Ep. 161 Nijay Gupta Returns - How the First Christians were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling

In this episode, Nijay Gupta and I go back to the first century. In the Roman-Greco culture there were gods everywhere, blood and smoke from their sacrifices filled the air, icons of gods were on every corner. And here come the Christians – believers in the unseen, in the supremacy of Jesus, in the finished sacrifice of Jesus, meeting in homes instead of temples and the culture around them thought they were weird. They were dangerous. They were compelling. We talk about their different beliefs and practices. Join us as we discover how the first Christians were weird, dangerous and compelling.

Nijay K. Gupta serves as professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, is the co-host of the Slow Theology podcast, is on the translation committee for the New Living Translation, and has written numerous books including Tell Her Story, Paul and the Language of Faith, and a commentary of Galatians for The Story of God Bible Commentary.

Nijay's Book:
Strange Religion

Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@allnations.us

Go to www.shiftingculturepodcast.com to interact and donate. Every donation helps to produce more podcasts for you to enjoy.

Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or Threads at www.facebook.com/shiftingculturepodcast
https://www.instagram.com/shiftingculturepodcast/
https://twitter.com/shiftingcultur2
https://www.threads.net/@shiftingculturepodcast
https://www.youtube.com/@shiftingculturepodcast

Consider Giving to the podcast and to the ministry that my wife and I do around the world. Just click on the support the show link below.

Living God's Way in an Ungodly World
In a world that makes up its own rules, Christians need to focus on Who rules! The Christ!

Listen on: Apple Podcasts   Spotify

Transcript

Nijay Gupta: 0:00

This idea of a God coming into human form, isn't that strange. They happen all the time, Zeus would come and disguise or Hermes or whoever, what is strange and what First Timothy, what makes First Timothy really interesting is in a normal Greco Roman story, that deity would come into the flesh appear, do some stuff, possibly good stuff. And then they would specifically say they returned to the celestial form, they have to leave that human form, or else it would be, it would be humiliating to them. And at first Timothy does it, it leaves that out, it leaves out that Jesus sheds his human form. Now his human form is glorified. But it's still a human form. And that's fascinating because when we say the supremacy of Jesus, we're also saying the supremacy of the god, man, or God human Jesus.

Joshua Johnson: 1:09

Hello, and welcome to the shipping culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create, and the impact we can make. We longed to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host, Joshua Johnson. Go to shifting culture podcast.com to interact and donate. And don't forget to hit the Follow button on your favorite podcast app to be notified when new episodes come out each week, and go leave a rating and review. It's easy, it only takes a second and it helps us find new listeners to the show. Just go to the Show page on the app that you're using right now and hit five stars. It really is that easy. Thank you so much. You know what else would help help us out? share this podcast with your friends or family or network? Tell them how much you enjoy it and let them know that they should be listening as well. If you're new here, welcome. If you want to dig deeper find us on social media at shifting culture podcast, where I post video clips and quotes and interact with all of you. Previous guests on the show have included David Fitch Scot McKnight and AJ Swoboda you go back listen to those episodes and more. But today's guest is ni J. Gupta. I'm so excited to have ni J Back on the podcast to talk about his latest book, strange religion. Me Jay serves as professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary is the co host of the slow theology podcast is on the translation committee for the New Living Translation, and has written numerous books including tell her story, Paul, and the language of faith, and a commentary of Galatians For the story of God Bible Commentary. And EJ and I go back to the first century in this conversation, and Roman Greco culture, there were gods everywhere, blood and smoke from their sacrifices filled the air icons of gods were on every corner. And here come the Christians, believers in the unseen in the supremacy of Jesus in the finished sacrifice of Jesus, meeting in homes and set of temples and the culture around them thought they were weird. They were dangerous. They were compelling. So we talked about their different beliefs and their practices. So join us as we discover how the first Christians were weird, dangerous and compelling. Here's my conversation with ni J. Gupta. And EJ, welcome back to the podcasts. excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Thanks, Joshua.

Nijay Gupta: 3:23

Looking forward to it.

Joshua Johnson: 3:24

This book of your strange religion, the first Christians were weird, and dangerous. And Greg Haleem. Fantastic. I really love it. They cannot. So I just want to dive right in and just go and I think, to start off our conversation, we have to figure out what what the first century was like, what was the Roman rule? Like, what was Greco Roman culture? Like? What? There were gods everywhere? Yeah, set the scene for us. So we know what we're talking about and the place in the setting for us? Yeah,

