I wish Paul was an Abolitionist

[00:00:02] Speaker A: From Westside Church in Bend, Oregon. This is behind the message in this podcast. We take you behind what we teach here at Westside. I'm Ben Fleming. [00:00:18] Speaker B: And I'm Evan Earwicker, joined here by Lindsey Parnell, as always. Hi, Lindsay. Hello. [00:00:23] Speaker A: Do you want to have I'm Lindsey Parnell. Part of that intro, Lindsay? [00:00:28] Speaker B: Nah. Nah. [00:00:30] Speaker A: Okay. That was easy. I appreciate that you gave us a title for this episode already, Evan, in that it's called My Chow Mein's getting cold. [00:00:39] Speaker B: It is. I do have a giant bowl of chow mein under the table waiting for me. I'm afraid it's gonna be cold by the time this is done. [00:00:47] Speaker A: Why can't you eat it while we podcast? [00:00:49] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Everyone wants soft noises. [00:00:51] Speaker C: No, no, no. [00:00:53] Speaker B: During the podcast, I'll spare everyone. [00:00:55] Speaker A: No. Don't they call that ASMR or something? Is that the thing where people like hearing noises? [00:01:01] Speaker B: I don't know. Nobody's asking for the noise. That would happen if I ate chow mein in the mic. [00:01:06] Speaker A: And it's on video. [00:01:09] Speaker B: Every time you catch it me, it's just zoomed in further and further. Yikes. [00:01:13] Speaker A: I noticed you spinning the chow mein on your fork. That's impressive. [00:01:17] Speaker B: Was it? Did I? [00:01:18] Speaker A: Yeah, a couple times. You rolled that thing up like spaghetti. [00:01:21] Speaker B: It must be second nature to me, spinning chow mein. [00:01:24] Speaker A: I guess I hadn't thought to do it. Well, I just don't know that I've done it with chow mein. I think I put it in big and I shovel. I'm gonna shovel. Is that a surpr. Anyone in the room that I'm a shoveler of the chow mein? [00:01:36] Speaker B: Do you know the etiquette for chopsticks in rice? [00:01:40] Speaker A: Is it shoveling? [00:01:41] Speaker B: No. You have to lay. I learned this. I was In Japan, like, 20 years ago with Alyssa. And if you stick your chopsticks in the rice, like, when you take a break to eat something else or take a drink, it's very offensive. So you have to lay the chopsticks on the top of the dish, like, across the lip of the dish. I guess that's culturally what you're supposed to do. [00:02:03] Speaker A: Can you eat rice with. [00:02:04] Speaker B: I can't. [00:02:05] Speaker A: I mean, it's gotta be sticky enough for me. [00:02:06] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:02:07] Speaker A: Eventually, I run out of. Especially you get down to, like, the bottom third, and all of a sudden, I'm just losing rice grains everywhere. [00:02:14] Speaker B: I can. I can eat rice with chopsticks. I always. Actually, most times, if I'm eating rice with chopsticks, I think about a scene in Kill Bill, one of the Volumes where she's forced to eat one grain at a time with chopsticks and her hands shaking. [00:02:29] Speaker A: Yeah, my hands get tired. That's what I'm saying. I mean, for me, it's just by the end of a normal dish and I'm eating normally, but my hand gets tired. I think some of that is part of the problem. [00:02:37] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. How's your grip strength? Everybody? [00:02:42] Speaker A: All you listeners out there, how's your grip strength? [00:02:45] Speaker B: I remember we were staying at somebody's house and they had one of those, like, carnival style test your grip strength things. And. Yeah, you got good grip strength. I guess I have good grip strength. I play piano for a lot of years. Maybe that helps. [00:02:58] Speaker A: Piano, guitar. Yeah, both of them are pretty grippy. [00:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah, you're a drummer and you just barely hold those sticks. [00:03:03] Speaker A: Yeah, you can't hold tight or things get weird. Yeah, you got to be loose. So we have better personalities that way, you know? But this whole thing started by us talking about our favorite movie, monsters. I'm going to throw a few more out there. These are big, clear ones. Godzilla, King Kong. [00:03:19] Speaker B: I've never seen a Godzilla film ever. [00:03:22] Speaker A: My personal favorite is still Jaws, the Predator, Alien, the Blob. Anybody know anything about the Blob? I feel like that's from time past. [00:03:31] Speaker B: No. And as you're reading these, I'm realizing I don't watch disaster monster movies very often. [00:03:35] Speaker A: Yeah, Dracula, I think, fits into that. Dracula monster. That kind of opens up things. Freddy Krueger, Nightmare on Elm Street. Definitely Nightmare on Elm Street. A movie I watched when I was nine at a friend's house. And I think due to my weird and erratic behavior afterward, my parents figured out that I had watched a scary movie at my friend's house and I got in trouble. [00:03:58] Speaker C: Nine's young to watch that. [00:04:00] Speaker A: Nine is pretty young to watch. Nightmare on Elmwood Street. [00:04:03] Speaker B: Children watch that. [00:04:04] Speaker A: It was not great. [00:04:07] Speaker B: There's a dividing line on scary movies. I can handle some, like, psychological, you know, like crime. And if there's, like, a serial killer on the loose, totally fine with that kind of. Even the jump scares are fine. Anytime you go into supernatural ghost movies, then I opt out. I don't like it. [00:04:28] Speaker A: Where does Texas Chainsaw Massacre fit into that? [00:04:31] Speaker B: Fine. I watched it this morning on my way to work. No, yeah. Honestly, serial killers are fine. It's a weird quote for behind the Message. [00:04:44] Speaker A: I have a monster movie. [00:04:46] Speaker B: No, but anytime it's supernatural. Demons, ghosts. Yeah. And that's not even from, like, a religious standpoint. I know some people would yeah, it's. [00:04:54] Speaker A: Just the vibe, right? [00:04:55] Speaker B: It's just too scary and it's too real. [00:04:57] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [00:04:58] Speaker B: What Lies Beneath. I saw that once in high school and on the way home from wherever I was watching it, I thought I saw a wolf run across the road in front of me. There wasn't a wolf. I was just so. In my head. That's a ghost movie, by the