March 26, 2024 • 45 mins
- Nijay Gupta's Strange Religion
- Richard Middleton's Abraham's Silence
- The Bible Project: https://bibleproject.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Everything sounds so fancy when you title it like that.
(00:02):
Yeah.
When you give something a main title and then you put the colon
and then you give it another title,
that's how it feels stupid legit.
You're like initial thought, colon, more thought.
And you're like, dang.
Mm-hmm.
They meant that.
They said what they said.
And then they said it again.
(00:22):
Welcome to TikTok Theology,
a podcast that tackles the major trending topics on social media
that concern the Christian faith.
I'm Megan.
And I'm Steven.
We know you can't form a theology in three minutes or less,
but those videos can identify current issues.
TikTok will give us the prompt and then we'll do a deep dive.
Thanks for joining us in this exploration.
(00:45):
Hi friends and welcome to episode four of season two of TikTok Theology.
On the day this drops, it will be Tuesday of Holy Week.
Yes.
Leading up to Easter.
So happy Judas negotiating for Jesus' betrayal with the Sanhedrin
as they traveled to the Mount of Olives Day.
Mm-hmm.
Good day.
Good day.
(01:06):
Tough day, but a good unnecessary day in fact.
On that note, we're going to be chatting about hypocrisy in scripture.
So don't worry.
We're not tackling this topic alone.
We actually have a special guest joining us.
Yes.
So Steven, why don't you tell us a little bit about who we're going to be welcoming?
Yeah, we have a very special guest, Nijay Gupta.
He is really, really a cool dude.
(01:28):
I've met him just once or twice and he was kind enough to come up on here and join us.
He's this really fantastic New Testament scholar.
He is a New Testament professor at Northern Seminary.
He's written a bunch of books.
Most recently is his book, Strange Religion,
How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous and Compelling.
He also wrote, we've mentioned this before, Tell Her Story.
(01:50):
He knows about how the women have led throughout the Bible.
He also serves as a senior translator for the New Living Translation
and co-hosts the Slow Theology podcast with AJ Swaboda, our friend.
Our friend.
So he's pretty awesome.
Got a dynamic duo over there.
They got a dynamic duo and that's a really great podcast.
You guys should save it.
Definitely want to shout that out.
And so he's going to talk to us.
(02:12):
We already pre-recorded this.
Let's turn to that now.
Alrighty friends, we have Nijeg with us in the Zoom.
And we're going to be having a conversation about exploring hypocrisy in the Bible,
which is kind of a conversation that has been popping up recently.
As all things come to light again on social media,
this is not the first time we've talked about hypocrisy.
(02:33):
This is not the first time the theologians and the churches had these conversations.
But social media gives light and life to age old questions and concerns,
especially when it regards to the faith and to scripture.
And I feel like Gen Z and their hunt for authenticity and their hunt hunt for consistency
and their hunt for all these things.
It has been something that has been difficult for a lot to wrestle with is what feels like a perceived hypocrisy in scripture
(03:00):
or in the way that Christians live or in who God is as a whole.
And so we're super excited that you're here to kind of unpack that conversation with us today.
Yeah, important stuff.
So I'll help as much as I can.
All right, well, we couldn't think of anybody better to help us as a New Testament scholar that you are like.
I'm a big fan. I enjoy reading your stuff.
(03:22):
And I tell my students all the time, like, I don't ever want to do the work of New Testament scholarship.
You know what I mean? All the languages and stuff like that.
So it's tedious.
Yeah, I like to have people I can trust, you know what I mean, to be good exeges and stuff like that.
And then I just use it for other stuff.
You know what I mean?
But but yeah, you've written tons of really, really good work.
The most recent one I read was tell her story and defending how you defend women in ministry and leadership roles
(03:47):
and just kind of going through the whole Bible.
And I thought that was really fantastic.
We're coming from a four square tradition.
So like we're all about women in ministry, you know, for everybody listening,
if you have not read anything from DJ, definitely do.
He's he's awesome.
I'm getting my ego boost.
I'm getting my ego boost today.
Keep going. Keep going.
You deserve it.
So we're going to talk about hypocrisy in a lot of different ways because, you know,
(04:10):
that word I think is probably a little bit flexibly used in social media and stuff.
So one of it is going to be about contradictions and then it's going to be about like people holding hypocrisy
and and if God seems hypocritical in it.
So there's going to be a few different questions that are going to like kind of roam around those ideas.
And so the first one we want to ask, why does it seem like God is hypocritical in the Bible?
(04:32):
For instance, why do we have a commandment to not kill?
Then yet God calls Israelites to go to war. It seems like sometimes God has a higher standard for us
than he does for himself.
You know what I mean?
Like he wants us to be these people of peace, but then he will he will not.
So could you talk about that a little bit?
Geez, he's just getting right into it.
(04:54):
Jump right into the hard stuff.
This is going to be a seven hour episode.
Yeah, just real simply like the Ten Commandments.
Obviously, these are important things.
And they're so generalized, like there are lots of conversations, you know, obviously lying is wrong.
But then there are these age old conversations about if someone has a gun to your head or if you're hiding refugees,
(05:19):
protecting them, like are there exceptions to these things?
And even with killing, you know, transletters sometimes wonder, should we translate as murder?
Should we, you know, because then there's questions about war.
There's questions about self-defense, you know, those sorts of things.
Yeah.
Physician assisted suicide, not that I'm endorsing that, but there are questions about that.
(05:40):
Right.
So the Ten Commandments is designed to kind of guide you in how humans should behave in general,
that there should be really clear standards.
But then when Jesus comes along, I'm not trying to be evasive, by the way, we'll get to the question.
When Jesus comes along, he's like, you've heard it said, but I tell you,
(06:01):
and Jesus really digs into the heart and he's saying, okay, it's one thing to talk about actions.
Actions are important.
We got to dig down deeper, get to where the heart is and what the heart's directed at.
And, you know, often with my kids, I, you know, I regularly tell them like,
you're going to make mistakes, you're going to screw things up.
But the question is, where's your heart in the right place?
(06:22):
You need to be really forgiving if your heart was in the right place.
But like you screwed up.
Like we obviously, as people grow up, we want to make sure they're doing the right things.
But don't we with our kids want to make sure that there's a lot of forgiveness
when their heart's in the right place.
The thought that counts sort of thing.
So when we're talking about the Ten Commandments saying, do not kill, you know, okay,
(06:44):
one thing that AJ and I try to do in our podcast is be really careful about what I call folk apologetics.
So that's the idea that we give like a nice, neat answer.
And then, oh, you know, we can wipe our hands with it.
Not a problem.
There are a lot of things in scripture that are heavy enough that you just can't give an answer.
It's disrespectful to the conversation to give an answer.
(07:08):
So, you know, at the risk of being a hypocrite myself,
I will tell you some of the answers that theologians give.
But then we'll go back to just the issue of paradox in scripture,
which I think will be a common theme that we'll come back to in this conversation.
But it's mystery, mystery, paradox, even balance, transcendence and eminence.
(07:32):
And we'll talk about what those terms mean later.
So let me tell you what theologians have said throughout the years about this issue of divine genocide or divine killing.
So they've said, you know, they said one, God can do it every once.
His ways are higher than our ways.
So it's kind of like do as I say, not as I do.
I'll put that on my Nijay-O. meter, how I rate that.
(07:55):
I mean, there are things that we do as parents that maybe our kids don't understand.
Where I could see where we say, okay, you just when you get older, you'll understand those kinds of things.
I don't know. That's a little tricky.
Another one. I actually like this one.
Tell me what you guys think.
In the book of Deuteronomy, there's actually two different things that are said to Israel on the brink of them going in the land.
(08:18):
One is wipe them completely out.
Don't leave anyone alive.
Kill them all.
The second thing is don't intermarry with them.
Don't assimilate to their culture.
Well, if you've already wiped them out, then why would you be worried about assimilating?
And then a third thing that's said throughout the historical books is you are being plagued by the Canaanites because you failed to drive them out.
(08:44):
Well, were they supposed to drive them out?
Were they supposed to kill them?
I think there are double messages in there.
One is and the killing them is more of preventing Israel from falling into idolatry and basically Israel's attempt to claim the land as their own versus these people are sinners and need to die because Israel is sinners too.
(09:09):
You know, we had Jim W. Adams.
We had just two episodes ago and we were talking about reconciling the violence of God and that was his main stance right there.
The Old Testament and the New Testament Jesus himself also speak with hyperbole and this is something that the reader and listeners would have known that the thing to wipe out completely is the idolatry out of the place.
(09:31):
But the people attached to it don't necessarily need to.
So yeah, I think that's a pretty compelling one, I think.
Good on the Niger meter?
Is it good on that?
Yeah, well, it is.
I mean, you know, you still have Psalms and maybe this is a more concrete example where you have some.
I don't know, maybe 139 where it says, you know, dash blessed are the one who dashed the baby's heads on the rocks of my enemies, you know, my enemy's baby's heads.
(09:56):
It's a problematic one.
It's harsh.
And in the and in the the liturgy, the Jewish liturgy and the Catholic in Orthodox liturgy, they actually remove those verses when they say it publicly, when they when they express the liturgy.
Because even though things are in the Bible, not everything is what we call normative.
(10:18):
Right.
