COOL WITH JESUS, IFFY ON PAUL?

Mark and an old friend talk about what to do with Paul when he drives you crazy. Mark gives an overview of Paul's world of growing up in Tarsus and training in Jerusalem, and then we walk through a list of the reasons he believes most modern Christians would like Paul more than they might expect. And if you disagree you're prolly just not chosen. That was a joke. haha

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Text and Rock Show. Ancient story. Better tomorrow. Let's begin.

SPEAKER_03 0:14

Okay, so um I took a few notes, but we'll just kind of start chatting and see how it goes.

SPEAKER_02 0:20

Alright.

SPEAKER_03 0:22

But let's see. Okay. Hey Texan Rockers. I'm back with my friend from Truman State University to talk a little Bible. And we're gonna jump into the world of Paul and why he specifically can be such a problem for moderns who want to have faith, but uh, I don't know, read the things he says. But what did you you messaged and said that it would be great if you could like Paul after we were done talking?

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Yeah, that would be great. Um I haven't been super impressed with Paul, but like a lot of people are like, oh, I love Paul, and I'm like, why? Please tell me why.

SPEAKER_03 1:08

I remember saying those exact words that like I like Jesus and I love my faith tradition, but I'm not a big fan of Paul. In fact, he kind of makes me angry. Like I think he's like my my gut reaction going through seminary, like everyone was interested in theology, and I was interested in biblical studies and midrash and stuff like that, and I was like, I think he's a hothead and he's terrible. You know, um he's grown on me though. I've done a I've done like a 180 understanding him in context. Like, okay, here's how I can here's how I can make it tangible. Do you know how uh you can read the gospels again and again and you can be like, I like Jesus, he's really great, seems like he's doing important things, but then the more time you spend with it, all of a sudden his personality starts to come alive. And you're like, you're like, oh my gosh, I think he's actually funny. Or I think I think he just took a shot at that guy.

SPEAKER_01 2:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:13

Like that was a left hook that no one expected, and I I bet people were just like shocked. I bet the poor were laughing, I bet the rich were mad, and you're like, holy nose, I actually like this person. Like a lot. So there was the like, I'm supposed to like the Jewish Messiah who's come to save us, yes. But then there was the like, oh I see his I see him as a person, and it's incredible, right?

SPEAKER_02 2:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:40

That happened for me with Paul, but it took a long time.

SPEAKER_02 2:43

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:44

And it took it took understanding his context and where he's progressive and where he's just not.

SPEAKER_02 2:55

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 2:56

Okay?

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Yeah, I'd like to know more about that for sure.

SPEAKER_03 3:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 3:01

Because you made the comment that he's both rabbinic and a stoic philosopher.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

So yeah, so he grew up as a kid in Tarsus. He's off of Jesus' map. He's born ten years after Jesus, but he grew up at kind of a port city that was a hub for Stoic philosophy. So you have like the Greek philosophy and rhetoric piece of Paul. It's a hub for imperial cult and specifically Hercules worship. Like, if you want to worship Hercules, go to Tarsus, I guess. Right?

SPEAKER_02 3:36

Um Okay, I did not know that.

SPEAKER_03 3:39

So there's this Roman aspect of Paul, there's this Greek philosophy aspect of Paul, and then there's what I would call like Jewish mid-Rashic. And what I mean by that is he's not just a Jew and just a Pharisee that's like concerned about the law, he's really textually smart and he's playing a lot of insider baseball. So the way he pulls the Hebrew Bible forward is a very specific flavor. And it's the same flavor that Jesus is going around telling stories about. Like when Jesus tells stories and everyone expects it to end one way because they're like, We've hope we've heard this story, it's in our Bible, and then he twists it just a little bit. Paul's playing a lot of those games too. Okay. Um, for instance, I thought it might be fun, like down the road, to look at a passage where he he basically says, the rock that watered Israel in the desert was Christ. And you're like, what? And so you and I immediately think, okay, so Moses hit a rock, it watered Israel in the desert. Somehow Jesus must have been the spirit that made that happen, right?

SPEAKER_02 4:50

Right.

SPEAKER_03 4:51

What did he mean?

SPEAKER_02 4:52

What did he mean?

SPEAKER_03 4:54

For Paul, there's a whole like seven stories in Midrash about this rock that rolled behind Israel, and every time they needed water, it was like, here I am, and they would hit it and it would give them water. And it's like, one, impossible. Two, it's in it's in their story bank, and he's saying that that rock that followed Israel around, that gave them nourishment, was Jesus. So he's not only using that whole story bank that you don't have unless you study rabbinic Judaism, right, but he's twisting it to say it's Jesus, and then in the passage itself, the whole thing's being leveraged to make a different point. So there's like layers and layers and layers of playing with the text that are really fascinating once you see that he's doing it and really pulls the rug out from literalism. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 5:49

Yeah, and so you have written on your blog, like post just all throughout the Hebrew Bible, um, where there's literary borrowing going on, right?