way. [00:05:14] Speaker A: That's incredible. [00:05:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:05:15] Speaker A: I think the one that scared me the most. Older. Was the Blair Witch Project. For the opposite of what you're saying is that I watched it and I was like, I've been lost in the woods and hung out with my friends like that before, and this feels like the tension that they built in it all of a sudden was following me around everywhere in my life. But there was no. Notoriously, you don't. Well, I don't want to spoil it. You just don't see much. Right. In the old Blair Witch Project. [00:05:40] Speaker B: Yeah. We talked about the village. [00:05:43] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:44] Speaker B: M. Night Shyamalan, back before he kind of took a turn into obscurity, I feel like, with his movies. [00:05:51] Speaker A: That was after Sixth Sense, right? [00:05:53] Speaker B: Yeah. I think Sixth Sense was his big breakout twisty movie. And then he had a string of them that were pretty popular. Maybe ending with Village, because then he did. Was it Girl in the Water. Shape of Water. [00:06:05] Speaker A: Shape of Water. Thank you, Justin. [00:06:07] Speaker B: That, yeah. People thought was weird. And then he. Yeah, whatever. [00:06:11] Speaker A: But, yeah, I kind of jumped a shark on his bit. [00:06:14] Speaker B: I thought the village was good because you think there's a. It's a monster movie, but it's not. [00:06:17] Speaker A: Right. [00:06:18] Speaker B: Big twist. Ooh. They're not actually. It's not actually olden times, so hate to spoil it for you. It's current day. [00:06:26] Speaker A: Oh, I do like twisty movies, though. [00:06:29] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:29] Speaker A: That's the others. Was that Nicole Kidman? You guys ever watched that? It's kind of a Sixth Sense vibe is how it turned out. For those of you who haven't seen it, it's good. Nicole Kidman right in her wheelhouse post. Moulin Rouge, I think. [00:06:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:06:46] Speaker A: That's what this podcast is into. Nicole Kidman movies from the mid 2000s. [00:06:52] Speaker B: That's amazing. [00:06:53] Speaker A: 2005, I think. [00:06:55] Speaker B: Ben, you and I were in Denver all week with about 3,000 other Foursquare leaders and pastors in our denomination in Denver, Colorado. And. Yeah. What's your take on what's the best way to connect with people from all over the country? Because sometimes you go to those and it just feels like, well, we could have just watched this Content online. But this one was great. We talked to a lot of good old friends and new people that we were meeting. And I think it is good to remember that we're part of something bigger than just our context, maybe. Yeah. [00:07:28] Speaker A: And the. The diversity that exists within the denomination is. It's challenging and it's beautiful and it's interesting and it makes me curious and everything all at the same time. It's a theological diversity that we have. I think there's just little fits and starts and differences that we have amongst each other, even in the denomination, which is actually a comfort to me. And then of course, the actual racial diversity and diversity of background and story. You and I have actually made pretty good friends with the Hawaiian guys, which is funny. I don't think anything about us screams Hawaiian. Those guys have actually become pretty good friends of mine and Brandon and Josiah and. Yeah, it's always. Overall, you can take each individual workshop or teaching and wrestle it to the ground and pull it apart and think about it. Overall, it's really inspiring and comforting to be a part of a denomination. [00:08:26] Speaker B: Yeah. And we have a very large by percentage Latino Hispanic group within our denomination. And culturally, the first night we missed it, we were actually on the tarmac for like five hours waiting to get in. But it was very, I guess, more Pentecostal than like, our expression would be here on Sunday morning. And one of our Latino pastors preached. And just to see that diversity, even in style of worship, I think is healthy and good in a large movement. And you realize not everybody approaches their expressions of worship, how they speak or preach in the exact same way. And I think that's the strength, right? Yeah, for sure. [00:09:12] Speaker A: What do you make of the fact, especially, like you said, it's more Pentecostal than our expression? You feel pretty comfortable with that now? [00:09:20] Speaker B: Well, you and I both, we grew up in some pretty charismatic streams. After my family left the Nazarene Church, which is not decidedly not Pentecostal Holiness movement out of the Methodist Church a hundred and odd years ago. But then I was in the same stream of charismatic Pentecostal churches that you were. And so we kind of saw the very extreme of the American Charismatic movement in the late 90s. And then coming into Westside, which is part of. Of a Pentecostal denomination, which is foursquare, There are definitely those threads and that stream is present here. But the expression is much more muted, for sure, than what we were experiencing in the charismatic churches in the 90s. And I know for me now, as we're leading this church, Together finding not a balance, but understanding that the Holy Spirit is such the main thing. Like, when we invite the presence of God, what we're saying is, holy Spirit, come fill me and dwell in me. So not ignoring the work of the Holy Spirit while also not turning ourselves over to become this. I don't know. Not overly Pentecostal, but overly focused, I guess, on the emotional or the expressions. That's a thing that I think we have to culturally find a fit, I guess. I don't know. What do you think? No, it's hard to talk about without. [00:10:50] Speaker A: I love watching you do it. [00:10:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:10:53] Speaker A: No, yeah. We're on the same page when it comes to this. There's a lot of things that we don't do that we both grew up with that we feel really comfortable about not doing. I don't think either you or I are closed off to the Holy Spirit doing what the Holy Spirit wants to do. But also, I'm not caught up in this is how God has to manifest himself in our presence every single time