And so there are some things where we say, yeah, that's not the best.
Like with my students, I was recently talking about in Paul, where he says all, you know, in this entire, he says, all cretins are liars.
I don't think all cretins are liars.
So this is again, an example of hyperbole.
We don't want to take those things and justify us doing them today and saying it's in the Bible.
(10:40):
Yeah.
So I think, you know, we have to talk about how inspiration works.
So I talk with my students about the difference between we're going really deep down in.
Hey, it's good.
I'm looking at last year.
I talked about the difference between theological inspiration and absolute inspiration.
(11:02):
So absolute inspiration is just sort of treating all parts of the Bible the same and saying all of them are normative.
And the last one, inspiration, we say all of scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and treating righteousness.
But there's kind of a heart or a nerve center of scripture in places like the Sermon on the Mount, the Ten Commandments, where these are our guiding lights,
(11:28):
you know, the fruit of the Spirit.
Yeah.
You know, and the early church would call this the rule of faith.
They would say there has to be these guardrails because one of the early church fathers said the heretics, you know, the early Christian heretics were just cherry picking verses and allowing that to guide their theology in wrong directions.
(11:53):
They created a rule of faith, which is basically like a theological compass in order to say certain things are more are more of an arrow pointing to Christian formation than other things in the Bible, even though those we can learn from those other things.
Mm hmm.
It's good.
I don't know.
Is that I don't know if any of these things are going to satisfy someone that's really wrestling with.
(12:16):
But you know, like these hard, I think I think these hard conversations in which basically our whole podcast is about like that's like the tough questions that they ask.
I think young folks, Gen Z millennials like myself, you know, Gen X, anybody who has these kind of questions, what they want, I think is a rich dialogue.
I don't think they want a neat and tidy answer.
(12:37):
Sure.
These questions confounded them for a reason, so like having a quick just like, Hey, here's a two step thing that's that seems dishonest.
Also unnatural.
Like that's not how these scriptures were ever handled throughout scripture.
Midrashes don't handle them like this.
Like they there's they dive in.
This is a tough concept.
So I think what we're trying to do is see if people can be guided through tough issues, not, you know, make them super reductionistic and easy.
(13:05):
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I also think I also think that like in the sense of it's very easy for us, especially to like read an English translation of a certain version of scripture and be like, Oh my gosh, heresy.
And so I think it's these kinds of conversations that kind of open it wider and they're like, well, there was original language and there was cultural context and there is like more than what feels like just a surface like, Oh, I read, I read the Bible and I saw hypocrisy and I don't want to believe in a God that contradicts himself.
(13:32):
And so I think that it's these kinds of things that make you understand that there is something deeper to it and that there's a reason that we have theologians who've been doing this for thousands of years and will continue to do it for as long as we are on this earth is because there's so much more than just an English translation that makes me feel like I don't like that God is a liar.
And so I think that that's why these dialogues are good.
(13:53):
Because even if it's I mean, we can't make people, you know, read a lexicon and we can't make people do anything like that.
I tried.
It's as much as we try and I know Steven tries in his classes like we all try.
But I think to at least like explain that there is more to this kind of helps bring at least a settling of okay, maybe we don't have it all figured out and there's we can't make them look deeper.
(14:15):
But we know at least there is a deeper there.
Yeah, you know, and what I'm going to recommend a guest to you his name is Richard Middleton.
He's Old Testament theologian.
And he has this really wonderful book a couple years ago or last year maybe called Abraham silence.
And I'm going to summarize it really, really briefly, but he basically says with Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son.
(14:35):
Yeah, this was actually an invitation by God for Abraham to argue back and he didn't.
And he calls this vigorous dialogue and prayer where we have a tradition of Abraham Moses all these patriarchs who basically argue with God like God's like I'm going to destroy that city.
And then they say, you know, that's not really in your character.
God.
(14:56):
Yeah.
And he says, yeah, you're right.
And Abraham blew it like Job did better.
Joe basically the book is like Job did better by basically arguing with God.
So what I think with these kinds of issues is there's a kind of respect that you can show to God in arguing with him.
Like when my kids argue with me, there's a good way to do it and a bad way to do it.
(15:20):
Right.
There's a dismissive way to argue.
But then there's like, didn't you always teach me don't don't our kids get us on those?
Like, did you always teach me to, you know, and I think that's what I think in these kind of situations even today, what what AJ and I try to do on slow theology is basically say, bring these things to God.
Like there's a kind of productive arguing with God that can happen when we say, I don't think that's right.
(15:50):
But I don't think that's right because you taught me that wasn't right.
You know, when you guys say, hey, DJ, aren't these things contradictions?
These this is exactly what the biblical tradition gives us space to bring to God and say, I think actually the biblical message is peace.
So why are these things happen?
It's an ongoing dialogue with God.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So good.
(16:11):
Well, even like moving moving forward of like what we kind of deem is hypocritical, but we also see these kind of certain places in scripture that catch people, which is these like perceived double standards in these places in the Bible.
Right.
Where we see like the famous, you know, passage that you clearly are very familiar with of Paul telling women to be silent in 1st Timothy 2, but then in Roman 16 affirming different women in leadership and where they're called to or how we're called to love everyone, including our enemies.
(16:39):
But then we have the flood or the condemnation of Sodom and Gomorrah or like seeing homosexuality as an abomination.
But we're supposed to live in love and love our enemies and like all of these different things that feel like, oh, well, I can do this or this like what where's the double standard where am I held to this and where am I not held.
So can you speak a little bit to like a biblical double standard?
(17:02):
Yeah, I think part of the problem is when we use the word Bible, which just literally means book, we treat it as if it were one thing.
When in reality, it comes from thousands of years of history.
And so when you think about where the book of Genesis comes from, which is ancient Israel thousands of years ago, and then you take something like the book of Revelation, which is from the end of the first century.
(17:33):
I mean, you're you're spanning thousands of years of literature.
Think about something written today and then putting it in a collection next to Beowulf.
That's what that's what we're talking about.
Even more more than that and saying, oh, this is all part of one collection.
What would you know, Tim Mackey, she also have Tim on your show, but Tim from the Bible project.
(17:55):
I love how he talks about this because, you know, I've said, you know, what do we do with these biblical texts that come from certain specific ancient contexts and then we strip them away from that and put them in the Bible.
He says it's kind of like a museum, like the British Museum or, you know, like an American archaeological museum where you're taking those pieces out of their, you know, like a sculpture or whatever statue taking them as context, but then you carefully place it into a specific arrangement.
(18:25):
So as you walk through it, you're supposed to experience in a certain way.
I like that with the Bible.
That's what's happening with the Bible, the canon that was formed is designed in a certain way to give you the story of the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, Gospels, first epistles, but we can easily forget or maybe not know that they come from really specific genres, really specific periods of time, that sort of thing.
(18:50):
So sometimes the genre will dictate the form of something.
So hyperbole is used more often in more artistic things.
I'm going to be teaching this week on Mary's song of praise, the Magnificat Luke chapter one where he says, you know, where Mary prophesies that the Messiah's work is going to pull down rulers from their thrones, but it doesn't say bad rulers.
(19:14):
It just says rulers.
It'll send the rich away hungry.
It doesn't say the bad rich.
It just says the rich.
So, you know, but then the book of Proverbs talks about, you know, Penny saves his penny earn kind of thing and you can flourish and, you know, the Old Testament really praises, you know, the role of the kings in the Psalms, you know, their, their, their sons of God, their little Lord, the angels along with humanity.
(19:38):
What do we do with that?
I think we need to be careful when we when you read like a conspiracy website that says here are all the contradictions in the Bible.
Yeah.
It's kind of silly because so much of the Bible is poetic in some sort of non when we when we first approach the Bible, we sort of think of it as like the Constitution.
It's written in sort of syllogistic, empirical, a equals, you know, a plus b equals c and that's just not the Bible at all.
(20:07):
So much is narrative.
So much is poetry.
So much is apocalypse or prophecy.
My wife is reading through the Old Testament.
She's been in Jeremiah for weeks.
It's just a long book.
Yeah.
And so I think you have to really take into account the genre.
So when it comes to like, let's say women, one thing that I often tell people is there are the ideals like relations 328, neither male nor female, meaning we're not going to treat people differently based on demographic based on biology based on status in society.
(20:44):
But then we have the realities of the world we live in and how we journey towards those ideals step by step.
So the example I love to give is and it's kind of silly, you'll have to just bear with me.
So when my kids were little, I would tell to get them to brush your teeth out, tell them that food has sugar monsters and they stick to your teeth.
(21:08):
And what you do is you brush them off, the toothpaste is like some kind of acid.
And then the sugar monsters fall into the lava pit in your stomach and then they die.
And none of that is actually true.
What?
I know.
I'm shocked.
I'm trying to get them to the truth.
(21:30):
But this is what they can handle now.
And then later on I tell them, you know, as well as Santa Claus not being real, sugar monsters aren't real either.
And I think often what we see in scripture are these step by step movements to try to move us towards that ideal.
But the step may be, hey, you're still going to be a slave, but we're going to increase your value.
(21:51):
Or you're going to be a slave, but we give you an extra few hours off.
And we don't like that from where we're sitting because we look at the Bible as a flat document versus a document written on it.
A document written over, you know, collected over thousands of years to understand the increment, often incremental movement towards those ideals.
