Across the Counter
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Across the Counter
The New Evangelicals | Tim Whitaker | Episode 57
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Exploring Deconstruction and Hell Views
Speaker 1Pull up a chair across the counter. Your one-stop shop for a variety of perspectives around Jesus and Christianity. I'm Grant Lockridge and I'm here with Tim Whitaker. Tim is the host of the New Evangelicals podcast and, Tim, I've been looking at your Instagram and all the stuff and I'm just curious about where you've landed, specifically on the topic of hell.
Speaker 2Wow, we're just hopping right into it. No, hello, no. How's your life, man?
Speaker 1No, no, how's your life, man? Wow, we'll go with that.
Speaker 2We'll go with that. I feel so attacked and then we'll hit hell later. Is this what persecution is like? Is persecution, just you know it? What persecution?
Speaker 1is like Is persecution? Just, you know, it's not the old evangelicals, it's the new evangelicals right now, through that, I have no, yeah, I mean, we can start with hell for real, though.
Speaker 2Should we just go for it?
Speaker 1Well, you said you had a hard stop, so I figured let's get to the meat of it, because that's what I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 2So what do you want to know, though?
Speaker 1Like what is it about what I've been saying recently that has sparked your interest? I'm curious what has sparked my interest? Because I've been um as a christian. I've noticed that I haven't really looked in to that topic at all, which seems stupid. But like you know what I mean, like you, just you hear, you hear people talk about it and you're like there's heaven and there's hell, and hell for eternity. And you know it's eternity of suffering, it's the worst thing you could ever imagine, ever and forever. And that's that's hard stop. And if you're a Christian, that's what you believe.
Speaker 2So yeah, yeah, that's what I've been taught.
Speaker 2Well, I mean same. Yeah, that's what I've been taught. Well, I mean same same. I mean I prayed a prayer many a times because I did not want to be eternally and consciously tormented forever, and praying to Jesus was my way out of that. Well, yeah, it's interesting. Obviously I'm someone who would say I've quote, unquote, deconstructed, but my view of hell didn't. That wasn't like a recent thought, meaning like it wasn't like I started. Tne discovered deconstruction was like oh my gosh, I'm going to rethink hell. I've been learning different perspectives about hell from even evangelical people for years.
Speaker 2Nt Wright, who's a pretty well-accepted scholar in the world of evangelicalism. His take on heaven and hell is phenomenal. He argues that it's not really about heaven when you die, it's about the new earth, it's about life after life, after death. That's what he says. So I think for a long time I've been rethinking this. Heaven is where the streets of gold are and where you have your mansion, and hell is where you're essentially on fire forever. So I think for a long time I thought, well, is that the narrative A of scripture and B? Are there other ways to think about these things? Right, et cetera. So anyway, yeah, so I have landed. Well, there's different ways to parse this.
Speaker 2I believe that a more clear narrative, at least in the New Testament and Old Testament, is probably the perspective of what's known as annihilationism. However, even then we can say well, is that true Meaning when we die? Is that what happens to us Now? Obviously I hold the Bible in some way or shape or form as authoritative. I can't prove this is what's going to happen, but if I had to guess, if I had a belief in the afterlife, I would probably hold to a view of annihilationism which essentially argues that those outside of Christ just eventually cease to exist. They will just not be conscious, they just stop existing, and those inside of Christ will go on to live eternally in the new heaven and new earth, essentially when God's space overlaps with our space and is reconciled. That's what I would hold now, and then second I would hold, like my second level would be universal reconciliation, and then my third perspective would be ECT eternal conscious torment.
Speaker 1At this point, there you go Just for our listeners. There you go, just for our listeners, because you say that you are a deconstructionist. But I think that that means a lot of things to a lot of different people. As far as you know, most the to me, when I hear deconstructionist, I think of someone who's left the faith, uh-huh, of someone who's left the faith, which is not, you know. I don't think that's the real definition of it. I've just been, you know, pretty much taught that like deconstruction means like hey, this Jesus thing's some nonsense. But I know that, you know, the deconstruction of ideas is basically, you know, bringing them down to the root of the idea and then hopefully, rebuilding off of that. So would you say, you're more into that camp.