we meet or things like that. And actually, it was in those services where things are more Pentecostal than I operate in these days. For me, it's not a. Ew, gross. This is awful. You guys go do your thing, and I'm out of here. A lot of what I've been able to do in the place I've been able to come to is I believe that God's working in and through this, and I don't need this right now, you know? And a lot of times it comes from that, from the stage. And I know a lot of you are going through this or hiding this or walking through this. And I stand there and I go, no, I'm not. Like, I'm not. I'm doing a ton of work regularly. And I believe that I'm walking with the Holy Spirit in a way. Not that the other people aren't, but I feel more comfortable than ever just being honest about where I'm at and what I do need to hear and how I'm praying. And I think maybe because it's a more regular part of my liturgy, these spiritual practices and things, the big moment that comes from a stage, it just doesn't happen as often for me. [00:12:18] Speaker B: Yeah. Our friend Grant Brusco spoke on the final night of this event. And it was a reminder of, like, oh, yeah, a specific Northwest. He's from Spokane, Washington. Specific Northwest People have a very specific culture, too, you know, because it felt very. Something that, like, is in the same style of maybe how we tend to preach. But he started out by saying, I lean more contemplative, but that's not to disregard or discount the Pentecostal side of this faith. And he said, let's do it together, you know, let's pray in the spirit and let's take time in solitude and contemplative prayer. And I think those things can come together in really beautiful ways. [00:12:59] Speaker A: And that's probably the best way to put it, is I feel more comfortable than ever that I belong in the way that I belong. And I don't feel this need where I would go to conferences before, too, if only I could do that, or I could lead that way, or I could speak that way, or I could move the crowd into this direction. I just don't feel that way anymore. And I feel very confident in, yeah, this is who I'm meant to be, and I want to grow within that. But his is the way that I'm gonna lead, and this is the way that God's gonna use me. And I have a ton of confidence that it fits into the puzzle. [00:13:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I remember years ago, I was probably in high school, and a friend of ours came with us to just a really, really charismatic conference. And so there's people up there, you know, giving prophetic words and just all the stuff. And she came with us and she showed up in this bright orange sweater, and she said, I'm wearing a bright orange sweater. I hope they call me out and prophesy over what I'm supposed to do in my life. So it's like high vis, just to hopefully catch the eye of someone on the stage. And it's a little humorous. And also it points to how this can go wrong, right. When it's just this, like, okay, if I can just get the answer for what's next. And you talked about that on Sunday, right. Of this. We want to know the will of God in terms of tell me where I should go and when I should go there. And then it's almost like that gives us permission, if we think we have an answer from God, to shut down the slow, tedious work of walking out our faith every day. Right? Because it's like, I know I'm supposed to go to this city and have this job and have this spouse. And you talked about maybe coming to a better appreciation for actually what matters. [00:14:33] Speaker A: And what a great excuse to say, well, God still hasn't put me in the position where I actually am going to start doing the work yet. So I'm just going to hang out here. I'M going to be bad at my job and terrible in relationships and lazy and whatever else. And I'm going to sacrifice my whole life to hearing this word from God, where God is asking us to do the deep work in the meantime in the little things, in little places, in constant relationships. And that's the work that he's inviting us into, that Paul invites us into in this mutual submission, which in Ephesians 5, which can be a pretty contentious, interesting text to cover, ultimately, what we believe is that Paul is inviting everyone in every one of their relationships to function in mutual submission. Because in that you'll find grace and then we'll find unity. That's how the whole thing is built. And it's a change, especially contextually, where only a handful of relationships mattered, and then those relationships determined your success in life. And Paul's inviting them into. We're actually going to have this much broader love and understanding for our neighbor and our family in mutual submission. And that is a game changer, and it should be a game changer for us. [00:15:43] Speaker B: Yeah. And the scale of it matters. Right? You talked about how you're frustrated that Paul isn't an abolitionist. He's not coming to blow up all the injustices in the empire or the larger world. You know, whether it be slavery, patriarchy, all these things he's not saying in this moment, like, okay, here's what the kingdom of God looks like once we get rid of all these structures. He's saying, no, within the structures that are not going to change today. Here's how we emulate, here's how we live out the way of Jesus and the kingdom to come at a small scale. And I think sometimes if we're only looking for the large scale, like, what will I eventually be who? You know, what is my grand calling? We miss that. Actually, God is speaking to us today in the conversation I'm going to have with my wife right now. How am I laying my life down? And if we are only concerned with the grandiosity of our entire life's work, I think we miss out on the Jesus way to actually have normal interactions with our kids or our boss or fill in the blank. [00:16:47] Speaker A: Don't fall for the convenient excuse to never do anything. Well, in the meantime, because you always think this big break is coming down the road, don't fall for it. It's a trap. And the spiritual formation conversations that we have, the liturgy that we have in our services, it all is trying to lend itself to. This is a slow, careful, difficult building of a life that emulates Christ. And it's so tempting to just run and chase after every shiny thing that