So I think the real issue is what are the ideals?
(22:12):
We can't treat all of the Bible the same.
We often get the ideal in what theologians call pro-tology and eschatology, how it was in the beginning before sin and how it will be in the end when everything is redeemed.
And if we focus on those things, we have a much more beautiful picture rather than treat everything exactly the same and then pit them against one another.
(22:34):
Right. So there should be a narrative through line for when we're reading scripture with the kind of the ending inside always the telios at the side of what we're doing.
So I really like that.
What about if there seems to be an apparent contradiction in the Bible that's like in the same genre?
Like, for instance, where it just seems like two different accounts.
(22:59):
We got two different accounts of Judas's death.
He hung himself. He hung himself in Matthew. He fell on the rocks in Acts.
And so, you know, those are both coming from the same genre, Luke Acts and then Matthew.
But then, you know, some people have said, oh, well, maybe he hung himself and then like we cut the rope off and then his guts fell out.
(23:22):
It's like, hey, you just added one iota to the Bible. You know what I mean? Like, be careful now. Careful.
And then there's other things like two different creation accounts that definitely seems like a genre issue between Genesis one and two.
But then, but then the synoptics will have a different timeline.
John, which could be sort of genre ish there, you know, like the way they're talking, but the Judas one, that's in the same genre.
(23:47):
That's where it gets a little, little tough. You can talk a little bit about that.
Yeah. Yeah, I think our time is up. Sorry.
Those things are interesting. I think it's the way we read the Gospels because today we have we have so much fact checking going on with presidential speeches or, you know, a modern biography people will comb through and, you know, think about all the
(24:10):
hearings that are going on with Trump or whoever with Biden and the documents and we we prize perfect veracity in terms of like, did it happen at 1230 or 1231?
Like that's that's something we really prize as as moderns. And it's not a bad thing, but it is the way we come into the Gospels is through the lens of like perfect veracity.
(24:34):
You have to understand ancient biographies and the Gospels were written generally speaking in the genre of ancient biographies.
All four of the Gospels, although Gospel of John kind of blends ancient biography with kind of fantasy, you might say, not fantasy in the sense it didn't happen, but fantasy that they're really going to ramp up the supernatural in a way that the synoptics don't.
(24:59):
They're going to pay more attention to that. Let's put it that way.
So then you have to understand what the rules of ancient biography was.
And you have to think ancient biographies were not trying to tell objective, neutral reporting of someone's life.
Even modern biographies aren't really doing that right there.
(25:20):
They they have their Ben they have their, you know, perspective.
But these ancient biographies, you know, you would think if they were just meant to be absolutely historical objective, we'd only need one of them.
Right. Just pick the best one.
Like Luke is passionate about this. He seems to have interviewed the right people. Let's go with Luke.
The reason we have four is ancient biographies were often trying to combine eyewitness testimony and facts with a certain perspective or take or spin on the person.
(25:54):
And they call this incomia stick, incomia stick, meaning they're trying to put forward the hero as someone to emulate.
And so they're going to shape the story towards, you know, that perspective.
So when it comes to some of these details, I'll give you another example. We'll come back to the Judas one.
(26:15):
For example, the temple cleansing when Jesus overturns the tables, you know, in in in the Gospel.
John happens the very beginning of the Gospel and in the synoptic gospels, it happens at the end.
And those who take this gospel genre as, you know, perfectly factual says there has to have been two temple cleanses.
(26:37):
But I'm like, if there were two, you think they would have like nailed the tables down.
I had that conversation literally two days ago in my class, like they were like, I heard that it was two.
I was like, yeah, the temple people would have known.
Oh, it's that guy. Watch out. He's about to he's about to whip everything.
Anyway, put the money away. Here he comes again.
I would have nailed the tables down. So what are you going to do now, Jesus?
But there was space within within that genre for shaping narrative shaping.
(27:04):
And we deal with this now with like biopics.
Like, for example, when I started my like working on my lectures on this material, it was when the Nelson Mandela biopic came out in Victus.
And, you know, I'm sure when they're sitting down to decide these things, they say like, there's certain things that we just have to do for for veracity.
Like, like he's got to be black.
(27:26):
You know, like, he's got to be a man.
Like you can't you can't break out of those sorts of things.
But then they can kind of move things around or add a scene in, you know, that sort of thing.
You guys remember Cherry to fire. This is where we get a generational here.
Yeah, which is the story of Eric Little, who's a runner.
And, you know, I remember there's a scene where there, you know, there's this run around like one of the universities, the UK universities and like people are like outrage that didn't actually happen in real life.
(27:54):
But it's within the biopics flexibility of telling the story of the person and the characters.
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm not against trying to line up the two stories in Judas.
I'm not against it if if if it's plausible.
I'm not sure how plausible that one is.
(28:16):
The, you know, the thinking I have is there are two stories, there are two traditions that developed.
He's definitely a real person.
He definitely betrayed Jesus.
But how he died, there's there's two stories developed and one has one and one has the other.
And I know we struggle with that.
But if you inspect the gospel closely, you're going to find lots of things that don't match up perfectly.
Yeah.
(28:37):
And so, for example, one of my favorite ones I use in the classroom is when Jesus is arrested and the soldiers mock him,
they put a robe on him.
What color is the robe?
I asked my students and some will say, you know, oh, it was it was red.
And others will say, oh, it was purple because the gospel John has it as purple.
The gospel Mark has it as red.
Now, how do you align the two?
(28:58):
Oh, they took off one robe, put another robe on or it's like lighting.
Right.
It's like, you know, magic, you know, it's like a movie.
One of the disciples was colorblind.
Yeah.
Oh, that's a good one.
I haven't thought about that one.
It's like that dress.
You know, the white and blue dress.
The white and gold versus the blue and black.
That's what it was.
But, but, you know, if we're talking about what the writer is trying to do, John is very interested in positioning Jesus as a royal figure.
(29:27):
So it's ironic because it's a purple.
But then Mark emphasizes Jesus's suffering, his noble and righteous suffering, which is the color of blood and martyrdom.
And they're both right.
But, you know, when you say what was the actual color, you know, was a purplish red or, you know, what I tell my students is when it comes to reading a text with the author, there are good questions and bad questions.
(29:52):
So I say this was like Harry Potter, you know, it's it's a bad question to ask how does magic work?
Like if you're reading with JK Rowling, how does magic work is a bad question because she doesn't answer it.
She doesn't want you to get distracted by that question.
She's assuming it.
Yeah.
But a good question is what kind of person is Snape?
Like that's that she wants you to ask that question or what kind of person is Dumbledore?
(30:15):
She wants you to ask that kind of question.
But asking the wrong question will get you away from the purpose of the story.
We may still have those questions.
And that's why I think it's OK to ask it was Jesus real figure in history.
You know, did he really die in a cross?
I think it's OK.
It's getting us away.
So back to Judas thing.
How much do I wrestle with that?
I take for granted that the stories about Jesus and Gospels are number one based generally speaking on what happened.
(30:41):
Luke talks about eyewitnesses.
Number two, there was flexibility for what I call narratizing.
Number three, because the Christian church sees these as inspired, we trust the storytellers.
Right.
Now, when students say that's not good enough, I say tough noogies.
We don't have a time machine until we build one.
(31:04):
We don't know what happened.
So we either trust, you know, the reconstructionists of today, the Jesus seminar and the people that want to tell us a different story.
Or we trust the authorized storytellers theologically or you just give up.
And if you want to give up, that's fine.
But I kind of like this Christian thing.
I think that's a that's a knee-jay group to quote.
If we do a little merch, tough noogies.
Tough noogies.
(31:26):
Professor Nijay says tough noogies.
Dude, where do you think that this part, these kind of conversations can kind of intersect with the infallibility versus inerrancy conversation about scripture?
Good question.
I remember going to a church plant in Philadelphia a long, long time ago.
(31:47):
And the preacher was trying to prove to the people there the Bible is true based on how the Bible actually reflects scientific fact.
And a lot of the stuff just either was half true or it was just kind of trying to pull the wool over somebody's eyes.
(32:09):
So it talks about how like God revealed a spherical earth to Job because he says the Lord hangs the world on nothing or something like that.
And I'm just like, I don't know if I would, you know, because they also talk about the four pillows of the world and the four corners and all that.
That kind of stuff where we talk about where we a modernistic approach as, hey, we can prove the Bible using essentially secular tools.
(32:37):
And that that's a dangerous game because you are beholden to those tools, I think.
I like a more postmodern approach. I still believe, by the way, don't cancel me.
I still believe in the infallibility. I even would use the word inerrancy. We can come back to that.
But it comes from plausibility.
(33:00):
Is there enough historical evidence to give the Bible plausibility?
Not absolute, hey, I can prove the Bible based on this archaeological find because then you're going to find some other archaeological thing and then you're screwed.
But is there enough plausibility there? Like was Israel, ancient Israel really in Egypt?
Were they really going to exile? Was there a real Jesus? Was there a real, I think that's plausibility.
(33:27):
But then a postmodern approach, which I prefer, says like, are these the words of eternal life?
Do these words transform our life?
And we get into questions of morality. We get into questions of kind of Augustine kind of stuff.
Like Augustine loved to kind of poo-poo all of the sort of objective questions.
