Shifting Culture
Shifting Culture invites you into transformative conversations at the intersection of faith, culture, justice, and the way of Jesus. Each episode, host Joshua Johnson engages guests who challenge conventional thinking and inspire fresh perspectives for embodying faith in today's complex world. If you're curious about how cultural shifts impact your faith journey and passionate about living purposefully, join us as we explore deeper ways to follow Jesus in everyday life.
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Shifting Culture
Ep. 331 Zach Lambert - Better Ways to Read the Bible
Zach Lambert joins me for a conversation about how we read Scripture and how our reading shapes everything. We explore the lenses we bring to the Bible, the harm that can come from flat or literalist interpretations, and what it looks like to center our reading on the life and teachings of Jesus. Zach’s new book, Better Ways to Read the Bible, invites us to move beyond fear-based or power-driven readings and toward a faith that bears good fruit - love, justice, humility, and hope. If you’ve ever felt disoriented by how the Bible is used in our culture, or if you're trying to rediscover Scripture through a Jesus-centered lens, this episode is for you. Listen in as we talk about interpretation, mystery, spiritual formation, and what it means to be shaped by the Word in a way that leads to life.
Zach W. Lambert is the lead pastor and founder of Restore, a church in Austin, Texas. Under his leadership, Restore has grown from a launch team of five people in 2015 to more than 1,000 members today. He holds a bachelor’s degree in communication from Hardin-Simmons University, a Master of Theology from Dallas Theological Seminary, and is pursuing his Doctorate at Duke Divinity School.
Zach is the cofounder of the Post Evangelical Collective and serves on the boards of the Austin Church Planting Network and the Multi-Faith Neighbors Network. Zach and his wife, Amy, met each other in the 6th grade, fell in love at 17, and got married at 21. They love watching live music, discovering local Mexican food places, and playing with their two boys.
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You see Paul and Peter, you know, two of the point leaders of the first church after the resurrection of Jesus, publicly arguing about how to interpret the Bible. And so if the original audience who spent literal time with Jesus did not have just an easy understanding that they knew they were doing interpretation, they were bringing social location and biases. How much more so are we? Hello and welcome
Joshua Johnson:to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture. Conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson, in this episode, I sit down with Zach Lambert, a pastor, a writer, a fellow traveler who's asking honest questions about scripture, about faith and what it means to follow Jesus in the world as it really is. Zach's new book better ways to read the Bible is deeply pastoral. It doesn't offer easy answers or clever takes. It invites us to pay attention to the lenses we carry, the fruit our interpretations bear, and the Jesus at the center of it all we talk about moving beyond flat or harmful readings of the Bible, learning to hold mystery and reclaiming a faith that's rooted in love, justice and the actual life of Christ, not cultural war slogans or inherited dogma. If you've wrestled with how to read Scripture with integrity, if you're looking for ways to ground your life in Jesus rather than the noise, this conversation is worth your time. So join us as we discover better ways to read the Bible. Here is my conversation with Zach. Lambert, Zach, welcome to shifting culture. So excited to have you on. Thanks for joining me. Yeah, thanks
Zach Lambert:so much for having me. Joshua, I'm excited to talk. Yeah. We're gonna
Joshua Johnson:dive into better ways to read the Bible. Your new book coming out. And so, you know, just as an introduction growing up, how were you exposed to the Bible? What were the predominant ways that you were reading the Bible growing up?
Zach Lambert:Yeah, I joke that in the churches I grew up in the Bible was really like the third member of the Trinity replacing the Holy Spirit. It was Father Son Holy Bible. We I grew up Southern Baptist. We did not have a lot of engagement with the Holy Spirit or kind of broad spiritual things. But man, did we emphasize the Bible, but it was certainly a very specific reading of the Bible, a much more fundamentalist understanding of it in the church that I grew up in, specifically so it was very black and white. There was this kind of mythos that it was easy to understand if you were just really faithful, and if you were, then you would come to the same conclusion as the preacher that we had, or the kind of dominant circles that we ran in. So the Bible was certainly presented as univocal about everything, and really just kind of one big unified word from God directly to us. But then I think I started to experience the Bible in ways that were confusing. I remember the first time, one of the first times this happened, or one of the most vivid times I was in a youth group in sixth or seventh grade middle school ministry, and it was Easter time, and I remember the pastor was talking about how Jesus was on the cross, and when Jesus was on the cross, that God turned away from Jesus, because Jesus had all of our sin on him, and God can't be around sin. And so God kind of abandoned Jesus, and there on the cross. And I remember the week before, we had had a lesson on how God was a good father that really like the greatest father that ever lived. And I remember thinking, that's not what a good father does. A good father doesn't abandon his son in the, you know, worst moment possible. And then also, you know, we'd had, I had heard myriad sermons about how God wanted to be close to me and I wanted to be I should want to be close to God. But then if God couldn't be around Jesus because of my or our sin, and I still had that same kind of sin in me, or I chose sin sometimes, then does God actually want to be around me? And I really began to have some struggles with how I understood scripture. And then obviously that affects how you understand God and yourself and the world.