you can find. And it can gather followers, it can give inspiration for a short amount of time, but ultimately what you're looking for is this bigger thing, and it's harder. That's the problem. That's the thing that's attached to this whole thing. It's way harder to live in mutual submission to people that rub you the wrong way or that live under the same roof as you or that work with you. It's way easier to have really shallow relationships and be flighty about everything because something else is coming down the. The pike. We just can't live in that way. And that's where kind of, you know, the beginning, the middle, and the end of my message was. Yeah, I get frustrated with Paul. And then if you read it for a while and you go, yeah, Paul's not an abolitionist, the frustration with Paul goes away because he's not trying to do the thing with his scripture that we think scripture should be doing all the time. And once we let him off the hook for that, and then we. We feel invited into the challenge of mutual submission, then we see where the work is. [00:18:17] Speaker B: Yeah. And we do this too, in our context. There are parts of our world that are wildly unjust. And, you know, each Sunday we get up and we preach messages about what it looks like to follow Jesus within these structures that are not perfect. Right. And you can look at anything from government to culture to financial systems, capitalism. None of these are perfect. None of these are free of injustice. None of these are the Jesus way. And yet they are the systems that we live under. And a hundred years from now, people might look back on our generation of churches and leaders and say, why didn't you do more? And that'll probably be fair critique. [00:19:01] Speaker A: Totally. [00:19:01] Speaker B: And also this Sunday, we're going to have a job to do to help lead people in healthy practices and hopefully come out of our services thinking about who Jesus is and how it impacts their life today, even though they may not be going out to dismantle the global financial system. But we hope that in their relationships, they look more like Jesus. And so we've got to let Paul kind of do the same thing, right? [00:19:26] Speaker A: Yeah. And how we talked about Ephesians 5 and then how. I think you're going to talk about the majority of Ephesians 6 this next week, there is a big rock moving for a lot of people. All of these conversations exist on a bit of a spectrum. For some people that I Talked to after the service yesterday. Just getting up and talking about how frustrated I was with scripture was like an aha moment for people. Like, oh, my gosh, you could do that. You can feel like something's incomplete and that you wanted more out of it in Scripture and it's not there. And then still find something in it. That is a huge movement of justice for some people that have felt like they've really been hurt by the patriarchy in Ephesians 5 and go down the list. Children, obey your parents in all things, for this is right. They feel the sense of injustice from all those things, then that pushes it forward. And I think we have been and we will continue to be very bold on some things that are so obviously and clearly Jesus. And then the things that are nuanced, I think we're willing to continue to talk about. And some people would disagree that some of the things that we think are nuanced, and they would say that they're not. But that's part of the challenge of leadership. [00:20:32] Speaker B: Yeah. And we can't put everything in the same bucket, I guess, where we think, you know, well, we don't want the Bible to ever challenge or come against something that I want to be or do. Of course it does. The way of Jesus always confronts our preferences, our impulses, our natural. I want to do this. I want to take that. I want. It's confronting that all the time. What we're saying is there are places in Scripture that require some wrestling to understand. Like, how is this Jesus to say, slaves fear your masters? What is that? And that's what you spoke to is this frustration that grows. What we're not saying is anything that makes you uncomfortable at all or challenges how you want to be, you get to throw that out. Because that is not the Christian way. The Christian way always challenges us and changes us. [00:21:27] Speaker A: And that's the pit in our stomach. Right. When the three of us sit around a table and we talk about getting ready to preach this message. Number one, I think we know we're gonna mess with some people's view of scripture and how they've read it their whole life, which, again, a good thing, but also a thing that. One of the things that I think I've matured in over time is I think it's a good thing for people to be pushed in a good way with Scripture. Also. It's something to care for. Like, that's pastoring is shepherding and caring for and trying to hold people through this, too, to a certain degree. So we know that but then we also know that there's this backswing that's coming for us of, oh, so you can just do whatever you want with the Bible. And because I'm a good Christian kid that grew up being like, no, I'm good enough to toe the line, I can stomach all of this stuff in Levitical law and understand it and put it right in my mind. I just feel that coming. This is a healthier way to understand Scripture, and I think it's a more honorable way. But still, those little voices in the back of my head exist, right? [00:22:36] Speaker B: And it makes me think of what Thomas Jefferson, I think it was Jefferson, he created a Bible where he just redacted anything he found problematic. [00:22:43] Speaker A: Right? [00:22:44] Speaker B: And I'm sure what he thinks is problematic and what I think is problematic are probably different, judging by his general slave owners and all that. But he created his own Bible because he's like, ah, I don't want to have to deal with this. I'm just going to redact anything that's problematic, that impulse. Wouldn't that be nice to do that? The task we have, hopefully, as faithful students of Scripture, followers of Jesus, and adherence to orthodox Christianity, like, we're not creating our own Nicene Creed here. Like, we're holding to the tenets of the Christian faith and we're trying to honestly wrestle with Scripture that is many times confusing, contradictory, troubling, offensive, all