Ep. 3 – The Jesus Argument

Pronch (00:00):
So how are you today?

Adam (00:02):
I’m good. It’s a lovely Tuesday. No, it’s a Wednesday. What day

Pronch (00:07):
Is it? I don’t even know. It’s Wednesday. It’s Wednesday, but it’s okay.

Adam (00:12):
That’s a week for me when I don’t even know what day it is. Then that says that I’m not overwhelmed with work or something like that. So yeah, I like losing track of the days. Summer is a time, especially in the summer camp scene, which we’ve talked about lots and have been part of that I love in the summer and when I worked at summer camp, just not knowing what day it was. It was just a great feeling of being removed from the hustle and flow of the rat race kind of life.

Pronch (00:40):
Absolutely. Absolutely. It’s a good

Adam (00:41):
Feeling to not know what day it is.

Pronch (00:43):
It happens a lot, but as you start to have kids and your life gets into a bit more of a cycle, a bit more of a pattern, you start to really know exactly when it is because things, you have to follow the schedule. You have to know we’re going swimming on this day, we’re going to soccer on that day. And so if you lose track of it, you’ll miss things. So that’s just one thing that, I dunno if children are in your future, I have no idea, but if they are, you start to, the cycle of the week becomes very important.

Adam (01:13):
Not if I just send them out to live in the woods and have

Pronch (01:15):
Them just, I hadn’t considered

Adam (01:16):
That for themselves and

Pronch (01:18):
That’s wilderness camp 1 0 1 right there.

Adam (01:20):
But I’m talking deep, not just Spartan. I’m going to give them a knife and then just they have to

Pronch (01:27):
Lord of the fly style

Adam (01:29):
And they just got to figure it out. Not against each other, but just against the elements. I think that’s

Pronch (01:33):
A good, you must survive.

Adam (01:35):
I think that’s a healthy way to raise kids and I think it’s an effective way to raise kids and I think the Kingdom of Sparta has proven that to us.

Pronch (01:41):
Yeah, yeah. I mean it makes sense. I mean that’s where we came from as a species’. True. We came from needing to survive against the elements.

Adam (01:48):
That’s right. And really it’s just me. I’ve been playing gdo war Ragnarok a lot lately, so I think I’m sprinkled with inspiration for, actually, I’ve been playing that and that’s the other thing I’ve been doing this week. I had some time off. I’ve been playing a lot of God war Ragnarok and the new Star Wars Jedi survivor game, so I’ve been swinging at you

Pronch (02:06):
Playing that. Did you spend the 80 bucks on it?

Adam (02:09):
Yep.

Pronch (02:10):
Wow.

Adam (02:11):
Yeah, I know people are saying it’s super glitchy and stuff. I have it on PSS five, so it’s been fine and I’ve been waiting for this game for three years. It’s like my favorite Star Wars story I think I’ve ever had. So I’m swinging a lightsaber around a lot these days.

Pronch (02:25):
I have not played it yet. I’ve seen some trailers. It looks really good, but I’m really soured on Star Wars right now. Too much. Well, it’s too much and not good enough. The last three movies were just, in my personal opinion, were terrible. I prefer the prequel series to, it’s

Adam (02:45):
A sequel state series statement, but I think it’s a fair statement and I think even as we might disagree deeply on the caught fabric of the cosmos and the existence of God, I think we agree that the sequel trilogy was a mess. And I think that shows the common ground that we have. There

Pronch (03:01):
We go. Absolutely. Absolutely. We could do

Adam (03:04):
A whole podcast about that, but we won’t right

Pronch (03:06):
Now. We’ll talk about that bonus episode. Let’s bring that off offline as like, let’s talk about Star Wars. I dunno.

Adam (03:12):
I mean, star Wars has impacted my faith, so it will definitely come up at some point organically in this conversation. So yeah,

Pronch (03:19):
Entirely possible. Yeah.

Adam (03:20):
How’s your week going?

