002. How to Read the Old Testament (and Still Have Faith) ft. Tremper Longman

What do we do with a God who commands violence, permits slavery, and seems to change his mind? Tremper Longman III — one of the most prolific and trusted Old Testament scholars of his generation — joins John for a conversation about the parts of Scripture that trouble us most, and why sitting with that trouble might be more formative than explaining it away. 

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About Tremper Longman III:

Tremper Longman III is Distinguished Scholar and Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies at Westmont College, and one of the most widely read Old Testament scholars in the evangelical world. He holds a PhD from Yale University and has written or edited more than 35 books — on Genesis, the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs, and the theology of God as warrior, among much else. He has served as a consultant on major Bible translation projects and scholarly initiatives including BioLogos, which explores the relationship between science and faith. 

What this conversation explores:

• Why the New Testament is nearly incomprehensible without the Old, and what we lose by skipping the first two-thirds of the story
• How genre shapes the way we read Genesis: what it means that it is history, and what it doesn't mean, and why Augustine and Origen were already asking these questions long before Darwin
• The five phases of God as divine warrior from the conquest narratives through the cross to the final judgment, and why that arc matters for how we hold the violence in Joshua
• What honest scholarship looks like when the text still troubles you: Tremper names what he cannot yet resolve about the commanded destruction of women and children, without flinching and without fixing it
• How the Psalms of lament (and Psalm 77 in particular)  gave Tremper language for his own seasons of grief, confusion, and anger toward God
• What the Old Testament actually says about Israel, chosenness, and the current conflict in the Middle East and why "Israel right or wrong" is a hermeneutical error

Resources Mentioned:

• Confronting Old Testament Controversies — Tremper Longman III
• Breaking the Idols of Your Heart — Dan Allender & Tremper Longman III
• Bold Love — Dan Allender & Tremper Longman III
• Cry of the Soul — Dan Allender & Tremper Longman III
• Is God a Moral Monster? — Paul Copan
• Jacob I Loved — Joel Kaminsky
• The Late Great Planet Earth — Hal Lindsey
• The Story of God Bible Commentary Series — Tremper Longman III & Scot McKnight
• Texts in Context: The Old Testament (forthcoming) — Tremper Longman III
• The Book of Job

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

How do I read the Old Testament so that I can know and love God better and have more faith rather than less?

SPEAKER_01 0:07

If we come away from the Bible with a picture of God that we feel totally comfortable with, it's more likely that we're creating that image of God.

SPEAKER_02 0:17

Yeah, God seems to be so severe where there's lots of violence.

SPEAKER_01 0:20

One of my responses might be to trouble people further.

SPEAKER_02 0:24

Is this mean there's aliens? And is that where they're coming into the Bible?

SPEAKER_01 0:28

When the Bible talks about gyfts, they're not talking about Jack the Beanstalk.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

Honestly, what troubles you that's not yet resolved?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

The whole language of kill every man, woman, and child, which you mentioned, and which is a divine order in it.

SPEAKER_02 0:43

And that just seems immoral and awful. What do we do with that?

SPEAKER_01 0:47

If you want to know the full story of God, you've got to read and get to know that story that then climaxes in the New Testament.

SPEAKER_02 0:58

How in the world, as a scholar of the Old Testament, should we be thinking now about Israel and its place in the world and its place in God's scheme of things?

SPEAKER_01 1:09

I don't think the Bible allows for the idea that Israel has carte blanche. I think that's really, really dangerous.

SPEAKER_02 1:19

What does it mean to be human? Why do we have the problems that we do? What is our purpose? Why do we exist? What does a good life consist of? I'm here today with a man that I could talk to for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, but we won't be able to go that long, but we'll do it again. Tremper Longman III, uh also known as Tilo, uh, is an Old Testament scholar. Uh we're having this conversation in Washington. Tremper, by the way, just thank you for coming on and doing this.

SPEAKER_01 1:56

Oh, my pleasure. It's great to see you, John, and talk to you.

SPEAKER_02 2:00

Wonderful to be with you. We're in Washington because I was at the Museum of the Bible last night. Um, Tremor, there are a few projects in the evangelical, in the best sense of that word, church world that you have not been involved with as a consultant, uh uh scholarly partner. And I just found out this morning one of those was the Museum of the Bible and their scripture and science exhibit.

SPEAKER_01 2:21

Yeah, right, right. Which was a temporary exhibit for a year, a couple of years ago, but now you can see it online if you go to their uh website, and it was a great experience. The museum is such a wonderful place.

SPEAKER_02 2:35

You were for many years uh on the faculty at Westmont College in Santa Barbara. Correct. Part of why I moved to Santa Barbara was to be close to you on the dock and hang out with Trepper, and then you moved 3,000 miles away. That stinks.

SPEAKER_01 2:46

Yeah, yeah, I know. It's uh well, we get back, as you know, to Santa Barbara two or three times a year. And uh, because we're still connected with Westmont College and had the great pleasure of teaching two of your children at Westmont. And uh yeah, so I love Westmont too.

SPEAKER_02 3:06

You are a prolific author. Uh, if you're looking for stuff to read, when when I would be preaching regularly, if I had a question about the Old Testament or needed a resource, you were always kind of my secret weapon. You were the first person I would go to. And you brought over today, um, uh, in case you're interested in a book, uh, this is a revision uh of something that you wrote years ago that has just come out. So I'm gonna put that up here. Do you have any idea how many books you've written?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

It's north of 35, but some of those are co-authored with uh oh, they don't count then. Yeah, yeah, I get halves.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

How about scholarly articles in journals?

SPEAKER_01 3:42

Uh, you know, I have written a whole bunch of them. Um, but earlier in my career, I decided to be honest, that uh uh there's royalties to be made in books. But um I'm glad after I established my scholarly reputation. I'm glad to be my articles and then did honesty about your greed. God sometimes uses that.

SPEAKER_02 4:05

He sometimes does. So so much to get into. Uh, but I think I'll start here. Um uh several of the books that you have written are about how to read the old testament, how to read Genesis, how to read Psalms, how to read Proverbs. And I was talking to a good friend of mine, uh went to seminar, so a very bright person, thoughtful Christian, uh, Westmont Grad. And he was telling me he's reading through the Bible this year, so he's starting to read through the Old Testament, and he said, It's just troubling. There's all these passages where God seems to be so severe, where there's lots of violence, where there's these odd uh cultural institutions that seem to be uh fine with God. And so he wanted to read it to grow spiritually and to deepen his faith. But I think a lot of people have this experience. There's just like these speed bumps that chip us up. So we'll get into some of the specifics more, but just broadly for anybody listening that wants to know how do I read the old testament so that I can know and love God better and have more faith rather than less. How do you how do you talk to people about how to approach it for that purpose?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot to say to that question, some of which we'll get into later. And one of my responses might be to trouble people further, to tell them that a lot of what troubles you in the old testament is found in the new testament as well. If you're talking about patriarchy, slavery, um, even divine violence. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:47

Um, so that's a big help for people then. Yeah, I know. That's very sorry. I'm very sorry about that. Yeah, so you must lead to something a little bit more helpful.