these things. And so to do the hard work, and you talked a lot about this yesterday, the hard work of putting it in context, understanding what it is and what it isn't, what it's trying to do, how God uses this to speak to our context, all that. It takes a lot of work. And it's way easier just to either blindly hold your Bible up and say, this is my Bible, I believe what it says I am, and that settles it. That's easier. Or. Or to start just throwing things out that we don't agree with, and not even in the middle of those, but another way I think is the Jesus way that we're called to, which is the hard work of slowly and meticulously and carefully understanding what it should be doing to us. [00:24:07] Speaker A: But the dark side of the Bible says that that settles it, is that you get a lot of people like the ones that I talked to yesterday afterward that felt a sense of relief where we're all quietly just stomaching the idea of genocide in the Old Testament, and it's like, okay, but I won't say anything because this is too hard. And we've just kind of known to accept this. And it's hard for me to stomach Ephesians 5. It's hard for me to stomach some of these things. We have to at least openly wrestle with it, I think, at the very basis of the whole thing, even if we don't all draw exactly the same conclusions. Again, to give grace to all of us reading Scripture, what we're asking you to do, because we believe it is Paul's intention, not because we're making it up, is we're asking you to take in this huge, massive exhortation on grace that he has in the first couple chapters and say, this is eternal and this is for everyone, and it's perfect and it's beautiful. And then we're asking you to understand that chapters five and six. It's almost like we're eavesdropping on a particular culture and a point in time, and it changes how we hear it. And it's just hard when you've grown up being told to read the Bible a certain way. [00:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah. And that's a great way. A metaphor eavesdropping in on the pastoral work that Paul is doing after he theologically sets the stage. And it's a good reminder. We have to start with the good theology that is permanent and for all of us. And then what he's doing, I think in the letter to the Ephesians, he's taking that theology and then applying it into their context, which is specific to a time and place. And so we ought to do the same. We ought to take Ephesians 1:4 and say, okay, in light of that, now, how should we live? Because the theology that Paul brings to the table is the kingdom value that applies anywhere, always, forever. And that's the stuff that we have to let confront us sometimes. He's speaking to cultural values and how they interact with the kingdom values. And we would be mistaken to say their cultural values are our cultural values 2,000 years later. And so I see these two levels of he's speaking kingdom theology and cultural values. And kingdom theology is forever. Cultural values change because culture changes. And so that's the hard work where if you're just reading it as a list of. To dos. Check the list prescriptive, you're going to come up with some funky ideas about, oh, slavery's fine. No, it's not. [00:26:36] Speaker A: And even how we preached it, we used the list idea through the first several chapters of Grace allows us to live in a different way. And we're not just trying to check boxes. We had conversations in our small group with people that grew up in Christianity a certain way where it was a literal task list in order to maintain your righteousness for some. And we talk about this the whole time and then Paul gives us a list at the end like, you're driving me nuts. Stop doing that. We just talked everyone out of this way of living and now you've reintroduced a kind of law again. That's the reading of it. If you just take it for granted on the surface when you look in deeper. He is trying to do a work in the culture. Right? Right, Lindsay? [00:27:16] Speaker C: Right. [00:27:17] Speaker B: Ben, we never give you warning when we're gonna bring you in on the conversation. [00:27:22] Speaker A: I can flag her down. [00:27:26] Speaker B: No, it's good. And I feel like, especially in the podcast, we come back to how do we read and interpret scripture a lot. And I think it's because it is a hurdle for a lot of people. And it's a hurdle even in our conversations. Not everything is so A, B, C in these letters. And the deeper you get into Paul's writing, the deeper you get into the New Testament for sure, the Old Testament, the more you have to wrestle with. And I don't think we should be afraid of that wrestling because I think we are shaped the best when we've actually gotten to the weeds and the dirt of this stuff and it's gotten on us a bit as opposed to just shaking our heads and be like, I don't know, it's weird. So let's go back to psalms because that's happier. You know, even in the psalms, there's a lot of crazy theology. [00:28:18] Speaker A: Pretty rough. Yeah, yeah. And I've gone through the journey of I just kind of had a spoon fed to me for so long. I got to a point where I was reading it for myself. Got really frustrated with all these bits and pieces where I think there was a time earlier where somebody would say, you know, the Bible actually kind of contradicts itself. And I would go, oh, no, no, no, here's how. And then I got to a point where I was like, it definitely contradicts itself and I'm tired of trying to pretend that it doesn't. And then I wanted to give up on the whole thing and just say, I don't know that anything is trustworthy and maybe I'll hold onto Jesus and call it good. And the irony is that that moment where, you know, and I'm not throwing out the importance of scripture or whatever, but it was that moment where all of a sudden I felt kind of open handed about it. Jesus, the center of It. I fell in love with scripture again and all of it, Genesis, all the way to Revelation, all the confusing bits and all the weird bits that felt like tribalism and whatever. When I began to look at it through this framework of. I think God is trying to speak to me in this way, but I'm not going to try to take every line and go apply it to my life. Right. Is how we learned. I loved it. I fell in love with the whole thing. And hopefully