Speaker 2Yeah, this is a very important question because, depending on who you listen to, you're going to get different perspectives. Here's what I would tell people. I guess we all think this, but I'm going to argue that what I'm going to say best reflects the reality of what's happening. Deconstruction is an explosion. People are going in very different directions. It's not a movement. There's no official networking of leaders, there's no statements of faith, there's no grand plan to destroy the church. That's not what's happening here. It is an explosion in the sense of a lot of us have common pain points and then from there we go in different ways.
Speaker 2Some people stay in the Christian tradition and explore beyond evangelical fundamentalism. Some people leave the house completely and say I want to deconvert, I want to either not believe anything religious or find a different religion entirely. They are both valid ways of quote unquote, deconstructing for how we think about it in our common cultural moment. I definitely, and the organization the New Evangelicals. We are firmly committed to the way of Jesus as best as we know how at any given time. So deconstruction simply means to be renegotiating or rethinking our faith in a way that, hopefully, is more congruent with the teachings of Jesus, that promotes the human flourishing of all of our neighbors.
Speaker 2Maybe one way to think about it is people who work with us oftentimes did not have a crisis of faith. They had a crisis of theology. Massive difference. I had a crisis of theology. It wasn't. Does God exist or even is Jesus God? No, I never really doubted that. For me as a belief, it was well, what do I believe about this Jesus and this God, and how does this deity move through the world and what does this deity advocate for? It was more of that than it was if God exists or not.
Speaker 1Yeah, well, there's the hell thing now. How are you doing what you've been up to recently?
Speaker 2oh, as far as like me personally yeah oh you know, just bringing marxism to the world and destroying everything that's.
Speaker 1That's religious dude karl marx is the best. No, I'm just kidding. Who's the best?
Speaker 2I will tell you it's funny. I've been reading I'm reading a book right now by a conservative white evangelical guy. Uh, who, who, who studied critic who? Well, he studied critical theory and critical race theory, like professionally, and I'm I the book overall I've been really enjoying, and he concedes that, um, tools like critical theory and even marxism are really good at diagnosing a lot of the problems that we're seeing today. Now, their solutions might not be great, they might not have good answers, but they're really good tools to diagnose the problem. So I thought that was funny because I've been learning like, yeah, this actually is helping me see the world differently.
Speaker 2What have I been up to? I mean, we're a nonprofit so I've been busy doing T&E stuff. There's a lot of stuff that we're working on trying to expand her content and trying to advocate for accountability in spaces and thinking about how do we do more content more consistently, how do we fundraise to pay for it. It's a pretty all-encompassing world. Man. A lot of my day is trying to wear several hats, from funding to board member, to content creator, to networker. We're writing a book, so there's just a lot going on. And then on the weekends I play music professionally, so I'm playing gigs usually Friday, saturday and sometimes even Sunday, so it's a pretty busy life, you're writing a book.
Speaker 1That's cool.
Speaker 2Yeah, yeah, it's coming out through Erdman's. It should be out sometime next year. But, yeah, we got contracted to do a book that hopefully tells a bit of my story but also the story of TNE and kind of what we're hoping for to happen as far as thinking about church and Christianity and hopefully some better ways than whatever we were given as evangelical fundamentalists. So I'm excited for it. Yeah, that's cool. Are you personally writing it or is it kind of a team percentage, so that way a lot of the bulk of it's going to fund the organization and not just like promoting me as an individual. Because I think sometimes in church culture we have like this mega church problem where someone gets really big, then they start writing their own books and they start kind of having their own brand separate from the church, and I didn't want to have that same kind of thing happen to me, where now I'm building the brand of Tim Whitaker and not TNE To me. I'm symbiotic, I'm totally intertwined with the organization.
Speaker 1Yeah, Well, that's good One that you know that, Because me and my wife were talking about this yesterday. We were like, if you could be famous, would you want to be? And both of our answers were no. As far as far as like a household name like we were talking about Miley Cyrus, which is just you know whatever, but like just somebody that's a household name that you know. You go on the street and people recognize you all the time and all that stuff Would you want to be that, Right? And? And you thought about, we thought about it, and it was like you know the network aspect, like being able to talk to whoever, whoever you wanted to, basically would be cool, yeah, but all in all, like that doesn't sound that fun. Yeah, I mean, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2I have thought about. I mean, I'm no Miley Cyrus, nor will I ever be or want to be, but for people like that, whose face is so recognizable wherever they go, it's got to get exhausting just always being on, because people build up this certain perception of you and certain kind of grumpy that day which is a perfectly normal human emotion and paparazzi were in your face the whole way here, and then some fans like can you sign my shirt? And you're just. You're just like no, I can't do that. You walk away and that's recorded and goes viral. That one clip of you being grumpy for one second is the new. Oh, this person's a jerk. They don't appreciate their fans. It's like no, they just had a bad day, like. We all have bad days, right. So I'm with you. I don't think I would want to have that level of scrutiny, where everything I'm doing is being examined and posted online, judged by a billion people at any given time.