Nijay Gupta: 3:56

you know, you've you've read the book, I wanted it to be an immersive experience. Today, Christianity, especially in America has so many entailments and entanglements that one of the big driving questions of the book is, would our wood ancient Christians first century second century Christians recognize us as their spiritual descendants? Would it be just obvious if you could transport them here? And I think, you know, I'm trying to push people to see that we need to do a little bit of a reset, go back to the beginning. And that's not to say the early church is perfect and actually have a whole chapter on how the early church wasn't perfect, but what you're kind of hinting at is I wanted to kind of throw people into an unfamiliar world, modern readers into an unfamiliar world. And so I tried to avoid Christianese I tried to avoid Pop Pop Christian language. So I used Latin word words I use Greek words. I try to explain them. But what I'm trying to drop you into is a world that is much different than ours because in secularized society, especially if you're not religious, you could go the whole week and not think about religion. But the ancient world, it was everywhere. When you woke up, there were little cult shrines in your home. And you prayed prayers to the laws and the penalties which are the the spirits that protect the household. You may say prayers to ancestors, you may say a prayer to or for the Emperor. Then you go out and as soon as you step out your door, Joshua. I mean, you just see deities everywhere statues, paintings, murals, altars, they're everywhere. And so when Paul, for example, goes to Athens, he's kind of blown away by a city full of idols. And I don't know what I used to think an idol was, but they're basically paraphernalia. And so just think today of, you know, if you're driving in downtown Portland, or Chicago, or LA, pick how many billboards there are, are think times square would be the probably the best example. And you're just bombarded with images and propaganda, and advertisements for, for us its products. And maybe heroes like supermodels, celebrities, and sports figures. In the Roman world, it would be mostly deities, politicians, and war heroes, those were kind of the biggies that would have statues and be kind of icons of the culture. And so religion was everywhere, in involved in everything, you went to a party, there was religious elements, you went to work, there are religious elements, you went to the pub with your friends, there are religious elements, it was everywhere all of the time. So I need to get people into that world to understand how important what we call religion was. And one of the reasons I do that is because, and this isn't, you know, this is just so obvious to so many Christians and pastors today. But today, we often treat religion as almost like working out, like exercising, like if I get a chance, I'm gonna wake up early, you know, lift some weights, go for a run, but if I know that's okay, I'll do it tomorrow. And we kind of see religion that way, where it's very optional, it's very personal. And it's whether or not it makes me feel good, right. Whereas in the ancient world, it was completely the opposite. You didn't have a choice, right? I kind of liken it to like, you know, right now we're talking and it's end of January, beginning of February and, and I'm starting to get tax information collected. And when I read the tax information, you're not gonna read anything about whether you have warm fuzzies in your heart, for the IRS, they don't care. They want to know whether or not you're gonna pay your taxes, and how much to pay. And that's kind of the way ancient religion was in the Roman world. It's not how much warm fuzzies you have. It's whether you got to do your duty. It was communal, it was political. It was economic. It was social. It was involved in entertainment, it was involved in war, and the prosperity of the people. So all those things I needed to disorient readers and shake them up. So they understand a completely different world that Christianity emerged in our world today. And

Joshua Johnson: 9:12

that's really helpful for a lot of people as we're looking. It's not the same world, it's a different world of ads. How was it different? And one of the questions that you have at the beginning of this journey to write this book was, why were Christians called believers as a question that you're seeking to answer. So what was belief and faith for Christians? And why were they believers? And how is that different than the culture of the day?

Nijay Gupta: 9:40

Yeah, and this is kind of where books come from, because one of the reasons I wrote the book is because I've written a previous book called pawn language of faith, right? Explore faith language in the Bible. And I got a question once, maybe an audience member at a talk or something, maybe a student account member? And they asked, because I'd mentioned that Christians call themselves believers. And then someone asked, Did Did other religious people at the time, call themselves believers and how should Christians be differentiated? So that started me on a research track? Where I started to investigate and I found that that in religious conversations that we have record of from the Roman world, they don't use the language of faith or belief because they don't, they don't. They don't take them as beliefs. They take them as basically facts. So the common person, the everyday person, didn't question the existence of the gods. And what they what they actually thought they didn't think is beliefs. Just like we don't think of democracy as a belief even though we Believe it, right? It's just, it's something we value. It's something that we take seriously, but we don't think of as a belief in the sense that it requires all this extra oath. Right? So they didn't, they would have, you know, so common people would have conversations where they would say, almost like sports. You know, who's your favorite cat? Who's my kids? And I will say, Who's the strongest superhero? You know? Oh, you know, Thor would be you know, Scarlet, which is, you know, Captain Marvel would come in or hoax, the strong, they would have those kinds of conversations, but they're more they're more like nitty gritty kind of stuff. So they didn't actually ever called themselves believers, Christians come along, and we kind of have to do some guesswork, because they don't explain why they call themselves believers. So it really boils to me down to two or three things that made Christians so unique, so different and so weird, that they call themselves believers. Number one, there is kind of a hidden sub object to that verb. Believers and what they're believers in Jesus. So number one, you know, that is sort of the the unspoken focus, right? It's not just, you know, I kind of think, do you remember the old movie, Prince of Egypt? You know, I love that movie. I watched it recently, just in preparation for a sermon, I was doing an exodus. And one of the best songs from that is, you know, there can be miracles, if you believe, believe in what the like that was like, That's Hollywood's version if you believe, but let's not say what you believe in because it's believing in the highway, right? But in the movie, it's just sort of like oh, and your heart, you know, muster up, I don't know, self determination, but for Christians is believing in Jesus. But second, Christians put a lot of emphasis on believing in things that you can't see. So number one, Yahweh is invisible. He dwells in unapproachable light, right? God dwells in unapproachable light. So this idea of Gods being invisible was not very Roman, right? Romans believed Yeah, Zeus is busy somewhere Jupiter is busy somewhere. But we have the statues that are almost like avatars to connect with these deities, but Christians don't have those Jews don't have those either. But Christians don't even have a temple. They don't have physical pairs of physical objects, you know, talisman. So then Jesus ascends right? Yeah, Jesus, right. He's you can see Jesus, but then he sends in to the heavens. And now you can't see Jesus. First Peter talks about this. You love him, and you believe in Him, even though you can't see him. And so it's this like, faith in something you can't see, I call believing that unbelievable. You know, think of the Emperor's New Clothes kind of thing, right. And third, and I think this is a much bigger deal than many modern Christians reckoned with. They were given a promise and prophecy from God that there was going to be an imminent hostile takeover. Right, Philippians chapter three, we await a Savior, right? And he's gonna shake everything up. He's gonna turn everything upside down. And so part of earliest Christian preaching was like, people get ready, you know, the trades govern, you know, the trumpets are gonna sound the archangels will lead. And so I think a big part of their preaching was, don't be complacent, don't sit on your hands because judgment to come in. And that was a firm belief that guided their lives, vigilance, right? Awareness, girding up the loins of your heart and mind, all of that. So there's a lot wrapped up into being believers. It's not just, Hey, I check these things off a mentalist, and I get to go to heaven. It was a whole reorientation of how you see the world and I'm sure we'll get into more of that. But that's a big part of what make Christians weird, dangerous and compelling. That doesn't