Pronch (03:22):
My week’s good. My kid’s homesick today, so that’s a little unfortunate. My wife and I are trading back and forth on who’s watching him while the other one does work, and I was able to convince her that this is work, which I’m really kind of shocked that I was able to convince her of that. But generally it’s been good. I’ve been spending the week outside doing some lawn care, cleaning up the trying to plant new grass seed to want to have one of those lush, beautiful barefoot lawns if I can. That’d be really

Adam (03:49):
Nice. I do love being barefoot. Yeah, nice. I heard that people fill in their lawns sometimes with clovers and they’re easy to mow and I don’t know anything about backyards, but that’s something that I learned the other day that some people are doing fill-ins with clovers because they’re easy to maintain and then you can have that barefoot thing, but then it’s a little more natural and than lawns that aren’t really that natural. So I’m interested in the world of clovers now, so it might just be like Cloverfield, but again, not the monster.

Pronch (04:21):
No, I was thinking, yeah. Okay, so yeah, let’s get back. Let’s get on track with our subject. The reason that we’re here and the reason that people are listening, where we last left off was talking about our joint understanding of where the stories of Christian faith come from and why you might find them believable and why I might not, and we don’t want to get super academic here. We don’t want to open up a textbook and have our audience have to fully understand the full history of everything. But I wanted to kind of open up the floor here with generally basically knowing that the Bible was not handed down from on high. We know that which I want to put out there for the audience to listen. That is obvious when you think about it. But as a adult, I had never thought about it until very recently.

(05:19):
It wasn’t until within the last year or two that it was like, wait, wait, wait. The Bible, nobody believed, well, sorry, not nobody. Generally it is not believed that the Bible was handed down from the clouds to the people as this is my word, I am God, hear my word. It was written by people and the people may be fallible, the people may be. So the whole idea of scripture all being God breathed and all that jazz. I wanted to ask you, knowing that it wasn’t handed down from a cloud to humans, why do you find the Bible to be generally at a high level without going super deep? Why do you find it to be a believable thing and what’s written in there is something that you believe as being worth devoting your faith and your life to?

Adam (06:05):
Yeah, I would say one thing on top is we should acknowledge that there are people who would, and communities and traditions that would probably, I don’t know anyone that specifically would say it came down from a cloud, but in terms of the way that some people engage with the Christian scriptures would be closer to what you’re talking about in terms of people divinely inspired. And that there are people who believe in what’s called the infallibility, which is basically that this is a very, very rough shot of explaining, but there will be people who believe basically like God inspired and sort of guided the hand of those writing. And each letter and word is that there are people who believe that it is divinely inspired and infallible, and in errant is another word, meaning there’s no questioning it. So there’s no errors or anything like that.

(07:09):
And there are people who would also believe it doesn’t need to be explained. It’s like that the spirit works in a way where as soon as you read it, you’re initially supposed to understand exactly what it means, so that we should acknowledge there are people who believe that I don’t fall into really that category, but many people do and many traditions do. And so the question of then the Bible as believable or not believable, I would say is kind of intentionally not where is not the starting point for me. And so a more accurate representation of where I would start from would be less about the believability. And I’m not trying to sidestep that question. There are things that I believe that I read that I go, yep, I believe that for the starting point of how I engage. I think less about did it happen or did it not?

(08:14):
And more about what is it telling? What is this collection of texts? If we’re just starting with the Bible, which is one element of my faith that what is this collection of texts saying to me about who I am, but more importantly who we are as people? What is it saying about people as a society as this historical movement and species, and what is it saying about the nature of the universe? I would say for a really just base idea that doesn’t capture all the nuance, but I would engage as a starting point more in what the Bible reveals about my life, our lives and this universe that we find ourselves hurdling through on this big giant spinning ball of mostly water and rock. So, so I think that’s kind of the starting point for me on a deeper level. And before I even start to look at the pieces that I believe or don’t believe, and even that word belief meant something very different to the folks who wrote and originally handed down these stories.