Speaker 1That's why we're podcast house. That's why Because you can't see us very good.
Speaker 2And that's why we talk about faith and theology, things that will never become incredibly mainstream.
Speaker 1I'm trying to do a little unity action, which is just never going to be popular.
Speaker 2Yeah, no, definitely not.
Speaker 1Let's all come together and sing kumbaya.
Speaker 2Yeah, good luck. Good luck, bro, I'm out.
Speaker 1Donald Trump is my savior. No, I'm just kidding. I knew that that would get you, because that's you got me you got that's your whole thing, uh not your whole. Thing but that's, you know, one of the reasons.
Speaker 2It's a fashion point. It's a fashion point there's no doubt.
Speaker 1I mean and that's valid on both sides a lot of people you know left their current faith traditions based off of that. Oh yeah, the whole donald trump white evangelical situation. So a hundred percent.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean, I'm trump, just on. On, he unveiled some deeper things that I don't think a lot of us saw and then when he unveiled it, it was like oh no, I'm out, like no, thank you, I, I this is not what I signed up for, you know. So definitely a polarizing figure, to put it as politely as I possibly can think of so you're not gonna buy the trump bible I debated it. You know I actually I used tne money so I bought three of them.
Speaker 1I figure it's not my money, you know yeah, you're just a part of it, you're not.
Speaker 2You're not the main guy, it's fine exactly so you can spend it on whatever I have no accountability, I just swipe, swipe, swipe, you know yeah no, that's, that's.
Speaker 1That's something, man, just the whole, and I do get that of leaving. I don't even know so when you say white evangelical christianity yeah what specifically are you referring to?
Understanding Evangelicalism and Voting Patterns
Speaker 2oh boy. Well, I mean this is. I mean you could do a three-hour podcast on this. The term evangelical is incredibly slippery. You can ask any scholar who studies this stuff. You can ask is Isaac Sharp, you can ask Christian Dumais. It's hard to define because you can define it sociologically, theologically, culturally, historically. It's a very influx term. There are things like the Bebbington quadrilateral that will kind of give some theological core values to what makes an evangelical an evangelical.
Speaker 1Wait, what the heck is that?
Speaker 2oh, the bebington quadrilateral, yeah, um essentially the word that is bebington, it's named after a man.
Speaker 2I'm gonna just make sure I'm not, um, not making sense, but yeah, the bebington quadrilateral, it's essentially four points of evangelicalism. So it says that, okay, these are the four things that make up an evangelical theologically, but biblicism, emphasis on the authority of scripture, crucicentrism, centrality of the atonement, conversionism and activism in evangelicalism on issues of social justice. So they kind of merge those two together. Um, so essentially it's those. Yeah, it's a lot of isms and they're very broad, right, because I would probably agree with a lot of these, but me and I don't know Elisa Childers would have very, very different outworkings of the same four statements, right. So you could think about it like that.
Speaker 2So when I, when we're talking about white evangelicals, it's literally a voting demographic as well. I mean, we measure religious groups all the time. Pew Research has black evangelicals, black Protestants, white evangelicals, white Protestants, catholics, white Catholics. So what has happened is, with the rise of the moral majority in the 70s and 80s this is Jerry Falwell kind of inventing this new category where he took evangelicals that were not really super into politics. They weren't really a big, I mean, they voted, but they voted usually Democrat or Democratic, not for Republicans, and they weren't like organized around central issues.
Speaker 2So Jimmy Carter was an evangelical who got elected by evangelicals. Jerry Falla flips that and really gets white evangelicals to become this massive voting block that, ever since the election of Reagan, have completely switched. Gets white evangelicals to become this massive voting block that, ever since the election of Reagan, have completely switched how most evangelicals vote today who are white, which is they usually go conservative or for the Republican. So I mean the data behind this would be in 2016, I think it was 70% of white evangelicals voted for Trump and in 2020, it was like 80%. It actually rose. So white evangelicals historically have always and in 2020, it was like 80 it actually rose.