Joshua Johnson: 14:29

seem weird to us at all believing the unbelievable believing in the unseen it's we we see it all around us. We believe it churches believe it Christians believe it. How is that subversive? In the first century? How Why does this culture say you are actually going to rise up against us that the peace of Rome is going to be disrupted because you have hidden beliefs? Why is that subversive?

Nijay Gupta: 15:01

Oh, man, Rome, Rome put so much into visual and physical glorification. Whether it's the physical expansion through conquest, whether it's building big buildings and palaces, whether it's ornate jewelry, on your armor, you know, all that you know, the way the Emperor looks the way the statues look, the ornate nature of temples and building projects. So it mattered a lot what you see, I mean, there was this there was this social philosophy in the Roman world, and I only talked about this a little bit the book called physiognomy meaning the way A someone Lux says something about their inner nature. And that means tall, beautiful people are innately superior to smaller, less beautiful people, right? This was built into the fabric of society, such that like, if you were like a less attractive emperor, you know, the mass population would never actually see you, in person, think about, you know, pre photography. So statues were often taller than their likeness, they would eliminate blemishes, you know, to their likeness, things like that. So here, you got Jesus, right, who was a man of no reputation a man, according to Isaiah F, who people turn their heads away, you know, he was despised and rejected. You have Paul, who was believed to be you know, bow legged and had a unibrow. And you know, bald and all this stuff. You had Paul say things like we're spectacles of the world, he says, we carry around Second Corinthians, and our body in our bodies, the necrosis, the rotting flesh, of the dead body of Jesus. And people used to say about Paul, you, brother, you look like death. They would say that to Paul, he would say, if death is at work at us, that means life is at work, and he's like, I am spending my good years doing ministry for you. So, so Christians were flipping the script. And they were saying, people want to infuse themselves with wealth and glory and power and all these things. And just like Jesus taught his disciples, you're gonna lose house, you're gonna lose family, you're gonna lose this, but you'll gain it all back. So the subversion is, you know, it's kind of like a political rival saying to you, Joshua, bet on me, follow me. And I'll make sure you get rewarded when the big changeover happens. But we're gonna have to go, you know, take over the system, we're gonna you need to back me with this. That's what that's what JC apostles were saying, you know, you know, to would be believers, you need to back us on this. And it'll pay off in the future, but you're not gonna get it now, which is why Colossians first, Peter Ephesians talks about deposit in heaven and inheritance waiting for you. What does it take to say, I'm going to go against the grain and culture, I'm going to do really dangerous things not so much like state persecution, but sociologically, that will get us in a lot of hot water. What What kind of worldviews change, has to happen to stand against the grain of culture, theologically, politically, economically, socially, personally, existentially. That's what really impresses me about these early Christians. They didn't just change one thing. They change almost everything. And they stood by that. I mean, one of the most well known things about Christians in the first two, three centuries was they didn't mind being martyred. Read polycarb. Right. Yeah. He serves, he serves food Polycarp serves food for his the people coming to a restaurant, or he offers to serve food. Yeah, come

Joshua Johnson: 18:49

martyr me. I'm good. Everything's, everything's good. The martyrdom but so my question, then. I mean, let's take it into like, eras of Christianity. After that, then if they changed everything in the hands if they were countercultural, and now at one point, you know, you have Constantine you have like this is now a state religion. Now, now, it's not a countercultural thing. It is the cultural mandate of the population. How Can Christians then learn from what was happening in the early Christians to say, we need to be countercultural now and stand up for Jesus is Lord, the supremacy of Jesus stand up, like being possessed by the spirit of God, like you were talking about, like one of the beliefs they have. Now? How could we, we get that back?