(33:52):
And he says, does the reading of the Bible lead me toward love of God and love of neighbor?
And isn't that really what life is for?
I'm going to just really quick tangent on Augustine here because I just did a chapter of a book on Augustine. I love it.
So he talks about, he uses this word, which I love, gravitas, which means weight.
And he talks about all substances having natural weight, but he doesn't mean gravity, even though we get the word gravitas.
(34:17):
So he says, like, if you drop a rock, it'll go to the ground because it'll always move towards its resting place.
But then he says with like a flame, it'll flick upwards because it's always reaching and struggling to reach its resting place.
And he says, if you mix oil and water, they're going to change places because they're going to, they're uncomfortable until they get to where they belong.
(34:40):
And then he talks famously about our hearts are restless until they rest in love of God.
And, you know, in the society we live in, I think that's a much better approach to scripture in terms of getting to the heart of the matter,
then just saying, here are 10 ways the Bible is factually true.
(35:01):
I think that was fine in the 80s. And that worked in the 80s.
And I think there are some ways that you need to put people's concerns to rest about some of the factual elements around Jesus.
Because people still ask, was Jesus a real person in history?
But ultimately, the Bible is an existential text, raising existential questions.
(35:25):
And you shouldn't create a recipe book out of the Bible.
I used to have this, when I used to teach a Bible interpretation course, I used to have it. I don't have one anymore.
But I used to have this granola bar called the Bible Bar.
And it's made only out of the food items that are mentioned in, I think, Deuteronomy.
And it tastes terrible because Deuteronomy doesn't mention salt or butter.
(35:48):
So it tastes absolutely terrible.
So I'm like, don't use it for like doing surgery or for, but for the existential questions we ask, the Bible is absolutely the best resource you could find.
I think we have to shift our infalability questions to the right questions,
even though I believe the Bible is completely true.
(36:10):
It has to be true according to the way that it's presenting what it wants to present, which is who God is.
Maybe a difference between true in this kind of modern factual sense and truth,
which kind of has more of a wisdom sense about it. There's more around it, if we...
Awesome. We kind of want to land the plane here on a pastoral note.
(36:34):
This has been awesome. So we need a Dr. Nijie to become Pastor Nijie here.
And so if you could speak a bit about hypocrisy in the church, why are Christians the first to judge?
If Christians are told not to judge, is there like a modern day Pharisee and anisman in church?
And then how would you basically advise people?
We want to leave with a sense of guidance of like, how do we then act?
(36:59):
You see hypocrisy in the Bible and you see it being not seen well.
Jesus condemning the Pharisees and whatnot.
So how do we tell church folks to live by the book in a way that actually gets it to that true guiding narrative of love and redemption and reconciliation?
What would you tell folks?
Yeah. I often use a quote from Cornell West with my students.
(37:25):
And it's a simple quote, let suffering speak. So when people raise questions about Christians then and now that are hypocritical, I want to validate that first.
And usually that's coming from somewhere.
They have met a Christian or someone in their family, someone at a meal, a Thanksgiving meal that is just a jerk that claims to go to church and that claims to be a born again Christian.
(37:53):
And they're just the worst human being on earth.
And I just want to validate that.
Like, I can't distance myself from that because that's my spiritual family.
So for as many racist, sexist, close minded, jerk Christians, I have to own that.
I have to own that as part of my family, my spiritual family.
(38:15):
So first, pastorally, I want to validate that.
I want to say, yes, I've met lots of Christians that I would not want to be in a two minute conversation with, let alone work with or be around.
Christians have done terrible things throughout history.
I do a lecture with my students on antisemitism.
Ambrose, one of the early Christian theologians for a century, praised the burning down of synagogues as God's judgment on the houses of impiety, called it.
(38:45):
We have to condemn that.
Neonaziism, right? All the stuff, neo-Nazism, all the stuff in the 20th century.
Even now that's happening, I'm guessing a lot of the antisemitism that's happening now is being done in the name of Jesus, even though that's wrong.
So I think pastorally first, we have to acknowledge, we have to be self-critical as a movement and say, there have been times, places, and even today where we blow it big time.
(39:09):
Because if we can't be true about and honest about that, we have no place to tell them about Jesus.
And I would even help them by taking it further and saying, this has been a problem since the beginning.
The very followers of Jesus that he entrusted himself to, that he said in the Garden of Gethsemane, stay with me and pray for me and pray with me.
(39:37):
And they fell asleep and then they abandoned him.
And so we could say, you want to talk about hypocrites, let's talk about these knuckleheads.
But there's a thing from AJ, my friend AJ, that I love.
And he'll ask me on the air, do you like tomatoes?
And I'll say, no, I hate tomatoes. I actually do hate tomatoes.
And he'll say, that's because you never actually had good tomatoes.
(40:01):
I've heard him do this. I heard him like he does something.
Yeah, and it's right. And if you've had real tomatoes, like real, real, real tomatoes that are sweet and juicy and delicious,
it doesn't taste anything like grabbed tomatoes that you buy at the store that have been preserved for months or whatever.
And I think there's just something really true about that when it comes to Christianity.
(40:27):
From the very beginning, heretical groups, false groups developed.
Paul was at war with super apostles.
I mean, this thing was from the beginning.
And Paul and Peter had it out, right?
So I would say, number one, I actually appreciate that the Bible doesn't paper over the dark places of our own tradition.
(40:57):
There was something I found called the slave, the slave, the slaves Bible, I think slaveholders Bible, the slaves Bible,
where slave owners in the 19th century cut out all the parts, the liberative parts of the Bible that could encourage a slave to rebel, whatever.
(41:18):
What if we did that and took out all the hypocritical stuff? It wouldn't be the Bible anymore.
I think it's actually something beautiful that God would invest in us knowing that we were going to blow it.
I was just talking to my wife the other day, yesterday, about the fact that whenever I think of prophets in the Bible,
I think there's like one or two because you know, you got Isaiah or whatever.
(41:40):
But actually, there are parts of the Bible that talk about there being like 500 or 1,000 prophets.
And these are the people that God speaks through.
And I'm thinking, why doesn't just God speak himself? Why does he use these prophets?
Because Israel is always on the lookout for false prophets.
So I'm thinking, if there is a problem with false prophets, why doesn't just God speak?
And there's something about God investing in us, not go-heads, and allowing us to make mistakes that is just so human.
(42:05):
Human in the sense that God is investing in us even knowing that at times we're going to let him down,
that we're going to be hypocritical.
I think that is, that can be a win, I think, for us in the sense that God's not going to give up on us
because he's already seen so many bad things that humans have done.
(42:27):
To me, that's like a banner of hope.
I'll end with one quick thought on that and then we can wrap up.
I just published a book that you should all read called Strings Religion.
How the first Christians were weird, dangerous, and compelling.
And I compare early Christianity to the Roman religion.
(42:51):
And one thing I found really interesting is Rome had a God for everything except they didn't have a patron God of the week.
And here you have Jesus.
And he was known as someone that came down from the highest of heavens and became like a slave and died on a cross.
And this would be something a Roman God would never conceive of because they want to ascend into glory.
(43:16):
You'd have gods of healing, you'd have gods of support, but the idea of a God who actually identifies directly with the weak is amazing.
Now he didn't sin, anything like that, but to stoop down to our level is powerful.
I think for people looking for that, you got to deal with hypocrites in the church.
(43:37):
We just are.
We're people in need of further redemption.
We're on a path, the Bible talks about moving towards salvation versus moving towards perishing.
We're on a path, the sinner says, I believe, help my unbelief.
I think that I'm okay with that.
I'm okay with that in the church.
I think the key is, are we honest?
(43:58):
Are we honest with it?
We're failures, but are we honest with it?
And do we say, because of Jesus, he's going to help me do better tomorrow.
And if not, then the day after that.
That's a big deal.
That's a big deal.
That makes you not a hypocrite, right?
It doesn't mean we don't have a problem, but it makes you not a hypocrite.
And that's a big deal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(44:19):
All right.
Well, hey, that was fantastic.
Such a such an awesome way to, and please get knee jays book, strange religion.
I think it's, I haven't read it yet, but I'm about to, you know what I mean?
And, and, and, and holding you to that now, Stephen.
Yeah, yeah, I will be a hypocrite.
Okay.
(44:40):
Come on.
Somebody I will gladly read the work of knee jay Gupta.
He's a brilliant, brilliant man and, and friend.
And yeah, thank you for coming on and, and, and offering these really great nuggets of
wisdom in a very, very tough topic.
And I hope our listeners are hearing, you know, not quick, easy fixes, but just like,
I think an approach to dive in, you know, like maybe a call to, to go in further.
(45:05):
Those are those tough questions that made me want to become a theologian and, and probably
something similar for, for you guys.
And so thank you very much, knee jay.
You were a wonderful guest and hope to have you on here again at some point in the future.
Maybe when you write another few books, you know what I mean?
Thank you, Stephen.
Thanks.
Thanks, Megan.
(45:26):
Thank you.
Alrighty.
Well, we hope you enjoyed that conversation.
And I think that knee jay is incredible, such a theologian, a scholar, and it's so incredible
that we get to have guests like him have these conversations with us.
And so as we wrap this up, this, as always, this podcast is sponsored by the school theology
and ministry at life Pacific University.