Joshua Johnson:And so as you're moving then maybe from a black and white reading of the Bible, growing up and saying the you know, the they're giving you this black and white reading, moving into man, you're questioning things. You're saying, Man, that doesn't really make sense, and you're having these questions and moving into some gray areas. What did that start to look like for you? What was a transition of having a broader understanding of the Bible? Well,
Zach Lambert:it certainly wasn't linear. The I actually tell the story in the book I ended. Getting kicked out of that youth group because I just kept asking these questions that were deemed unacceptable around the inconsistencies that I saw or the the picture I had of God that seemed to be really different than what had been told to me. So yeah, they, like my youth pastor, pulled my parents aside and said, Your son is disrupting my Bible studies and causing the other kids to doubt their faith, and he can't come back anymore. And so at that point, I really put Christianity in the Bible away. I mean, I didn't engage with them at all. I was I was pretty much done, and part of me was glad because I wasn't. I didn't like love church. My parents made me go. But then part of me, that I think I would discover much later is that I was pretty devastated, because there was my parents were in ministry. Everybody we knew was Christian, this thing that was the most important thing for, like, basically my entire community now was something that I didn't fit in, and it was caused a lot of dissonance. And it wasn't until later on, probably 1718, years old, where I picked the Bible back up, just kind of thinking, maybe I've misunderstood some things, and maybe I should just read it for myself, you know, because I'd mostly had it read to me or preached for me. And thank God, I just opened up to the the Gospel accounts, and I started reading about Jesus, and what I realized Joshua, is that I knew a lot about the beginning and the end of the story, like, kind of the first and last chapters of Jesus's book, The the Christmas story and the Easter story. But I knew shockingly little about the life and teachings of Jesus. I don't remember, maybe it was, but I do not remember the Sermon on the Mount being talked about in any of my childhood churches. You know, I don't remember. I remember reading about Jesus being accused of being a glutton and a drunkard, you know, because he was hanging out with the the people of ill repute. So much. I remember reading as like Matthew 23 and him really like dressing down these religious leaders for being hypocrites and stuff. And I just remember being like, I have never heard this before. So it was like this radical, revolutionary Jesus. And I have, I remember the moment vividly. I'd like finished reading the Gospel of John, and I closed my Bible, and I thought, if this is who Jesus actually is, and if following this Jesus is what Christianity actually is, then I think I want to do that. But it was just really different from the Christianity I'd been
Joshua Johnson:exposed to so many people read the Bible in different ways. You lay out some harmful ways that people read the Bible. Why do you think that, if you saw that and we read the ways of Jesus and the words of Jesus, we read the Gospels, Jesus is the center of our faith. We are the body of Christ. We're the Bride of Christ. We're so connected to him, the goal is to grow up into Jesus, who is the head, so that we can have maturity. Why do we forget that? Why do we forget Jesus? What happens with our ways of reading the Bible that removes some of the aspects of Jesus that we are uncomfortable with.
Zach Lambert:Well, I don't know if there's one specific reason for any given person, but like, people are not monolithic, I think in the reason and how they get to what you're talking about, kind of a Christianity devoid of Christ is what I call it. But I do think that it does have something to do with the fact that the kind of real Jesus and the true message of Jesus is actually incredibly disruptive for so many of us, and how we kind of do life. You know, whether it's this consumerism, this these toxic cycles of acquisition and consumption, of always bigger and better and newer, Jesus is incredibly disruptive to that. The way we think about power and hierarchy, you know, and Jesus was constantly kind of flattening things. Jesus is incredibly disruptive to that. I also think just the idea of power in general, I mean, the Incarnation God, putting on flesh in the person of Jesus, is the the emptying of power, right? It's the giving up of power, is how Paul describes it, that Jesus did not think equality with God something to be held on to, but that gave it up in order to make a home with us. And that messes with our understanding of the world and power and all of that stuff. And so I think it ends up being easier to just make our Christianity based on some other verses that are actually a lot more palatable to the way that we live and move in the world already, rather than allowing the way of Jesus, the message of Jesus, to disrupt and transform. I mean, like, I think about, you know what Paul said, right? Like, do not be conformed to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. I just think that Jesus is the the catalyst for transforming us and renewing our minds, and that's hard, and so a lot of us choose to just conform to the patterns of the world instead, a
Joshua Johnson:lot of times, when I'm teaching and we're thinking about how to to. Translate the message of Jesus to different places and cultures. It seems pretty easy to say, Okay, I could contextualize it one way so that people can understand. It seems very difficult for people to actually analyze the lenses and the things that they read Scripture with their own worldview, the way that they see the world, the way that they were raised. What are some ways to help us start to identify maybe these are the lenses I'm using to read the Bible, and maybe it's not so helpful,