Nijay Gupta: 19:46

I need to write another book to mean that I don't I don't dress this directly, but I love talking about it. But what I want to do is just really captivate people with the story of the earliest Christians so that they're forced to ask these questions, but I don't mind talking about it. Recently, I watched my wife and I watched the movie killers of the flower moon. Have you seen that? Yeah. Yeah. Such a good movie. I don't want to spoil it for listeners. So if you need to pause it, watch a three and a half hour movie and come back by all means do so. But it takes place in America, American south in the 1920s, I think and you have Indian tribe, the Osage, who who strike it rich with gold on their Tsar with oil on their land, and they are in a position of now doing kind of intermingling with trade and marriage with the white people. And what's really fascinating that thinking about strange religion is the question of what's called assimilation. How much do you does one group culturally assimilate to another group. And assimilation often is a necessity of being in relationship with with another group of people. And showing goodwill and treating them positively and creating relationships of exchange at the same time. So I don't want to spoil the movie, but to listeners, but the movie raises questions about the dangers of assimilation. And what are the, the the movie keeps returning to these moments where kind of the the heart of the tribe meets to say, what have we given up of who we are in the process of acculturating, and the process of negotiating relationship with another culture. And that's a battle that Christianity faces in every generation in every place. There's no such thing as a Christian nation. And once you start thinking that way, you're starting to turn the church into row, usually it determines turns in a row rather than vice versa. That's, you know, watch House of Cards, if you want to learn about six. But, but But So what's happened in the past and what's happened in America? I think, I think one of the things that Bible teaches over and over again, is you can't fall asleep on the job. Meaning, we are people of lighten of day, and the enemy always is looking for ways to sneak in and find soft points in our armor, to get at us. And an easy soft point is we get comfortable, we get complacent, we let the enemy in. And next thing you know, we forgot who we were. Right? Instead of fighting the enemy, now, we're negotiating with the enemy. And then eventually, we're just like our enemies. That doesn't make America all bad. That doesn't make Rome all bad. What it does mean though, is we forget the DNA, of what makes Christianity tick of who Jesus Christ is. When I see Christians misbehaving, when I see them trolling, when I see them embroiled in white supremacy, or racism, or sexism, or what you know, name all the isms. I don't recognize Jesus in that. And what I want to say is read your Bibles. Read your Bibles, and read, read the whole Bible in such a way it constantly makes you uncomfortable. So you realize that it is a message outside of you, not something that is tried to reinforce just what you want to be true. And so I've been listening to the Bible project, his journey through a year of the Sermon on the Mount, and how many revolutions in history have taken place because of the Sermon on the Mount, especially Jesus teaching on radical love of enemy, stranger? All those things, and when I see what's going on in the West, specifically United States, specifically when it comes to political differences, ideological differences, we've forgotten our scriptures. Right, we've forgotten our heritage. And I kind of see a parallel with kills a flower moons, people I've watched that also have, you know, this tribe says, you know, we need to remember what our roots what our cultural roots are. Nona negotiables of what makes us tick. Right? What are things that we just absolutely will not compromise on? That makes us fundamentally not fundamentalist but fundamentally Christian? And and we've heard we've forgotten those things we've we've we've just put a Jesus badge on, on what we want to happen, what we want to be true.

Joshua Johnson: 24:42

Well, let's remember then, let's go back now and go back again to the first century and say, I want to I want to talk a little bit about how that that we as humans are the image of God is when there are so many different icons and images of Gods all around and how that was weird and crazy. For the the people of that time.

Nijay Gupta: 25:09

Yeah, Rome, you know, basically my book is comparison of early Christianity and Roman Roman religion and Roman state religion. And so that's why I talk so much about that in case your listeners wondering But Roman religion had a certain ideology, it it was a mediated religion in the sense that the average person had a number of go betweens or barriers to get to God or vice versa. So you had not only the Imperial infrastructure Like the Emperor and the Emperor's priests, the emperor was actually called Pontifex Maximus, the Great Bridge maker, or bridge builder, or bridge between heaven and earth. And so the Emperor saw himself as a great high priest, between the realm of the gods and the realm of mortals. So that's going to shape how people look at religion, how people look at God, you had, you know, actual Roman priests who were in Roman religion kind of appointed state appointed, you had temples, if you wanted to connect with God, you, you often had to be in a hotspot. And those hotspots were physical locations that were temples, they were everywhere, but they weren't. They were in every city, but they were everywhere. And so there are all these barriers. And someone asked me in a meeting yesterday, were the poor. Did the poor experience less privilege when it came to religion? Absolutely enrollment, religion. You know, you couldn't afford better sacrifices, you couldn't afford to get to the better festivals, you know, you couldn't afford to visit the temples on the regular basis. And you couldn't afford to get to Rome, which was, you know, the, the center of, of the Roman world, and the universe were in perspective. And so there were all these barriers to knowing what we think of as knowing God. Right. And so the more barriers there are, especially if you're underprivileged, the less you think of yourself, right? If there all these barriers for me to have access to God, then God can't really think much of me. Or the gods can't really think that much of me. And Judaism improved upon that vastly right. Anyone that wants to enter within the Jewish fold, can no Yawei can be in a covenant in some sense. But it still was, had a center in Jerusalem, even the people that live in the diaspora, the whole lives, longed to go to Jerusalem long to be with the temple, when the temple is destroyed, they longed for the tap to rebuild. Now it wasn't after somebody ad. But there was still that sense of God lives in a special way in one place. The Christians, I talked about this as a religious technology, innovation or revolution, kind of like going from landlines to cell phones, Christians are going door to door saying you can know God intimately. And it doesn't matter whether you're in the greatest palace in Rome, or your middle of nowhere in Asia Minor, or in one of these, you know, outlying lands that are part of the Roman territories, or even not in the Roman world at all. You could be the middle of nowhere on an island. And you can still know Jesus Christ with the same level of depth and intimacy, intimacy and love as the people who gather amongst the greatest and wealthy and this was pretty unheard of, at the time. And so that would be just one piece of what made Christianity so unique amongst the religions of its time. So

Joshua Johnson: 28:48

what were some of the core beliefs of the Christians, early Christians were called believers? What were some of the core beliefs of these Christians?