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

And how I really like your phrase because it's easy to understand about how they take those and they put it to work to make this new point or a point nobody had really thought about before to like move things forward. And kind of like in that vein, like when I was like, oh Paul, you know, I've gotta like study some of this and like see what I can dig up, you know. I ran across um these Greek poems that um that he borrowed from.

SPEAKER_03 6:37

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Like what? Like I have an idea. What's that?

SPEAKER_03 6:43

Just the fact that he knows it. He's well read enough in Greek poetry that he's pulling from the Bible and the Greek poet. That's wild.

SPEAKER_02 6:52

Yeah. And I mean, these are poems that I think were written to Zeus, right? And it blew my mind that, like, one of them, that phrase um that is just so well known in Christianity, for in you we live and move and have our being. Like you borrowed that!

SPEAKER_03 7:11

And we think it's beautiful. It is beautiful, it's beautiful poetry. Um and it's like, man, if you describe God like that, well then I'm in, right?

SPEAKER_02 7:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:23

It's very, very, very Greek philosophical, and he lifted it right from the poets.

SPEAKER_01 7:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:29

So you have like, you have like, I think of Paul like in the center of a triangle. You have the Jewish story lore. I would call it lore. It's like stories that they don't even care if they're true, they're tradition. Does that make sense?

unknown 7:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 7:45

And they play with them. And then you have the Greek philosophy and rhetoric piece, and then you have all the Roman imperial stuff. Like, yeah. My first entryway into loving Paul was when I started to see him raging against the machine. Like, okay, uh the party line I had always been given on Paul is they would pull that one line from Romans and say, like, basically, God put the Roman Empire in charge, so you should do what they say, because he has the sword for a reason, right?

SPEAKER_02 8:15

But then whether they're good or bad, whether they're singing their power or not.

SPEAKER_03 8:21

But then you get under the hood of what he's writing, and he's pulled all of these phrases from the imperial cult and he's flipped it, so it's about Jesus. Just a statement like Christ is Lord, it's supposed to be Caesar is Lord, and everyone knows it, right? Yeah. And it's just like the easiest example to cherry pick, but he's again and again taking things that the emperors were using to say they were divine and appropriating it to Jesus, and in doing so, he's like undermining the very claims of the Empire. So, I mean, as soon as as soon as I realized he was more like a Star Wars freedom fighter than a like, you know, you're like, alright on Team Empire, I was like, okay, I'll hear him out a little more. Um but yeah, he's got he's got all those things going on, right? Um and there's some reasons, like, for the way he writes the way he does, and there's some reasons for the way he argues the way he does that we'll get into when we start to grab like individual texts. Like I thought it might just be fun to grab the text that make us the maddest and what do we do with it, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 9:35

But for today, oh go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 9:37

Oh no, go ahead. You go ahead. Oh, go ahead.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

For today, I made a list and it was specifically from your comment in TikTok that you want to see if you can like Paul by the end of it.

SPEAKER_02 9:47

Alright.

SPEAKER_03 9:48

And I wrote things I think most modern Christians would like about Paul.

SPEAKER_02 9:52

Okay, let's hear it.

SPEAKER_03 9:54

And it's not none of it's none of it's like the theological mumbo jumbo. It's just like if you followed Paul for a day, I think you'd really like him and he'd really like you after he figured out what was going on with electricity. So um, but first of all, um we've talked a lot in the past about how as hard as it is to have faith as a modern, sometimes I definitely decide to keep mine. And I defiantly decide that some stories matter, and that for me at least, I need to re-mythologize in some ways to go forward. Like I just actually need the simple story of God loving me and being my parent, and here's the evidence of that through Jesus to to live well. Not not just to go on, but to like treat other people well. It's like my motivation for that, right?

SPEAKER_02 10:51

Right.

SPEAKER_03 10:52

So the reason I'm a Christian probably is not Jesus, it's Paul. And I know that sounds blasphemous, right?

SPEAKER_02 11:00

Okay, that's right. I'm on the flip side of that right now, so I would like to hear it.

SPEAKER_03 11:06

I had it for shock, I said it for shock value, because of course, Paul is not the promised Messiah of the Jews. Paul doesn't die for our sins, none of that. But the reason I've heard the story is Paul.

SPEAKER_02 11:19

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 11:20

It is likely Paul. Um, and yes, his disciples went out into the world, but no one spread Christianity or had the success spreading Christianity in the Roman world like Paul. And it's because of the things we talked about. He knew the culture, he's fluent in Greek before Hebrew. He probably is good at Hebrew like I am, as in he went to school and studied it and got as good as he could. But all of his quotes from the Bible are from the Greeks at school. And all like the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible is what Paul says. And he speaks Greek, he knows philosophy, he knows the poets, the way he talks about God. Yeah, so Paul is probably the reason that most of us have heard the Jesus story, and that just is what it is. Like, he he literally took three missionary trips farther west each time. Even more than that, he's the one that pushed that to be Christian you don't have to be all that Jewish. And he set up Gentile communities. The the disciples of Jesus very much seem to at least start out as understanding that they're the Messiah movement within Judaism. And so if you're going to be a follower of the way, you're also gonna be Jewish. Like, you know that famous story where Peter's on the roof and the sheep comes down with all the animals. I think that's the writer of acts way of showing you, like not just telling you, but showing you that Paul's opinion is right and is gonna win the day. But I think it's a living argument when that text is written. Yeah. It's kind of like this might blow your mind a little bit, but it's kind of like when John the Baptist comes up to Jesus and says, I'm not fit to tie your s his sandal from now on, you must increase and I must decrease. I think that's actually because they were both very popular movements that people saw in competition. And so you have the writer cleaning it up as no, very clearly John said this. Right?