that's the journey that some people that are listening are taking. [00:29:36] Speaker B: Yeah. I remember several years ago, I think a man did this and then didn't a woman do this. Both authors where they. He tried to live out all the rules and instructions in the Bible for a year and took it to the extreme and tried to do all of them. And it was ridiculous. Right. Because when you actually act all these things out in the modern age, just absurd and. And wasn't a year of biblical womanhood. [00:30:05] Speaker A: It was Rachel Held Evans. [00:30:06] Speaker B: Yeah. Where she tried to do the same. [00:30:10] Speaker A: She camped outside the city gates when she was on her period. She held up signs glorifying her husband when he drove into town. Amazing. [00:30:22] Speaker B: And to do that is to point out, like, oh, yeah, the literal interpretation of scripture is going to lead you down some strange paths. And it's just a reminder of, like, we all contextualize this. Even the most staunch, theologically conservative, fundamentalist leaning preacher or church, they are contextualizing and taking what they want from it. Nobody is actually living out, word for word, the entire scriptural set of instructions. And so then you're asking the question, well, what do we follow and what do we contextualize and what do we reject? And so we're kind of all in the same boat. And hopefully we come down in a way where we're contextualizing in a way that looks like Jesus and not like an angry version of Moses or something. [00:31:10] Speaker A: That's the job. [00:31:12] Speaker B: Right. [00:31:12] Speaker A: I think that's the whole thing. What you described is pastoring as best we can to contextualize and understand this is a massive eternal thing. This is a moment we're eavesdropping on a culture and a person still. We can glean so much from hearing that conversation. Right. But how we. Again, to quote from my youth group growing up, how we apply it to our lives gets to be different. But that's what makes the whole thing beautiful. The wisdom literature comes alive when all of a sudden you're walking through Ecclesiastes and you're not trying to be like. And this is how I'm going to do this tomorrow. And you're listening to someone's experience in grief and pain and trying to understand time and the human experience. It opens up the whole universe of scripture to you in a beautiful way. And it's scary, too. Right? Like, I do want to acknowledge that through the whole process, every time we talk about Scripture, I want to acknowledge and give grace to people because this is scary stuff. It's kind of like asking somebody to go walk on the moon when they've been walking with our gravity for so long. It's different. It feels funny for a while and you have to adjust. But I think there's a lot of beauty in the discovery and the wrestling with it. [00:32:19] Speaker B: Yeah, the adjusting is something that I think has come up a few times in Ephesians of this idea of when we're new to the way of Jesus, we don't always get it right, you know? And I think one of the ways that we contextualize Paul's instructions is understanding that if someone is stepping into new life for the first time, that's going to look like a different level of maturity in their faith than someone who we do have high expectations. You know, 10, 15 years into your faith that you are maturing. Right. Can you speak to that? Like, do we have different expectations for someone who should be further along in their faith than just barely, I don't know, barely following Jesus? Because this speaks to behavior, right? Like, grace is what gets us there. It's the finished work of Christ that saves us. But then how we live matters. So do we have different expectations that. That as we follow Jesus that our life changes? [00:33:16] Speaker A: Yeah, I think so. I think that's been evidence to me. And again, you kind of go through that quote, unquote, deconstruction of, well, I'm just going to go ahead and throw all of it away, and then I'm going to do something better. I'm going to do what I want. But then you find out what you're really made of on the inside. What is the soil that your life has been growing up in, and then what fruit does it bear? And ultimately, I think all of us, if we're calling ourselves followers of Jesus at all, we do want to see that good fruit. We want to see the love, joy and patience, kindness and gentleness come out from our being. And so, yes, I'll answer it in a couple different ways. I get really frustrated with people that have been quote, unquote, following after Jesus for a long time. And you really don't see any evidence of that. Patience and gentleness and kindness and humility. That makes me mad. And maybe it's because I'm a pastor and I feel like you're representing our brand. You know, like, don't call yourself a Christian. If you're going to act like this and you're going to talk, please don't do it like you're, you know, ruining our witness or whatever you might say. That is frustrating. And all of us clearly can fall subject to a lack of patience at any single moment and point in time. So we should be moving. Absolutely. We should be improving in all of these ways, and we're going to do it imperfectly. And that's just kind of the name of the game, I guess. [00:34:37] Speaker B: Yeah. And it is interesting that Paul, before he gets to his list of how to live and what to do, he starts the very first. I think it's in chapter four, where he says, make allowance for one another and keep the peace. So he's admitting before he even says how to live, people are going to get this wrong. And so be kind to one another as you walk out the way of Jesus. And I appreciate that. He gives us some room to not get it right all the time. And when we get it wrong, we have to give ourselves allowance for that and one another. [00:35:11] Speaker A: And Paul does something similar in a few different passages in other writings. There's a moment where he says, everything that I just said, try that out and see if it works. Test it for me and report back and let me know if this is the right way to go. I think Paul, again, like us as pastors, would communicate to a group and say, here's a good strategy. Let's go ahead and try it out. It seems like it would be of Jesus. But even if it doesn't, Paul gives himself