Nijay Gupta: 28:56

Yeah, I mean, first, most absolute, the supremacy of Jesus. We use these words like Jesus, my Savior, Jesus, Lord of my heart, but I in the spirit of not using Christianese I want to say like what would be the Roman way of saying it? And in the Roman way, B supremacy, Roman, Roman and Greek religion were like a game of thrones, right? It was all about who is strongest in Jupiter, one of Jupiter's Jupiter Zeus, one of Jupiter's most common titles was best and greatest. Right? And here, Christian said, Okay, we'll pray for Caesar, we'll pray for our governors. But Jesus is far and away, above all. And here's one of the fascinating things about Jesus. In the Roman world, it was almost like a big Pyramid of Power, right? The largest population were at the bottom of society, poor people, slaves, criminals, immigrants, that and so forth. And then you had kind of the low class, what we think of as blue collar. And then a very small percentage of people would be what we consider wealthy, very, very small number, and it would be people of the high class, equestrian class and turtle class. And then you have Caesar who stands on the cusp between kind of the world of Gods world of mortals and then you have this whole divine realm that also had tears of importance. And everybody was always trying to climb a little bit up that ladder right there trench trying to get up up up. If you were a great hero War hero or sports hero. Or if you're an emperor, you know, you would want to be divinized after your death, meaning you're given kind of honorary membership in the realm of the gods. And that was like, everything goes up. But the amazing thing about the gospel is an incarnation is that Jesus comes down. So here's the Supreme Being Philippians, two with quality with God, and snap of a finger from God, Jesus comes down becomes human. So he's actually going the opposite direction of the Roman, the Roman stratified success plan. And he comes down, and he comes to the flesh, and then he even dies. But then Philippians two says, even death on a cross, which is the most degrading, humiliating way, this could get a little grotesque trigger warning to listeners, I was just reading about an American state of camera, which one changing their form of execution to breathing in a toxifying chemical. So they put a mask, they they hold you down, you know, with straps, they put a mask on you. And they're doing it for the first time. This is just maybe a week ago. And they thought it would be quote unquote, painless. But this guy is just writhing in pain for like 25 minutes, suffocating. And the people you know, there are people observing even doctors and things and they're just horrified by the level of torture that this person experiencing in his last moments, that disgust you feel with me saying that is just a taste of the, of the sickness, and horror of crucifixion, right, this guy suffered for 20 minutes. But He's crucified people could be suffering for a day or two. And also the shame and all of that. Here's something really amazing. If you read First Timothy three, Paul talks, pug is another Christ him not as well known. But it talks about Jesus, you know, the Incarnation appearing to angels, all this stuff. And this idea of a God coming into human form, isn't that strange? They happen all the time, Zeus would come and disguise or Hermes or whoever, what is strange, and what First Timothy will make First Timothy really interesting is in a normal Greco Roman story, that deity would come into the flesh appear, do some stuff, possibly good stuff. And then they would specifically say they returned to the celestial form, they have to leave that human form, or us it would be, it would be humiliating to them. And at first Timothy does it, it leaves that out, it leaves out that Jesus sheds his human form. Now his human form is glorified. But it's still a human form. And that's fascinating, because when we say the supremacy of Jesus, we're also saying the supremacy of the god, man, or God, human, Jesus. That's fascinating. NT right, talking about Hebrews refers to Jesus as our man in heaven. Meaning, he goes back to heaven, but we say to him, hey, Jesus, you're one of us now, don't forget us. And he does it. That's an incredible thing, because that's just not true of the gods.

Joshua Johnson: 34:01

Absolutely amazing. That one of the other beliefs that you have here is it's a cult without smoke and blood. Yes. First of all, what was it like when you step out of a house? In that time? There was a lot of smoke and blood, what was it like?

Nijay Gupta: 34:18

Yeah, I mean, you know, what am I opening question for that chapter is what is church smell like to you? So if you walked into a church, it's gonna smell like carpet cleaner, or probably coffee? Maybe someone's cologne or you know, deodorant. But you might have different answers from church to church based on what people smell like, right? But in the ancient world, every temple smelled the same. It's smoke and blood. Because you're burning animal stuff, you're burning material stuff, and it's gonna just naturally produce smoke, it's and you're gonna have to deal with lots of blood. So you're talking gallons upon gallons of blood of goats, and oxen, and all these things. And we just can't even imagine how bloody you know, the smell of blood, all of us know the smell of blood from, you know, a bloody nose or, you know, whatever experiences you've had with blood, and it is that kind of thick. You know, we all know that smell, but to but to say that was the smell that you smelled all of the time. We have to just wrap our heads around that. One of the big arguments in scholarship on ancient religion is what's the purpose of sacrifice? It seems like such a simple question. And Christians, you know, lay people might answer atonement. But the problem is that's a Christian answer. But it wasn't necessarily an answer a typical answer you'd have in the Greco Roman world because they didn't use the language of atonement. Certainly not for religion, you might have to atone. You know, if you committed a crime or whatever, but day to day you don't think about atonement that way. So I came across this scholarship by by ancient by a modern historian of ancient Greece, his name's Fs Knight and, and he, they were the book is smoke signals for the gods. And this really inspired and influenced my chapter, he says, I'm just going to be real simple with this. He says, it's basically the way to get the gods attention. So you can have a conversation with a deity. So he uses the language of smoke signals, you're signaling to the god with goodwill, that you want to have a chat usually to ask for something. And so I use the analogy, it's the quarter in the payphone. It's not the conversation, but it's what gets the conversation started. Now, then you present something that God may say yes or no. But you start out with an appetizer, you're like, hey, I bought you some chicken wings. I know you like the buffalo spice, you know, like your, you know, your some celery, here's some blue cheese, you are buttering up the deity. So you could ask for something like, Hey, I'm about to have a baby, I hope it goes well. Or, Hey, I'm about to, you know, go into war, I hope you'll stay, you'll give us a little luck. The fascinating thing Joshua, about Christians and Jews had sacrificed now, of course, they believed in the goodwill of God, they believed in prayer without sacrifice. But they still had lots of material sacrifice. And here they are the Christians. And they don't have that at all. So this is really interesting. There were certain building blocks of society, for religion, that you just absolutely had to have. Priests, temples, sacrifices, you just had to have those things. Those were like, the fundamentals. You know, think about if you're, if you're like, I'm gonna start a restaurant, but we're not going to have tables, chairs, silverware, or food. Right? He'd be like, I don't at the restaurant, open space. But Chris will that they're like, Hey, come to a religious meeting. But we don't have sacrifices, or priests, or temples are called images. But here's what I think is going on. If one of the fundamentals of sacrifice was an expression of goodwill, with a concern and hope to make a positive connection with a deity get on their good side, here's what the cross means. Jesus did that. And when you go to prayer, God has already favored you because of Jesus Christ. Like you're about, you know, it's like having God over. You're about to serve your best cheesecake. And God says, Nope, none for me. I'm full, like you already ate. Yep, Jesus gave me cheesecake on the way here. Like you're able to put that cheesecake away and buy something else. That's it. It's every time every time you got it, I got some cheesecake, I'm good. Jesus already fed me. You know, it's not that God's not willing to be good. It's just what Jesus does for humanity is literally once for all. He creates a disposition of favourability and grace and goodwill from the beginning forever, no matter what. Imagine coming into any negotiation with God, any conversation, knowing God is already favorably disposed to give you what you want. If it's righteous, right. He's already favorite. He's already been well buttered up.