(09:38):
So from a, I’m coming at it from a perspective thousands of years after it’s written and also from a time and place and an intersection of power and privilege that is very, very different than where these texts come from. And when you talk about the who authored them, the fact that particularly these are oppressed and displaced people who are sharing stories amongst their communities, when we talk about those original authors, that’s who we’re talking about. And I’m coming from a very different place. So I look at it first in terms of what does this have to tell me about how I can live and move in the world in a way that brings life and flourishing, and where do I need to pay attention to the places that I, and we can suppress life and flourishing. So it becomes more of a practical, I don’t want to say the Bible’s, a practical guide to life. Again, losing a lot of the nuance, but it becomes more of an important gift and I would say even tool in which we use to practice a faith rather than something to explain and belief.

Pronch (11:06):
Okay. So knowing that then, are there parts of the Bible that make you uncomfortable? Are there parts of the Bible that you wish weren’t there?

Adam (11:19):
Yeah, I would say yes. I would say yes to both of those. So for sure there are so much violence and genocide and infanticide and oppression and slavery is present in the Bible. So I think that anybody who isn’t made to be uncomfortable, I think from my subjective experience, other traditions would disagree.

Pronch (11:51):
That should just be an opening we have on the show. Yeah, it’s a disclaimer

Adam (11:55):
And I think that is important to say. Everything I’m saying, like I said, is coming from my subjective perspective and diversity and difference, I actually uphold is a really important thing. So take a giant heap of salt with everything that I say. I’m just coming at this from my perspective as you are, but when I approach it, I think if you’re not made uncomfortable with what you’re reading, I actually think that I would almost go so far as say then you’re reading it wrong or you’re not reading it deeply enough. Because if you’re looking at it as

Pronch (12:23):
Or completely

Adam (12:24):
Enough or Yeah, that’s a good way to say it. Completely enough, yeah. Yeah, because so much layer and nuance. But yeah, if you’re not made uncomfortable by the way that we teach kids because they’re kids is really wild. And we teach in Sunday schools in white evangelical and United church context, we teach the Noah’s arc story. It has animals in it, and it’s a cute thing to draw on the walls, but that story is not made for kids.

Pronch (12:59):
It’s horrible.

Adam (13:00):
Yeah. It’s a worldwide genocide story,

Pronch (13:06):
Worldwide genocide story that is attributed to God,

Adam (13:10):
Right? Yeah. Yeah. I’m going to hold that piece then That’s almost like a whole episode then that we have to go. But even just removing that piece from it, you should be uncomfortable by these things, and I don’t think it’s something that you have to smooth over or just explain away. There are deep things that should trouble us and that is critical for anyone engaged in the Bible, whether you’re engaging it from a point of belief or from a point of criticism or anywhere in between. So absolutely am troubled by things that I read, and I think that’s important, and it has been part of what’s shaped my faith being troubled by these things. And to the second question of are there things that I wish wasn’t there? I want to take the exact way that you phrase that and say, yes, there’s definitely things that I’m like, I just wish that wasn’t in there. But as an extension of that, some people would take that and then go like, well, why don’t we just take stuff then let’s remove this. And I think that we see in history and in culture around us that when we simply say, well, if only that wasn’t there, and we remove and we erase the things that trouble us, we don’t actually process and we don’t engage with them to a point of healing. So you can’t ignore something troubling your back and just not go to the doctor or you shouldn’t. Sure.

Pronch (14:42):
I think that’s an important point. Lemme pop on that idea as well there the idea of one of the things that constantly irks me is the inability of people sometimes to forgive and forget and growing as an adult, I’m starting to understand more and more why forgetting is not always the right course of action. You bump into me while we’re walking down the aisle. Yeah, okay. I can forget about that institutional racism and slavery for hundreds of years and people, it would probably be easier if we just guys, let’s just forget about the fact that there was a lot of really messed up stuff going on and let’s just be better people going forward. That’s probably not the right answer there is. We need to learn. That’s exactly,

Adam (15:28):
Because it’s easier for the people in power. Exactly.

Pronch (15:31):
And it would probably be better all around if we did just move forward, but we can’t because there was so much. So I definitely agree with you what you said there about wishing something there is the same as forgetting about something that was important for whatever reason in the past. That’s a really good way of putting it and wishing something wasn’t there means that you’re ignoring a part of the history, a part of the story. That’s a really good way of putting it, Adam. I like that.