Zach Lambert:right? That's a great question. I'll start by telling how it happened for me. I remember being in a seminary class and my professor. So I did a, did seminary at Dallas Theological Seminary, you know, very kind of traditional conservative seminary. Right out of college. I was, I was 22 years I just turned 22 when I started in seminary. And I remember I did this, the masters of theology, which is like 120 hour masters program. And so we, you know, that's what? 40 something classes, five books a class. Let's call it 200 books I was assigned, you know, and I can count on one hand the number of them that were not written by straight white men. And that was just, that was just the lens. And the vivid memory that sticks out is probably my fourth or fifth semester. We were assigned a book by justo Gonzalez, who's a theologian and historian, very, very famous, very mainstream, you know, and but
Joshua Johnson:my brother, my masters as well, yes, very typical,
Zach Lambert:very typical book. And, but my professor, when he assigned it, he said, just remember that this book is written by a Latino theologian, and so it's probably pretty biased. And I remember being like, I've never heard a book introduced like that at seminary before, and I just started to have this realization that, like, well, if, if just Gonzalez is biased. Like, aren't we all biased, you know? But the reality is that a certain type of theology was considered kind of normal, and then anything outside of that was considered aberrant, or at least needed a disclaimer. And I mean, you can go to a Christian bookstore and you can find sections for Black Theology and feminist theology and queer theology and all these things, right? But there's no white theology section, you know, there's no there's no masculine theology section, there's no heterosexual theology section. And really, that's because those things are just called theology a lot of times. And that started to help me realize, like, Oh, wait. I think that we are all bringing us our social location into this, some combination of our background, beliefs, experiences, biases, all of that. The other thing I'll say about trying to help other people realize that is, I think it starts with understanding that none of us are the the original audience of the biblical books. Right? They were all written to other people in different times, and at best, we read over the shoulder of the original audience. And I'm not, I mean, I obviously love the Bible. I think it transforms, you know, God used it to transform us, and it's great all the things. But we are not the original audience. And you know, we're not ancient Israelites. We're not first century Palestinians living under Roman oppression. We are so far removed from that. And the crazy thing is, even the original audience argued over biblical interpretation. You know, they went back and forth. You see the Hebrew prophets getting into dialog and arguing with each other. You see Paul and Peter, you know, two of the point leaders of the first church after the resurrection of Jesus, publicly arguing about how to interpret the Bible. And so if the original audience who spent literal time with Jesus did not have just an easy understanding that they knew they were doing interpretation, they were bringing social location and biases. How much more so are we?
Joshua Johnson:So then, how do people get comfortable with that? With mystery, and it's difficult, and it's not, there isn't. So if you look at here, one of the the ways that you say a lens that that actually does some harm is the literal lens, like literalism, and, you know, I've heard it say it's a flat reading of Scripture. It's like, hey, what's on the page? This is it. The context is gone. So if we're looking at that and going in there, how do we go move from something like that into a place of being okay with mystery and not understanding everything? It's
Zach Lambert:a good question. And I appreciate even your definition of literalism, which I do more in the book. It really is a kind of wooden literalism, because I do want to say some of the Bible is absolutely meant to be taken incredibly literally. You know? I mean, they're 2000 plus verses about caring for the poor and oppressed. Jesus said the most important thing in the world is to love God and love your neighbor as yourself like that's literal. Jesus said, do this. This is the most important thing in the world. What happens? I think. Wooden literalism is that we read every biblical passage as if it's meant to be historically scientifically literal, and often missing any kind of nuance or especially genre. We intuitively get this now, right? Like, one of my favorite genres of literature is, like, post apocalyptic, you know, futuristic stuff, like I read sci fi and things like that. We read a book like that, and we know this is not like a history of the world, right? This is, this is fiction. It's a specific kind of fiction. But the problem is, a lot of us have been exposed to like, let's say, the reading of revelation as well. This is a word for word, prediction of the future. You know, when in reality, it's much more of like a science fiction using pictures and word pictures to talk about what life was like under the Roman Empire at the time, rather than here's the exact sequence of future events. And so I think a big part of helping us get comfortable with the mystery is just getting more familiar with the context genre, authors, intent, audience, what was going on in the culture at the time. I think that really helps us understand. The last thing I'll say about that is, I am, I'm in a doctoral program right now at Duke, and we took an Old Testament class last semester. It was kind of CO taught. At least a few sessions were co taught by Ellen Davis, who's this amazing Christian theologian, Old Testament theologian. And then Rabbi Shi held, who is a Jewish rabbi, and we had this amazing conversation about, you know, when you think of biblical inspiration, what, how do you know that the Bible is inspired? Like, what do you kind of hold on to and, or at least, what have you been taught? And so the Christians in the class talked about how most of us were taught that the reason we know God inspired the Bible is because there's one perfect meaning for every single piece, you know, every verse, every passage, like there's one truth, and it's about getting to that one truth, and that's how we know God inspired it. And I remember Rabbi shihel like laughing and saying, that's the exact opposite of why we think the Bible is inspired by God. We think the Bible is inspired by God because there are so many beautiful truths that can come out of any given passage. And he talked about it like, you know, holding up a crystal to a light and just rotating it slowly and seeing the beauty that was refracted in all these different ways. And he kind of said, like, how, how limited would God be if there could only be one application for a modern day person, an ancient person, or anything in between? When, in reality, God is much more involved and it's, it's much more mysterious than I think a lot of us are