SPEAKER_02 13:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 13:30

So I think this story of Peter finally accepting Gentiles is really a story about Paul winning, like that debate. But for you and me, that means we are pulled in as non-Jews. Like we're, you know, Paul would say we're grafted into Judaism through Jesus, but we're we're a Gentile expression of the Christian faith. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 13:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 13:57

Okay. Reason too why I think most modern Christians would like Paul. He's one of the only men to admit that he was completely wrong. Like, did I know?

unknown 14:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:12

You know how most guys, you know how most guys, even when they're wrong, will find a way to explain it away where they'll say, I'm sorry, but right?

SPEAKER_02 14:20

But here's why it's still right. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:23

I mean Paul's Paul's story, like, if if you watch The Chosen and there's that group of Pharisees hunting down the Jesus movement, that's Paul's movement. He's he's like one of those guys in the like Pharisaic outfit saying this guy's gotta go, right?

SPEAKER_01 14:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 14:43

He's traveling around hunting down people. I think a while back you and I were talking, and I said that you know, sometimes the biblical characters are worse than us, and that gives me hope. Like, I disagree with a lot of people, but I'm not trying to throw anyone in jail or have them murdered, you know. So that's like point for my sad life, right? But um, no. I think uh the story, there's one in there's one in Galatians, and there's one in Philippians, um, where and then the story, the story is like in Acts 9, where Paul says he completely changed his opinion about the Jesus movement because he encountered Jesus. The story in Acts says that he was blinded and the voice of Jesus said, Why are you persecuting me? And to us, we're like, Why are you picking on me? To them, persecution is like what happened to the Maccabees by Antiochus. So I mean, to them, persecution is a loaded word of why are you trying to murder me for my faith? Right? And Jesus says, You're persecuting me, not my followers. And Paul it completely turns around. One of the best scholars of Paul in the last 50 years, Dunn wrote a book called The Apostle of the Heart Set Free. The idea being he was so closed off to this movement and angered by it and thought it was a problem to be rooted out.

SPEAKER_02 16:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 16:26

He really spent his life, I think, feeling terrible about it and trying to make amends.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

Yeah, he spent the rest of his life doing the complete opposite. And if you're thinking about like a true apology, like true apology is changing your mind and your behavior.

SPEAKER_03 16:44

So I mean repentance, uh t'chuva in Hebrew or metanoia in Greek literally means to change your mind or t'shuva in Hebrew is like turnaround from what you're doing. So Paul turns around and starts planting Jesus communities of Gentiles everywhere. And so no matter what he has to say about how those people should conduct themselves, he goes back to everyone in Jerusalem and says, I was wrong to the degree that I think that's the reason they still hate him. Like the verdict's not in on Paul in his lifetime, and they don't like him all that much. Jesus' own disciples don't like him all that much.

SPEAKER_02 17:27

I mean, he was trying to hunt them down. It would be hard to trust.

SPEAKER_03 17:31

I don't think they ever I don't think they ever fully get over it. I think it's why Peter and Paul don't seem to like each other, and I think that's why James and Paul come to a head. And I think that Paul's forever trying to make amends, but he really does say, I was wrong, and then like listen to in Philippians, listen to what he says. If any this is Philippians like 3, 5. He says, if anyone has reason to be confident in the flesh, that is in like the works they've done as a human, I have more. Circumcised on the eighth day, member of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew born of Hebrews, as to the law, a Pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. So he says, if anyone by the book and by the game they're playing in Jerusalem is justified, it's the way I was living. But then he says, Seven, yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as lost because of the Messiah, because of Christ. More than that, I regard everything as lost because of the surpassing value of knowing Messiah Jesus, my Lord. For his sake, I've suffered the loss of all things and regard them as rubbish in order that I may gain Jesus Christ and be founded in not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, the one that comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God based on faith. That that's him right there saying, I was wrong about everything I thought. And I think for me personally, I start to identify with Paul because I came to a point in my life as someone that studies the Bible where I just want to be honest no matter what. Like it would be easier for me to just still pastor and tell people what they want to hear. But I try to, I try to just be honest about my convictions, and to some degree, you know, I know what it is to like work dumb jobs when you're qualified to do other things. I know what it is to go from like the center of a religious system that's popular to just saying, eh, I'm just gonna go tell the truth. And so Paul Paul like literally does a 180, and I think most people would respect him for that, you know.

SPEAKER_02 19:59

Yeah. Yeah, I think so too. Um, because ultimately, like, if you're a truth seeker, which I like to think most of us are really do care about what the truth is. Like, even if we don't like something and it's hard to accept, like, you still want to know what that truth is. And so I think there's a respect that comes for people that can that ultimately are truth seekers.