SPEAKER_01 5:56

Yeah. So, well, first of all, I would uh go to the easy answer, which is um Christians who have trouble with the old testament. Um, first of all, let's say that um the old the New Testament is virtually not understandable without the Old Testament.

SPEAKER_04 6:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 6:20

I sometimes talk about my father at this point. He used to take me to the movies back when I was growing up, and he'd take me to the movies, but he'd never check when the movie started. I don't know why he didn't do this, but we'd go to like a James Bond movie and there'd be 15 minutes left. Uh and I'd walk in there and I'd go, This is really exciting, but I don't know what in the world's going on, who these people are, or anything like that. And so the first thing I would say is if you want to know the full story of God, if you want to uh know about creation, sin, God's passionate pursuit of his human creatures to reconcile with them uh in many ways in the old testament. You've gotta read and get to know that story that then climaxes in the New Testament. Yeah. So, first of all, the Old Testament uh supplies that story.

SPEAKER_03 7:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 7:28

And then of course, uh I would move next to the Psalms and talk about how uh and many Christians who have trouble with the things that we're gonna talk about, um, even though the Psalms themselves have speed bumps in them, like the so-called curses of the Psalms. And uh we could talk about that later if you'd like to. But uh, but as Calvin said, it's hard to read the Psalms without recognizing that it's a mirror of our soul, you know, that it helps us understand what's going on in our hearts, but not just understand, but uh bring us to God.

SPEAKER_03 8:11

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:12

And uh and and we could go on and on. There's so much that first of all reveals who God is to us that brings us into the presence of God, that where we hear the voice of God in the Psalms and in the Old Testament story, the Old Testament as a whole, I would argue, and uh, you know, the wisdom literature.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

Um wisdom literature is well, oh yeah, right.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

Wisdom literature is typically referring to three main books, which is Proverbs, uh, which begins with a prologue that says uh its purpose is to make you wise. And wisdom is more than just navigating life. Um, but then there's Ecclesiastes and Job as well. And this book right here is available to you if you go online today. Yeah, yeah. I mean, plus, you know, speaking of that book and resources, my good friend Dan Alender, the psychologist, whom I'll probably reference a few times. We'll come back to Dan.

SPEAKER_02 9:18

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 9:18

Uh, we wrote a book on the book of Ecclesiastes called Breaking the Idols of Your Heart, How to Navigate the Temptations of Life, which takes that book and talks about how Ecclesiastes is an idol buster that if we try to make anything other than God the most important thing in our life, it's gonna be inadequate. So, I mean, uh, I went into the Old Testament years ago.

SPEAKER_02 9:46

I was gonna ask, yeah, what what prompted you to do that?

SPEAKER_01 9:48

Because you could have gone a lot of different directions with your probably could have, and there are a whole bunch of answers to that question. And since I've already talked about royalties, I won't say that uh everybody in everyone in the class ahead of me was going into New Testament. I didn't think there'd be a job in New Testament, but um but no, it had more to do with the fact that I myself struggled, and there are certainly things that I continue to struggle with in the Old Testament.

SPEAKER_02 10:18

Um it's actually just kind of helpful to know. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean and yet that doesn't cause your faith to erode, but there are questions that are still not answered.

SPEAKER_01 10:27

Absolutely, yeah, and it has to do with the new and old testament, yeah, but mostly the old testament, I will admit that. So I was intrigued by the old testament, um, wondering about the old testament, but also recognizing that um Christians struggle with understanding how the old testament relates to our faith.

SPEAKER_03 10:49

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 10:50

And um yeah, so and is that where the concept of story is the most helpful concept? That you just can't know the whole story without knowing that part of it.

SPEAKER_01 11:00

That's a very important concept that um so I'm editing a commentary series called the Story of God commentary series, um, which uh Scott McKnight is the editor of the New Testament, I'm doing the Old Testament as the general editor, and that's the whole thesis of it, which is where does this fit in to the story of God?

SPEAKER_02 11:23

So let's just go back to the beginning of the story, the those opening chapters of Genesis. Um huge questions for lots of folks, controversy around science and what does science teach us when Darwin came along? What did that mean for the faith? Um uh lots of people who feel like there is a kind of war between particularly Christianity, the account of Genesis, uh, and what science tells us. Yeah. So uh you've been very involved in those kind of discussions. You've been really involved with an outfit called Bio Logos, which is looking at both science and faith. Um, talk to us a little bit about not so much the science side of it, but your expertise would be Genesis.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 12:11

Why does it say seven days? Was it really seven days? There's a talking snake in there. What's the deal with the talking snake? Eve doesn't seem to be surprised when the snake talks. Yeah. Uh right. How how do we read those opening chapters of Genesis? And how does a thoughtful person think about the Bible and science?

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Yeah, yeah. So let me start by saying whenever you're interpreting the Bible, you got to ask what type of literature this is. Uh to use a technical term, what's the genre? Okay. Uh, because genre triggers reading strategy. In other words, say that one more time. Genre triggers reading strategy. Yes. And usually we do this unconsciously with modern literature. Matter of fact, often the genres on the first page, a novel. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 13:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

Or we know when we pick up a book and it starts talking about short creatures with furry feet that we're not to go out there and say, wait a minute, uh, they're not creatures like that. Now, I'm not saying that Genesis 1 to 11 is like that. As a matter of fact, I think the whole, is it history or is it myth is is totally wrong-minded. It is history. It is talking about God's work in the past.

SPEAKER_03 13:32

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:34

But there are a lot of signals that this is not a sort of literal history telling. You're right, not a science book textbook, not trying to inform the reader how God did it. Uh, it's saying he did it, but now how did he do it? Now, I what are some of those signals? The days are one of them. Uh, and this is not a modern insight. I could cite Augustine or Origen who said, of course these aren't 24-hour days. They aren't, Augustine said, solar days. Origen said, Who would be so foolish as to believe that these are, you know, regular days when there's not even a sun, moon, and stars until the fourth day, right?