Joshua Johnson: 39:17

God's buttered up, that's good. Like it is buttered up. But so that, why do we forget that? Because we often think that okay, I have to do something for God's to get his favor. And here and we're so we're forgetting all of these things. So what I want to do is, let's get into some of the practices of the early Christians so that we remember the practices so that we could go okay, maybe that actually makes us uncomfortable now, because I have forgotten those. And what are the practices that we may have to return to you that there the Christians we're doing?

Nijay Gupta: 39:54

This is why we pray in Jesus name. I mean, when I first learned that as a teenager, it's just something you say, right? It's just the end of the phone call, right? You just say in Jesus name, you know, amen. But we could start prayer that way, you know, in Jesus's name, dear Lord, dear father, we could start that way. And that might actually remind us, and this actually comes from Romans from other places where Paul talks about the intercession of Jesus. And even that notion of praying to Abba, Father, I get this from the Gospel of John as well, where Mary is excited to see Jesus, you know, after the tomb, he says, don't hold on to me, because I'm ascending to my God and your God my father and your Our Father, and the your is really important there because he's saying because of what's happened, my father is now your father. That's what we're saying when we say in Jesus's name, or we could say in the son's name would be another way to say the same thing. So I think, you know, if I'm being blunt and theological, you're Joshua. And I'm blaming myself too. For this, we often operate with a low Christology. We come to prayer as if Jesus never did anything. Or as if Jesus didn't exist, or the whole Bible didn't exist, or Israel didn't exist. And we think that we're at square one. And we're not. I mean, that would be that would be pitiable and sad indeed, if we're at square one, because we're sinners. And we don't have any right. So I think number one is really, really having a Christological mindset when we go to prayer. There's an old, old, old New Testament debate about why Christians earliest Christians in the button, the New Testament, they never, almost never there's one. There's one time they almost never pray to Jesus. There's only one time and it's Steven. When he says, You know, Jesus, Jesus, get ready for me, I'm gonna die. There's only one time why is that? Is that weird? And people thought, oh, some critical scholars thought, oh, this because Jesus wasn't they didn't see Jesus God. Of course they did. Now this Grace and peace to you from God, the Father, Lord Jesus Christ, it's pretty obvious, right? It's to me, it's pretty odd. Philippians two, given the name is about every name of the name of Jesus, every knee shall bow. It's pretty obvious. But why don't they pray to Jesus? And the answer I've come across, which is really compelling, is because we pray through Jesus. We don't pray to Jesus because we stand in the place of Jesus, when we pray to the Father. Now, is it okay to pray Jesus, I think it's perfectly fine to pray Jesus, I think it's good to pray to Jesus, we should pray the Holy Trinity. But there is something really special about knowing that when we're praying to the Father, we're standing with Jesus. And it's almost like we're whispering in Jesus's ear, you know, can you ask for this? She said, I got this and that he asked for He's almost like, he's our advocate, right? It's almost like saying to your lawyer, will you tell the judge this, right? Like, I'll tell him, we forget that we forget. You know, I call this vicarious Christology meaning, Christ becomes a channel or pathway for us to communicate with the Father. And when we pray, we're actually praying with Him through Jesus. So I, you know, right now, my podcast, live theology, we're going to kick off a series on Lord's Prayer. When we pray Our Father in heaven, we're praying with Jesus as he prays, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. We're not praying to our Father, in the sense that it's just our father. We're praying to His father, but he gives us the privilege of praying with him through him.

Joshua Johnson: 43:39

What other practices so one of the practices like, you know, with with all the smoke, and the blood, there was a priest, you needed that sacrifice. And now they're the Christian said, we're a priesthood of all believers, like there's no, yeah, we we are the priesthood. How is that practice different? And how, how can we start to reclaim some of that? Yeah, today?

Nijay Gupta: 44:02

Yeah. I don't think you're gonna like my answer, because they're not specific practices. I'm a firm believer in good habits, but they're not religious practices, because often ancient religious practices were obligations to appease the divine, and Christians just had different mindset. So one of my chapters is about really showing sacrifice through imitating, imitating God. And so you might go to a place like Romans chapter 12. offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God. This is your spiritual act of worship, to be conformed a longer to Patmos world would be transformed by the renewing of your mind. You know, it's an oxymoron to say living sacrifice, a sacrifice definitionally an animal sacrifice means is dead. But both can be true for Krishna at the same time, we modify or put to death, our selfish desires every day, or we should. And we claim ourselves as through siia sacrifices to God. And what does that mean? That means servants of God, that means relinquishment, God that today's your day, what do you want me to do with it? This money is your money. What do you want me to do with it? My family is your client family, how should I raise them? My workplace is your workplace, how should I do my job to your glory? And so Christians were really sold on the idea that every individual can live their whole lives dedicated to God. Could you

Joshua Johnson: 45:40

talk a bit about early Christians meeting in homes and houses? What does that have to do with with Christianity? What what is the the house? Represent? And why wasn't there a temple or a building? Yeah, yeah. And do we have to reclaim that today?

