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Is questioning theology heretical?
We're thrilled to welcome Nate and Shelby Hanson from the Almost Heretical podcast in this enlightening episode that will challenge your views and provoke introspection. Together, we explore their personal journeys from conservative Christian upbringings to questioning theology, their disillusionment with the church, and how their experiences with faith have evolved and influenced their outlook.
In this ATC Episode:
• We delve deep into multilayered discussions, unfolding the concept of the Bible as a single source of truth, and the possible missing voices in its formation.
• Nate reflects on his time in California, and how it significantly shaped his faith and view of Jesus.
• We dissect the concept of Hell in Christianity, the historical interpretations, and what it means to not believe in Hell.
Connect with the Almost Heretical Podcast:
Instagram: @almostheretical
Website: www.almostheretical.com
Hi, this is Grant Lockridge and Jared Tafta on the Across the Canter podcast, where we create space for real people to have honest conversations. Today I interviewed a Nate and Shelby Hansen from the Almost Heretical podcast. They've had some wild interviews, had some awesome interviews with Neil deGrasse Tyson, with Tim Mackie and multiple others that are super prominent in the Christian sphere and also just in various different areas of academic thought. I didn't have Jared on this one because this was before I had Jared on the podcast. I asked him to be the cohost and I had started a podcast on my own. But glad to have him in here and, jared, just maybe you introduced a little little bit.
Speaker 2:This was a really awesome podcast to listen to and I also thought it was too good not to let you guys here, so I'm excited for you guys to hear Grant have a conversation with Nate and Shelby Hansen from the Almost Heretical podcast.
Speaker 1:Nate and Shelby, just tell me a little bit about your personal journey and kind of how you got started in the podcast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I started the podcast with another friend of mine, another former pastor named Tim, we started that. This is our fifth year doing the show now and there's been some breaks in there, some extended breaks for, you know, COVID and life crises and stuff like that. But but yeah, it's been this, it's been this journey for us and it all started out of a place was like 2018, 2017, 2018, you know, the first year of the podcast, 2018, you know the whole Trump thing had happened with the 81% of evangelicals voting for Trump. Right, and we're just. We had had this experience in the church where there's a lot of disillusionment with with what had happened in our personal stories. We talk about that a lot on the podcast, especially in the early episodes. We're like on episode 115, I think we just recorded, so it's been going a while. We have a whole second podcast we do for supporters, called Utterly Heretical, if you want to get really crazy, where we get into more stories about ministry days and planting churches and all the stuff we were doing. But so, all in, you know we're close to 150, 160 episodes now and so we share the bits of our story in there and but the gist is, you know, myself personally raised very pretty conservative church, reformed in theology, so Calvinist. The question was you know, are you a four point or a five point? Calvinist right.
Speaker 1:There you go, Like I think.
Speaker 3:I knew Tulip before. I don't know. I think I knew Tulip probably before I knew what a tulip was, you know so. But yeah, like went to the same church my my whole life until I, you know, eventually moved out and and moved to California. But but yeah, great grandparents were married there, my grandparents were married there, my parents were married there. It's just, it was, yeah, my great grandma, founding member of this church. And this church is, you know, very, very special, very significant to me. I have a lot of great experiences there. So it was. It wasn't like all these people, you know, let me down and and stab me in the back and how dare that? You know, it wasn't like that for me. I mean, this is a. This was a really special place for me, still is a special place for me. And these people I still see them, you know. I see them at the grocery store, I see them at the library, I see them around town. And this is this instant connection, instant hug, and it's like Nate, how are you doing? And I'm like how are you? doing, and so this was a really positive, really positive experience it was for me. Was the the theology that changed? Right, it was it was not being able to teach some of the things I had been teaching. I went on to be church planter with Francis Chan and I was a pastor in San Francisco and urban missionary and all these things I got. I always say like I got radicalized in high school.
Speaker 1:Super radicalized.
