything right.
If we think of the Kingdom of God as the ultimate blockbuster movie, Jesus' life in the Gospels is the trailer. He didn't bring the kingdom in full.
Jesus, in fact, taught his disciples to constantly pray, your kingdom come. The kingdom is a future event. But there was a moment in history when that full restoration of all things could be glimpsed in miniature whenever Jesus cast out evil, gave sight to the blind, and raised the dead.
In other words, the work of Jesus and the apostles is the trailer. But we are still waiting for the feature film. And while we wait, yes, God will occasionally answer prayers and do miracles. But that is not the expectation. At least what we see in the Gospels is not a program of faith healing for today.
Here's a question from Dan. Sorry we in the States stole John for a bit. We will maybe give him back in the future. My question is, what about those generations of people that are unreached or unreachable? In other words, how would someone come to Christ if they don't know he exists or of what he did?
Hey, thanks. It's lovely to be stolen by the US. I'm having a ball. I really appreciate it. Look, let me say two things I don't believe about this question of what happens to those who have never heard of Christianity. First, I don't believe that God judges anyone for having not heard
I mean, that would be unfair, right? Imagine someone dies having never heard of Jesus and God says, how dare you, having never heard of Jesus. It doesn't make any sense in the fairness of God. The other thing I don't believe though, is that sincerity is a criterion that's going to let us into heaven.
Because, you know, I mean, that's what people often say, you know, but they were sincere and so therefore, but where would you draw the line? I mean, the sincere Taliban leader, the sincere sacrificer of children in ancient Canaan. I'm not sure that sincerity is a criterion. So that's what I don't believe. What do I believe about this, you know, frankly, very difficult question that Christians disagree on.
I do believe that the criterion for God's final judgment is going to be how people responded to what they actually knew.
what they did with what they knew. So the question is, what do human beings know? And I think the answer to that is they know that there's a creator, even though some people suppress that, and they know that there are neighbors deserving of respect. So it's like a sense that you ought to revere the almighty that is known by everyone,
and that you ought to show kindness or justice to your neighbor. So we could summarize that as love God and love neighbor, but that would be overly Christian way of saying it. So here's the thing. In theory, if someone does this, if someone responds to the universe by revering the creator and seeking to care for neighbor,
and laments the times when they don't do that, I reckon that person has a form of genuine faith and God will have mercy on that person. So that's the theory. The next question is how many people actually do this? And my answer is I have no idea. What I do know is that if such a person is saved,
It's not going to be because of their goodness. It's going to be because of Jesus' death on their behalf, which maybe they have never heard of, sure. But from God's perspective, God can respond to their faith by granting them mercy because of Jesus. The last thing I'd say about all of this has to do with the right attitude that Christians ought to have.
I think it's right to hope that God has mercy on more people than end up in churches. In fact, I think it would be unchristian not to hope that. But at the same time, I don't think it's right to say God has an obligation to have mercy on those people. It is mercy after all.
No one deserves God's forgiveness and eternal life. So, in the end, I just throw myself on the mercy of God and hope that's a reality for a surprising number of humans. This one's from Simon in Adelaide. Many Christians seem to get a bit riled up about Halloween. Could you say something about its historical roots, current cultural relevance, and whether followers of Jesus should participate in it or not?
Halloween, sure. Let me wind back with a little bit of historical context. It was actually a policy of Gregory the Great, perhaps the most important missionary bishop of the ancient church around the year 600, to seek to win Europe to the Christian faith without destroying all of their pagan cultural traditions.
We actually have letters from Gregory to missionaries advising things like remove the idols when people become Christians in, say, early England. Please use their sacred days to reorient them toward the one true God.
And in one of his letters, he even says that missionaries should keep the great bull sacrifice, central to English paganism of the time, but that they should teach the locals to celebrate the bull feast with thanksgiving to the one true God from whom all things come.