Adam (15:59):
Yeah. It’s a way of evading accountability and responsibility, and I think that extends not just to, I wish there were parts of the Bible that weren’t there, but it evades even to then. I actually had a friend really inspire me with something that he said once, which was a lot of people are part of the faith and then they kind of confront whatever, either an exist existential crisis or a lot of times confront this stuff and then go very understandably. They’re like, well, I don’t want any part of that. I don’t believe that anymore. So I’m not part of that. I think it often ends up with then the troubling things that should trouble us just saying, okay, I’m out, are actually a way of evading responsibility and accountability of saying, well, guess what? You are part of this tradition and there’s work that needs to be done.

(17:00):
And so saying, I wish something wasn’t there, or just saying, yeah, well, I’m just not a part of that anymore. I think not always, but can often actually be a way of not helping things and a way of basically just kind of evading to say, if I am going to reach for bad mixed analogies, I’m sure lots on this, but if a tree falls in my backyard and it was the weather and it falls down and breaks the fence of my neighbor, and I’m like, well, act of God. It’s not my responsibility to be part of, even if I didn’t do it, I have a responsibility to be part of repairing what has been rent. So again, at some point analogies and metaphors fail, but that’s a similar way to when we talk about do I wish things weren’t in the Bible? Sure, I feel that way, but I don’t actually think it’s helpful to take that.

(18:11):
I think it’s good to acknowledge how we feel and be honest about things that trouble us and things that we just have to be so much easier. If this wasn’t there, we wouldn’t have this problem, and we don’t know for sure that that’s true. And B, it kind of is immaterial when it comes to the call that I feel Jesus is indicating us that is about action and transformation, guided and undergirded by contemplation. So I got to fix the fence. I can’t just be like, well, I wish that hadn’t happened, or, well, I didn’t do it, it was me. Someone else wrote this. Well, guess what? You’re on the grounds now. And so I believe in a called shared accountability and responsibility as people, and I feel that way because of the life that Jesus led.

Pronch (19:00):
Okay. Yeah, I like that. That’s good. Then I guess my next question would be, do you believe the narratives mostly I’d say Old Testament, obviously New Testament, the narratives in there are about Jesus’s life, and obviously you would believe those in general, but the narrative of Noah’s Ark or the Passover story, do you believe that those are literally true or that those are allegorical stories to be told, lessons to learn from?

Adam (19:32):
So when it comes to, I just want to say as a disclaimer, it comes to the New Testament story of Jesus. Again, what belief means and what we’re engaging with here is not a historical document. So there’ll be complexity that we’ll go into another time about New Testament belief when it comes to Old Testament stuff, I think the first thing to understand is these are not our, so when I say our, I obviously mean white, 21st century men. These are not my stories, and as Christians, they aren’t originally our stories either. These are stories from the Jewish faith. And so it’s one thing is it’s actually not for me to dictate or decide or teach on the content of these things and their historical pieces. So that’s an important piece when it comes to learning about the very, very rudimentary understanding and learning that I’ve done about ancient Jewish texts and specifically Jewish narratives of creation and what we often refer to in Christian circles as the Old Testament, but many of the Jewish scriptures and elements of the Torah.

(20:59):
To understand that, to come at these stories and go, this is a retelling of a historical event that occurred in this way, is a completely modern lens, a modern white post-enlightenment lens that you would take to the story. So Jewish writers, again, not to speak on behalf, but something that I’ve learned is that Jewish writers did not engage with stories and pass on stories in the format of saying this is about something that literally happened. That doesn’t mean to say that they couldn’t have literally happened necessarily all the time, but that’s not why they wrote the stories. That’s not what we can gain from these stories at their deepest. So when it comes to a literal flood and two animals getting on a boat side by side and sharing and the mural on the kids’ church wall, that is, I love animals too. I love it. We have one in our church. It’s a cute picture. It’s a very cute picture, cute picture. Do I think that that literally happened? I don’t think so. I could be wrong. I wasn’t there, and I think it would be just as dangerous for me to suggest, well, we know for sure that it didn’t happen as to say like, oh, it literally for sure happened because it was written in the Bible. So personally, I don’t think that there was a literal, so it’s probably