(45:47):
Have a good one.
See you soon.
Everything sounds so fancy when you title it like that.
(00:02):
Yeah.
When you give something a main title and then you put the colon
and then you give it another title,
that's how it feels stupid legit.
You're like initial thought, colon, more thought.
And you're like, dang.
Mm-hmm.
They meant that.
They said what they said.
And then they said it again.
(00:22):
Welcome to TikTok Theology,
a podcast that tackles the major trending topics on social media
that concern the Christian faith.
I'm Megan.
And I'm Steven.
We know you can't form a theology in three minutes or less,
but those videos can identify current issues.
TikTok will give us the prompt and then we'll do a deep dive.
Thanks for joining us in this exploration.
(00:45):
Hi friends and welcome to episode four of season two of TikTok Theology.
On the day this drops, it will be Tuesday of Holy Week.
Yes.
Leading up to Easter.
So happy Judas negotiating for Jesus' betrayal with the Sanhedrin
as they traveled to the Mount of Olives Day.
Mm-hmm.
Good day.
Good day.
(01:06):
Tough day, but a good unnecessary day in fact.
On that note, we're going to be chatting about hypocrisy in scripture.
So don't worry.
We're not tackling this topic alone.
We actually have a special guest joining us.
Yes.
So Steven, why don't you tell us a little bit about who we're going to be welcoming?
Yeah, we have a very special guest, Nijay Gupta.
He is really, really a cool dude.
(01:28):
I've met him just once or twice and he was kind enough to come up on here and join us.
He's this really fantastic New Testament scholar.
He is a New Testament professor at Northern Seminary.
He's written a bunch of books.
Most recently is his book, Strange Religion,
How the First Christians Were Weird, Dangerous and Compelling.
He also wrote, we've mentioned this before, Tell Her Story.
(01:50):
He knows about how the women have led throughout the Bible.
He also serves as a senior translator for the New Living Translation
and co-hosts the Slow Theology podcast with AJ Swaboda, our friend.
Our friend.
So he's pretty awesome.
Got a dynamic duo over there.
They got a dynamic duo and that's a really great podcast.
You guys should save it.
Definitely want to shout that out.
And so he's going to talk to us.
(02:12):
We already pre-recorded this.
Let's turn to that now.
Alrighty friends, we have Nijeg with us in the Zoom.
And we're going to be having a conversation about exploring hypocrisy in the Bible,
which is kind of a conversation that has been popping up recently.
As all things come to light again on social media,
this is not the first time we've talked about hypocrisy.
(02:33):
This is not the first time the theologians and the churches had these conversations.
But social media gives light and life to age old questions and concerns,
especially when it regards to the faith and to scripture.
And I feel like Gen Z and their hunt for authenticity and their hunt hunt for consistency
and their hunt for all these things.
It has been something that has been difficult for a lot to wrestle with is what feels like a perceived hypocrisy in scripture
(03:00):
or in the way that Christians live or in who God is as a whole.
And so we're super excited that you're here to kind of unpack that conversation with us today.
Yeah, important stuff.
So I'll help as much as I can.
All right, well, we couldn't think of anybody better to help us as a New Testament scholar that you are like.
I'm a big fan. I enjoy reading your stuff.
(03:22):
And I tell my students all the time, like, I don't ever want to do the work of New Testament scholarship.
You know what I mean? All the languages and stuff like that.
So it's tedious.
Yeah, I like to have people I can trust, you know what I mean, to be good exeges and stuff like that.
And then I just use it for other stuff.
You know what I mean?
But but yeah, you've written tons of really, really good work.
The most recent one I read was tell her story and defending how you defend women in ministry and leadership roles
(03:47):
and just kind of going through the whole Bible.
And I thought that was really fantastic.
We're coming from a four square tradition.
So like we're all about women in ministry, you know, for everybody listening,
if you have not read anything from DJ, definitely do.
He's he's awesome.
I'm getting my ego boost.
I'm getting my ego boost today.
Keep going. Keep going.
You deserve it.
So we're going to talk about hypocrisy in a lot of different ways because, you know,
(04:10):
that word I think is probably a little bit flexibly used in social media and stuff.
So one of it is going to be about contradictions and then it's going to be about like people holding hypocrisy
and and if God seems hypocritical in it.
So there's going to be a few different questions that are going to like kind of roam around those ideas.
And so the first one we want to ask, why does it seem like God is hypocritical in the Bible?
(04:32):
For instance, why do we have a commandment to not kill?
Then yet God calls Israelites to go to war. It seems like sometimes God has a higher standard for us
than he does for himself.
You know what I mean?
Like he wants us to be these people of peace, but then he will he will not.
So could you talk about that a little bit?
Geez, he's just getting right into it.
(04:54):
Jump right into the hard stuff.
This is going to be a seven hour episode.
Yeah, just real simply like the Ten Commandments.
Obviously, these are important things.
And they're so generalized, like there are lots of conversations, you know, obviously lying is wrong.
But then there are these age old conversations about if someone has a gun to your head or if you're hiding refugees,
(05:19):
protecting them, like are there exceptions to these things?
And even with killing, you know, transletters sometimes wonder, should we translate as murder?
Should we, you know, because then there's questions about war.
There's questions about self-defense, you know, those sorts of things.
Yeah.
Physician assisted suicide, not that I'm endorsing that, but there are questions about that.
(05:40):
Right.
So the Ten Commandments is designed to kind of guide you in how humans should behave in general,
that there should be really clear standards.
But then when Jesus comes along, I'm not trying to be evasive, by the way, we'll get to the question.
When Jesus comes along, he's like, you've heard it said, but I tell you,
(06:01):
and Jesus really digs into the heart and he's saying, okay, it's one thing to talk about actions.
Actions are important.
We got to dig down deeper, get to where the heart is and what the heart's directed at.
And, you know, often with my kids, I, you know, I regularly tell them like,
you're going to make mistakes, you're going to screw things up.
But the question is, where's your heart in the right place?
(06:22):
You need to be really forgiving if your heart was in the right place.
But like you screwed up.
Like we obviously, as people grow up, we want to make sure they're doing the right things.
But don't we with our kids want to make sure that there's a lot of forgiveness
when their heart's in the right place.
The thought that counts sort of thing.
So when we're talking about the Ten Commandments saying, do not kill, you know, okay,
(06:44):
one thing that AJ and I try to do in our podcast is be really careful about what I call folk apologetics.
So that's the idea that we give like a nice, neat answer.
And then, oh, you know, we can wipe our hands with it.
Not a problem.
There are a lot of things in scripture that are heavy enough that you just can't give an answer.
It's disrespectful to the conversation to give an answer.
(07:08):
So, you know, at the risk of being a hypocrite myself,
I will tell you some of the answers that theologians give.
But then we'll go back to just the issue of paradox in scripture,
which I think will be a common theme that we'll come back to in this conversation.
But it's mystery, mystery, paradox, even balance, transcendence and eminence.
(07:32):
And we'll talk about what those terms mean later.
So let me tell you what theologians have said throughout the years about this issue of divine genocide or divine killing.
So they've said, you know, they said one, God can do it every once.
His ways are higher than our ways.
So it's kind of like do as I say, not as I do.
I'll put that on my Nijay-O. meter, how I rate that.
(07:55):
I mean, there are things that we do as parents that maybe our kids don't understand.
Where I could see where we say, okay, you just when you get older, you'll understand those kinds of things.
I don't know. That's a little tricky.
Another one. I actually like this one.
Tell me what you guys think.
In the book of Deuteronomy, there's actually two different things that are said to Israel on the brink of them going in the land.
(08:18):
One is wipe them completely out.
Don't leave anyone alive.
Kill them all.
The second thing is don't intermarry with them.
Don't assimilate to their culture.
Well, if you've already wiped them out, then why would you be worried about assimilating?
And then a third thing that's said throughout the historical books is you are being plagued by the Canaanites because you failed to drive them out.
(08:44):
Well, were they supposed to drive them out?
Were they supposed to kill them?
I think there are double messages in there.
One is and the killing them is more of preventing Israel from falling into idolatry and basically Israel's attempt to claim the land as their own versus these people are sinners and need to die because Israel is sinners too.
(09:09):
You know, we had Jim W. Adams.
We had just two episodes ago and we were talking about reconciling the violence of God and that was his main stance right there.
The Old Testament and the New Testament Jesus himself also speak with hyperbole and this is something that the reader and listeners would have known that the thing to wipe out completely is the idolatry out of the place.
(09:31):
But the people attached to it don't necessarily need to.
So yeah, I think that's a pretty compelling one, I think.
Good on the Niger meter?
Is it good on that?
Yeah, well, it is.
I mean, you know, you still have Psalms and maybe this is a more concrete example where you have some.
I don't know, maybe 139 where it says, you know, dash blessed are the one who dashed the baby's heads on the rocks of my enemies, you know, my enemy's baby's heads.
(09:56):
It's a problematic one.
It's harsh.
And in the and in the the liturgy, the Jewish liturgy and the Catholic in Orthodox liturgy, they actually remove those verses when they say it publicly, when they when they express the liturgy.
Because even though things are in the Bible, not everything is what we call normative.
(10:18):
Right.
And so there are some things where we say, yeah, that's not the best.