SPEAKER_03 14:21

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

And so you have, and then people want to take it more literally, uh, will say, well, God could have used some other light source, switched it on and off in 24-hour period, which is true, but it says evening and morning. And so you to have an evening and morning, you gotta got a sun rising and setting. And so, so that's one obvious clue. Another one, just uh pick out one of many, is Genesis 2 7, when it says, uh, God picked up some dust and breathed on it, Bretton breathed on it, formed the first human being. Um, at the point we have to remember God doesn't have lungs, all right. Yes, and uh, and then and then secondly, it's interesting that in the ancient Near East we have creation accounts, and one of the creation accounts, well, two of them actually talk about how the gods take the clay of the ground and mix it with the blood of a demon god, and then one they all spit in it. So it seems to me that this figurative depiction of what God actually did, which is create human beings, is trying to communicate not how God did it, but something about who we are. You know, we are creaturely, we're from the dust, but we have this special relationship with God, and it's a dignified relationship with God, as in contrast, and we're innocent from the beginning. Sin enters in Genesis 3 as a result of human choice, not because of the way God created us. Whereas in the Babylonian and Canaanite version, it's the way uh God the gods made them.

SPEAKER_02 16:09

So let me let me stop you there for a second. When I was growing up, my picture of the Bible generally and Genesis in particular was God told people, here's how I did it. Yeah, right. So uh there was no particular context for it. Uh it was just a uh unique one-off book. So then when I found out, no, actually, in the ancient world, in that part of the world in the ancient Near East, there were other accounts of creation and they involved similar kinds of characters or pictures or metaphors or uh use of clay or so. Initially, that was quite troubling to me because I thought, no, no, no, I I thought it was just this one book. How did uh your own work discovering nope, there were other accounts of creation, they have some similarities, they have some differences with Genesis. How did that strike your own faith? Did it make it stronger? Was it troubling? How should we think about the fact that uh Genesis was like part of a bigger conversation?

SPEAKER_01 17:15

Yeah. Well, ultimately it strengthened my faith. Um, it was so long ago that I'm sure it unsettled me for a while. But uh, and and I don't want to say that the countergenesis is is uh interacting with the Babylonians as much as interacting with God's people who are attracted to Baal or Mardu.

SPEAKER_02 17:41

Oh, interesting.

SPEAKER_01 17:42

Uh and so there is this kind of uh evangelistic, I would say, um approach to uh to what we're reading in Genesis one and two.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

So Genesis one and two are not so much like we're interested in the science part of it. Right. How did it happen? The author there wasn't interested in that much more in saying, here is the true God, right? And here are ways that that God is different than the gods of Babylon or Baal or yes, absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

So that's the big difference, of course, is Marduk didn't create the first humans or the Marduk was one of those Babylonian god, yeah, sorry, and um and Baal didn't, um and but it's Yahweh who did it, and um and he relates to human cre so in in these ancient Near Eastern accounts too, the reason why they create human beings in the first place is because the lesser gods were digging the irrigation ditches and they went on strike, it's the first recorded strike, and uh and finally the head god Enlil said, Oh, okay, and then he created human beings to dig the irrigation ditches.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

So people were just made to be slaves for the gods, right?

SPEAKER_01 19:08

Right, right.

SPEAKER_02 19:09

Which then means that the gods kind of have needs. Yeah, they do have to be able to do that.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

Yeah, it's interesting in the flood story in the Gilgamesh at Bek, when the god Enlil causes the flood to happen, but another god tells his follower, who's the Babylonian Noah, to build a boat, and um that afterwards when this guy Utan Apishnum comes out of the ark, the first thing he does is offer a sacrifice, and it says all the gods gathered around like flies. It's like at a picnic where it literally says like flies. But um, yeah, so so but the bottom line is Genesis 1 to 11 is talking about things that God actually did, but it's not interested again in telling us how he did them, which to me uh allows for us to turn to God's other book, nature. Protestants often and Catholics do too, but use different terminology, the two books that God speaks to us through the word and through nature.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

The little book and the big book.

SPEAKER_01 20:27

Yep, yep. And so since the big book, well, by which I mean the Bible. Oh we're speaking of the universe, excuse me. Yeah, big in terms of its importance, but uh but since it doesn't address the question how did God create the first humans, this allows us, I think, to to ask, well, what can we learn from science? And um and um and and your comment about being troubled by evolution, it's interesting that in the immediate aftermath of Darwin, there wasn't the same level of problem. I mean, you have you have a scientist like Asa Gray from Harvard, who was a devout believer who was perfectly fine with evolution, but even more interestingly, B.B. Warfield, who was a longtime professor of systematic theology at Princeton Seminary when it was a conservative seminary, a champion of Orthodox Christianity. Right. He's known as the father of inerrancy, and uh and he wrote an article where he said, as long as you understand that God is using providential means in the evolutionary process as opposed to just kind of random chance, that's not a problem. Yeah. Because and this is what people often um miss is they Think that God needs to somehow miraculously do something for God to be involved. And when I encounter somebody like that, I tell them to read the book of Esther, and which is this, and we're in Purim season, uh, which is where uh God, well, first of all, God's never mentioned in the book of Esther, uh, but there is this um attempt to eradicate the Jews during the Persian period, during the reign of Xerxes, and this guy Haman uh hates the Jews, and so he takes an opportunity to convince Xerxes to choose a date to kill uh all the Jews. And without going into a lot of the details, if you read through it, you see all these ironic reversals and surprising developments that Esther just happens to get chosen as queen, and um, and we could go on and on, but in those ironic twists in the book of Esther, I think we see the providential hand of God. God is using human beings and um events in order to bring about the salvation, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:16

And so the analogy then would be God's able to do the same thing physically with the universe, he's able to use causal laws and dynamics that can be interpreted physically, right? But it's God that's at work behind them through things like natural selection.

SPEAKER_00 23:30

Yes, right. Yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 23:32

So, in a way, it seems like the more I can read Genesis through ancient eyes, yes, right, right. The better I'm actually able to look at the modern world through science.

SPEAKER_01 23:43

Yes, right, right. Um, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 23:48

Yeah. Um, for anybody who's struggling with that issue of science in the Bible, do you have any kind of practical advice for them? Here's what to do if your faith is troubled by it.

SPEAKER_01 23:58

Yeah, well, I would direct people to the Bio Logos website where you'll find a lot of helpful um comments by people like you. I believe you have some material on the bio, Tim Keller um and N.T. Wright. I have some things there um from a theological point of view. Um, I did write a book called Confronting Old Testament Controversies, where one of the four controversies is uh is this issue.

SPEAKER_02 24:28

Science issue. Okay, so let's go to another one.