I love the idea, actually. The key thought is that not everything in every culture is contrary to God's ways. Far from it. God's grace is present in every human culture through all of history in various ways. So the wise missionary thing was to see what can be reformed
and only reject things that are explicitly contradicting the Christian faith. Okay, Halloween seems to be one of these missionary traditions of the first European Christians. It wasn't entirely bad, so it should be transformed in a Christian way.
Originally, November the 1st marked the end of the summer months, and in the pre-Christian Celtic environment, they believed that the spirits of the departed returned to their homes at that time to visit loved ones. And they would wear masks and other disguises to frighten off the evil spirits who were trying to cut in on the action.
So around AD 610, Pope Boniface IV, in the spirit of Gregory the Great, decided to reclaim this festival for Jesus.
He moved All Saints or All Hallows Day, a feast celebrating the departed in Christ, from May 13th to November 1st. And the evening before was also sanctified and called All Hallows Eve or All Saints Eve, which we say is Halloween.
It was a time to remember the faithful believers of past ages and to pray that we would learn from their good example. Okay, so that's the history. You jump forward to the modern period. I would say to the degree that contemporary Halloween engages in crass materialism, I don't like it. I can even say it's evil. Frankly, in the same way that Christmas borders on evil for the same materialistic reasons.
And obviously, dressing up as demons or devils or axe murderers is not in keeping with the Christian outlook. But frankly, it's not even in keeping with the original pagan outlook for this date. But dressing up, visiting neighbours, spreading good cheer, eating lollies, they're all good things. And if you can add to that, recalling our beloved departed ones...
I think Halloween is cool. We're going to take a break and let John catch his breath. Back soon. 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 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 AnglicanAid.
Here's a question from James.
On the question of women being treated poorly by Christianity, why is it that contemporary culture is so critical of the church in this regard, when contemporary culture is also at fault? For example, our media objectifies women way more than the church. Just look at the adverts. Just to be clear, I think the church has made a lot of mistakes in its treatment of women.
We've let the patriarchal tendencies that are inherent in males influence how we do church. And by the way, I do think patriarchy is inherent or something like it is inherent. I think it's the flip side of something positive. So boys grow up knowing they are on average much stronger and more physically daring than girls. The physiology literature on this is really clear.
But I'm of the view that boys are meant to grow up learning that this bodily prowess is meant to be used to serve society, not to push anyone around, least of all women. But unfortunately, that bodily reality becomes a psychological setting in many men, where they think they have entitlements over women.
And the church has been guilty of that mindset. Your point also seems unavoidable. The objectification of women in contemporary culture is a scandal that doesn't get nearly enough airtime, in my view. The male gaze reigns supreme across advertising, celebrity, and of course, porn.
And seven in ten trafficked people in the world are girls and women. Our contemporary secular world, in my view, treats women far more poorly than the church does. Churches may be criticized for barring women from the role of priest or pastor, but wider society somehow gets a free pass for using women's bodies as marketing tools.
and masturbatory aids, and worse. I'm sometimes asked what things in society today might be looked back on 200 years from now, the way we look back on the crusaders or slaveholders. Now, obviously, I don't really know the answer to that. We're all blind to our blind spots. But I reckon this issue of the objectification of women is as good a candidate as any.
Hey John, Producer Kaylee, and Marvelous Mark. This is Becky from Manchester, Tennessee. Love the show. It sounds like 12-year-old Jesus caught the temple teacher's attention. If they were so intrigued by his knowledge and the questions he asked, surely they kept an eye on him as a possible rising rabbinical star. Is there any record beyond the Bible of this? We hear a lot about him being the son of a poor carpenter and are left to assume he was a rube.
But from his teachings, he was obviously a highly educated man. If you haven't done an episode on it yet, I would love to hear what kind of education somebody like Jesus would receive in first century Galilee. Thanks so much for all y'all do. Marvelous, Mark. Oh, dear, Becky. I'm not going to hear the end of it. Mark's going to suggest we make an Undeception t-shirt with that on the front.
But to your question, which is good, the simple answer is no. I think all we have, by way of evidence, is Luke chapter 2. And it's the indication that Jesus was a precocious child, asking questions and impressing the religious authorities in Jerusalem.