Pronch (22:37):
More of an allegorical story, something to learn from. One of the

Adam (22:40):
Lessons. Allegory certainly would be consistent with one element of the way that ancient Jewish texts are written. And what’s really exciting is when even if you say, well, it’s really important for me to actually have the literal element be in there, I would encourage people who if that’s part of their faith and their tradition and their beliefs, great. I don’t think that in and of itself is harmful, but it’s really exciting when you open up the stories and you unpack them to the deeper layers. I mean, when we read Lord of the Rings or Watch Star Wars, the really compelling thing about these stories is not laser swords and magic rings. It’s what is it telling us about who we are and about the human condition and about the possibility of, and how do we confront evil? The literal layer of the story is just the shell.

(23:42):
It’s just the surface and the stories that endure, they don’t endure. And we see that there could be a really flashy action movie that comes out and you’re like, oh, that was really good, and then you forget about it like a year later if it doesn’t have substance underneath. So my encouragement to people, and there are many people who do believing the literal retelling is part of what they believe in their tradition. I would encourage those people to still see that there are deeper layers to these stories than, Hey, this thing happened and that my belief is that the writers of these stories and God are not trying to convince us something happened or didn’t happened. They’re trying to teach us and show us something that is important for how we live together here and now and in the future, learning from the past.

Pronch (24:37):
I love that, and I completely agree with you that the Lord of the Rings, star Wars, any story that touches you, that makes you think about who you are, the person you are, the people you interact with, you can learn from it, whether it’s from the Bible or it’s Lord of the Rings, and I have Lord.

Adam (24:54):
These things have radically impacted not just by life, but my faith.

Pronch (24:59):
Yeah, anything can make you think about who you are and want to be a better person or want to be a different person. Maybe the word better shouldn’t be there, but want to change who you are or how you interact with the world. So the fact that the way you look at it of the old rabbinical text, the Torah and the Old Testament as those are a life lesson encased within a narrative that makes sense and that makes sense to me too as why these stories were written down, why people continue to read them and continue to tell them over thousands of years because there was something there that they felt was important for the human condition. That makes a lot of sense to me. But the thing that makes me a little bit confused is the amount of negative attributes that are applied to the Almighty in those Old Testament stories kind of make you go, huh?

Adam (26:08):
Well,

Pronch (26:08):
Why? Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Ask your question. Sorry.

Adam (26:11):
Why would you want to worship or follow or trust a God who killed everyone is a really important question to put it succinctly.

Pronch (26:23):
Even if the idea that there was a flood that killed everybody, no, that okay, it’s just an allegory of we’re trying to tell this specific thing, and I’m not even going to try to pretend I know what the specific thing that allegory is that they’re trying to tell us. I’m not going to pretend that in this conversation it’s the idea, the overarching idea is in this allegory we’re going to, even if it is just to pretend for whatever reason, that God decided all humans needed to die, how is that a good attribute to apply to the God and why does that make you think this is a good not evil being?

Adam (27:00):
Yeah, because to be clear, where I would come from would be that is evil to kill and crush and destroy, to wipe out and to be very clear, genocide is evil, pure and simple. And in a world where we’re like things are subjective relative, I do not make room for that to be subjective. Objectively what we see take place all over the world today and what is told in the story of wiping out entire peoples is evil. So I think that we’re going to go down a new shoot here, but there’s some helpful things for me that I’ve learned when we encounter what some people refer to. And I don’t think this is a fair name, but I’m going to say it because title, because people, I think some people will understand it. The God of the Old Testament, I’m air quoting right now.