Speaker 2So white evangelicals historically have always been in the mode of if it's a republican, you vote for him it's uh.
Speaker 1It went from 70 in 2016 to 80 in 2020 yeah, it jumped.
Speaker 2It jumped definitely between five and ten percentage points.
Speaker 1Yeah okay, yeah, which was more discouraging to me.
Speaker 2Yeah, you guys had four years of this man dehumanizing and lying about everything and you went up in support. Yikes, you know. So that's just me, all right.
Speaker 1Well, feel free to not answer this question and we can cut this, but I got to know who you're voting for then.
Speaker 2I'm definitely not voting for. Well, hold on, let me back up, I'm speaking.
Speaker 1Are you voting for Trump? It feels like no, no, no.
Speaker 2I just want to be clear, because we're a nonprofit, this is not an endorsement, regarding the organization of TNE, of who you should or should not vote for. This is Tim Whitaker, speaking personally for my own thoughts that are not related to TNE. At this moment, I want to save democracy, so Biden becomes a very potential choice. However, I've been very disappointed in how he's still funding the nation state of Israel with billions of dollars of weapons that are killing tens of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza, so I have a lot of hangups with how he's handling that situation. The other side of it, I think well, trump and Biden would both be terrible on Gaza, and I think one wants to light our democracy on fire, and one we can at least survive the next four years as a democracy and hopefully get an actual presidential figure in the White House. In the fall.
Speaker 2I mean I miss Mitt Romney, bro. I'm like can we, can we get Mitt Romney back? Like I would be in here, man, yeah, I'm just saying like you think about who it was before Trump, mccain, romney, even Bush. I mean you know you can critique him for being a warmonger, and there's plenty of critique there, but like I dare I say I almost miss those guys. I miss Mitt Romney for sure.
Speaker 2Mitt Romney saw that the election was installed. He couldn't certify. He certified it right and now he's seen as like a pariah. He's seen as a rhino Republican in name only. So it's just so sad to see how far things have drifted, where some people really think that Joe Biden, who is still funding the mass slaughter of Palestinians with billions of of dollars of aid, is somehow a far left like radical. That's not far left radical, I promise, like. I promise you, that is not a far left radical position at all. Uh. So it's just very interesting to to see that. But yeah, I'll probably vote for either biden or a third party. I'm just undecided based on on on what's happening overseas right now rfk?
Speaker 1baby, no, I'm just kidding. He's got a brand.
Speaker 2You can, oh boy it's just, it's shocking to see, like, what our options are. I mean, and they're like okay, think about it like this right, I watched all the. I watched the gop primaries. Chris christie, I he's, that's my former governor he left in disgrace for some Nonsense scandals. Nothing that was like sexual, it was just like it was politics stuff.
Speaker 2But that man is on the GOP Presidential debate you know Conversation saying, hey, I think that parents should be able to manage their trans Kids health care. I think that the government should stay out of how they manage their health care with their primary doctor I'm you, chris Christie. This is a perfectly reasonable, insane position. And he was one of the first people to go. And he also said that the election was not stolen and that Trump's a liar. So there were some GOP people who I was like man, I would actually really want to take some of their stuff seriously, but they were some of the first to go and instead it came down to, I think, what DeSantis, ramaswamy at one point, and Nikki Haley and Trump, and we all knew Trump was going to win.
Speaker 2So it's just frustrating because I don't want to sound hyper-partisan, but what do you guys give me to work with here the guy's on trial. Criminal trial for potentially paying out-of funds, hush money to silence a porn star that he slept with while he was married. You want me to be like as a Christian. That's my dude. Are you serious? Are you serious right now? What is wrong with you? Of course not.
Speaker 1Yeah.
Speaker 2Anyway, end of rant.
Speaker 1Well, to me it's just so interesting that it's clear, because I'm kind of more or less on a unity situation, right. Yeah, I'm just like trying to bring people together, hear ideas, not, you know, really argue with people. I'm just kind of trying to, you know, talk to different people, get different, different perspectives, so that we can all grow together. And I'll tell you what people just apparently are not interested in unity, which kind of blew my mind a little bit, not like necessarily for the podcast, because it's you, you know, going okay, but just like, as far as like actually getting people together, loving your neighbor, that sort of thing.