Joshua Johnson:comfortable with Yeah, it is. I love that, and I love that picture of this crystal. And we're looking at those things. It's why, as we read the same passage over and over again, if we're reading the Bible, different things come out at us all the time, and we're like, oh, there's a truth here. I didn't see that before. Like, where? Why is that there? Like God is speaking something new to me today. Now, like looking at that, if there is a mystery in that and that God is still speaking through the Bible, now, how do we reckon with him still speaking? That is not just okay. There's this book, and I because, like, if I just look at all we've had great pieces of literature throughout the the centuries, like and but nothing has stood the test of time like the Bible. And that people get some it's, it's just amazing what the Bible can do. So how do we reckon with God is still speaking through the Bible as we engage with the text. How does how does that work? Yeah,
Zach Lambert:I'm not sure how it works, you know, but I do think that the biblical authors describe Scripture as living and active, and the reason that it's living and active is not because of some like magic formula of words that exist on the page. It's because of God's presence in and through and it's because of the subject matter. I think in the scriptures, I think it's important to think that, you know, to understand that we, we don't. I have a whole chapter in the book about this. We do not have a text based faith. As Christians, we really have a person based faith in Jesus and an event based faith in the life, death and resurrection of Christ. And so that's a very different thing. The reason the Bible matters so much is because it tells us about God, right? The Bible doesn't like exist in a vacuum, you know, like it is the subject matter that I think makes it so substantial, and God's ongoing involvement in and through that subject matter. I also think that one of the reasons it's still so compelling is because I think the best way to think about the Bible is not like. God's love letter to us, or God's instruction manual for life, but really as a collection of writings where people who were deeply committed to trying to understand and follow God wrote down their experiences of how they did that, everything from poetry to history to mythology to social issues and sermons and everything in between. And so this, like shared human experience that we have with the biblical authors, I think, is what deeply resonates for so many people when they read about these folks who are trying to follow God, trying to understand God, trying to understand themselves, humanity in light of God, that that transcendence is something that we're deeply connected to, and that God is actually the one that is helping breathe life back into that over and over and over again.
Joshua Johnson:So as we're walking through situations in this world, and we're seeing something play out on the political stage, and from the White House. We're getting Bible verses from Isaiah that that actually point to something that they're not trying to say. They're saying something opposite of what the Bible is actually saying, but they're using the Bible as justification to do harm to people. How do we root ourselves and say, Okay, I actually know the context and the Scripture. I know that that's not what it says. Instead of going, Oh, it's a Bible verse, it must be true. So how do we start to actually be aware of what is happening within culture and the Bible?
Zach Lambert:That's such a great question, and honestly, that that is the reason I wrote the book, is because, as a local church pastor, that's just a question I get all the time, right is like, how do I know? How do I make these interpretive decisions? What are the criteria I should be using? Like we talked about this earlier, we're all making interpretive decisions, and we are using some set of criteria. I think my thesis in the book is that some criteria are significantly better than others when we're making interpretive decisions. And the the lens that one of the healthy lenses that I talk about, is this lens of fruitfulness, and it's probably, and I think it's probably the most practical of them all, and it's how I would more specifically answer your question. You know Jesus said that you will know His followers by our fruit. You know Galatians says the fruit of the spirits, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. And so we have to be asking, Is this use of a Bible verse, right? Like you just alluded to is this use of Here I am, send me in Isaiah, and used in a way that justifies violence against immigrants and incarceration and alligator Alcatraz and all these horrific things, is that actually promoting more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control in the world. That is, I think, a very helpful like, just kind of quick check, right to understand, is this Bible? Is this Bible verse being used appropriately or not? Because if Jesus said, you'll know my followers by their fruit, and then you know the Scriptures say this is what the fruit of the Spirit is, then it's and it's not the fruit of like human intelligence or human effort. It's the fruit of the Spirit of God at work. And so I would look at a usage like you just alluded to with Isaiah, and say there's no spirit of God in that usage and that application and so, and we know that because it's not producing love, joy, peace, etc.