SPEAKER_03 20:28

Yeah, yeah, for sure. It I think, man, now more than ever. I think what you said is so important. I mean, how how much would all of us like to just have someone speak the truth very clearly in a way that we couldn't deny it right now?

SPEAKER_02 20:41

Yeah. And it's getting hard like just this day and age is so difficult to discern the truth anymore.

SPEAKER_03 20:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 20:49

Like with all the new stuff like AI and just levels of deception and everything.

SPEAKER_03 20:58

But yeah. Oh, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

None of that's new. Well, except for AI, but none of the other stuff is new.

SPEAKER_03 21:04

Yeah. Yeah, politicians lying or leveraging religion to say that they're right. But uh, okay, this is gonna be the tough one for you.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 21:15

Here's things I think most moderns would actually, modern Christians would actually like about Paul. Number three, Paul's actually progressive, not regressive about women in his culture.

SPEAKER_02 21:28

That's what I want to know more about.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Okay, so first of all, the gang you see on the chosen in the temple system studying Torah, notice there are no women.

SPEAKER_01 21:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

All those guys view their wives as property. Like they view, like they view their cattle. Okay? Yeah. If you read if you read the Mishnah's rules on how to treat your wife, you would be appalled.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Like it's terrible.

SPEAKER_03 22:00

It's so it's so terrible. They have entire sections of law code on when your wife has to sleep with you and when she is off the hook of when what you can divorce your wife for and what you can't, what what uh to do if she makes you a bad sandwich. I mean it's it's absurd. It's just absolutely nuts. And Christianity is a whole movement, it breaks down Gentile and Greek, male and female, like Paul's own words, right? And Paul comes out of this setting where they literally viewed women as property and had no problem if you had more than one wife and this and that. And he seems to actually be progressive in what the roles in the household should be. I don't know that the passage in Ephesians is by Paul. But if we play the devil's advocate and say, okay, mainstream Christianity's complete assumption that Paul wrote everything that the Bible says Paul wrote, I don't think he did.

unknown 23:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 23:05

That said he did, that passage is more progressive in its time than regressive. The place you get into trouble is if you view scripture as being zapped from the heavens and not by a human author.

SPEAKER_02 23:20

I can see that.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Like if you understand it's by a human author, it's a click forward, but we need we went to hear and we need to get to hear, right? If it's if it's like God zapped this book for all time from the heavens, and this is like women's role, and this is man's role, then you have some, then you have all sorts of problems, which I would argue the evangelical church like does.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

Because yeah, now it's coming from like the highest being in the universe, you know, and he's not supposed to change, so yeah, but I mean that's that's why I'm fundamentally not a pastor anymore.

SPEAKER_03 23:58

I don't think God's right next. I think we do that. And we're considering God, and we're talking about evidence of God that we've seen and we're trying to convey it, but it's it's this idea that God inspired human authors to write exactly the truth lands you in a whole bunch of trouble. Yeah, not just modern sense of abilities, just things like whether or not the earth is flat or the universe has three tiers or there are demons behind every corner, or when you when you're sick, you're being cursed. I mean, the whole biblical worldview can't be taken as God writing capital T truth, you know? Um Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:39

I agree 1,000%.

SPEAKER_03 24:42

But like put all that on the shelf and say, okay, if the typical Pharisaic Jew thinks women are property and they have all these rules for what women ought to be doing, and they're super oppressive, yeah. Paul makes women leaders in his Jesus communities. Like when we look at the names of people he lists off that are his point people, there are women in the list and they're leading. Paul also, where I would say he's more progressive, should be saved for like when we get into that Ephesians passage.

SPEAKER_02 25:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 25:17

Like it's not, it's not as simple as wives submit to your husbands. It's everything that comes after it, and then there's another layer of how he's pulling the Old Testament forward and what he's doing with it. And I've never heard a pastor that can like punch their way out of a paper bag and teach that passage. So like it's more.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

I'm very interested in that.

SPEAKER_03 25:39

I stylistically don't think Paul wrote it. It would be like if you read the Text and Rock blog and then went and read a John Piper sermon, you'd be like, this is not the same dude. Right? That's scholars don't think Paul wrote it. But if we say Paul wrote it because it says Paul and Apostle of Christ at the beginning, which they did all the time, like they constantly, they constantly will rip another guy's name to to bolster their own writing.

SPEAKER_02 26:06

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 26:07

But if we say Paul wrote it, it's still more progressive based on like his his like group, you know?

SPEAKER_02 26:15

Yeah, and like his thoughts than what he was teaching other people who would write in his style.

SPEAKER_03 26:23

Yeah. So I don't think you would like Paul as far as like he would he would never he would never enter a conversation being as progressive as you want him to be, but he lived 2,000 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 26:37

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:37

I mean, 50 years ago in this country, people were debating like whether people could have, you know, interracial relationships.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

That's that's where we were, right? Right. 50 years ago.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:52

50 years ago, people would have told you to work in the home while your husband went off to work in this country.