Navigating Christian Differences With Love
Speaker 1I'm just confused how people of at least the Christian faith and beyond aren't necessarily incredibly interested in that, like that not, at least, you know. And the reason I brought that up is just because democrats and republicans or whatever, two sides of anything wouldn't you think that there'd be like a ton of christians on both sides? If there are christians on both sides which there are but wouldn't you think, like most christians on both sides, which there are, but wouldn't you think most Christians on both sides would be like, hey, loving each other? Because I thought that, but maybe I'm just naive man.
Speaker 2Maybe I'm biased here. Let me just preface with what I'm going to say. It could be very much biased. I don't think it is. I think that I have data to back this up. You're definitely going to find Christians who are more progressive, who are going to be pretty hardline and like no, we can't even shake hands with people who would vote Republican. That definitely exists.
Speaker 2But, man, it just seems like the right flank of evangelicalism by and large is the one that is just so hardline, and not just even hardline, they're just brutally dehumanizing. I mean, are you following this whole Preston Sprinkle controversy happening right now between him and Elisa Childers? No, no. So I don't know how much your audience knows these names, but Elisa Childers is a fundamentalist Christian who has a pretty big podcast platform. She's totally went down the rabbit hole of like if you're gay and a Christian, you have to not say you're gay and essentially pray it away and like even the thought about you being attracted to someone of the same sex is inherently sinful. So she's taking like a very hard line position on this.
Speaker 2Preston Sprinkle is someone who has said I would take a bullet for historic marriage. He's not affirming, but his approach is much more like hey, I accept that there are side B Christians which are people who are gay, who are celibate, but they would still say, hey, I'm a gay Christian, I just choose to be celibate. So Preston would be like hey, I believe that that could be a thing and we should show hospitality I affirm using someone's pronouns just to be kind to them, et cetera. And people like Elisa are like I'm not kidding you, they're like Preston Sprinkles a heretic, he's preaching a false gospel just because he's too kind to them, because he's too hospitable to them.
Speaker 2And so it's like I just see these moves in these spaces of people drifting to this right where, like, it's not even about hey, we hold a difference here. It's about no, if you're even kind to these people, if you even think about, if I smell one whiff of you being potentially liberal, meaning hey, god says to welcome the immigrant, oh my God, you want open borders. That's what I see, that all day in these spaces. So I think, like I mean, I go to these events, I shake hands with these people, I'm going to talk to them and try and reason. In my experience, a lot of them don't feel like I don't feel like it's reciprocated nearly as much personally yeah, that's just my take.
Speaker 1I could be biased here well, I mean, that's also your personal experience, so you're not saying everyone everywhere, you're just saying in my personal experience, which is totally, yeah, that's valid every time. I mean, if you're like hey, my personal experience is this, then right, yeah, absolutely I just don't know how we overcome some of these massive differences.
Speaker 2Right, if I'm saying queer people have a right to exist in the country and are loved by god and it's not inherently sinful for them to be queer, and someone's like, no, sorry, um, I don't think that we should affirm a marriage. You know gay marriage in America and I don't think I think that if you hold this view, you're not a true Christian. It's like well, well, I think that you're a Christian, even though we disagree, and they're like no, but you're not a real Christian. It's like well, how can I move forward with you If you think I'm a heretic over this issue, if you think that you can't break bread with me because I'm affirming the dignity and humanity of queer people and saying they have a right to exist and to love who they want to love, and you're like, sorry, bridge, too far, heretic, all right, like, what do I do with that? Besides say okay, okay.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, I guess the question there would be how much do you have to believe like a person to be in the same community as them, right, like, does it have to be infant baptism? Like, if we're all on infant baptism, we can make a little community over here. And then anybody that's like, hey, I'd like a believer's baptism. It's like, hey, go to the Baptist thing. Or is it just? You know, we all are trying our best to follow Jesus and we all believe differently and that's kind of okay. Like, what do you think about that?
Speaker 2Well, I think for fundamentalism like it's an impossible thing to do, because fundamentalism of any kind insists that they have the boundaries on what's acceptable. So the second you're one degree away from the fundamentalist. You're just no longer in the true faith. This can happen in Catholic spaces, this can happen in Protestant spaces.