SPEAKER_01 24:30

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:31

Uh and this one might be the most troubling. It probably is for me. Uh, if you read through, for example, the book of Joshua and the conquest of Canaan, what looks like just the destruction of whole peoples, uh, and not just soldiers fighting soldiers. I I I get it was you know a time when in the spring the kings went out to war, yeah. Um but also of women, yeah, and also of children, right? And it seems that God is commanding that, and that just seems uh immoral and awful. Yeah. Um, so what do we do with that? How do we think about that?

SPEAKER_01 25:09

Yeah. Um, well, first of all, this is one area where I continue to be troubled as well. Yeah. Uh sometimes that kind of trouble makes you try to explain it away somehow. And I have been unable to do that. Yeah. So, and you know, I've been studying this theme of God as a warrior since the early 80s, and even before it became the ethical issue it is today, it was interesting, and and rightly so, it should be an issue that we think through. But it took 9-11 for that to happen. Uh I since I had been working on the theme, uh, no one seemed all that interested in it until 9-11, when, except for you know, Mennonite scholars and others who were also writing on it and troubled by it. But um but when 9-11 happened and you heard people like Osama bin Laden sort of articulating uh uh similar kind of theology.

SPEAKER_02 26:21

Yes, our devotion to God means that we want to wipe out these people.

SPEAKER_00 26:26

Right, right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:27

So yeah, I I don't know that I had made that connection, but it makes sense that that event and that articulation would raise the issue in a much more troubled way.

SPEAKER_01 26:36

Right, right. I mean, before that, people sang Joshua fit the I grew up singing that's I fit the battle of Jericho and the walls came to add it. Yeah. Um so uh just a couple thoughts that you might want to follow up on. Uh the first is one of the reasons why I can't sort of explain away the old testament by saying things like, well, it's just the way God allowed them to understand him, and that he would um that people would come to understand him better. In other words, that it's just a part of their culture.

SPEAKER_02 27:19

So some folks would say it was kind of the best people could do thinking about God at that time. It was a violent thing, war was always there, right? So God has to accommodate that mindset and then eventually lead them away from it.

SPEAKER_01 27:31

Right.

SPEAKER_02 27:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:33

My difficulty with that is that um when you read the New Testament, here's one of the places where uh, and you read about Jesus coming again, um, and Jesus himself uses image like I'll be on a cloud. Now, the cloud people sometimes visualize a white fluffy cloud, right? That's because they're not reading it in its original context. This is storm god imagery. This is a dark cloud. Um, Baal was a storm god, and in the Canaanite literature, he's called the writer on the clouds. And if you'll notice in the Old Testament, when Yahweh is writing on a cloud, uh, it's always in a context of judgment, whether it's Isaiah 19, Naam 1, Psalm 68, um, and Daniel 7. And Daniel 7's the most relevant picture here, and I'll describe that in a little bit. Um, so so you have actually a very organic, coherent presentation of God's battle against evil. Okay. And sometimes just for uh purposes of teaching, I talk about the five phases of God's battle against evil, and they're not all consecutive. The first two are overlapping, but the first is referring to stories in the old testament where God fights Israel's flesh and blood enemies, and of course, the conquest is one of those, yep. Second, and the second one is God fights Israel, uh, you know. So here there are previews to this, but the Babylonian captivity of Jerusalem, and if you read Lamentations 2, the poet will say God came against us as an enemy. So in both those cases, it's God bringing judgment, whether it's against Israel's enemies or Israel's Israel itself.

SPEAKER_02 29:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

But then there's a third phase or a group of teachings that we see in the exilic and post-exilic prophets, whether it's Malachi, Zachariah, but I'll use Daniel as an example, example. So, and their message is God is coming as a warrior again. You're living an oppressive situation, but God's coming as a warrior again, and he's going to come and judge your enemies. Um, so hang in there. It looks like evil's in control, but no, God's in control and he'll have the final victory. So, Daniel 7, you'll remember, is this vision of the hybrid horrific beasts that rise up out of a chaotic sea um that represent evil human oppressive kingdoms. And then the ancient of days who represents God. And by the way, this is the clearest, in my opinion, sort of glimpse into Trinitarian teaching in the Old Testament. You have one like the Ancient of Days, who's clearly representing God, uh, who is open the books and is about to judge, and into his presence comes one like a son of man riding a cloud. Now, son of man always means human being in the Old Testament, but it's like a son of man riding a cloud, which only God does. Yeah. And then he goes out and destroys these beasts. So that's the message resonating through the period between the Old and New Testaments. And there's a lot of what we call sometimes call intertestamental books that talk about this. Then we come to the New Testament, right? And John the Baptist, what's his message? His message is one is coming after me. Yep, and that person will gather all the chaff and burn it with unquenchable fire, and he will um, you know, um chop out the rotten wood. Then Jesus comes, he's baptized, John gets put in jail, Jesus um starts his ministry, he heals the sick, he exercises demons, preaches the good news, and John the Baptist in jail sends up two messengers to him with a question Are you the one or should we expect another?

SPEAKER_03 32:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

And that question behind that question is where's the axe chopping, Jesus? Where's the chaff burning? And Jesus goes out and does more of the same. And he says, Tell John, you know, what you've seen. And so what's that message? That message is John, I am the expected warrior. But I'm intensifying and heightening the battle so it's directed toward the spiritual powers and authority. And those evil powers are not defeated by um by swords or spears. Matter of fact, they're not defeated by killing, they're defeated by dying.

SPEAKER_03 32:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 32:47

And this takes him to the cross. And so Paul uses uh language like uh Colossians 2, 13 to 15, where he's triumphed over the powers and authority, or Ephesians 4, 8, I think it is, where quoting a divine warrior hymn from the Old Testament, Psalm 68, in terms of the ascension, leaving captivity captive. But now the question is, was John the Baptist wrong? And the answer is no. Uh, he just didn't understand it. Jesus's coming was a two-part affair.

SPEAKER_03 33:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:22

So then Jesus talks about him coming on the cloud. He Revelation 19:11, and following, he's leading an army to judge um evil human beings and spiritual powers and authority. So, in a sense, um the battles of the old testament are kind of a preview of the final judgment. Now, one other comment about that though, is I think when it comes to the battle descriptions of the old testament, we need to recognize, and this is another um kind of uh result of reading it in its ancient context, that ancient battle reports are hyperbolically described. And that's true of ancient near Eastern, but it's also really clear in the Bible, too. If you read Joshua 1 through 12, at the end of it, you go, and they conquered everybody, they destroyed everybody, and then you turn to chapter 13 and you talk about the Canaanites are still here, there, and basically so that's kind of a genre issue, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:32

Yeah, battle accounts were were announced in that way, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Yeah, and so um, so but does that mean Israel never killed a woman or a child in battle? Since the answer to that is almost certainly no, it still raises the ethical issue, which I struggle with.