Like with my students, I was recently talking about in Paul, where he says all, you know, in this entire, he says, all cretins are liars.
I don't think all cretins are liars.
So this is again, an example of hyperbole.
We don't want to take those things and justify us doing them today and saying it's in the Bible.
(10:40):
Yeah.
So I think, you know, we have to talk about how inspiration works.
So I talk with my students about the difference between we're going really deep down in.
Hey, it's good.
I'm looking at last year.
I talked about the difference between theological inspiration and absolute inspiration.
(11:02):
So absolute inspiration is just sort of treating all parts of the Bible the same and saying all of them are normative.
And the last one, inspiration, we say all of scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and treating righteousness.
But there's kind of a heart or a nerve center of scripture in places like the Sermon on the Mount, the Ten Commandments, where these are our guiding lights,
(11:28):
you know, the fruit of the Spirit.
Yeah.
You know, and the early church would call this the rule of faith.
They would say there has to be these guardrails because one of the early church fathers said the heretics, you know, the early Christian heretics were just cherry picking verses and allowing that to guide their theology in wrong directions.
(11:53):
They created a rule of faith, which is basically like a theological compass in order to say certain things are more are more of an arrow pointing to Christian formation than other things in the Bible, even though those we can learn from those other things.
Mm hmm.
It's good.
I don't know.
Is that I don't know if any of these things are going to satisfy someone that's really wrestling with.
(12:16):
But you know, like these hard, I think I think these hard conversations in which basically our whole podcast is about like that's like the tough questions that they ask.
I think young folks, Gen Z millennials like myself, you know, Gen X, anybody who has these kind of questions, what they want, I think is a rich dialogue.
I don't think they want a neat and tidy answer.
(12:37):
Sure.
These questions confounded them for a reason, so like having a quick just like, Hey, here's a two step thing that's that seems dishonest.
Also unnatural.
Like that's not how these scriptures were ever handled throughout scripture.
Midrashes don't handle them like this.
Like they there's they dive in.
This is a tough concept.
So I think what we're trying to do is see if people can be guided through tough issues, not, you know, make them super reductionistic and easy.
(13:05):
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
I also think I also think that like in the sense of it's very easy for us, especially to like read an English translation of a certain version of scripture and be like, Oh my gosh, heresy.
And so I think it's these kinds of conversations that kind of open it wider and they're like, well, there was original language and there was cultural context and there is like more than what feels like just a surface like, Oh, I read, I read the Bible and I saw hypocrisy and I don't want to believe in a God that contradicts himself.
(13:32):
And so I think that it's these kinds of things that make you understand that there is something deeper to it and that there's a reason that we have theologians who've been doing this for thousands of years and will continue to do it for as long as we are on this earth is because there's so much more than just an English translation that makes me feel like I don't like that God is a liar.
And so I think that that's why these dialogues are good.
(13:53):
Because even if it's I mean, we can't make people, you know, read a lexicon and we can't make people do anything like that.
I tried.
It's as much as we try and I know Steven tries in his classes like we all try.
But I think to at least like explain that there is more to this kind of helps bring at least a settling of okay, maybe we don't have it all figured out and there's we can't make them look deeper.
(14:15):
But we know at least there is a deeper there.
Yeah, you know, and what I'm going to recommend a guest to you his name is Richard Middleton.
He's Old Testament theologian.
And he has this really wonderful book a couple years ago or last year maybe called Abraham silence.
And I'm going to summarize it really, really briefly, but he basically says with Abraham being asked to sacrifice his son.
(14:35):
Yeah, this was actually an invitation by God for Abraham to argue back and he didn't.
And he calls this vigorous dialogue and prayer where we have a tradition of Abraham Moses all these patriarchs who basically argue with God like God's like I'm going to destroy that city.
And then they say, you know, that's not really in your character.
God.
(14:56):
Yeah.
And he says, yeah, you're right.
And Abraham blew it like Job did better.
Joe basically the book is like Job did better by basically arguing with God.
So what I think with these kinds of issues is there's a kind of respect that you can show to God in arguing with him.
Like when my kids argue with me, there's a good way to do it and a bad way to do it.
(15:20):
Right.
There's a dismissive way to argue.
But then there's like, didn't you always teach me don't don't our kids get us on those?
Like, did you always teach me to, you know, and I think that's what I think in these kind of situations even today, what what AJ and I try to do on slow theology is basically say, bring these things to God.
Like there's a kind of productive arguing with God that can happen when we say, I don't think that's right.
(15:50):
But I don't think that's right because you taught me that wasn't right.
You know, when you guys say, hey, DJ, aren't these things contradictions?
These this is exactly what the biblical tradition gives us space to bring to God and say, I think actually the biblical message is peace.
So why are these things happen?
It's an ongoing dialogue with God.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So good.
(16:11):
Well, even like moving moving forward of like what we kind of deem is hypocritical, but we also see these kind of certain places in scripture that catch people, which is these like perceived double standards in these places in the Bible.
Right.
Where we see like the famous, you know, passage that you clearly are very familiar with of Paul telling women to be silent in 1st Timothy 2, but then in Roman 16 affirming different women in leadership and where they're called to or how we're called to love everyone, including our enemies.
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But then we have the flood or the condemnation of Sodom and Gomorrah or like seeing homosexuality as an abomination.
But we're supposed to live in love and love our enemies and like all of these different things that feel like, oh, well, I can do this or this like what where's the double standard where am I held to this and where am I not held.
So can you speak a little bit to like a biblical double standard?
(17:02):
Yeah, I think part of the problem is when we use the word Bible, which just literally means book, we treat it as if it were one thing.
When in reality, it comes from thousands of years of history.
And so when you think about where the book of Genesis comes from, which is ancient Israel thousands of years ago, and then you take something like the book of Revelation, which is from the end of the first century.
(17:33):
I mean, you're you're spanning thousands of years of literature.
Think about something written today and then putting it in a collection next to Beowulf.
That's what that's what we're talking about.
Even more more than that and saying, oh, this is all part of one collection.
What would you know, Tim Mackey, she also have Tim on your show, but Tim from the Bible project.
(17:55):
I love how he talks about this because, you know, I've said, you know, what do we do with these biblical texts that come from certain specific ancient contexts and then we strip them away from that and put them in the Bible.
He says it's kind of like a museum, like the British Museum or, you know, like an American archaeological museum where you're taking those pieces out of their, you know, like a sculpture or whatever statue taking them as context, but then you carefully place it into a specific arrangement.
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So as you walk through it, you're supposed to experience in a certain way.
I like that with the Bible.
That's what's happening with the Bible, the canon that was formed is designed in a certain way to give you the story of the Bible, Old Testament, New Testament, Gospels, first epistles, but we can easily forget or maybe not know that they come from really specific genres, really specific periods of time, that sort of thing.
(18:50):
So sometimes the genre will dictate the form of something.
So hyperbole is used more often in more artistic things.
I'm going to be teaching this week on Mary's song of praise, the Magnificat Luke chapter one where he says, you know, where Mary prophesies that the Messiah's work is going to pull down rulers from their thrones, but it doesn't say bad rulers.
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It just says rulers.
It'll send the rich away hungry.
It doesn't say the bad rich.
It just says the rich.
So, you know, but then the book of Proverbs talks about, you know, Penny saves his penny earn kind of thing and you can flourish and, you know, the Old Testament really praises, you know, the role of the kings in the Psalms, you know, their, their, their sons of God, their little Lord, the angels along with humanity.
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What do we do with that?
I think we need to be careful when we when you read like a conspiracy website that says here are all the contradictions in the Bible.
Yeah.
It's kind of silly because so much of the Bible is poetic in some sort of non when we when we first approach the Bible, we sort of think of it as like the Constitution.
It's written in sort of syllogistic, empirical, a equals, you know, a plus b equals c and that's just not the Bible at all.
(20:07):
So much is narrative.
So much is poetry.
So much is apocalypse or prophecy.
My wife is reading through the Old Testament.
She's been in Jeremiah for weeks.
It's just a long book.
Yeah.
And so I think you have to really take into account the genre.
So when it comes to like, let's say women, one thing that I often tell people is there are the ideals like relations 328, neither male nor female, meaning we're not going to treat people differently based on demographic based on biology based on status in society.
(20:44):
But then we have the realities of the world we live in and how we journey towards those ideals step by step.
So the example I love to give is and it's kind of silly, you'll have to just bear with me.
So when my kids were little, I would tell to get them to brush your teeth out, tell them that food has sugar monsters and they stick to your teeth.
(21:08):
And what you do is you brush them off, the toothpaste is like some kind of acid.
And then the sugar monsters fall into the lava pit in your stomach and then they die.
And none of that is actually true.
What?
I know.
I'm shocked.
I'm trying to get them to the truth.
(21:30):
But this is what they can handle now.
And then later on I tell them, you know, as well as Santa Claus not being real, sugar monsters aren't real either.
And I think often what we see in scripture are these step by step movements to try to move us towards that ideal.
But the step may be, hey, you're still going to be a slave, but we're going to increase your value.
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Or you're going to be a slave, but we give you an extra few hours off.
And we don't like that from where we're sitting because we look at the Bible as a flat document versus a document written on it.
A document written over, you know, collected over thousands of years to understand the increment, often incremental movement towards those ideals.
So I think the real issue is what are the ideals?