SPEAKER_02 27:00

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 27:01

How does that educate you? What do you think? Or push back, whatever you want.

SPEAKER_02 27:06

Um, I mean, I think I'm tracking with you, like, so far. Um, I don't have a whole lot of pushback yet, just more like, like, how do you guys like how do you scholars like know like what clues you in that this is not Paul? You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 27:27

Like, you have to study Greek for 10 years. You have to read a lot of it. Okay, you have to read like a ton of it. But you can pick up, you can pick up English writing and very quickly tell one author from another. And their genres are the same. You you have a letter, you have a Roman letter, and they're gonna follow a very, very similar format. But Paul, stylistically, is like a snowball writer. He gets excited and he won't end a sentence. He'll go on and on and on and on and on.

SPEAKER_02 28:01

Yeah, like random. That annoys me about him because I'm like it feels like a word salad by the time you're done, like, with his sentence. You're like, what did you even just say?

SPEAKER_03 28:13

Yeah, yeah. And he's um there are passages in Paul that you can give to like a New Testament uh student to freak him out where he there's not a period for like a page. And it's like, ugh, right? Yeah, and uh like other authors write like that. Like Philo's like that. Philo of Alexandria is some of the hardest Greek you'll ever come across. Okay. If we put Philo next to someone claiming to be Philo, you'd be like, no. Right? It's not long enough. That's where scholars start, it's mainly stylistic. Um I'm going to play the devil's advocate and just assume everything a conservative would want to assume, though. When we look at that passage, I'm just gonna say, let's say Paul wrote it. Because what we actually have to undo is a much bigger problem, and that's that's the problem of inspiration, of blanket assumptions that when something says someone wrote it, someone wrote it. You have Psalms that say uh David wrote this, you have Proverbs that say Solomon wrote this, but the reality is they love to take good literature and attach it to a name because it brings it up in status, and they love to collect literature under a name, right?

SPEAKER_02 29:34

And so I don't think like, well, I was never told that. Like, it was only within the last couple of years that I like became aware that that was what had happened. Um I spent most of my life thinking, yeah, David wrote all the songs, and Solomon wrote everything in Song of Song, you know what I mean?

SPEAKER_03 29:59

Me too. You could have done an Mdiv in seminary and still not learned that. It wasn't till I got it till I got to like a critical program where I learned more about ancient culture and ancient literature in general and like how it ticks.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Um and uh it it's to me it it's allowed me to just hold the whole thing loosely and be like, okay, I got an ancient author here.

unknown 30:26

Right.

SPEAKER_03 30:28

They're gonna tell me something about God and they're gonna use Jewish stories to do it, and I want to see is it beautiful, is it helpful, can I leverage it in a way that helps my life? And sometimes it can't. Sometimes it can't, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:42

Yeah, and I mean it when I think about you know the nuances there of like culture and just group thought, like this is how everyone thought, this is how their society ran, it's different, it's not as progressed as we are now. And you know, just kind of like you said, holding it loosely, not holding all of this against them, like, well, you're just evil now because you didn't have this all figured out when you were alive. You know, like we all have like had grandparents who had like a leg in two worlds, you know, like the world we live in now is not the world we grew up in. It's like we're the bridge to like this future, and our grandparents, you know, while they have maybe progressed in some ways with us, like they might still hold on to some of those like things that they were grew up with, their earliest way of being, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 31:47

Like that's a great way to think about it.

SPEAKER_02 31:50

Hard to let that go, and so I'm trying to bring that to Paul when he is saying things I'm like, the hat's really messed up, you know.

SPEAKER_03 32:02

Hard what you that's such a great image as a bridge because as a person that's trying to live out your faith, yeah, you not only want to be a bridge to people and saying it's it's actually way more complex than just you thinking that I assume everything that's written in in this book is like literally true, and it's way more complex than it all even being equally good literature or or helpful for faith in Jesus, like all of that, and then on the back end you have this entire evangelical machine that's decided not to think about any of that, yeah. And generally people encounter that first, right? So, I mean it's very difficult, it is very difficult. Um I think though, uh those are the pieces on the board, and that sometimes Paul gets blamed, and what we're really mad at is blanket evangelical assumptions.

SPEAKER_02 33:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 33:05

It yeah, it does. That that really does make me mad. The blanket evangelical. Just the way that I've been taught to look at Paul my whole life.

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 33:15

And when when I actually read it, now I'm like, I only have half of the information I need. I don't have the other half of his letters. I don't have what he was even responding to. I have a very poor view or understanding of the culture he was in. Um all of that just forms a much clearer, better picture than just a list of rules that we now have to follow, whether they make sense to us or not. Like just obey because this is the hand of God wrote this man, you know.