SPEAKER_02 34:52

So uh take just a moment, because I think it'd be good for people to hear from you. You're a scholar, you're a follower of Jesus. Without fixing it, without solving or answering the problem, name honestly what troubles you that's not yet resolved.

SPEAKER_01 35:09

Well, I mean, the whole language of kill every man, woman, and child, which you mentioned and which is a divine order in Deuteronomy 20. Yeah, which is um it isn't. I mean, I Paul Copen, uh, I don't know whether you know Paul, he's uh actually an apologist. He wrote a book, um, Is God a Moral Monster? Which is very good. I recommend it to people. Uh, but he talks about you know hyperbole as well, but he also talks about the fact that this isn't technically genocide in the ethnic sense.

SPEAKER_02 35:47

I have seen that and then argument, but again, yeah, but it is still problematic. Right now, you're not allowed to fix it or answer it. You're not gonna be able to do it. Yeah, I'm no, I'm naming it's I'm not anti-naming it. What troubles you with it?

SPEAKER_01 35:59

That it is any kind of genocide, whether it's religious or ethnic, yeah, that uh that certainly children and uh women are killed in this and non-military men, yeah, uh prisoners of war essentially, yeah, are being slaughtered. Um it's it's I you know if somebody has and there are other issues too that I don't have easy answers to or don't have any answers to. Yes. But I also think that if we come away from the Bible with a picture of God that we feel totally comfortable with, it's more likely that we're creating that image of God in our own with our own standards. Yeah. So um, so I don't know what to do with that, John. But thank you.

SPEAKER_02 36:59

No, I think it's helpful. And that doesn't mean that you don't think it makes sense to commit yourself to Jesus or to have faith in the God of the Bible. Uh-huh. It's possible to do that and have certain questions that remain difficult to unresolve. Absolutely. Absolutely. That's great. So I've moved to another uh uh part of the Old Testament that can be uh at least curious, odd, strange for folks. Uh in Genesis, it talks about these strange figures. Yeah. Uh the Nephilim and that the you know uh uh I forget what the language is, sons of heaven married the daughters of earth or something like that. Sons of God, daughters of man. There's all kinds of speculation about that. Yeah, and now that the online world is around, it'll even be thinking, oh, is this mean there's aliens, and is that where they're coming into the Bible? And yeah, so how do you understand stuff like that?

SPEAKER_01 37:55

Yeah. Uh so I will mention that I'm doing four books now called Navigating Tough Texts of the Old Testament, and then the first volume on the Torah is coming out in October, uh, where I deal with this.

SPEAKER_02 38:07

No kidding.

SPEAKER_01 38:08

Yeah, that's great. I have little, there are probably 60 tough texts in the Torah and wow that I have 500, 600-word essays on. And one of the things I point out is these are tough texts for a reason, you know, and I don't have a pat answer for them, but there are certain things that we can say about them and other things that we need to be very uh reserved about. That doesn't mean we might not say that this is a possibility. And while I'm talking about this, maybe I should throw in just so people don't freak out that there are not pad answers to every Bible question, that um that the Bible's really clear on what's important.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

Yes. Thank you.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

And yeah, and so we look at a text like Genesis 6, 1, and we don't have a clear pat answer, and we say, well, maybe nothing's clear in the Bible, yeah, which is definitely not the case. Yes.

SPEAKER_02 39:04

Um no, I think it's real important for folks to hear, and just for me to come back to uh that God is just and that God is fair, that Jesus has represented him and is the culmination of this story. Yes, so many elements of it are repeated over and over with a depth and a beauty that remains unrivaled in the history of the human race or human literature.

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Amen. Amen. But Genesis 6, one and follow is not it's not one of those.

SPEAKER_02 39:32

So so um so that's the story.

SPEAKER_01 39:33

But basically, the stories that the sons of God, the daughters of men get married, they have children that are called the Nephilim. Um uh they're uh the that are the heroes of old. Uh to be honest, I forget right, I don't think they're called giants in Genesis 6, but later there's a giant race and numbers uh that are giants in the land, yeah, yeah, right. And and by the way, when the Bible talks about giants, they're not talking about Jack the Beanstalk. They're talking, and um but um but yeah, so so what are we to make of this? The one thing that is clear is somebody's having sex with somebody that they shouldn't be having sex with, all right. That's been going on a long time. There's a transgression there, yeah. Yeah, but but what makes this particular coupling um an uh and there are a few possibilities, but I do think the most likely possibility since sons of God is typically used of angels in the old testament, and daughters of men are used of human beings, and that the offspring are so prodigious that that the so-called angelic interpretation, as opposed to these are descendants of Cain intermarrying with descendants of Shem, you know, you go back to Genesis 4 and 5, you have the two genealogies, and there are other possibilities too, but I think that's the most likely, and in particular, because that's the way uh Jews understood it around the time of Jesus, or at least many Jews, and the book First Enoch has a section that elaborates on this story, and I think it's also alluded to in the sixth verse of Jude, where it talks about angels that left their natural habitation in a context where Jude is making an argument against the false teachers who apparently are sleeping with their students. And and so um, so so I think Jude's probably understanding Genesis six in that way. Um, but um, but yeah, so I and and I go back to the point that I made earlier, but I'm not exactly sure where to go with this. Then Genesis 1 to 11 is a figurative depiction of history, it's it's not a literal depiction of history.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Yeah, so for example, on that, you were mentioning Cain. Yeah. Um uh there's Adam and Eve, and then there's Cain, and then Cain gets married.

SPEAKER_00 42:23

Yeah, right, right, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 42:25

Yeah, so either it's incest, which is pretty disgusting, right, or there's another backstory that uh the story of Genesis is not telling.

SPEAKER_01 42:35

Right, exactly. And so you so one of the things about Genesis 1 to 11, I think this relates to that, is that it's covering a really long period of time, and if it were a movie, it'd have the broad lens on, it's the whole world, and then comes to Abraham and boom, you know, it's kind of close up on this one guy starting at the age of 75 until his death is covered in you know more chapters than Genesis 1 to 11. So Genesis 1 to 11 is not interested in answering all our questions, though something like um uh like I sometimes get the question, you know, where did the dinosaurs fit in? It's kind of like you're taking it too literally, A and B, the Bible's not interested in that question. It's actually Genesis one to eleven's purpose is to provide the background for the call of Abraham.