Pronch (28:02):
Yeah, I got you. Good. Look at air quotes for the audio,

Adam (28:04):
And again, we can’t even, it’ll take a whole episode to go, how does that stack up against the Jesus we find in the gospels and the New Testaments? We’re going to have to put that aside for a second, but when we engage with these scriptures, as we said, things should trouble us and depictions of God, I think I believe should be one of those things, and that there are things that are revealed in scripture that Richard Rohr, he’s a Catholic priest and monk and an author, he would say, I think I’m attributing this correctly. To him, he would say that the text reveals both the problem and the solution. So how we read scripture is really important, especially the Old Testament because it’s even more far removed from us in terms of time and it’s removed from the Christian tradition because it predates it. How we read scripture is really important, and the ability to not look at scripture and just say it’s a guide for life or it’s a history textbook, or it’s one cohesive voice speaking all throughout, you just have to figure out how it all works and shapes. I think those approaches I find less helpful. And to understand that as we talked about, there are many, many people who wrote this in many locations over many times with many audiences, many agendas, many positions of power that they were coming from, I think points us pretty consistently to the fact that these scriptures, even though we typically engage with books as in our modern world, is there’s an author and there’s a story and it’s cohesive. That’s not what the Bible is.

(30:02):
It is not univocal, I don’t think on any particular issue. And when we try either for conservative purposes or progressive purposes to flatten it and say like, well, we will just make it mean what we want it to mean, we’re doing the same thing I talked about where we’re actually getting away from what’s helpful and we’re actually avoiding accountability and responsibility and confronting things. And I think that when Richard Broer says it contains both the problem and the solution, I think that that has been really important for me to see that what we worship, as Brian McLaren would say, is what we become. So if we have a vision of God who is violent and punishing and retributive and oppressing, we will become that. And people for thousands and tens, thousands of years have demonstrated that, and particularly in ancient Mesopotamia all the way up to Rome, when we’re talking about where the timeline starts and kind of finishes for these scriptures, those gods existed and were real to people.

(31:22):
Gods of violence, of death, creation, stories that were built in violence and death and genesis’s this really interesting kind of alternative to that. But the depictions of God as violence, as violent and murderous should trouble us and we should pay attention to them. And I think that it is important for us then to recognize why was it important for these to be maintained, these stories and these depictions of God? Was it because it is a literal vision of this is who God is or it, were there other reasons that these are maintained and were some of those reasons to give us an honest account of where humankind’s journey with God has come from and where it is leading to in terms of our understanding of God? And one other last little quote I’ll share is that I was persuaded by, I’m actually doing an online course on Mondays right now that is kind of covering this topic of what about the wrath of God?

(32:34):
What about the Old Testament? So as I do that, I’ll be able to share more of what I’m learning from a guy named Brian Zand who’s leading it. Peter ends, who is the guy I talked about last time, who is kind of the guy who loves to poke holes in everyone’s favorite Bible stories from an academic perspective and critical perspective, he would say that God lets God’s children tell the story. And that is one of the things that I have been compelled by, that we are the ones telling this story. And so in that we are not necessarily coming at these stories or these depictions as to use a term that could get mixed up gospel, but we are learning from the really crude finger paintings of us trying to get our best like a child attempting. The Sistine Chapel is similar to as we move along in our journey as humans, is us trying to get our picture of what does this God look like?

(33:33):
And so crude paintings, paintings with the tools that we have and the colors and shades that we have, the ability, that’s part of what we’re working with here again, if we’re trying to approach this on another way, is saying, what you read is what happened. And every depiction that says, God, that’s exactly what God did. And we all believe that even Christians today don’t believe that. And because we debate on everything on what it means. So approaching is saying, well, there’s this violent God in the Old Testament like that then that’s like the story says that God killed all these people and washed them away and saved this one family, and that’s what God did. Some people engage with it that way. I think that’s a really paper thin way to understand it. But it is really important for us to go, why is it important to understand a story where God is depicted like this and what can that teach us about ourselves and about who God is?