(22:12):
We can't treat all of the Bible the same.
We often get the ideal in what theologians call pro-tology and eschatology, how it was in the beginning before sin and how it will be in the end when everything is redeemed.
And if we focus on those things, we have a much more beautiful picture rather than treat everything exactly the same and then pit them against one another.
(22:34):
Right. So there should be a narrative through line for when we're reading scripture with the kind of the ending inside always the telios at the side of what we're doing.
So I really like that.
What about if there seems to be an apparent contradiction in the Bible that's like in the same genre?
Like, for instance, where it just seems like two different accounts.
(22:59):
We got two different accounts of Judas's death.
He hung himself. He hung himself in Matthew. He fell on the rocks in Acts.
And so, you know, those are both coming from the same genre, Luke Acts and then Matthew.
But then, you know, some people have said, oh, well, maybe he hung himself and then like we cut the rope off and then his guts fell out.
(23:22):
It's like, hey, you just added one iota to the Bible. You know what I mean? Like, be careful now. Careful.
And then there's other things like two different creation accounts that definitely seems like a genre issue between Genesis one and two.
But then, but then the synoptics will have a different timeline.
John, which could be sort of genre ish there, you know, like the way they're talking, but the Judas one, that's in the same genre.
(23:47):
That's where it gets a little, little tough. You can talk a little bit about that.
Yeah. Yeah, I think our time is up. Sorry.
Those things are interesting. I think it's the way we read the Gospels because today we have we have so much fact checking going on with presidential speeches or, you know, a modern biography people will comb through and, you know, think about all the
(24:10):
hearings that are going on with Trump or whoever with Biden and the documents and we we prize perfect veracity in terms of like, did it happen at 1230 or 1231?
Like that's that's something we really prize as as moderns. And it's not a bad thing, but it is the way we come into the Gospels is through the lens of like perfect veracity.
(24:34):
You have to understand ancient biographies and the Gospels were written generally speaking in the genre of ancient biographies.
All four of the Gospels, although Gospel of John kind of blends ancient biography with kind of fantasy, you might say, not fantasy in the sense it didn't happen, but fantasy that they're really going to ramp up the supernatural in a way that the synoptics don't.
(24:59):
They're going to pay more attention to that. Let's put it that way.
So then you have to understand what the rules of ancient biography was.
And you have to think ancient biographies were not trying to tell objective, neutral reporting of someone's life.
Even modern biographies aren't really doing that right there.
(25:20):
They they have their Ben they have their, you know, perspective.
But these ancient biographies, you know, you would think if they were just meant to be absolutely historical objective, we'd only need one of them.
Right. Just pick the best one.
Like Luke is passionate about this. He seems to have interviewed the right people. Let's go with Luke.
The reason we have four is ancient biographies were often trying to combine eyewitness testimony and facts with a certain perspective or take or spin on the person.
(25:54):
And they call this incomia stick, incomia stick, meaning they're trying to put forward the hero as someone to emulate.
And so they're going to shape the story towards, you know, that perspective.
So when it comes to some of these details, I'll give you another example. We'll come back to the Judas one.
(26:15):
For example, the temple cleansing when Jesus overturns the tables, you know, in in in the Gospel.
John happens the very beginning of the Gospel and in the synoptic gospels, it happens at the end.
And those who take this gospel genre as, you know, perfectly factual says there has to have been two temple cleanses.
(26:37):
But I'm like, if there were two, you think they would have like nailed the tables down.
I had that conversation literally two days ago in my class, like they were like, I heard that it was two.
I was like, yeah, the temple people would have known.
Oh, it's that guy. Watch out. He's about to he's about to whip everything.
Anyway, put the money away. Here he comes again.
I would have nailed the tables down. So what are you going to do now, Jesus?
But there was space within within that genre for shaping narrative shaping.
(27:04):
And we deal with this now with like biopics.
Like, for example, when I started my like working on my lectures on this material, it was when the Nelson Mandela biopic came out in Victus.
And, you know, I'm sure when they're sitting down to decide these things, they say like, there's certain things that we just have to do for for veracity.
Like, like he's got to be black.
(27:26):
You know, like, he's got to be a man.
Like you can't you can't break out of those sorts of things.
But then they can kind of move things around or add a scene in, you know, that sort of thing.
You guys remember Cherry to fire. This is where we get a generational here.
Yeah, which is the story of Eric Little, who's a runner.
And, you know, I remember there's a scene where there, you know, there's this run around like one of the universities, the UK universities and like people are like outrage that didn't actually happen in real life.
(27:54):
But it's within the biopics flexibility of telling the story of the person and the characters.
Yeah.
And, you know, I'm not against trying to line up the two stories in Judas.
I'm not against it if if if it's plausible.
I'm not sure how plausible that one is.
(28:16):
The, you know, the thinking I have is there are two stories, there are two traditions that developed.
He's definitely a real person.
He definitely betrayed Jesus.
But how he died, there's there's two stories developed and one has one and one has the other.
And I know we struggle with that.
But if you inspect the gospel closely, you're going to find lots of things that don't match up perfectly.
Yeah.
(28:37):
And so, for example, one of my favorite ones I use in the classroom is when Jesus is arrested and the soldiers mock him,
they put a robe on him.
What color is the robe?
I asked my students and some will say, you know, oh, it was it was red.
And others will say, oh, it was purple because the gospel John has it as purple.
The gospel Mark has it as red.
Now, how do you align the two?
(28:58):
Oh, they took off one robe, put another robe on or it's like lighting.
Right.
It's like, you know, magic, you know, it's like a movie.
One of the disciples was colorblind.
Yeah.
Oh, that's a good one.
I haven't thought about that one.
It's like that dress.
You know, the white and blue dress.
The white and gold versus the blue and black.
That's what it was.
But, but, you know, if we're talking about what the writer is trying to do, John is very interested in positioning Jesus as a royal figure.
(29:27):
So it's ironic because it's a purple.
But then Mark emphasizes Jesus's suffering, his noble and righteous suffering, which is the color of blood and martyrdom.
And they're both right.
But, you know, when you say what was the actual color, you know, was a purplish red or, you know, what I tell my students is when it comes to reading a text with the author, there are good questions and bad questions.
(29:52):
So I say this was like Harry Potter, you know, it's it's a bad question to ask how does magic work?
Like if you're reading with JK Rowling, how does magic work is a bad question because she doesn't answer it.
She doesn't want you to get distracted by that question.
She's assuming it.
Yeah.
But a good question is what kind of person is Snape?
Like that's that she wants you to ask that question or what kind of person is Dumbledore?
(30:15):
She wants you to ask that kind of question.
But asking the wrong question will get you away from the purpose of the story.
We may still have those questions.
And that's why I think it's OK to ask it was Jesus real figure in history.
You know, did he really die in a cross?
I think it's OK.
It's getting us away.
So back to Judas thing.
How much do I wrestle with that?
I take for granted that the stories about Jesus and Gospels are number one based generally speaking on what happened.
(30:41):
Luke talks about eyewitnesses.
Number two, there was flexibility for what I call narratizing.
Number three, because the Christian church sees these as inspired, we trust the storytellers.
Right.
Now, when students say that's not good enough, I say tough noogies.
We don't have a time machine until we build one.
(31:04):
We don't know what happened.
So we either trust, you know, the reconstructionists of today, the Jesus seminar and the people that want to tell us a different story.
Or we trust the authorized storytellers theologically or you just give up.
And if you want to give up, that's fine.
But I kind of like this Christian thing.
I think that's a that's a knee-jay group to quote.
If we do a little merch, tough noogies.
Tough noogies.
(31:26):
Professor Nijay says tough noogies.
Dude, where do you think that this part, these kind of conversations can kind of intersect with the infallibility versus inerrancy conversation about scripture?
Good question.
I remember going to a church plant in Philadelphia a long, long time ago.
(31:47):
And the preacher was trying to prove to the people there the Bible is true based on how the Bible actually reflects scientific fact.
And a lot of the stuff just either was half true or it was just kind of trying to pull the wool over somebody's eyes.
(32:09):
So it talks about how like God revealed a spherical earth to Job because he says the Lord hangs the world on nothing or something like that.
And I'm just like, I don't know if I would, you know, because they also talk about the four pillows of the world and the four corners and all that.
That kind of stuff where we talk about where we a modernistic approach as, hey, we can prove the Bible using essentially secular tools.
(32:37):
And that that's a dangerous game because you are beholden to those tools, I think.
I like a more postmodern approach. I still believe, by the way, don't cancel me.
I still believe in the infallibility. I even would use the word inerrancy. We can come back to that.
But it comes from plausibility.
(33:00):
Is there enough historical evidence to give the Bible plausibility?
Not absolute, hey, I can prove the Bible based on this archaeological find because then you're going to find some other archaeological thing and then you're screwed.
But is there enough plausibility there? Like was Israel, ancient Israel really in Egypt?
Were they really going to exile? Was there a real Jesus? Was there a real, I think that's plausibility.
(33:27):
But then a postmodern approach, which I prefer, says like, are these the words of eternal life?
Do these words transform our life?
And we get into questions of morality. We get into questions of kind of Augustine kind of stuff.
Like Augustine loved to kind of poo-poo all of the sort of objective questions.
(33:52):
And he says, does the reading of the Bible lead me toward love of God and love of neighbor?