Joshua Johnson:I mean, that's a that's a helpful framework. You'll know them by the fruit. So you said, just before that, in one of your answers, you said that our faith revolves around a person, revolves around Jesus. Jesus is the center of our faith. It's not just, you know, random texts here and there. So it's Jesus. So one of the things that I was gonna walk with my parents, I was in the Seattle area. I was on a walk, and I saw a church with the American flag out there. I was like, okay, that's their, you know, like, Hey, we're gonna celebrate empire. We're gonna celebrate our country. Great, I'm I, I'm glad for patriotism. I love patriotism, but it's a church, you know, it should revolve around Jesus. And then I go to another church right down the road, and then they have a pride flag. I'm like, Yes, that's good. Like, hey, we want to say we love these people, but it's a flag that is not Jesus. How do we how do we say, hey, there are some good ways. And we want some liberation theology. We want to actually read the Scripture through a lens of liberation. We want to say God loves every single person that we're all made in the image of God. But how do we do that in a way where justice or Empire is not the leading force, but Jesus is in. And that then, because Jesus is justice, like justice goes with Jesus, and he's then against empire. So I just want to I've been trying to wrestle with, yeah, how do we especially justice? I think I see behind you. I think Circle of Hope. Eliza Griswold book, I see that behind you and one of my favorite books of last year, but it's the same thing I think there, as they were wrestling with in Philadelphia, is, are we letting Jesus like guide things, or letting justice issues take center stage? How do we wrestle with
Zach Lambert:that? That's such a good question. I would say the thing that I talk about a lot in the book and at our church here in Austin, is that I believe in the pursuit of justice. I believe in radical inclusion because of Jesus in Scripture, not in spite of them. And so Jesus and scripture are the, really the foundation for those values. Those values are not the foundation for how I engage with my faith, right? And I think we can flip those and it becomes unhelpful. So for me, like at our church, we say all the time, we are unapologetically justice oriented, we are unapologetically inclusive and affirming, and we're also unapologetically Christian, and that the first two actually flow from the third one. The third one is the reason that we are those things because there are a lot of really great groups in the world who are doing justice and inclusion work, and I love that. You know, there are groups focused on diversity and equity and inclusion that I think are doing fantastic work. But for me, the reason I care about those things is not because they are popular. It's not because they are hip. It's not because, you know, they get extra funding from the government or not. It is because of my faith in Jesus. It is because I am attempting, like I said the very beginning, to orient my life around following Jesus, to be transformed by his teachings and his example and his spirit within me, and that leads me to a place of justice and inclusion. And, you know, anti Empire work, right? It leads me to push back against Christian nationalism and all those kinds of things. And I would, I build partnerships with people who do those same things for different reasons. And I that's totally fine, like, you know, atheist, agnostics, people of other faith do those things for different reasons. I do a bunch of multi faith work here in Austin with rabbis and Imams around, you know, caring for immigrants and all kinds of stuff. So they have different motivations. But my motivation is because of Jesus and because of my faith. And I think that if you are going to be a Christian church, that has to be the motivation too, like it has to spring out of that. It can't
Joshua Johnson:be reversed. You're doing some some great work in this book, and I think it's really helpful to actually help analyze our lens of how we read the Bible. What are some healthier ways and better ways that we could actually read the Bible? But as your work out in public as a public theologian, as you're actually encountering everyday issues within communities, whether it be immigration or whatever the issue is, how does your view of Scripture help inform how you present something to the world? So that people can make informed decisions on how they should act and respond to public situations,
Zach Lambert:you know, there's a popular refrain that goes something like, you know, just preach the gospel. Don't get political, you know. Or just talk about Jesus. Stop talking about social issues. And my response is always, what part of our lives should the gospel not affect? And I think the answer is no parts of our lives, every part of our lives should be affected by the gospel. The word Christian means little Christ. It doesn't mean like churchgoer. It doesn't mean checker of doctrinal boxes. It means little Christ, which means every part of our lives should demonstrate the the personal work and teachings of Jesus. That that term was first used from what theologians and historians think, in a derogatory way for people who follow Jesus, they would say, look at those little Christs. You know, look at those little Christians. They just like. They look just like, just like that, that guy that Rome executed. How ridiculous is that? Like, Man, how much would our witness, public witness and stuff transform if people looked at us and thought they really remind me of Jesus, you know, because so much of, specifically the kind of American church, reminds nobody of Jesus, and people are are leaving it in droves because of that, because it's a Christ less Christianity. So, yeah, I would say it has to be. It has to affect every part of our lives. And so what I'm doing with, with any kind of public theology stuff, is to say, Okay, here's the thing that's happening in the world. You know, immigration, an election, a protest. In your city, whatever it is, or it could just be like how you interact with your friends and your family, how you have hard conversations, how you treat people you disagree with, how you do, how you choose to not fight dehumanization with more dehumanization. It's just all these things about like our everyday lives. I'm trying to say, how does the message and gospel of Jesus change how we should be thinking and interacting with these things. Because to me, that's the again, because I'm a Christian and because I am so committed to following Jesus imperfectly in every part of my life, that is just, that's the question for me. There aren't other questions. You know, it's not like, it's not like, what would, you know so and so, think about how I talk about this thing. It's like, what does the gospel teach me about this? What does following Jesus look like when it comes to supporting the vulnerable or speaking out on behalf of the marginalized, or whatever it is, or or like parenting my boys, you know, like it's, it's not even just all these, like, major social issues, it's like everyday life, you know, like one thing that I spend so much time talking with people about politics and stuff like that, just like you'd think online and at our church, but I would say I also spend so much time right now talking with people about what they are allowing their kids to do, from, like, A tech, phone, social media perspective, you know, like that's just as much on people's minds as a lot of other things. And again, like our following Jesus should affect how we think about that too, right? And so I'm not just saying it's only about politics or it's only about social issues. It's about every part of our lives.