SPEAKER_02 43:34

I I I'll talk with folks sometimes who kind of feel like, why doesn't why don't those chapters, Genesis one to eleven, explain things that is are scientifically congruent with what we now know to be the truth? Right. Not interested. I remember I think you and other folks A, not interested. B, the problem with it is if it was expressed in terms that would make sense scientifically in the year 2026, yeah. What about when the year 2026? 2300 rules of matters like uh uh humans' understanding of what science truth is is constantly changing. Exactly. So if it was pitched to any one moment in history, it would miss all the rest.

SPEAKER_01 44:10

Yeah. There's one school of thought that I have interacted with, uh, connected with you, Ross, and reasons to believe, which thinks that developments in modern science allow us to understand that these scientific truths are somehow embedded in the Bible. And I say again, no, that's why it's so important to remember that the Bible is addressing addressing their contemporaries. Yes, that no book of the Old Testament or New Testament was written for the future, it was written to an ancient audience that has enormous implications for us. So it was written for us, but not to us. And I like to say from a New Testament for us, not to us. Yeah, yeah. I have to attribute that to John Walton, my buddy, but otherwise he'll get mad at me. But uh um, but I follow that up often with they don't call the book of Romans Romans for nothing, right? It's like it's a letter written to them. Yes, that's why and and it's true of all the Old Testament books as well. So um, so it's really important to keep that in mind that Genesis 1 to 11 is interested in giving us a backstory to the call of Abraham, and actually the book of Genesis is the backstory to the really important story in the Torah, and that's the Exodus. So um the Exodus is the main story in the Torah. Uh yeah. Um, and Genesis is setting it up, yeah, setting it up, yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_02 45:58

I have uh in my office a set of the great books that I got from my parents, and uh they were put together, edited by Mortimer Adler. Oh, yeah, right. And he used to talk about what he called the great conversation. I always like that image, and the idea is that you we could think of there being a table and the people around it are addressing the great questions of human existence. Yes, yeah. Uh what does it mean to be human? Why do we have the problems that we do? What is our purpose? Why do we exist? What does a good life consist of? And the conversance, conversations come and go. Yeah, but the great conversation goes on. And that's where for me it was helpful when I learned actually the writings of Genesis were part of the great conversation. Right. And it's always been going on, and it was going on in the ancient Near East. Yeah, and there were a series of thoughts about it, gods and chaos monsters, and and so Genesis is using what John Walton called the cultural river. Yes, those constructs, those metaphors, those images, that language, but to make unique claims that there is one God, not a raft of gods, that he has no needs, that he is good, that he created all human beings in his image. Yeah. Uh so it was making very unique claims, but it was using the con the great conversation that was going on at that time to do it.

SPEAKER_01 47:20

Yeah, that's great. Thank you for that.

SPEAKER_02 47:22

Yeah, well, I thought I would check in with you guys. I'm gonna steal it from you, Matt. See if it's okay. Um, I'll come back to Israel for a minute because we've been talking about them some, and and taken into modern day, uh, right now, the Middle East, as always seems to be the case, is tragically in the news. What's happening in Gaza as we're talking right now, what's happening with Iran and Israel with that. Um, and folks wonder how we should think about Israel as Christians? Um uh when you and I were younger in the 70s, there was a book called The Late Great Planet Earth. Part of what it would say is uh when the state of Israel got uh reconvened in 1948, that was an answer to biblical prophecy, which means we are now in the end times. Yeah, there'll be a certain line of thinking that says um Israel is God's people, therefore we, whoever we are, must back them right or wrong. Um, forget about issues of justice, it's just they're gonna win, so we need to back them. Um, and that seems at odds with, you know, even Israel would get in trouble when they thought we're God's people, so we're gonna win no matter what, doesn't matter how we behave. Uh and then on the other hand, the Jewish people have been the victims of anti-Semitism century after century after century, often at the hands of followers of Jesus, yeah, and called Jesus killers and so. Uh so how in the world, as a scholar of the Old Testament, uh should we be thinking now about Israel and its place in the world and its place in God's scheme of things?

SPEAKER_01 49:06

Yeah, the great questions, but I have to start with late great planet Earth. Yes. Because uh, did I ever tell you how I became a Christian?

SPEAKER_02 49:14

Well, no, no, for people that have not heard, it was written in the 70s by a guy named Hal Lindsay, and uh I think this may be accurate. I think outside of the Bible, it might have been the most widely sold, widely bought, bought book in the in the 20th century. And it was all very much about end times and kind of this is how the Bible is being fulfilled in our days, in our day, right? Yeah, so it was in ways that did not turn out to be true.

SPEAKER_01 49:42

That's correct. And uh, but I I was so how where where does your story intersect with that? Well, because in high school, I was dating a girl uh who and I was playing football, wasn't particularly religious, um, and uh she gave me the late grade planet Earth, and I read the book, and I said, Well, let me put it this way I totally disagree with Hal Lindsay's interpretive approach, but he got one thing right, and that is God is coming again, and he he's gonna judge the wicked. And I knew I was on the wrong side of that divide, so no kidding. So that was really formative for you. Yeah, it was it was formative. There were precursors to that.

SPEAKER_02 50:30

Well, and it's really comforting to know I'm gonna be wrong about a ton of stuff, yeah, yeah, right, right. God can use uh me or you or our books if they're wrong about a bunch of stuff. But if we try to point people towards God and towards Jesus and towards the game, uh there's a tractor beam at work pulling them in.

SPEAKER_01 50:47

So my understanding reading the New Testament is that um and and I try to avoid what's called supersessionism with this, because I honor and respect which means basically the church Israel's done, yeah, and the church took over. Well, that the Jews are done. I mean, there's a difference between the Jews and the state of Israel, yes, yes, and um and but to get to your question, um I don't think the Bible uh allows for the idea that Israel has a divine right to the land. Now I'm gonna leave unanswered at this point, though I would be sympathetic to it, whether they have a political and moral right to the land. But the one thing I would go on to say is because of what I said first, including what I said second, that doesn't mean Israel has carte blanche in terms of Israel right or wrong, yeah, and that they should get unalloyed support from the Christian community. Matter of fact, I think that's really, really dangerous, particularly when there are so many fine evangelical Palestinians um that live in Gaza on the West Bank. And I I imagine you've been there. I've I've taught at Bethlehem Bible College and and I've also taught to Jewish Christians in Tel Aviv. Um but it's a very complex moral and political question that's not answered by the which which is informed by the Bible, but it's not answered by coming to the conclusion that Israel has some kind of divine right to the land.