Speaker 2It's not just an evangelical problem, but I think that a lot of us are coming out of what really is a fundamentalist evangelical view where if you think that the Bible is not inerrant in the modernist sense, you're not a true Christian. I mean, ken Ham, who runs a Young Earth Creations quote unquote science center, has said if you don't hold to Young Earth Creationism, you don't really believe the true gospel. So a lot of these folks just draw these boundaries where you're like again, I don't think that you're not a true Christian, ken Ham, for having this view, but you think I'm not a true Christian, so I'm willing to work and reason with you, but it seems like you're not willing to work and reason with me. So it is what it is. It's out of my control ultimately.
Speaker 1Yeah, I guess. So what's the best way to you to love people that are way different than you in the, in the Christian tradition, but also, you know, just really anybody like? How do you, how do you love these people if they're just like absolutely toasting you all the time?
Speaker 2Yeah Well, I mean this is, you know, people always ask, especially folks who, um, um, who, who think I'm not a true Christian, they go. You're just, you just want to go along with your feelings, you just want to do whatever feels good. And so one time someone asked me so, tim, what Christian belief do you hold, or what biblical belief do you hold that you're uncomfortable holding? Trying to challenge me, I said easy enemy love. I don't want to love my enemies, Do you? I don't, I don't want to treat you like an equal.
Speaker 2Sometimes, sometimes I don't like Trump. I wanted to humanize him. So I think that for me, it comes down to having this posture of a posture of openness, like, hey, I'm willing to talk to you, I want to talk, and hoping that through that posture we can have a conversation. If they keep roasting me, it just is what it is. You know, like I mean, I can't control. Control that it doesn't bother me, but I I do my best not to repay evil for evil, meaning it's one thing.
Speaker 2To critique ideas, I get it. We all have different theologies. The bible is complicated, the christian tradition is massive. We're gonna have views that were like no, I don't like this view that you have. That's legit and valid. But once you start calling people, you know piles of garbage and that they're just terrible and they're evil and they're whatever, it is For me that, or we start making fun of what they look like To me. That's where I always draw the line. So I've had people make characters of me and post them online, trying to mock what I look like or my eyebrows or something, and it doesn't bother me at all. But I just have a policy of not doing that to them Because I think once you do that, it continues the cycle of chaos that we're trying so desperately to stop.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, that's definitely fair. So you obviously I knew this from the last interview, but you would say that you are a Christian, which is yes, and so who would you say, or who do you say Jesus is?
Speaker 2Jesus is God incarnate.
Speaker 1Okay, so you're God incarnate son of God.
Speaker 2Yeah, in that situation, oh yeah, I have no problem telling people bluntly I affirm Orthodox Christian beliefs the Trinity, the virgin birth, the Apostles' Creed Absolutely. But I also and I think this is the difference and this is why people get worried, especially ones who are more conservative I'm also willing to acknowledge that those beliefs came from somewhere and that they might not actually be historically true, meaning I can't prove to you that Jesus was born of a virgin. I can't prove that I hold it as a belief. But I also understand that it's a pretty tall order to claim it's a miraculous thing, right? So I have no problem when someone says hey, tim, I'm a Christian.
Speaker 2I did a lot of research on this word virgin, like the gospels and also Mark who wrote the earliest gospel, never mentions the virgin birth. I'm not so convinced this happened. What I don't do is go oh, how could you be a Christian? It's like well, no, I understand how you can get there. I would affirm it differently. But I also understand what you're saying, because if we use logical faculties and reason and we do study some of these words, we start seeing how you know Matthew and Luke. They're kind of like riffing off of other things happening. And it could have been could be more metaphor, that's all. It's a plausible scenario, even though I would still affirm that Jesus was Jesus was born of a virgin right. So I give more leeway to other folks who would see it differently, and for some people that's just a bridge too far.
Speaker 1Yeah. So people have told you like, hey, you're not a Christian because you're willing to think about those things.
Speaker 2Yeah, I mean totally, I've been called not a Christian, over my belief, of course, over queer inclusion, because I don't think that the Bible is inerrant, or because I've said that I've had friends who would say things like that. And I'm like, yeah, I get it, you know, and I would not not call them a Christian because of that. And then we go, we'll see, that's what I'm talking about, that's not orthodox, okay, like I'm. You know, you're always someone's heretic, right, everyone is someone's heretic. So what are you going to do, like the Christian? Well, humankind, but Christianity has been fighting over who's a heretic, who's in, who's out, since the beginning. You know, we used to burn people at the stake. Now we just rage tweet them. That's an upgrade to me.