Joshua Johnson:I agree. It's every part of our lives. And I think these tech issues, one of the things that it helps us reckon with and ask the question is, we haven't we're starting to ask the question, what does it mean to be human? Because we have so many, so many things here that we're like we're productive machines. We have machines doing things for us. We have billionaires that are talking about transhumanism and becoming more than human. Of trying to stop the dying process, like we're we're looking at like, what does it mean to be human? So if you look at the the lens of Jesus, and look at the life of Jesus, like, for us, how do we root ourselves? What does it look like to be human in this world where we're not giving into this culture that wants us to be other than human, yeah. Oh, that's a
Zach Lambert:big question. I don't, I don't want to get too nerdy theologically, but that's okay. You get nerdy. Great. Well, so you know, there, there are a myriad of ways we understand the life teachings and specifically the death and resurrection of Jesus that are often called like atonement theories, right? Basically, it's asking what happened through Jesus's death, burial and resurrection. How did that change things, cosmologically, spiritually, in our personal lives, in our communities, all that kind of stuff. There are a lot of helpful atonement theories, and there's some really unhelpful atonement theories. One that I think is underutilized and under discussed is what's called the recapitulation theory. And what that is is basically saying, in addition to being God in the flesh, in addition to the forgiveness of sins or whatever, Jesus exists to show us what it means to be a human. We got it wrong and get it wrong, and that's just part of it. Jesus not just shows us what God is like, but shows us what we are supposed to be like. And for Jesus, that included sacrificial love. It included service. It also included getting sick. It also included dying. I mean, like he shows us the full spectrum of what it means to be human. It included weeping, you know, when he met Mary and Martha after Lazarus died. It included laughing and making jokes. It included all kinds of things. Like he shows us the full spectrum. Hebrews says that we do not have a great high priest talking about Jesus who is unable to empathize, but one who is able to empathize with every single part of being human. But it wasn't just that Jesus was fully human and fully God. It was that Jesus was showing us what full humanity was supposed to be like, what what a flourishing life looks like. And you know, to put it bluntly, it is not becoming less human. It's actually becoming more human.
Joshua Johnson:A conservative Christian counter to what they say and what people say as fluidity. And there is that empathy is toxic, or toxic empathy, and you just said that Jesus empathized with us. And what does it mean to identify as human and be human? How, instead of having a yelling match or an argument like of toxic empathy and the good the empathy could do, what's a way that we can like? Enter into a dialog to help people understand empathy, and how Jesus was empathetic, and what that looks like for us.
Zach Lambert:Well, I just alluded, I just mentioned this, but one of my favorite stories in the life of Jesus is when he arrives at Mary and Martha's house after Lazarus dies. And you know, it's where the shortest verse in the Bible, Jesus wept, has found a little trivia for you, and I know you know that, but trivia for your listeners. But here's the most amazing thing about that story for me, what we see is Jesus engaging with Mary and Martha as individuals, and specifically in the ways that they needed to be engaged with. So you have Mary, who comes, who's much more kind of emotive and in pain and angry and all of these things, you know. And Jesus does not like rebuke that he cries alongside of her. He listens to her express her anger. He empathizes with her. Then he talks to Martha. Martha has all the theological kind of questions, you know, like the intellectual stuff, like, Well, why did he die? Like, and why didn't you save him? It would probably would have been different if you were here. Martha is processing it in totally different way that they're different people, and Jesus answers her questions, he talks her through it. It's a much more kind of intellectual engagement, whereas with Mary, it was much more emotional. The reason Jesus can do that and meet them where they are is because he empathizes, because he knew them. He knew their stories, he knew how God wired them, and he met them exactly where they were. And that, that those two pastoral moments in the span of, you know, just a couple of seconds there as he meets them outside their home. I think are a beautiful demonstration of Jesus's commitment to empathizing. And again, if we're supposed to be little Christ, then we should be somebody who we should be people who empathize as well.
Joshua Johnson:So if Jesus is the center of our faith, and we want to read the Bible through a Jesus lens, and that's one of the lenses you talk is the Jesus lens. You know, I lived in Korea and worked at a school there, and it was a Christian school. I walk up, there's a big old statue of Korean Jesus. He looks very Korean. I go, I go to a church in the States, and I'm teaching a lesson. I look on the wall, there's a painting of a blonde hair, blue eyed Jesus. And so we're all trying to make Jesus a little bit into our own image. How do we know if we're reading through a Jesus lens that we're not reading into a Jesus of our own image lens, but we're actually reading into a Jesus lens of who Jesus really is?