a little bit more space than we give Paul, which is kind of funny. And I think in that vein, Paul would come back now and be like. And if somebody said, hey, man, I really tried to hold up the slavery thing, but it went away and sorry, I really violated Ephesians 5 for you, he'd be like, oh, no, thank God, that was not. I didn't want that around. I was just trying to do what I could with what I had. [00:36:02] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. As you were talking about slavery in chapter. Is it five? It's five. It's all in five. Yeah. And then you. Maybe you quoted it or referenced it, but Philippians chapter two, where it says, let your attitude be the same as that of Christ Jesus, who Being in very nature God, and it goes through there and it says he took on the very nature of a servant or a slave being found in human likeness. And so we find, even baked into the theology of Paul is one of always lowering right. And so maybe sometimes we wish that he would have more of a liberation theology where everybody rise up, you know, like Hamilton taught us, rise up. I still haven't seen Hamilton and Paul's point consistently. I think, in looking at the life of Jesus is lower, lower, lower, lower, lower. And nowhere clearer than in Philippians 2, where he says Christ went all the way down to death on a cross and then God raised him up. And so I do think there is some of these things that if you're just looking at one piece of that verse and it says, slaves, obey your masters with fear and trembling. And you don't understand the larger theological picture that Paul is trying to paint and what he's not trying to do, he's not trying to set slavery up as the norm for all time. He is saying, in all of your relationships, lower, lower, lower, lower, lower. And you're going to find God there and he's going to raise you up. You know, these are the kind of the nuances and the flavors that take the harder work to understand what Paul's going for. [00:37:40] Speaker A: Yeah, I should have said that yesterday. I like that. [00:37:42] Speaker B: That's a really good point. [00:37:42] Speaker A: Yeah, Golly. Could have put that right in the notes. [00:37:45] Speaker B: Right? Write that down. [00:37:46] Speaker A: Lindsay, do you have an aha moment with Scripture, kind of like we're talking about probably recently? Actually. [00:37:55] Speaker C: I have a similar story to you, Ben. And that kind of struggled with it when I started reading it for myself. And how do you make sense of God commanding the destruction of entire people groups and, you know, things like that, where growing up, it was just. It was either equated to like, you take the spiritual lesson from it, which is like, you know, we come against all principality and power, we show no mercy, you know, that kind of thing. Or you just kind of gloss over it and just. It was different back then and move on. And recently I was having a conversation with a friend, and when I started questioning a lot of it and wondering, like, did that literally happen? Is that, you know, allegory, different ways to read the Bible and interpret it? I had a really hard time knowing when do you apply that type of interpretation? When don't you, you know, kind of what you guys are saying, when is it cultural context and when is it kingdom theology? And it felt kind of like my view of Scripture was a bit of a house of cards, and I pulled out the bottom one, and then it all came crumbling down. So kind of figuring out how to navigate scripture has been a journey. And I actually want to say that to anyone who's, like, overwhelmed by this, like, it's a journey and takes practice to read scripture in a different way than you always have. But recently I thought, man, it's actually getting easier to read scripture differently. Not literally every line. And I think if it doesn't stand up to the character of God, then I'm gonna read that and I'm gonna interpret it. Like, if this questions the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God, who I see Jesus Christ in the Gospels, if what I'm reading challenges that in any way, shape, or form, then it's my job to do some work here and figure out that's not the intent. So what is the intent of this? Does that make sense? I want to articulate that clearly. [00:39:50] Speaker A: Yeah, it's like a pressure test. [00:39:52] Speaker C: Yes, it needs to. Like, the character of God is consistent. His goodness is always. It never isn't. Right. And so if what I'm reading is calling that into question, then it's my job as a follower of Jesus to become a student in this moment and do some work. Press in, find a commentary, find an author, talk to, you know, meet with somebody to suss out how to wrestle with Scripture and to pay attention to those things that have dissonance. Right before, if there was a rub, I would just, well, I don't know what to do with that. So move on. Instead of being like, hold on, there's something in me that is fighting against this. I feel dissonance. I should pay attention to that and lean into it and do some work here. Because I think we all, all who claim to follow Jesus should become a student of the Scripture in some way, shape or form, to read it in a way that lends to our flourishing and to our understanding of who God is more and more and more. Does that make sense? [00:41:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And it speaks to the movement of that we are being moved into more flourishing by Scripture. It's shaping us into what's the next step for us to look more like Jesus. And that's been a helpful lens for me, especially in the Old Testament, is let's look for the redemptive movement. Because if I try to say, okay, I'm going to apply the commands that were given to an ancient warring people, as far as the rules of engagement, then to my everyday life, and when I take the Spoils of war. What do I do with the women I want to take as my wives? You know, like, okay, you're going to run into some real big problems. And yet in those stories, and I'm not excusing the atrocities that are mentioned in scriptures, but I'm saying oftentimes there's a movement towards redemption. But it's so the starting point for them is so far away from modern sensibilities that we just write it all off as atrocity. And sometimes actually God is moving his people towards