Speaker 1I'd rather be rage tweeted at than be burned at the stake. So you don't believe the Bible is inerrant? Yeah, what does that mean?
Speaker 2Well, I'm thinking about the Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy, where, essentially, they affirm that the Bible makes accurate scientific, historical and moral truth claims in all the stories it tells. So essentially, it's like a literal way of reading Genesis 1 and 2, things like that, and I just disagree. I don't think that's what's happening at all. When Jesus says, even to the ends of the earth, I think he really believes that the earth is flat, which would make sense, because how would he know? It's not. We just discovered that. That's a new discovery in the terms of human history, right? So I don't think that the Bible is a science book. I don't think that it's always telling, accurate. What Tim Mackey might call is like camcorder footage of history, and I think that archaeological data shows that, like the story of Jericho, the Battle of Jericho probably didn't happen the way it was described. The Exodus story probably didn't happen the way it was described. That doesn't negate the truth of those stories, though, and one of my examples is you know, think about Lord of the Rings, the movies or the books, whatever one you want to read. They're not factual accounts of history, but they are true in the story that they tell about the human condition. So the problem for the fundamentalists is that they have mapped on truth and fact in the Bible and merged it. So if it's not factual, it's therefore not truthful. Therefore, you can't trust it. Therefore it's not really God's word.
Speaker 2I think that factual piece is a very modern understanding of what we think about when we talk about history and biography. Biographers in the ancient world don't write biographies like how we do today. They don't tell history like how we do today. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John have four very different agendas when it comes to how they tell the story of Jesus. That's why they don't always line up and sometimes there's contradiction.
Speaker 2It doesn't mean that they're not true. It just means that they had different motives than trying to record all the exact wording or exact stories, the exact way that they happen. But for people like me, maybe for you or for folks listening, that can come across so unsettling because for so long we were told, if this didn't really happen, there's nothing to pin our faith to, and I just think that is too binary and it's not nuanced enough. If we're reading Genesis 1 or Exodus or Leviticus with the same voice that we're reading Matthew, Mark or John or Romans, we're missing it because they're not written by the same people. They have different agendas, different purposes, different times in history, different cultural contexts that shaped why those people wrote what they wrote. So it's just not fair to apply the same monolithic voice over all the texts.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, I would definitely agree with you on that, just as far as some books are written as poetry, some are written historically. So I do believe you know some things. You know completely accurate to me as far as the numbers they use and stuff like that.
Speaker 2Like, I would totally agree with that because, yeah, well, what I would say is I don't think that those inaccuracies are are are unintentional meaning. I don't think that like that, that, that, that, that, that I don't think that the author of Exodus counted and was like, okay, I got a million, and then it was like, whoops, actually it was 60,000.
Interpreting Biblical Texts With Context
Speaker 2I just think that way that numbers are used in the Hebrew language, the way that it's just a very different way of thinking about the world. It's just a very different understanding. So I think that's the problem. Sometimes, I see, between this ultra-progressive or ultra-right wing where it's like sometimes they both denigrate the text. One's like, oh, they're a bunch of made-up fables that mean nothing. And others are like no, this is the inerrant, imperfect and infallible word of God and we have to accept everything it says at face value and as literal as possible. And it's like well, maybe there's more going on here besides either of these paradigms, and maybe both of these are mapping on modernist understandings of a collection of texts whose authors had no such notions of a modernist worldview, right? So maybe if we think about, or maybe if we use the data that we have to understand the Bible on its own terms, maybe then we'll get some of the deeper truths that are hidden in the text.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I I think you're on this team too, but I am on very much the team that everything in it is true, if that makes sense. True in the sense of you know, leads to truth, kind of like. I don't think there's anything in the Bible that you're like if you understand it contextually and you understand it the way that it was meant to be read, which is a whole thing in and of itself right, but like if you do that to the best of your ability and you know, you look up resources and you figure it out and arrive at a place. I think that that is absolutely true. I don't think that that's going to lead you astray as far as, like you know, loving your enemies, kind of situation. Like I don't think that's bad advice?
Speaker 1I don't think that's the truth.