(34:36):
And a lot of times about who God actually isn’t. And I think the who God isn’t becomes much more full, fully revealed in Jesus when Jesus comes along. So maybe I’ll stop it there because gone on for a bit, but I’m loving it. God, I’m loving it. God, what is God like is kind of the core question that undergirds all theology, not just Christian theology. What is this God? Who is this God and what is this God or god’s for those who have non monotheistic religions and faiths? That’s the core question. And so it is actually critical that we look at these depictions even in the Old Testament and go, is that what God is like? And for me as someone who an academic theological way to say it would be, I’m christocentric another. Really? Oh, wow. What does that mean? It means I’m really Jesus centered. And so Jesus is the linchpin for me and my faith and everything to stack up against Jesus and the person of Jesus and his life, death and resurrection. And so that is how I start to engage and I think is important to engage is through the person, the lens, the understanding of Jesus. How do we interpret things with that, with Jesus as the cornerstone? That’s been critical in my faith and in many people around me.

Pronch (36:08):
And I think that also with the people that I’ve generally engaged with as well, I think that from my camp experience and the youth services throughout the year that I did as a younger person, I would agree that that has been the focus with all of the people that I’ve generally engaged with throughout my life. The only problem I have with that is that Jesus is described as the fulfillment of the prophecies that are laid out in the Torah. Jesus is depicted as the, again, whether you believe in the literal creation story of Adam and Eve, he is atoning for the original sin. Now, in my belief, it’s not physically possible for their to have been an original sin. There could not have been an individual that named Adam in English, but whatever the name would’ve been an old ancient Hebrew, but there couldn’t have been an original individual to have originally eaten from the fruit and caused the original sin, which leads to Jesus’s being the fulfillment of the prophecies to atone for the sins of humanity. While I agree that the good stuff that Jesus is depicted for the good stuff that is love your neighbor as yourself and work with and take care of others and all that, that’s all amazing and that’s all good. And if that’s all that you take away from Christianity, then there’s no real problem because your idea is I want to be a better person, and this person generally was a good person, and that’s cool, but that can all come from humanism. That can all come from,

Adam (37:47):
And that can come from any person.

Pronch (37:48):
Exactly. So the idea that Jesus was God incarnate as a human being, then it’s like, okay, but who is God? If Jesus is God, then what’s the step before that? The step before that is Jesus’, theoretically the fulfillment of what’s foretold in the Torah. And that’s why just having what you called Christo centrism, is that what you called it? Yeah, yeah. That’s a new term I’d never heard before. Just that on its own doesn’t seem like enough. If Jesus is the be all and end all of what was originally foretold,

Adam (38:27):
It’s not enough. And so let me throw two more wrenches in there. Let’s make it even more problematic. One, does Jesus have a cornerstone on morality? I would say no. And second, when we say Jesus, who do we mean? Because I’ve seen a million Jesuses. I’ve seen Jesus’ on signs that condemn my L-G-B-T-Q friends. I’ve seen Jesus that preach a prosperity gospel that says it’s about getting money and being successful and have vision board and buy your boat and a million other jesuses are purported to be Jesus. So it becomes even more problematic. You actually can’t even just say Jesus, because now Jesus can mean so many things and can be frankly kind of so many different people. So those are two extra

Pronch (39:30):
Problems. And in the narrative gospels of Jesus’ life, there’s four different jesuses there as well. The first gospel, which is Mark, which was the first one that was written, even though it’s not the first one in the order, mark is the oldest, he’s the most human, he’s the most non Godly. And by the time you get to John, he is God from the get go.

Adam (39:53):
That’s so funny that you say that because in my, I completely experience it in the opposite way where John is like the most, and maybe it’s like the artist in me. I was trained as an artist. So John for me is in many ways I see the most of all the gospels, I tend to see the humanity emphasize the most when I personally subjectively read on.