Speaker 3:Francis Chan at a high school conference and just a small conference is before crazy love and before all that. But at this small conference up here in Portland in high school, and just hearing it, I just it just hit me. It was like you know this message of you're not, you know you're not, you're not pleasing God, right, like you're not, you're not good enough, you're not doing enough for God and you need to be on fire, you need to be radical, you need to be crazy. That was what I felt. I felt like, wow, yeah, that's what I've always felt. I felt like I'm not pleasing God enough. I felt like I'm not, like that God's not happy with me, right. And so I was like this, this was just scratching my itch, right. And so like I just jumped all into that and from there was like got done with college, moved to Southern California to be a part of Francis's church leading worship at his church, and went on to, yeah, plant is a long story, but then plant churches with him. And then it just kind of like started sinking in. I was like I don't, I think. I think I don't believe in hell the same way that I, that I used to, and I was a big motivator for everything we were doing. So that's, that's a tease to my story, but I've talked enough. So, shelby.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and so I I mean I had a very similar upbringing and we actually our communities kind of overlapped a little bit growing up. We were both homeschooled and in the same kind of vicinity and I was. I also became a missionary, was living in China for a couple of years and then went to school to be a Bible translator, finished that degree and then started doing a master's in biblical studies, and that's when kind of things started shifting for me for a whole bunch of different reasons. But as I, as I started to kind of go public with my change and I was up in Canada going to school and like Nate and I knew who each other were. But when then I started writing about it, nate was like Whoa, it's somebody else from my community who's also like going through this and that's pretty rare to find in our community. So so he reached out about like maybe being on the podcast and that's how I ended up joining in the brief version.
Speaker 1:That's cool. So what do you mean by like going through it? Because I know that it's kind of been like a deconstruction, reconstruction thing.
Speaker 4:Yeah, well, and I mean those terms. As we all know, it's hard to nail down. It's like what is that even mean when I said going through it, I definitely meant like deconstruction, and it could be debatable whether reconstruction has already happened or is still happening or is ever going to happen. Or I like to say maybe deconstruction was my reconstruction. I don't know, but yeah, for me it was. I mean, there were little things all along that were, I think, a pretty typical. Just, you know, becoming an adult and realizing that like the faith of your childhood is, you know that needs to have some nuance at it and maybe not everything you believed was exactly exactly what you thought like maybe the earth didn't necessarily happen in six days and you know, maybe the like. I do remember in one of my first years at school. It was a Christian, evangelical Christian university and I was taking introduction to the New Testament and the professor just talked about how, you know, there's these criteria for which books were included in the canon, and he specifically emphasized that inspiration was not one of the criteria and I was like what, like that's, just like?
Speaker 1:that sounded so heretical inspiration was not one of the criteria, would yeah, and so okay.
Speaker 4:So I was suddenly very worried and like how can I even trust this professor? But then he actually. Then he explained like it's actually a good thing that inspiration is not one of the criteria, because there's no way for us to prove that the criteria are things like Catholicity. Was it? Was it accepted widely by the whole church, or Orthodoxy? Does it match what we've, what the church has decided is Orthodox or Apostolicity? Was it written by an apostle? So it's criteria that actually have a basis and inspiration. So then, and of course we ended up talking a ton about okay, what? What is inspiration? And I mean, I mean that's a huge topic we could go into more, but that I mean that was. You know, that was maybe one of the journeys I started going on and then by the time, by the time I was about to start my masters, it just became well. I guess I should give context for like I was so what I would say on fire for Jesus, like that was my email address literally on fire for my savior at gmailcom. Now you can email me if you want and the number four, and I mean I like I started the prayer ministry at my school. I like led everything I could possibly lead the mission strips, and I like people would come to me for spiritual mentorship, like I was the one and and I really like I tried that was what I wanted and I was and I loved it, like I had this incredible relationship with Jesus that, I would say is, you know, as real as I think it could have been. It sounds like it's really, you know, a doomsday story I'm telling here. But yeah, and then, right before I started, my masters just was struck by tragedy and some friends who died and it was just kind of this moment of prayer and then just waiting and like unanswered prayer and after that that, like I mean, one of the friends died and another one we waited for like a week while they're in intensive care and everyone around the world Is praying and then they die, and I was just like I can't, I can't pray and I wouldn't say I like lost my faith right then. But I was like I'm something here is not working and and I knew you know, there's thousands of years of history of Christians Wrestling with these same crest questions. Like I know I'm not the first one to be like how could God allow this? But but it was just too much, and so that started me just feeling Completely shaken and kind of these rose colored glasses just taken off and then, and then I went into my master's biblical studies and started Just realizing that the Bible isn't I'll say this and this might come into play in our conversation today I've often gone through these cycles and the cycle starts with some Statement such as the Bible Inspiration is not one of the criteria of the New Testament starts with some statement like that that sounds just absolutely Insane and I start off being like this there's no way that this is possible. But then and then, as