SPEAKER_03 33:52

There's just some basic things too that I learned that no one taught me when I was even studying the Bible to be a pastor, and it's just like no one, no one taught me that the letters of Paul were written before the Gospels predominantly. And a lot of times when the Gospels are theological, it's Paul's thoughts being retrojected into them, especially in John. No one taught me that um in the Bible, Paul's letters are under the name of Paul and then in order from longest to shortest. So you think he wrote them in that order, but he did not. And it so like Galatians, Paul's like a hothead, he's also young. And I didn't know that, right? I was like, jeez, dude, calm down. But like when I think about okay, so when I think about um my own little life in ministry, when I was like a 25-year-old students pastor, I had unrealistic expectations of students, I had unrealistic expectations of family systems, I was harsher than I needed to be, I was not gentle enough. Um I I needed wisdom and to grow up in a whole lot of ways. I bet that's true for Paul too. Because he's a dude, he's like a person. You know? I mean he's not when I look at when I look at the way he's writing to the Corinthians or the Romans, it's very different. And that's something that no one ever taught me, you know?

SPEAKER_02 35:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:29

Um I think that I think that if you I think if you got to walk in and talk to Paul when he was like in prison and just hang out for a while, you'd really like his personality. Like when it like his letters are very much Roman letters to communities addressing specific issues.

SPEAKER_01 35:49

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_03 35:50

I think it was very culturally savvy. I think that he was very funny. I think that he was he liked to be a rock in people's shoes. Like you don't you don't get thrown in prison and then over time have the guards like you enough to like to like let you go. You know what I mean? Like I think he was super, super not even charismatic, just just authentic and fun. And that doesn't always come through in a letter where he's like addressing all the weird things the Corinthians are trying to pass off as normal, you know? Yeah, but but I think a similar thing happened, like I said, when I read enough Jesus, and then when I read enough Paul, I was like, oh, he's really, really funny. And he's really like setting them setting this up, and he's really um super sharp, you know. Um he's humble and sometimes self-denigrating, honestly. And I don't think I like that I don't think he ever got over his shit. I don't think he ever came to a place where he got over the mistakes he made. I don't like uh there's been all sorts of speculation about like what the thorn is in his side, yeah, you know, that praise that God will remove, and I don't know what any of that stuff is, but i I see someone that it was immensely struggling, uh both spiritually and psychologically, to forgive himself. And I don't think that comes across when you read a letter and he's trying to give advice because you you feel like he's like just pointing a finger at you.

SPEAKER_02 37:31

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:32

I but I think if you hung out with him for a day, the dominant thing that would come across is like, yeah, I was a train wreck, and now I'm not, and I'm trying to help. You know? Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_02 37:45

That would make me like him a lot more. That's a lot more relatable, and like um, yeah, like that kind of person is a likable person. So yeah.

SPEAKER_03 37:59

Um okay, I got a couple more. You ready?

SPEAKER_02 38:02

Okay, yes.

SPEAKER_03 38:03

Alright. Uh, things I think most modern Christians would like about Paul. I haven't heard any other writer in the Bible articulate that idolatry is the core problem, and I think he's right. Like, in like he he will consistently go and debate with people in pagan cities that you set up a created thing and you worship it as God, and it causes every problem you have in your life and in your community, and I think that's true. I like I think in this country we worship power, sex, money, and war. Those are the gods of the American Empire, and it doesn't take much proving. Like, I don't need to make a case for that. It's an inverted order, you know.

SPEAKER_02 38:51

Well, and don't we also worship like self-efficiency and like not needing anybody else and like just doing whatever is right, like in our own eyes? Like, I feel like that's another big one, you know.

SPEAKER_03 39:08

Yeah, like independence at the cost of everyone else, right? Yeah, yeah. When I look at my own life though, like in seasons where I'm not as healthy as I want to be, what I've done is I've made something that might even be a good created thing, the like God that I'm worshiping or pursuing. And I don't think that ever goes away. I think that's a constant human tendency, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 39:34

It does.

SPEAKER_03 39:34

Um I think the other thing, this isn't something that I think will make you like Paul so much as it unlocks Paul, and N. T. Wright is the scholar that has really tried to help people understand this gently because he knows that it's basically it didn't come true. Paul thinks the world's gonna end like next Tuesday. Yeah. Like actually, I would I would argue every writer of the New Testament letters thinks the world's over like next month. And for Paul, there's this small spiritual window between the resurrection of Jesus and when the world ends, and he's bringing as many Gentiles into the people of God as he can. That's why he's so driven, fanatical, and like sometimes abrasive. He thinks it's like very serious and he's very convinced of it. Um the problem with that is like that didn't happen. So like he's a human writer, they're all human writers.

SPEAKER_02 40:42

Do you mean the end of the world didn't happen? Okay, yeah. So he thought it would and then it didn't, and okay.

SPEAKER_03 40:49

I don't think any of them in like theological circles, they call the last 2,000 years the age of the church. Which is just a great way of saying the world didn't end after all.

SPEAKER_02 41:00

The world did not end.

SPEAKER_03 41:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 41:03

The world as they knew it ended.

SPEAKER_03 41:05

Yeah, definitely. Definitely. Um, but can you have all this apocalyptic apocalyptic literature laced through the New Testament about God intervening in history and setting everything to rights? I don't think they ever planned on that being 2,000 years later, or literally God knows how history will go. Or whether, you know, whether we all have to go through death before we see any kind of renewed earth. We don't know. We don't have answers to any of that, right? No. And Paul Paul has no idea that like 2,000 years of history are gonna go on after his life. And it allows me to cut him a break. Does that make sense? Like, it's just an interesting thing about him that no one ever told me.