Zach Lambert:This is a vital question, and I unpack it quite a bit in that chapter, and so I'll hit a couple of high points. One question I think is helpful to ask is, what did Jesus care most about? And we can understand that in a few different ways. One is by the frequency with which he talked about something. So the thing Jesus talked about more than anything else is the kingdom of God, this place of mutual flourishing, you know, equality and all of that kind of stuff, this place that is kind of already and not yet, this place that we can kind of best see through the lens of the Garden of Eden and Genesis and the new heaven and new earth and revelation, this place where God and humanity walk next to each other. There's no division between people, between God, between people and creation. So Jesus cared most about that. That's what he talked about most. That's what most of his sermons went back to and so we can say, well, we should care most about that. If that's what Jesus cared most about, we should care most about that. And if our biblical interpretations are leading us away from the kingdom of God, then they're probably not great. We can also ask, what made Jesus mad? Because Jesus gets angry a number of times in the Gospel accounts Jesus, I think the easiest way to sum it up is that Jesus got the most mad when people in, you know, political or religious power positions used those positions where they were supposed to be caring for and serving people to actually harm them or exploit them instead. That's what made Jesus more mad than anything else. That's he gave his he reserved his greatest rebukes for religious and political leaders who were hurting the people they were supposed to be caring for. And so we can learn a lot from that. If we want to interpret Scripture like Jesus, if we want to be like Jesus, then we should kind of get mad about the same things he got mad about. Then the last one is, Did Jesus ever talk about kind of like, what's most important in the world? And he did. He got asked the question, what's the most important thing, right? And they phrased it as, what's the most important law, 613, laws, what's the most important one? Jesus says, Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength, love your neighbor as yourself. And that, I don't think that would have been initially, like, super controversial. That was in the Shema. I mean, that was what Jewish folks, like, recited to themselves already. What was really controversial were the next two things he said. The first one saying that all the law and the prophets are, hang on this, like they're all summed up in those two commands. That was a huge statement, right? Yeah. And then the second statement was the response to when you know the guy says, well, who's my neighbor trying to justify himself, the biblical author says, an attempt to justify himself. Who is my neighbor? And Jesus tells the story of the Good Samaritan, where he basically says, the neighbor is the person that you are the most different from the person that you have the most problems with. Kind of the person that you think is the ickiest in the world, that's your neighbor. That's who you're responsible for. Those two things would have been and they were massively controversial, amen, I think ended up, you know, starting to really, like, turn some kind of power structure opinions against him when he started talking about that more and more. So all those are clues to where, how we can understand what it really looks like to not remake Jesus in our image, but actually allow ourselves to be conformed to the likeness of Christ,
Joshua Johnson:even in Sermon on the Mount, Jesus calls us love our enemies, meaning we're going to have enemies. And what do we do with enemies that are called to love, and that is so difficult in this day and age of polarization and division, loving our enemies and like, let's work towards reconciliation. How is that possible? Like, there's so many I just see so many people. Like, okay, I can deconstruct and I could do something, and I could step away, and then I just see enemies. But then we're also called to love enemies. So hard, so hard. But it's amazing that Jesus is calling us to something greater than we are, and showing us what it means to be human, absolutely and to live a good life. You know, if you're looking at ways as a pastor, and you're pastoring restore Austin. You're interacting with your congregants all the time and people, what are the the major questions people are asking
Zach Lambert:right now, huh? Well, I'm in Texas, and I mean, we're in a weird spot in that we are right in the middle of kind of urban Austin, which is this, you know, kind of progressive bastion in the South, in the middle of one of, if not the most conservative state governments in the world. So a lot of people feel caught in that and really not sure what to do, especially as they see either themselves or people they deeply love, feeling like they're they're targeted. So that could be, you know, immigrants, undocumented folks. It could be LGBTQ folks, trans folks, specifically, I get a lot of questions about, like, what do I do? You know, I just feel so helpless. And it transcends those issues too. I mean, it go like we just had this horrible flood here in Central Texas. Yeah, really, not far at all from where I live, there handful of people in our church who lost loved ones. And, I mean, it's it hit everybody in this area. And again, people just asking, like, Where is God in this and and what do I What do I do? Because it just never feels like enough, especially in the age of social media, especially when you see somebody you know, posting or protesting or whatever, and you're like, I'm not doing enough. You know, that's probably the biggest question, those two questions, where is God in this and what am I supposed to be doing? Yeah, I don't have easy answers to either of those things. I think that they are connected, though, and that I believe we are scripture says the body of Christ, the hands and feet of Jesus, and so we are supposed to be the ones who are in these spaces bringing grace and hope and love and support and care and kindness to folks in need. But I think that also looks really different for different folks, right? Paul talks about, you know, if you're a teacher, then teach. Well, if you're a servant, then you know, serve well. If you are into hospitality, make sure that you, you know, are always ready to be hospitable for someone who needs it. And it's this whole it's like seven or eight things, this whole list of like, and it reminds me, Bernice King talks all the time. Dr King's daughter talks all the time about how the work is in the streets and it's in the classrooms and it's in your home, and it's online and it's offline, and it's in writing and podcasting and also art and music, and it's in rest and joy and frustration and all those things that we need, all of those and so what is it? It looks like? I think, orienting however God has made you, your passions, your gifts, your talents and abilities, orienting that toward the way of Jesus and the kingdom of God, whatever that might look like, is kind of the if there was an answer, quote, unquote, to it, that's how that's what I try to give people, at
Joshua Johnson:least well well done. I think that hopefully helps people walk the journey of what it looks like to be the hands and feet of Jesus in everyday life. So what's your hope for people who pick up your book better ways to read the Bible? What do you hope this book will do for the for the world?