Speaker 2I don't know enough to say emphatically yes, that's correct. I I suspect that I think that for me, the Bible is wisdom literature in some parts, it is ancient biography in some parts, and so it's just very important for me to do my best to know when I'm reading Jonah what genre of literature am I reading here, what was the ancient understanding of this story and how its primary audience would receive it? Right, that helps me at least make sense of what's happening, and then from there I can negotiate how it might or might not apply to either me or my community or the world around us today. I think that kind of has to be the approach before we just start cherry picking verses, right?
Speaker 2I mean, one classic example is the verse in Jeremiah, for I know the plans I have for you, right, that we have taken and just made it this individualistic, like blessing, when in reality, in context, it's talking to a group of people and like that didn't happen, like the actual blessing didn't happen for years and years later, like it's just, it's not what you think, but it won't stop hobby lobby from putting in on everything to sell it, right? So I think we get into a lot of danger when we start doing that all over the place with the text just kind kind of oh this verse sounds nice, this verse sounds nice. The original, well, the manuscripts that we have the Greek and Hebrew do not have verses or chapters or even punctuation. Right, we add that in doing our best to figure out where these things would go. But the Bible doesn't have chapters and verses inherently, so it's not designed to be just cherry picked for our liking whenever it suits us.
Speaker 1It doesn't have punctuation in Greek Dang no quotation marks nothing. I learned something new today.
Speaker 2I learned that recently too. I was like, wait, really, I think it was Dr Jennifer Bird, she's a biblical scholar. She's like, yeah, like there's. You know, we don't. Whenever you see, like in Corinthians, a quote or something, that's our best guess based on data to some degree, but we're still guessing that Paul might be quoting a different letter that we don't have access to, or you know that just I think that's one example of how much work goes into translation to get us to our English version today.
Speaker 2Again, does that mean that it's wrong or that people are misleading us intentionally? Not at all, but there's still modern human hands in the translation process doing their best to fill in the gaps that we just don't have direct access to. We don't have the other conversation to the Corinthians. We think that there could even be a third letter or a second letter that really is 2 Corinthians, and now we call the third letter 2 Corinthians, but we don't know. It's kind of a hunch. So the more you read biblical criticism and historic criticism about the Bible, the more you see how scholars are. Hey, we're doing our best here, but the information to a degree can be very limiting.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm really excited. Have you seen the documentary 1946?
Speaker 2Oh yeah, I know, rocky, she's a good friend.
Speaker 1You do? Yeah, I'm interviewing her in a little bit Tell her, I said hello Will do Rocky's great. That's definitely something I want to talk to her about.
Speaker 2Did you watch the documentary?
Speaker 1Yeah, I thought it was pretty, first of all, just incredibly well made.
Speaker 2I totally agree. I went to the premiere in New York City. I was like what am I in for? I was like whoa Rocky. Like okay, you're a filmmaker, like you're doing the thing you know.
Speaker 1It was top tier, it was nice dude. I thought about making the documentary afterwards and then I was like that feels like a difficult situation. I looked into it and I was like how hard can it be with a couple cameras? And then I was like wait, I'm stupid.
Speaker 2I can use iMovie right.
Speaker 1But it was like you know, if I get a couple nice cameras, how hard can it be to record interviews and stuff. And I was like, oh, very hard.
Speaker 2Right. And then editing all of it for sure, very hard, right, yeah? And then editing all of it for sure, a hundred percent.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, so I'm excited about that. Any, any final thoughts? Anything you want to share with our audience?
Speaker 2No, I mean I'm not sure what your audience thinks about me or the work that we're doing. Hopefully I was compelling. But no, I appreciate them listening. If they want to know more, they can find us on any of our social media channels. Where they can DM me, I'm happy to talk.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, our audience is pretty much all over the place as far as because we're the one, you know, one stop shop, whatever for different perspectives. So we get, you know, non-christians, we get deconstructionists, a good bit of deconstructionists, and we get tons of white evangelical Christians we get, you know, it's very much a mixed bag as far as it's not just like one demographic, it's like massively more than the rest. So yeah.
Speaker 2But yeah, we're going to find out.
Speaker 1Well, thanks so much, Tim.
Speaker 2Go hang out with the fam I appreciate your time and thanks for having me back on happy 50th episode section thing dude.
Speaker 1Heck, yeah, man, congrats, bro, thanks. Thanks for listening to the across the counter podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars wherever you got this podcast. Thanks, y'all.