SPEAKER_02 41:58

What what was his conception of like he's bringing all these Gentiles in? Is it because of his view of salvation? Like they're these people are going to be saved from something? Like, in his view, like, what did he think Jesus did on the cross? Um because I've I've heard that there's been like different major um like beliefs about that, and penal substitutionary atonement is now the dominant one, but like in the past that wasn't maybe necessarily the primary thought.

SPEAKER_03 42:44

First of all, for Paul, let's talk about for Paul, and then let's talk about like how do you hold faith as a modern right? So for for Paul, he introduces this is this is my least favorite thing about Paul. Okay, he not only introduces the idea that basically everyone's damned except followers of Jesus, and it's he's a little iffy on what happens to the Jews, right? Like people debated in Romans where he talks about the the Jewish people forever, like till the sun comes down. Um his view is that Jesus dies as a Passover lamb, and he uses a lot of Exodus and imagery. So like Jesus dies as a Passover lamb to prevent God from taking out his wrath on believers, right? That is his view. It's also the view, it's also the view of like most of the New Testament writers. You know?

SPEAKER_02 43:44

So pause to us, ra like God's wrath means hell, right? It was that the same view that they had.

SPEAKER_03 43:58

Well, first of all, hell's a moving target. It. Um, you know, if you're gonna go to hell, go go to hell in the Old Testament where it's just like a gray nether gloom area.

SPEAKER_02 44:07

Right.

SPEAKER_03 44:07

When they meet the Greeks. Everyone goes there. Yeah, when they meet the Greeks, hell gets really creative.

SPEAKER_01 44:12

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 44:12

And then most of our views of hell today come from. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, a theologian proper, like, oh, that uh Wes Huff guy or or Hoff guy or whatever will like um say, and you've heard this party line, that hell is like eternal separation from God, and they'll try to water that down. It'll be bad, we just don't know if it'll be flames and like this or that. Um I I don't I don't philosophically know what to do with the idea that billions of humans are created and like I don't know, a f a few million are saved, and like that was their plan for the world. Um I'm I'm much more comfortable leaving all that to God than I think Testament writers are. Um and I'm much more comfortable with leaving like other conceptions of God as like living expressions.

SPEAKER_02 45:18

Um what does it mean to be the living expression?

SPEAKER_03 45:24

I'm more of a Mr. Rogers theologian as far as like I'm a Christian, that's my heart language for talking and about and naming God, but I'm fascinated by like Buddhism. Or like I'm fascinated by world religions, and I don't I don't shut the door on anyone that isn't in my tradition. Um, probably another reason I'm not a pastor anymore.

SPEAKER_01 45:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 45:48

But for me, in my life, like that's what I can speak to. The imagery of Passover Lamb is really important to me. Because I have things from my past I can never undo. And there's nothing I can there's nothing I can do to go back and stop words from coming out of my mouth or stop decisions from being made. And there are things that either break the world because I did something I knew was wrong and I did it anyways because it was fun or I thought it would be the best thing. Or they're things I by rights should have done to heal the house of the world, and I stood by and did nothing. Right? Yeah, and I can't fix any of it, and it really is a burden to me. Like, I get when Paul has guilt and shame that won't go away. The imagery of a Passover lamb is powerful to me. Because, like, by rights, I don't even need God to destroy me. I've kind of destroyed myself or contributed to destroying the world, and in some way, God is choosing to pass me over and to treat me kindly and good. I mean, to the point of dying on my behalf. That's a powerful image, and it's such a powerful image that it inspires me to be good and as virtuous as I can be. Does it make sense?

SPEAKER_02 47:11

Yes. I was gonna ask you um to explain a little more of the image of the Passover Lamb because I think that sometimes in Christianity um those dots are not as strong as they could be. Like, I think we tend to think more about um okay, like say Easter is like tomorrow, right?

SPEAKER_03 47:36

Yeah. Um Passover.

SPEAKER_02 47:39

Yeah, so this is about just God's wrath turning away, and we don't really connect, like, I mean, even though we have like lambs on our Easter cards and make a really scary lamb cake or whatever.

SPEAKER_03 47:54

It's so powerful and so important, and I suggest whatever your view is of atonement, like Jesus died for my sins, or God is my forever friend now because Jesus died for me, and the like dots don't connect. You're like, how would that even fix anything, right? Passover is such an important image. Jesus enters the city of Jerusalem on lamb selection day, and and the the imagery of the Passover lamb comes from Exodus when people were slaves in Egypt, and the idea was you took a lamb and you let it live in your house with your family and with your kids, and you played with it, and it was cute and cuddly, and it was innocent, and it didn't deserve any bad at all ever, because it's a beautiful little lamb. I don't know, we'll call him lucky. And uh, yeah, then on Passover, you sacrifice it, and you take its blood and you spread it over the doorway, and in in in Shemot, in Exodus, it says that when the destroyer comes to kill the firstborn of Egypt because of Pharaoh's hardness of heart, God will pass over the Hebrew people, right? Or anyone that got anyone that believed in the right and spread lamb's blood over their door was protected. Now look at that imagery in light of Jesus. I mean, John John's the greatest expression of this. Like the creator enters the painting that he, the masterpiece that he made. No one recognizes him. He lives a sinless life that is good and beautiful, and he deserves no harm, and he harms no one, and he's brutally executed. And the idea is whatever evil is in the world that God's fighting against passes you over. You don't get the evil you deserve for the evil you did.