SPEAKER_02 52:52

Yeah. So you would think that question needs to be resolved in by issues of kind of justice position.

SPEAKER_01 53:01

Yeah, absolutely. Okay, yeah. I mean, and which of course is informed by our understanding of the Bible on issues like justice and uh but um but I don't know, is is that answer your question at least in general?

SPEAKER_02 53:20

Or yeah, um, what about people who say the Bible says God's given the land from Dan to Beersheba to Israel, therefore that's what ought to happen.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

Um I think that was true in terms of the Old Testament, they never fully occupied it um in the Old Testament time period.

SPEAKER_02 53:38

I don't think it's a promise for perpetuous with the coming of Jesus, that part of the mission shifted and became global for all peoples.

SPEAKER_01 53:48

Yes, yes, yeah. And I I actually make that point against uh people who are American Christian nationalists, you know, the idea that a nation is somehow a godly nation, or in our case, a Christian nation, is um is a grave hermeneutical error because in the old testament God did choose a people through whom he wanted to reach all the people. You know, it was the choice of Israel was never uh never a sign of divine privilege, it was a sign of divine um responsibility and a call to serve.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

Say that one more time. The choice of Israel was not too divine privilege privilege or a special status.

SPEAKER_01 54:44

It was, well, if there was a status, it was a status to be a servant and outreach to the rest of the nation. And I'm basing that first of all on Genesis 12, one through three, where in the promises to Abraham is um God will bless him and his descendants, but through them, all the descendants of so God wasn't saying I like you better than them.

SPEAKER_02 55:09

He's not saying he was saying I love the world and I want to bless the world through you.

SPEAKER_01 55:13

Through you, and as it turns out, that through you uh entails suffering, yeah, you know. Um, and um yeah, so so uh there's a Jewish scholar, Joel Kaminsky, who I think has written well on this topic in a book entitled Jacob I Loved, where he talks about a biblical Old Testament Hebrew Bible understanding of the chosenness of Israel.

SPEAKER_02 55:43

Oh, that's wonderful. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and that that applies to us because it seems to me, just as Israel could make the mistake of thinking my chosenness is a matter of my privilege that I can presume on rather than no God wants me to serve and bless the world. Yeah, I can fall into it.

SPEAKER_00 56:01

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 56:03

Yeah, so let me turn it then. I want to get more personal for a moment. Uh, there's a book we and we mentioned the co-author's name Dan Allen.

SPEAKER_00 56:11

Oh, yeah, right.

SPEAKER_02 56:11

He's a psychologist. You guys write together some. You have to carry him. Your back's got to be getting sore because he pretty much contributes nothing. It's just all you. Dan's just kind of piggybacking off of your work. But uh, in particular, the book Bold Love, I want to talk about my wife Nancy, who you know well. Uh, I cannot tell you, you guys should pay her a royalty stream because she has given that book to so many people, and both of us have found it uh incredibly helpful and uh uh enlightening, challenging, sobering, convicting, good in terms of thinking much more clearly about love than we all tend to do. Yeah. Talk some about Bo Love, where that came from, your relationship with Dan if you want to. Oh, yeah. And what has that meant in your life? How has that impacted your own relational emotional?

SPEAKER_01 57:00

Yeah, I mean, tremendously. I mean, it so Dan and I became uh best friends in eighth grade, where we decided in Columbus, Ohio, where we decided that we would be best men in each other's weddings, which happened, and that the last one way before you Alice or eighth grade.

SPEAKER_02 57:24

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 57:24

So eighth grade. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 57:27

Um and uh so before you knew who your bride was gonna be, you knew who your best man was.

SPEAKER_01 57:31

It was just weird. I'm sure Alander was the one who brought it up. Of course. Well, and talk about previewing, he said, uh, and whoever dies last has to dance on the grave of the first person. Wow. This is before either of us are Christians, too. Yeah. So fortunately that wouldn't happen.

SPEAKER_02 57:51

It is a little weird. I maybe became a psychologist. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 57:54

Yeah. So you don't know the half of it. But but um, but then I became a Christian, you know, my senior year in high school. We also played football uh for the state championship team. Thank you. Yes, third in the nation, yeah. But glory days, but um so um but I played a little bit in for a small team, Ohio Western University. Dan went into illicit pharmaceutical sales, illicit pharmaceutical illicit, illicit. So he was selling weed and even LSD. Gotcha, gotcha. This was the 70s, early 70s. Pre-Christian days, pre-Christians, yeah, pre-Christian days. So yeah. So I mean, um, but we were roommates in college and um and and he eventually became a Christian, and a few months after that stopped selling illicit drugs. It's called sanctification, and um, and then we went off to seminary together. Um, I got married in college. He ended up getting married a few years later to a girl, Becky, who was in high school with us. And then um and we went to seminary and um I was approached by a pastor in um Florida asking if I'd want to intern at his church in Boca Raton. And I said, I'm going to Yale, I'm getting my doctorate. Uh, and then they got Dan to do it. I want to point out that he was second choice. But at this church, loser, he was working halftime with Dave Nicholas, the pastor in halftime with a guy named Larry Crab, whom I think you know. I know.

SPEAKER_02 59:41

Larry Crab, also a prolific author, Christian psychologist.

SPEAKER_01 59:44

Yeah. So, of course, both of them were defining halftime like 40 hours a week and each. And so he ended up gravitating toward Larry, which is what got him into counseling. So Larry and Dan were partners for a number of years, maybe 10, 12 years. They were doing conferences. I had become a professor. I know this is getting a little long, but it's gonna be it's great. I'm just looking down because there's so many questions that we're gonna have to say no to. I'm just kidding. It's great. But um, because this is leading up to an important point, which is so I'm teaching at Westminster, post-yale. He's doing conferences and teaching with Larry at Grace Seminary in Winona Lake, and uh they invite me and my mentor, Ray Dillard, to come to one of their conferences to um to evaluate how you they're using the Bible in their conference. And we're thinking, oh, this is great. And by the way, I just got out of Yale, I was a little ivory towerish. My dissertation was fictional Acadian autobiographies. I was teaching at a school that emphasized the mind over the heart. Um, and so we come to this conference and we're listening, getting ready to kind of critique them on how they use the Bible, and we're getting critiqued. Our lives are getting critiqued, and we're going, they know the Bible, and they know, you know, how it affects their lives and the lives of other people.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:23

What was it about your life that you felt like was being critiqued? Well, it sounds like there was some ouchers in there.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:28

Well, I mean, it I think it was basically that I was approaching the Bible way too intellectually, that it was a matter of the mind. I mean, it wasn't and it wasn't I wasn't doing enough kind of introspective work tending to my inner life. Yes. Um, yeah, and and therefore completely misreading the Bible because it's not just about the mind, it's not just something to inform heart intellect. Um, yeah, I Dan, it was funny because Dan gave a kind of anecdote about one of his friends. He goes, Yeah, I was visiting one of my friends, and I walked in, and then it all of a sudden I realized he realized I was in the room. There were probably 500 people in the room. He goes, three girls. I have three boys. And he took a baseball, one of the boys took a baseball bat, and they went on to talk about my bad parenting.