And isn't that really what life is for?
I'm going to just really quick tangent on Augustine here because I just did a chapter of a book on Augustine. I love it.
So he talks about, he uses this word, which I love, gravitas, which means weight.
And he talks about all substances having natural weight, but he doesn't mean gravity, even though we get the word gravitas.
(34:17):
So he says, like, if you drop a rock, it'll go to the ground because it'll always move towards its resting place.
But then he says with like a flame, it'll flick upwards because it's always reaching and struggling to reach its resting place.
And he says, if you mix oil and water, they're going to change places because they're going to, they're uncomfortable until they get to where they belong.
(34:40):
And then he talks famously about our hearts are restless until they rest in love of God.
And, you know, in the society we live in, I think that's a much better approach to scripture in terms of getting to the heart of the matter,
then just saying, here are 10 ways the Bible is factually true.
(35:01):
I think that was fine in the 80s. And that worked in the 80s.
And I think there are some ways that you need to put people's concerns to rest about some of the factual elements around Jesus.
Because people still ask, was Jesus a real person in history?
But ultimately, the Bible is an existential text, raising existential questions.
(35:25):
And you shouldn't create a recipe book out of the Bible.
I used to have this, when I used to teach a Bible interpretation course, I used to have it. I don't have one anymore.
But I used to have this granola bar called the Bible Bar.
And it's made only out of the food items that are mentioned in, I think, Deuteronomy.
And it tastes terrible because Deuteronomy doesn't mention salt or butter.
(35:48):
So it tastes absolutely terrible.
So I'm like, don't use it for like doing surgery or for, but for the existential questions we ask, the Bible is absolutely the best resource you could find.
I think we have to shift our infalability questions to the right questions,
even though I believe the Bible is completely true.
(36:10):
It has to be true according to the way that it's presenting what it wants to present, which is who God is.
Maybe a difference between true in this kind of modern factual sense and truth,
which kind of has more of a wisdom sense about it. There's more around it, if we...
Awesome. We kind of want to land the plane here on a pastoral note.
(36:34):
This has been awesome. So we need a Dr. Nijie to become Pastor Nijie here.
And so if you could speak a bit about hypocrisy in the church, why are Christians the first to judge?
If Christians are told not to judge, is there like a modern day Pharisee and anisman in church?
And then how would you basically advise people?
We want to leave with a sense of guidance of like, how do we then act?
(36:59):
You see hypocrisy in the Bible and you see it being not seen well.
Jesus condemning the Pharisees and whatnot.
So how do we tell church folks to live by the book in a way that actually gets it to that true guiding narrative of love and redemption and reconciliation?
What would you tell folks?
Yeah. I often use a quote from Cornell West with my students.
(37:25):
And it's a simple quote, let suffering speak. So when people raise questions about Christians then and now that are hypocritical, I want to validate that first.
And usually that's coming from somewhere.
They have met a Christian or someone in their family, someone at a meal, a Thanksgiving meal that is just a jerk that claims to go to church and that claims to be a born again Christian.
(37:53):
And they're just the worst human being on earth.
And I just want to validate that.
Like, I can't distance myself from that because that's my spiritual family.
So for as many racist, sexist, close minded, jerk Christians, I have to own that.
I have to own that as part of my family, my spiritual family.
(38:15):
So first, pastorally, I want to validate that.
I want to say, yes, I've met lots of Christians that I would not want to be in a two minute conversation with, let alone work with or be around.
Christians have done terrible things throughout history.
I do a lecture with my students on antisemitism.
Ambrose, one of the early Christian theologians for a century, praised the burning down of synagogues as God's judgment on the houses of impiety, called it.
(38:45):
We have to condemn that.
Neonaziism, right? All the stuff, neo-Nazism, all the stuff in the 20th century.
Even now that's happening, I'm guessing a lot of the antisemitism that's happening now is being done in the name of Jesus, even though that's wrong.
So I think pastorally first, we have to acknowledge, we have to be self-critical as a movement and say, there have been times, places, and even today where we blow it big time.
(39:09):
Because if we can't be true about and honest about that, we have no place to tell them about Jesus.
And I would even help them by taking it further and saying, this has been a problem since the beginning.
The very followers of Jesus that he entrusted himself to, that he said in the Garden of Gethsemane, stay with me and pray for me and pray with me.
(39:37):
And they fell asleep and then they abandoned him.
And so we could say, you want to talk about hypocrites, let's talk about these knuckleheads.
But there's a thing from AJ, my friend AJ, that I love.
And he'll ask me on the air, do you like tomatoes?
And I'll say, no, I hate tomatoes. I actually do hate tomatoes.
And he'll say, that's because you never actually had good tomatoes.
(40:01):
I've heard him do this. I heard him like he does something.
Yeah, and it's right. And if you've had real tomatoes, like real, real, real tomatoes that are sweet and juicy and delicious,
it doesn't taste anything like grabbed tomatoes that you buy at the store that have been preserved for months or whatever.
And I think there's just something really true about that when it comes to Christianity.
(40:27):
From the very beginning, heretical groups, false groups developed.
Paul was at war with super apostles.
I mean, this thing was from the beginning.
And Paul and Peter had it out, right?
So I would say, number one, I actually appreciate that the Bible doesn't paper over the dark places of our own tradition.
(40:57):
There was something I found called the slave, the slave, the slaves Bible, I think slaveholders Bible, the slaves Bible,
where slave owners in the 19th century cut out all the parts, the liberative parts of the Bible that could encourage a slave to rebel, whatever.
(41:18):
What if we did that and took out all the hypocritical stuff? It wouldn't be the Bible anymore.
I think it's actually something beautiful that God would invest in us knowing that we were going to blow it.
I was just talking to my wife the other day, yesterday, about the fact that whenever I think of prophets in the Bible,
I think there's like one or two because you know, you got Isaiah or whatever.
(41:40):
But actually, there are parts of the Bible that talk about there being like 500 or 1,000 prophets.
And these are the people that God speaks through.
And I'm thinking, why doesn't just God speak himself? Why does he use these prophets?
Because Israel is always on the lookout for false prophets.
So I'm thinking, if there is a problem with false prophets, why doesn't just God speak?
And there's something about God investing in us, not go-heads, and allowing us to make mistakes that is just so human.
(42:05):
Human in the sense that God is investing in us even knowing that at times we're going to let him down,
that we're going to be hypocritical.
I think that is, that can be a win, I think, for us in the sense that God's not going to give up on us
because he's already seen so many bad things that humans have done.
(42:27):
To me, that's like a banner of hope.
I'll end with one quick thought on that and then we can wrap up.
I just published a book that you should all read called Strings Religion.
How the first Christians were weird, dangerous, and compelling.
And I compare early Christianity to the Roman religion.
(42:51):
And one thing I found really interesting is Rome had a God for everything except they didn't have a patron God of the week.
And here you have Jesus.
And he was known as someone that came down from the highest of heavens and became like a slave and died on a cross.
And this would be something a Roman God would never conceive of because they want to ascend into glory.
(43:16):
You'd have gods of healing, you'd have gods of support, but the idea of a God who actually identifies directly with the weak is amazing.
Now he didn't sin, anything like that, but to stoop down to our level is powerful.
I think for people looking for that, you got to deal with hypocrites in the church.
(43:37):
We just are.
We're people in need of further redemption.
We're on a path, the Bible talks about moving towards salvation versus moving towards perishing.
We're on a path, the sinner says, I believe, help my unbelief.
I think that I'm okay with that.
I'm okay with that in the church.
I think the key is, are we honest?
(43:58):
Are we honest with it?
We're failures, but are we honest with it?
And do we say, because of Jesus, he's going to help me do better tomorrow.
And if not, then the day after that.
That's a big deal.
That's a big deal.
That makes you not a hypocrite, right?
It doesn't mean we don't have a problem, but it makes you not a hypocrite.
And that's a big deal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
(44:19):
All right.
Well, hey, that was fantastic.
Such a such an awesome way to, and please get knee jays book, strange religion.
I think it's, I haven't read it yet, but I'm about to, you know what I mean?
And, and, and, and holding you to that now, Stephen.
Yeah, yeah, I will be a hypocrite.
Okay.
(44:40):
Come on.
Somebody I will gladly read the work of knee jay Gupta.
He's a brilliant, brilliant man and, and friend.
And yeah, thank you for coming on and, and, and offering these really great nuggets of
wisdom in a very, very tough topic.
And I hope our listeners are hearing, you know, not quick, easy fixes, but just like,
I think an approach to dive in, you know, like maybe a call to, to go in further.
(45:05):
Those are those tough questions that made me want to become a theologian and, and probably
something similar for, for you guys.
And so thank you very much, knee jay.
You were a wonderful guest and hope to have you on here again at some point in the future.
Maybe when you write another few books, you know what I mean?
Thank you, Stephen.
Thanks.
Thanks, Megan.
(45:26):
Thank you.
Alrighty.
Well, we hope you enjoyed that conversation.
And I think that knee jay is incredible, such a theologian, a scholar, and it's so incredible
that we get to have guests like him have these conversations with us.
And so as we wrap this up, this, as always, this podcast is sponsored by the school theology
and ministry at life Pacific University.
(45:47):
Have a good one.
See you soon.
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