SPEAKER_02 49:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 49:48

That's beautiful.

SPEAKER_02 49:50

That is beautiful. And I like that better than just like the blanket sin, because sin, I don't feel like that is it covers it. Like it doesn't really bring it home sometimes, I think.

SPEAKER_03 50:07

I think it's like overuse. Yeah, sin sounds very much like a Sunday school lady telling you that you were wrong or you did something wrong. Yes. And less like I I hardly even use the term sin with people. I usually say we've all done things that break the world, and that have breakfast.

SPEAKER_02 50:26

I like that. I like that a lot better. Because we all have and we all know it when we hear that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 50:33

And it's more serious than everyone than anyone wants to admit. So there's the like the there's like the little things we do that was like, that wasn't right. But then there's like the top five everyone has that they can't undo. And they're the things that as a full-grown adult, you'll like lay in your bed and remember. And there's nothing you can do. Like there's nothing you can do to fix any of it. You know? Um, and I think that like there it's very, very easy to point fingers at like the people and powers that are breaking the world right now. Yeah. But it's way more honest to own that we break the world too. And that we're broken too, right? And so Passover is a really powerful image. The connection between Passover and Jesus' death, guess who makes it? Paul.

unknown 51:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 51:24

Paul does. Alright.

unknown 51:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 51:27

No one ever taught me that either. NT Wright taught me that. Like just reading N. T. Wright was like Paul's entire framing of the Jesus story is the Exodus. And there's an Exodus from human sin. And it's back written into the gospels. So you know. That's cool. Yeah. Um, the last thing, the last reason I think most Christians are called. What kind of dog do you have?

SPEAKER_02 51:51

I have three. That one's the Austral Shepherd.

SPEAKER_03 51:55

Oh, they're really smart.

SPEAKER_02 51:56

Sorry. Yeah. He's smart until he's not smart.

SPEAKER_03 52:01

Yeah. I think the last reason most of us would like Paul is that everyone liked Paul who met him. Like, all of the communities he writes to, he writes about how great the relationships are and how strong the relational bonds were. And he has people like all across the Roman Empire willing to do things that he asks them to do. And I think that it speaks to his character way more than hopping into a letter where, like, when he writes Galatians, he's mad at people that have gone into this like baby church that he planted and told them you're not saved unless you're Jewish and you need to be circumcised and follow these food laws, or none of it counts. That's why he's so mad in the book of Galatians. So yeah, he's super ticked, but he's ticked because he's protective. It'd be like if someone It'd be like if someone came. It'd be like someone came to my kid Otto, who's 13 and he's figuring out the world, and said, You don't really count unless you do this and that and that and gave him terrible advice. I'm ticked. Right? Yeah. That's the book of Galatians. Like that's what's happening. And so the the the dominant picture we get is that except for religious people, kind of like Jesus, everyone seemed to like him. So I mean, there's that too.

SPEAKER_02 53:28

Yeah.

unknown 53:29

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 53:30

No, that's that's good. That's that's a good point.

SPEAKER_03 53:33

Okay, so um I will like I will pick I'll pick like three problem passages and then we'll go from there next time. Like we'll do that one. Do you want to do the Ephesians one right off the bat? Sure. Or don't care.

SPEAKER_02 53:54

No, we can't. Go for it. Ephesians. Is it Ephesians 5, 22? Is it that one?

SPEAKER_03 54:01

Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02 54:02

I made a list of like all the ones I could find.

SPEAKER_03 54:06

Oh, hold on. Tell me your list. Or do you can just you can just uh message it later.

SPEAKER_00 54:12

I'll message it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:13

We'll just use your list. That sounds fun. Oh, and it's okay, it's way more collaborative. Like when I yeah, when I uh when I like perform poetry with Eric, the rule I have is I give him no advice about what to play ever.

SPEAKER_02 54:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 54:27

Then it's a true collaboration, and it's always better than like my dumb suggestions. So just bring the things that are frustrating you and we'll just talk about that. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 54:37

Okay. Sounds good.

SPEAKER_03 54:39

Cool. Well, uh, have a wonderful Easter weekend.

SPEAKER_02 54:43

You too.

SPEAKER_03 54:44

All right.

SPEAKER_02 54:45

Bye.

SPEAKER_00 55:13

The Text and Rock Show is the creative work of Mark Schaefer and Eric Madison. Don't forget to subscribe so you know when new episodes turn up. If the show adds value to your life, please consider leaving them a review or sharing Textandrock with a friend. You can explore other Text Androck digital productions or contact Mark and Erin by simply clicking the link in the show notes.