redemption slowly, step by step. But they're starting from such an ancient warring, you know, crazy spot that it doesn't really compute. And so to even just witness how far they come from the early Genesis stories, which, by the way, Genesis 1 through 11, there is craziness in there. [00:42:23] Speaker A: Craziness. [00:42:24] Speaker B: I mean, it's wild. There's all kinds of things that are just over the top wild to see where we go from there all the way into John's letters and first and second and third John, we've come a long way towards redemption and we're not done yet. And so to try to see this arc of the redemptive story of God, rather than being like, okay, I'm going to try to apply two Kings, chapter four today. Good luck. It's helpful. And maybe it breaks out of this. The literal telling of the scripture is all we ever need. Well, no, we need to see what God is trying to do through his Word. [00:43:01] Speaker A: And if we're having a hard time in this day and age with the literal direct translating of a scripture into our lives, it does make sense to me even more now than ever that the Sermon on the Mount was so offensive from Jesus to people that were faithful Jewish people. The sound of Jesus voice compared to what they felt like was the most honest version of God to an ancient warring people. The sound of Jesus talking about giving up your shirt for someone else that needs it must have just been such whiplash for them because, you know, we could have a conservative or old school or classic view of the reading of scripture and they had at times a hundred, so that Jesus would come and be the Messiah and then say, and this is how we're going to serve our enemies? Would it just be been like, this is outrageous. This guy cannot be God. There's no way. [00:43:58] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And that pattern of whiplash or feeling that as the audience of scripture, I think repeats itself over and over again. [00:44:06] Speaker A: Yes. [00:44:07] Speaker B: And we find every new generation, there are ways that. Wait, I thought we were supposed to. And Fill in the blank. And so every generation has the opportunity to say, lord, speak your word to me through your written word, but make it come alive. Because if it's just the written word blindly trying to apply, I think we're going to miss Jesus. And he is the Word. He is the living word of God. And so we need him here. Otherwise we're without a guide. Right. I think that's why he gave his Holy Spirit. [00:44:39] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And some people probably had some whiplash yesterday and some were relieved. And I actually, I kind of felt honored to help lead everyone into each of those moments. I think it can be easy in my more cynical state to say, yeah, and some of you are going to hear this and you're going to deserve it. And I hope it hurts your view of scripture or whatever. I hope it makes you react in some kind of a way. But all of us, having just shared even our stories of walking into it, we've had our own moments of whiplash or taking offense of God speaking to us in some way. And it's a beautiful thing to watch a church walk into healing for some that felt like they had been hurt by the text and to walk some into a new way of thinking. And it all happened, I think yesterday in a sweet way. I haven't checked my emails in a while. I think it was sweet. No. [00:45:29] Speaker B: And I'm so proud of our church. After one of the services, that's what I'm getting. I was standing next to you and I look over and you had like this gaggle. I'll call it a gaggle. It was of old men standing around you. And in so many contexts and different times you preached the message you preached yesterday. That would have been a group of angry old men coming to confront you. And out of the corner of my eye I see they're high fiving you and giving you side hugs. And it was like this, thank you, Ben. From a demographic that in so many churches would be there to question your intention and your theology and your preaching and maybe, correct me if I'm wrong, maybe they were confronting you, but it sure seemed like they were thanking you for leading our church in this way. And so I'm really proud of the church we have. [00:46:15] Speaker A: Yeah, me too. That was the biggest takeaway from the day was I'm really proud to be a part of this church and idea. One of them was a 90 year old guy that I talked to out in the atrium and he said, I stopped going to church a long time ago because I felt like nobody was raising their hand and going, are we serious? Like, we just read that nobody's got any questions. And he appreciated kind of the. The actively asking everyone's questions in front of them moment at the beginning. And, yeah, it was sweet. It was all. Yeah, it was all a lot of kindness and a lot of relief. A good handful of tears, which is a funny text to have tears over. [00:46:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:46:52] Speaker A: But, yeah. Yeah, it was a relief to walk the church through that, and I'm proud of it. [00:46:56] Speaker B: It's also hard to have a handful of tears. They really run through your fingers. [00:46:59] Speaker A: A handful of tears. You got to put your fingers together really tight. [00:47:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:47:04] Speaker A: If you got chubby fingers. [00:47:05] Speaker B: I always struggled, you know, how people could do, like, in the pool, where you put your hands together the right way and it shoots water out. Yeah. I think I was 25 before I figured how to do that. [00:47:14] Speaker A: Yeah. I couldn't do, like, the, you know, the under the armpit sounds I could do with my hands. [00:47:20] Speaker B: Can you whistle with your. Your pinkies in your mouth? I cannot do that. [00:47:23] Speaker A: How do people do that? I don't know. How do they do it? [00:47:26] Speaker B: I don't know. [00:47:27] Speaker A: It's a miracle. [00:47:28] Speaker B: They're my monsters. [00:47:29] Speaker A: They're monsters. [00:47:29] Speaker B: To bring it all back. [00:47:30] Speaker A: Jaws. Best monster ever. [00:47:33] Speaker B: All right, we're one more week in Ephesians. We're talking about the armor of God in chapter six. It should be a good time from Independence Day. [00:47:41] Speaker A: Ooh, yeah.