Nijay Gupta: 45:59

Yeah, no, there was no Temples. That the idea what's really fascinating to me is, when you look at Paul's letters, for example, which is our earliest Christian literature, the temple was still standing for the majority of Paul's letters. But he never once tells Christians to go to Jerusalem, which would be a common thing you talk about in Judaism, right, where, you know, Hey, I can't make it. But I'm gonna send a tribute with someone who's going that way. Or I'm gonna save up all my nickels and dimes. And I'm going to go on pilgrimage this one time. But what's fascinating is Paul never, never says they have to go anywhere except on Christian mission. Right, that's the only thing. And it's usually to far flung parts. I mean, he wants he, you know, in the book of Acts, it's clear that he wants to pay his respects to his heritage, but he never wants to go there. So no, they didn't have buildings, I used to think they met in homes for convenience. And I do think there's a little bit of that, like, we're also they're gonna meet, you know, they can meet open air, but you know, people are gonna wonder why kissing each other, and what's all this weird stuff going on? We know they met early in the morning or late at night, you don't want to be out and about, you know, doing that, you know, just drawing attention. So, you know, the house makes a lot of sense. It was a normal gathering place. But the more I researched it, the more I realized, Christians were doing something that would have seemed odd because the Roman world had a bifurcated religious system. They had household religion, and they had public religion, but they were very different. So you didn't really worship Jupiter in your house? You might, but it wasn't really an obligation, because what mattered, the government happened largely outside your house. And so you didn't really, you know, it's kind of like someone who has like, a picture of Ronald Reagan, like, on their bed stand. And you, you know, sir, yeah, people do that. But it's seen as kind of odd, like, okay, that's more for like, civic, you know, civic life. And in your household life, you don't do that. So you have pictures of family members and things like that. She had household religion, which were these praying to the spirits of the house, and then you have Public Religion, Christians brought all that into the house, and combine the fact they met and now they didn't always mean the houses, they might have met in workshops. But broadly, they did. Combine that with the language of family that was pervasive in early Christian literature. They call each other brothers and sisters. They call godfather. They talk about Jesus as the great son. They talk about being spiritual children, right, Paul, spiritual child, Timothy. And now they're using family talk, right? They're talking about this sacred kiss this holy kiss, but it's not like, you know, smooching. It would be it would be similar to have you ever been in a church where the pastor says, you know, let you know, let's break down the barriers. Let's all hold hands. And think about how awkward that is. To turn to a stranger and hold their hand, it's a really intimate thing. Think about the people that you hold hands with. Other than awkward church moments. It's my daughter, it's my wife. Right? You don't really, it's culturally, we just don't do that. But it would be equivalent to holding hands. Think about the warmth of the person's hand, the intimacy you feel, with holding their hand. I'm always thinking about like, How soon can I let go? I'm thinking about like, what did they touch? What did I touch? How quickly will be offensive if I grabbed my hand sanitizer after all of that, that's what the sacred kiss was, it was an expression of physical connection that showed a family level of intimacy with people that are in your family. And so they did that. And then the meal, the meal is really important. Now, I talked about this, but there's some uncertainties, something when you see the poster or sorry, the paintings of the Last Supper, you know, where there people will kind of joke Why are they all sitting on one side of the table because of it's a painting. But another funny part is in the ancient world, you would actually lay down, you would recline. So language of laying down often occurs in Greek for going to bed and for going to a meal, you would lie down. You would usually lie on your side with your face towards the food and your feet away from the food because feet were dirty. And so when you have images in the gospels for example the beloved disciple laying at the chest of the Father. Right? They're not like on a beanbag, right? They're there. They're already in a natural position where that could happen. Because they're not about

Joshua Johnson: 50:52

being a beanbag. Jesus, Jesus

Nijay Gupta: 50:54

was John, on a beam or in a hammock, maybe it'd be a better one. That's a good ai ai would probably come up with that image. So, so one, one big difference is if you went out and about to a banquet, right, a religious banquet for a Roman festival, they're going to put you in seats based on your relative importance. And this even happened with dinner parties, even people's houses. But I think in Orthodox Jesus following churches, not all of them were I can we can talk about that later, if you want. I think when they had, when they had the Lord's Supper, they had a real meal. With real food, I want to, I want to emphasize that because I'm not a big fan of the dry wafer and little bit of juice. They had real food, it wasn't ostentatious, it would be basic staples. To us, it would be like baked potato, with salt and butter. I mean, that would be our version of it, baked potato, and let's say cheap lemonade. You know, that would be what we that would be its sustenance. It's easy to buy, it's easy to find. And you can buy a whole bunch of it to make sure he buys gets the same amount of food. They'd have a meal together that celebrate the Lord's Supper, and my sense is in Orthodox churches in the home, it wouldn't be stratified meaning everybody would feel like they were equals at the table. Now, there were bad Christians, like in First Corinthians 11, where they're celebrate the Lord's Supper, and Paul's saying, some people aren't getting any food, some people are getting drunk, meaning some people are getting more, some people are getting less. He's saying you guys are doing this wrong. But in a righteous, holy family meal. Everybody feels like they have a place at the table. Like they're equal members of the family. That's powerful. Because you think about even the American church. And I, okay, I get critical of mega churches, but I don't think they're all terrible. But if I'm pulling up to a mega church parking lot, and I'm driving a 1994, beat up Toyota Corolla. And I see a bunch of hammers, and I see a bunch of Tesla's I might think to myself, is not the place for me. Right, and I show up in a T shirt, and jeans, because that's, you know, that's my style. And I can't afford really nice clothes. And I show up everybody dressed up. That's not I'm not saying churches can't have cultural dynamics. But I would sense that in Orthodox churches in the first century, there was every accommodation made to make sure everybody at the table felt like they were equally a part of what's going on, because of Jesus.