Zach Lambert:It's a deeply pastoral book. I'm not comparing myself to Dr King at all, but he, he used to talk about how at the end of the day, he's just a Baptist preacher, and at the end of the. I'm just I'm a local church pastor, and that's to the people here in Austin, but it's also to a lot of people that I get to talk with online and talk with through my writing and things like that. So my hope is deeply pastoral. My hope really is that it just helps people wherever they are on their spiritual journey, whether they're someone who has not read the Bible in a really long time because it's been so weaponized, or it's so scary or it's so triggering, that this would be a helpful way of, you know, kind of re engaging you in the text. If you're someone who reads the Bible a lot, but kind of struggles with, yeah, how to make some of these interpretive decisions, my hope is that it gives a framework for how to do that. This is one I don't talk about a lot, but it's a huge hope. If you're someone who is a much more kind of conservative or fundamentalist type of a Christian, and who does not understand how somebody could say they love God and Jesus in the Bible, but they think so differently than you, my hope is that you could pick up the book, and even if you don't agree with it, understand where somebody else who loves Jesus and is trying to follow scripture is coming from and how they got to this place, specifically, hopefully bridging some gaps between like parents and kids, friends and friends, you know, who maybe you were raised in the same kind of churches, but now you're in totally different places with your faith. That's really my my hope.
Joshua Johnson:That's beautiful. Would love to see this bridge the gap between people so that they could actually talk again and see one another and see people's perspectives and the lenses that they actually use and and then empathize with. Yes, but Zach, if you could go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give
Zach Lambert:in your anger, do not sin. I think in my early and mid 20s, I felt very righteously angry. I'm not saying that it wasn't that it was all wrong or anything, but man, I thought I was supposed to be flipping all the tables and burning all the bridges and doing all the things. And I remember, there's this one time where I had left this denominational meeting that I was in where there was somebody arguing about, like, whether a woman could be a pastor, and I was just so angry and, you know, yelling at them and whatever. And I walked out, and I was feeling a like a, you know, a tug of my spirit of like that probably wasn't great, but, but I'm telling myself, you know what? No, you're just, you're flipping tables just like Jesus. And I felt like there was this still small voice that said, Yeah, you're all about flipping the tables, but are you actually willing to, like, lay down your life for the people who are sitting at them? Because that's what I did, you know, and I was like, oh, man, no, I'm not and so, yeah, that would be what I would tell my early 20s self is maybe that righteous anger. Maybe that anger really is righteous, but do not let that anger lead you to a place of hurting people or dehumanizing people or burning everything down, because I think it's much more important to build something beautiful and helpful and let that naturally critique all the all the stuff that's wrong. But if all we do is worry about tearing things down and critiquing What's wrong, then I think we end up just looking for something else to critique and yell about and deconstruct and demolish and all of that. If there's nothing on the other side of it,
Joshua Johnson:I'll take that for myself as well. So well done. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could
Zach Lambert:recommend. I'm reading Richard rohr's new book right now, called the tears of things. I think this is like, you know, this is blasphemy in most of my circles. I'm not like, you know, Die Hard Richard Rohr guy. Like, I like, I like his stuff, but I'm not, like, hey, every new book that comes out, like, I just gotta, I gotta put everything down until I read it. But it's basically an engagement with the prophetic people in Scripture. And, oh, I've just found it to be so, so good and helpful, especially for this moment. And it's a little bit of what I just talked about, not allowing your prophetic witness to lead you to a place of hurting other people, but actually allowing yourself to move through he calls it order disorder, and then reorder. You can't stay in disorder forever. You know you have to move into a reordering of things. And we see that from the Hebrew prophets, and it's a model for us, too. So that's been something that's great. We just finished a new season of the bear, which is fantastic. It's not religious at all, although it's kind of a religious experience sometimes. But yeah, the dynamics between the characters and the relationships and the family dynamics and the co worker dynamics are just so beautifully done. It's such a beautiful human story. So, yeah, those are the two things that come to
Joshua Johnson:mind. Excellent. That's great. Well, better ways to read. The Bible is available anywhere books are sold, you go and get it, buy it for your friends and pass it out. Maybe just buy boxes of them. Yeah, it's a fantastic book. So Zach, this is great. Is there anywhere you'd like to point people to, anywhere they could connect with you?
Zach Lambert:Yeah, thank you so much for saying that. I hope that the book is truly helpful. If you want to connect with me in online spaces, I am really active on substack. I started that about six or eight months ago, and I write all the time long form stuff on there. And then I'm also on every social, Twitter and Instagram and those kinds of places too. But yeah, I'm on substack. Zach W Lambert at public doing public theology, or in any social media places. Zach W Lambert as well.
Joshua Johnson:Excellent. Well. Zach, thank you for this conversation. It was fantastic. Thank you for diving deep into the lenses that we use to read the Bible, the lenses that have been harmful as we have been growing up with them, and some helpful, healthy lenses that could reorient our way to engage with the Bible, that we engage with Jesus as the person of Jesus, the ways of Jesus, the words of Jesus. And if we could embody that, this world would be a beautiful place. And so let's embody the ways of Jesus. Let's live like Jesus and help the world look more like the way Jesus wants the world to look. And what is really real, which is the kingdom of God, which is the ways of Jesus, as Jesus is King, so thank you. Well said. Thanks for having me on. I appreciate. Yeah, you.