SPEAKER_02 1:02:30

But okay, but it's but he disguised it, he changed your kid's gender so people would not know it's you, but you were the bad example.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:37

But long story short, I remember this was in Houston that we talked to each other and we said, he said, I want to be a counselor who is biblically sensitive. And I said, Well, I want to be a Bible scholar who isn't just interested in the mind. And that's when we started our collaboration together. And Bold Love uh was our first, and I only contributed a uh chapter, but the collaboration was uh the book is about how to deal with what does it mean to forgive people who harm you? Now, Dan's previous work was Wounded Heart, which is dealing with sexual abuse, a grievous type of harm. And this was and and the connection between us was on this warrior theme. What does it mean that God is a warrior that um informs us about how we boldly love people who harm us at whatever level? And uh basically we were suggesting that the whole forgive and forget thing was misguided, you know, that God doesn't forget in the sense of he isn't aware of the sin we do, he forgives us. So so any case, that was our first collaboration. That's way back in 1990.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:10

So say a little bit more because it was so powerful. Uh why the adjective bold? What is it about uh love, if you get it right, that requires boldness? Because I think a lot of people don't. That's not where we go. We think it's something much more comforting.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:26

Yeah, I think it's bold because sometimes our love propels us to you know challenge those who have harmed us, you know. It's not like forgive and forget, I'm gonna act like you didn't do this to me, but you need to boldly um step into the situation and deal with people. Uh so so that was um that was so a bit of that warrior heart.

SPEAKER_02 1:04:55

Yeah, warrior heart, exactly entering into the arena, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:59

Right, yeah. So um, yeah. And uh that was a fun first collaboration. So we went on to write uh Cry of the Soul, uh, which is about the lament psalms, yeah. And it was back mid-90s when people today, you know, I I kind of like to think that maybe we helped start the whole appropriation of lament psalms in Christian circles. Yes. It wasn't popular back then. Wasn't popular back then, it was kind of like you know, repress your hard feelings. But our thesis was essentially um, if you have these feelings of even anger against God, don't repress them, take them to God.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:48

And again, uh if you would, if there's areas, um how has that applied for you? Or have there been moments in your life where The need for lament involving God or other people is intersected.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:04

Well, let me go back to the writing of this book. So when we started writing the book, both our lives were in great shape. As we were writing the book, uh our lives started unraveling, you know, in terms of um for me, one of my sons got in a lot of trouble at school and in the community. Um, my mentor, the one guy Ray Dillard I was talking to, died suddenly at the age of 49. And he was not only a mentor, he was also the chair of the department I was teaching in. So my teaching load all of a sudden doubled. Dan had a falling out with his mentor, um, and other things happened in his life. So all of a sudden, these lament psalms were not, they weren't totally non-experiential, but Psalm 77 in particular really ministered to me at that point, both helped me articulate my frustration and anger toward God, and also um pointed me to God. And basically for Psalm 77, the psalmist starts out by saying that God has kept him from sleeping, and then he starts accusing God of withholding his compassion, his mercy, and so forth. It's basically saying, God, you're a liar. You told me that you would take care of me, but you're not. Wow. And most laments have this sudden and abrupt shift to praise at the end, but this one doesn't. This one says, But then I remembered your mighty acts. And in particular, it talks about the crossing of the sea. It harkens back to the Exodus. And the point that's being made is God, I don't see any way out of this that I'm in now. But God, I remember the Exodus when the Israelites had their back against an impassable sea and uh Pharaoh's chariots, and you opened up the sea. You it is possible for you to to to hear me and um and answer me. So basically it's looking back to the past, and I could look back to the past and see previous times in my life when God had answered my prayers in that way, and then uh that gave me more confidence, not that it was I kept going back and forth, but um confidence to live in the present and hope for the future. And God did open up that particular sea, He doesn't always open the sea, right? So sometimes you gotta sing those psalms of confidence, even though I walk through the dark valley, I will fear no evil. Um, so yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:09

It's funny how that kind of pulls together. Um, there will be moments that will be part of scripture where I can't resolve it, I don't understand it, and so I have to lament. I don't know, yeah. Uh get this, and yet I will hold on to you, and then our life is that way. Uh, that that theme of uh enough of a foundation for very solid faith. Yeah, and then openness to pain or questions that I don't fully understand, right? And then uh uh we have a good friend who is in his final days right now, and so just walking through the pain of that. And it's a strange thing when I talk with somebody, sometimes the phrase will just come, God has been faithful. And even though there has been and continues to be a lot of pain, yeah, and questions that I don't understand, it's kind of like, Oh yeah, I'm still here. Yeah, yeah, and uh, this was really hard, but I'm still here. Yeah, yeah. And I get to be with my friend Tremper, get to talk about what matters most in some deep way that I don't fully understand in the midst of questions and pain.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:20

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:22

God has been faithful, absolutely, and it's one of those thoughts that seems like it comes particularly from the old testament and particularly from the Psalms, that's just somehow true.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:33

Yeah, and and also the book of Job, right? It's kind of like um um at the end, yeah, he doesn't know why he suffered, he didn't get the answers, he laments all the way through until the end when after um seeing God and not just hearing him, having that deeper experience of God, yes, through his suffering, yes, he's able to um to suffer silently. Um and he doesn't know that God's gonna restore him in the final chapter of the book, but um but that is a persistent theme in the Psalms and Job and in Lamentations too.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:18

Um and Job he just complains and accuses God the whole way through. Yeah, his friends defend God, yeah, and then God shows up and says, Yeah, Job, you were right. Right, they're in big trouble. Yeah, if you ask me to, I'll probably forgive them. Exactly.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:31

Yeah, it's an amazing book.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:33

Yeah, it is an amazing book. Uh the whole big book is an amazing book, and you do an amazing job of helping to make it accessible and available to us. Tremper, I'm so grateful for this conversation. Uh only the tip of the iceberg, so I'd love to do it again sometime.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:49

Well, thank you, John. It's great to know you and and for this conversation.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:54

Thanks.