Joshua Johnson: 53:48

Amen. Amen. We need to do that, too. Everybody's invited to the table. Everybody's there. Everybody's equal at the table. In the Jay, what's your best advice to keep Christianity weird?

Nijay Gupta: 54:01

The best advice. I mean, it should be obvious based on my profession, you got to read your Bible. And you have to read your Bible with an open hand, saying, every time you open your Bible, say, God helped me see the world, the way you see the world, helped me see myself the way you see me, help me see you the way the cross teaches me to see you. We should get upset when read the Bible. We should get upset when read the Bible, because it doesn't reflect the values that were often taught as we go to the mall, as we go to our workplaces. And we should say, this is a hard teaching. This is a hard teaching. God helped me to live out these teachings. Because when I look again, at the what's going on in the world, I look at the way that Christians behave the quaint Christmas, treat each other, and other people. And then I read the gospels or I read the fruit of the Spirit. Or I read the Psalms, where I read the Proverbs. I think to myself, we've taught Christian terms. And we've taught Christian soteriology sort of, we haven't actually taught the way of Jesus, the radical way of Jesus. I'll leave I'll leave you one anecdote. I know time is short. I'll give you one anecdote. And this was in the book. And I love this and I wish I wish every Christian knew this. Early Christians got mocked, right for being so weird. And the name Christ in Greek sounds a lot like the word the name crest, or crest, us. And crest this was a common slave name. Add it met, useful or helpful. So imagine you just named your slave tool tool, right, it gets the job done. And so Christians are sometimes because it sounds so similar and they didn't know the name of Christ because it comes from Judaism. They would just mistake it for crest, or Kristus. And then they would call Christians, basically tools, you Christians are bunch of tools will eventually in early Christianity, you know, take another 100 200 years, they actually transform that to a badge of honor. Because Kristus can mean tool, or can also mean kindness. As unhelpful, I want to be helpful. I want to be kind. And so you actually have some early Christian writers and I talked about this in my book, who say you want to call us tools? Well, we actually take that proudly, because the thing we want you to know about us is that we're kind of we're kind people, we're kind hearted people were people full of grace. And so you shout Cresta, SAS, we say proudly, we are people of kindness. And if I could wave a magic wand Joshua, for how Christianity could change in the West, yeah, of course, I want people to be worshipping Jesus and be Orthodox, but in terms of how they behave. I love truth. I love justice. But I think the word that I want unbelievers to say is true believers, is compassion. And you could be compassionate to somebody without agreeing with them. You can be compassionate with your enemy, without being on the same page politically, morally, whatever, religiously. People have compassion, meaning I care about you, as if you were part of my family. Imagine how the reputation of Christianity would change overnight. If that were true of Christians,

Joshua Johnson: 57:33

amen. Let's do it. Let's be compassionate, compassionate people that follow the radical way of Jesus, and all those things and actually let the Bible disturb you. And the say, Man, this is hard, but helped me follow up. Yes, teaching the trend, walk through it, you know, your book, strange religion, Nietzsche is fantastic. And so I want everybody go out and get it and read it. And, like plop themselves into this Roman worlds where these Christians that are emerging, it's it is, it's a fun read, because I'm, I'm there, I'm in a different place entirely. And that that starts to then I have to reflect on my own beliefs. And I have to reflect on my own way of living out my faith with other people. And so it's really helpful. How can people get your book? Where would you like to point people to? How can they connect with you? Yeah, I'm

Nijay Gupta: 58:31

happy for people to buy it wherever they buy books. I, you know, Amazon is nice, because you get to see reviews and things like that. But I often buy books from christianbook.com. I used to actually work for them. Back in the days low twins and this algebra, they do good prices, you can buy it directly from Baker. But yeah, I mean, just peruse it online. If you can check out the description. If it resonates with you, encourage you to read it.

Joshua Johnson: 58:58

I love your cover to cover beautiful.

Nijay Gupta: 59:00

I'll tell you what I told them when they were because I didn't design the cover, but I give input. So I said I want something. Something that points to Christ is ancient and weird. And they nailed it. absolutely nailed it. They showed me two options. And this was just far and away. And I get so many comments on the cover. So kudos to them for just creating a really evocative, provocative cover. get people interested in

Joshua Johnson: 59:27

excellence. You mentioned earlier, slow theology. So check out Nietzsche on slow theology with AJ Swoboda, who has been on this podcast as well. And you're a professor at Northern seminary. So if you want to take a class, do something. Yeah. Check them out there, too. So you, Jay, thank you for this conversation. It's fantastic. Figure out how Christians were weird, and dangerous and compelling in the early church, and when Christianity was first emerging, and what was the culture like and how countercultural and then I love some advice to figure out how we could reclaim the DNA of what Christianity is today. So thank you for this conversation.

Nijay Gupta: 1:00:12

was great. Good to talk to you again.