Pronch (40:18):
Sure, okay, let me clarify what I meant when I said that is yes, there’s more humanness, there’s more humanity in who he is, but his abilities, his godliness, the fact that he can do this, he can do that. More of his miracles, more of his being not human is described and informed. Sure. Heritage saying in the later gospels, whereas in the first gospel, the mark gospel again, and I have not read them in great detail, so I want to very much put that on the floor here in the very first one. He’s the most human. He has the least, which again, we’ll get into this in greater detail later on, but that’s just very interesting and I like that, that you see, I find the

Adam (41:03):
Opposite. I still would hold my position. I find it fascinating and interesting and beautiful that that’s what has leapt off the page for you when you’ve read Mark. And so yeah, I think again, we’re all coming at it from our subjective places. And one of the things that I have been convicted about is that scripture is in this way alive and it speaks to us in this particular way. And some people would say certain things, shimmer, when it like a word or a character, we could read something for the 90th time and something new kind of sparkles and we notice something new. So I think that scripture is really fascinating and powerful in that way. But anyway, the reason I bring up those extra problems is because I do think it becomes critical to understand, confront these questions of who is God? What is God like?

(41:59):
And if we’re making the claim, which this is the great claim that Christianity makes, it’s the great claim that Christianity makes in my experience or in my circles, really is not the Bible is this telling of events. And it reveals, the Bible reveals these stories, and the Bible reveals how the world was created and the Bible reveals how we should live our life. The great claim of Christianity actually isn’t specific to the scriptures. The great claim of Christianity is Jesus’s God. I think it was good what you said that it is that important to go. What’s the step before that? Because when we engage with this stuff, some people do, some traditions do elevate scripture to a point where they’re like, well, that’s the only way we understand these questions. Or some of them basically kind of elevate it to almost a fourth member of the Trinity where there’s like Father Son Holy Spirit in the Bible.

(42:57):
And these things are equally important. I don’t personally go that far or go in that exact, I don’t figure it out in that way, but how we engage with scripture is critical to figuring out who is this God and therefore, who is this God revealed in Jesus if that’s the claim we’re making. So we have to start to actually get specific about who the writers are, who’s telling these stories. And even in these narratives of Jesus’ life, these things are not devoid of an audience and perspective of the author and the time that they’re living in. So it is not this simple process, even with the narrative, this an optic gospels of saying like, okay, well we can just do this. We’ll just read this and that’ll take it away. And that is why for thousands of years we’re still debating this and why we would say, when you start a life with Jesus, this is not a course you’re going to complete in four years and get your piece of paper. This is a lifelong cultivation of understanding this deep, this mystery and paradox of this person who was fully human and fully God, which is the claim. If you’re coming from that, the claim that Christianity is making, 200% what? Yeah,

Pronch (44:14):
100% God, 100% human. Come on

Adam (44:16):
Out of what? That’s right. So one thing that I just wanted to say on that note is that everything you’re saying, I believe all questions that you have and the troubling things and the problems you see, I actually think are critical for those who profess a faith or who get on board with this claim that Jesus is God to confront and think about and deal with and wrestle with. And I think that we are healthier in faith when we do those things. And unhealthy faiths just take a story like Noah’s Ark and go, okay, so God kills everybody. So genocide is part of God’s vision and God’s heartbeat and people just take it surface deep. We become what we worship, and I think that those are bad and dangerous things to take at their surface. And I think it is important for us to dig into this stuff at a deeper level. So everything that you’re doing when you wrestle with these things is very, very important for those who are professing the faith or seeking to grow in the faith.

Pronch (45:29):
Cool. Well, I think let’s hit it there. Let’s leave it there for today. I think that’s, we’ve touched on a lot here

Adam (45:38):
And we opened up a lot of kind avenues that we can take a lot doors. Yeah. I almost don’t want to overwhelm. That’s right. In one episode. So I think, yeah, how we read this thing is critical. I think it’s actually more critical than what do we believe about this thing called the Bible, this collection, how we engage, how we read this is actually a critical first step before we even start to think what we believe about it.

Pronch (46:07):
Yeah,

Adam (46:08):
Beautiful. That’s where I would land. Yeah.

Pronch (46:10):
Well, thank you for talking to me today and giving me a little bit more insight into how you read things and how you start to understand this. It’s really, really

Adam (46:20):
Neat. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks for asking me.

Pronch (46:23):
Alright. Talk to you next

Adam (46:23):
Time. Talk to you next time.