Most scholars don't think Jesus had an elite education. He was raised as a carpenter in Galilee and probably only had serviceable Hebrew, Aramaic, and perhaps a little Greek. His education was probably not much more than regular synagogue attendance.
I think we have to conclude that Jesus was just an outstanding, bright boy with a passion for knowing the Jewish scriptures.
He also obviously had a flair for rhetorical speech because some of his sayings are clearly designed not just to be memorable, they're obviously memorable, but formally memorizable. Many of his sayings use techniques like parallelism and antithetical parallelism, I can talk about that some other episode, that would lodge these teachings in the minds of students.
But we sadly don't have any evidence of how he learnt to do that. It's not so surprising. We hardly have any evidence of the education of any Jewish person in this period. It's one of the frustrations of history. More than 99% of the evidence for everything is just missing. So we have to make do with the less than 1% that remains.
This one's from Justin, off the back of our episode this season called The Apocalypse, with Scott McKnight chatting all things Revelation. If all scripture is God-breathed and useful for teaching, why is Revelation so hard to understand? To be honest, I quite like that there are some really difficult bits in the Bible. If it were all really straightforward, I'd be nervous that it was all just dumbed-down human teaching instead of something more lofty.
The fact that there are bits that stretch my brain to breaking point actually excites me. The key problem with Revelation is that contemporary Christians haven't taken the time to learn what kind of writing style it is. I put it to you that the very first Christians, the ones to whom the book was written, would have found it challenging but also mostly understandable.
This is because they knew the literary genre of apocalyptic. They had seen other examples before, so they could use those previous examples to make sense of all the weird and wonderful imagery throughout the book. With a little bit of effort, I reckon most Christians today can make broad sense of the book of Revelation.
There's just one really important thing to get in place in order to do this. We need to stop trying to read it as a run sheet for the unfolding history of our contemporary world. That's where the problems begin. And that cannot be why it was written to those in the first century in Western Turkey. So I want to suggest you run a little test here.
Don't try and work out what the book is telling us about Russia or China or America or even Israel. Just read it as a collection of symbolic visions about the overthrow of evil through the power of the suffering King Jesus, whose own followers will come out just like him. They'll endure suffering before resurrection and glorification in the kingdom.
Actually, you could enhance this experience of letting the whole book wash over you with this simple theme in mind by listening to an audio version of Revelation. I often do this. When I sometimes feel like I'm getting lost in the weeds, I just play my audible version of the Bible.
You can go for like a two-hour walk and listen to the whole book of Revelation. And I bet by the end, you'll think that's a weird book. And I'm glad not every book is written like that. But I am overjoyed that God will overthrow evil and lift up the downtrodden in his joyful eternal kingdom. That much is clear. ♪
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I hope you enjoyed our Q&A episode for this season. We get a lot more questions than we're able to tackle in just one episode. And I'll be hopping into the Undeceptions Plus feed over our season break to answer a few more. Actually, our Undeceptions Plus subscribers got an additional two questions already in this episode. One about the authorship of Paul's letters in the New Testament. That was a cracker.
And another about whether the Old Testament Jews were polytheists, believers in multiple gods, and only later became monotheists, worshipping just one god. That was a tricky question.
If you'd like to sign up to become an Undeceptions Plus member, head to undeceptions.com forward slash, you guessed it, plus. Undeceptions.com forward slash plus to get access to additional Q&As, extended interviews, longer episodes, and so on. There's also some other fun stuff we throw in, and it's just five bucks a month. Come on. See ya. Undeceptions is hosted by me, John Dixon, produced by Kaylee Payne, and directed by Mark Hadley.
Sophie Hawkshaw is on socials and membership. Alistair Belling is a writer and researcher. Siobhan McGuinness is our online librarian. Lindy Leveston remains my wonderful assistant. Santino DiMarco is chief finance and operations consultant, editing by Richard Humwey. Special thanks to our series sponsor, Zondervan, for making this Undeception possible. Undeceptions is the flagship podcast of Undeceptions.com, letting the truth out.
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