the cycle goes on, I'll be like, okay, I guess I can see what they're saying, but I don't really know. And then it keeps going like actually that kind of makes sense. And then by the end of cycle I'm like you know what? I totally agree. And so these cycles just keep happening, and so those would happen a lot like I would you know. Learn that. You know that Paul didn't write first, second Timothy and Titus. And at first I'm like how is this possible? And then, within you know a month or two, I'm like, oh actually, like it's not even a problem. So just learning how the Bible was put together. I studied Dead Sea Scrolls and gender studies Intertwined. So specifically was looking at the Genesis Apocryphon, which is a Scroll that we found in the Dead Sea Scrolls that like is a retelling of Genesis, just kind of this literary piece from the second temple period man so just learning about like there's a whole world of texts that is, beside the Christian and Jewish, by like what would what we would call our Bible? like those these are not the only texts. Yeah and the other texts can really speak into these texts and just give us a lot of insight and and just nuance the world a bit and not the process by which some of those texts went to our canonized Bible is very human process. So oh yeah. So all that to say Ended up on the podcast, with Nate talking mostly about the Bible and how it interacts with a lot of issues, and then I Mean at this point, yeah, I'm still kind of figuring it all out. I don't know, I Don't know who God is, I don't know who Jesus is necessarily, but I still Like love Jesus. There's no figure In history that I admire more and no words that I love more than the ones that are in there. And then there's also parts of the Bible that I will never share with my children because I think they're harmful. So it's, it's a complicated journey, journey. So, yeah, it's a little bit about me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's definitely nuanced cuz I mean obviously I've been, you know, I was raised conservative Christian, so I was always told like the Bible is an errant, completely legit, completely like every part is profitable for teaching, even though that's in the New Testament, but still like just the whole thing is completely good to go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was like asking people this grant. So when you thought of, like, let's say that I'm suing, you were also taught it was inspired, right, it was the inspired word of God. Is that true? Yeah, so, like when you thought about inspiration, what was the picture and you like from a young age right, were you in the church. Yeah now I'm interviewing you.
Speaker 1:you like this, so my question is I want a conversation, that's all.
Speaker 3:My question is because I have you know what I pictured and I you know, some other friends and things have told me what they pictured. But when you pictured inspired, when you pictured like these people were writing the words of God, how did you assume that like? What did you think? How would that look like to you?
Speaker 1:It's like as I got taking over. How did it happen like you gotta take?
Speaker 3:over their hand right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like basically God like Inhabits their mind somehow and makes it so that they can't write anything wrong, or something like that.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Did you think that the person writing was cognizant of what was happening or no?
Speaker 1:I Mean, if that, I don't know really what I thought. I thought it was more almost like a Like a vessel, like possession deal.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, we've. People have used that word before. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're rolling up into their head.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just just kind of like, here we go, like that's, that's the Bible. But then the letters, I don't know, because Old Testament's definitely a lot Different to me, of like, because they're like thus says the Lord, and then it's like here we go and the New Testament's like we're writing a letter to a church which is totally different than like thus sayeth the Lord.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and you see, like I mean, in Paul's letters, which is most of them he's, his personality is very distinct in in his writing and so I mean, obviously people, just you can still attribute inspiration to that, but it is definitely different vibe than the Old Testament, for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so but yeah, now that I've always heard that it's the inspired word of God, but definitely like looking into, because nothing is as simple as it seems like on the surface, like if you just don't really think about that, like totally fine, like inspired word of God, okay, everything in its right, I don't really have to think about it, and I'll just read it and try to apply it to my life, even though some things feel like it doesn't necessarily apply. Then you realize that you know it's it's literature and there's poetry and there's narrative and there's all sorts of different like different forms of Hebrew in there and different like ways that they were like assembled and the Like it's not chronological and things are in different places. So it's just kind of hard to To put all that together. So you need, you need somehow to like you either go at it with the eyes of a child and say, hey, I'm gonna read this thing and try my best, or you think a little bit deeper and I think that that's kind of what you guys are doing, which is why I thought it'd be really cool to interview you, because I've had like three friends pretty much straight up leave the faith, because they were like they kind of dig in a little bit and they're like wait a second, we just kind of picked these books out of a hat, or not really like it's way more nuanced than that, but like people basically just sat down and picked which ones were in it, like that's, that's pretty much the gist, like there was obviously criteria, but yeah, it was.
Speaker 4:I mean, as I ride the fence, I think of like I do believe there was a Process and a lot of intentionality, but that doesn't necessarily mean I trust the whole process Partially. I mean, when you come at it from a lens of gender studies, like there's just innately Gonna be some pretty significant voices missing, when it's 100% written by men and basically 100% featuring men. So, you know, it's like I don't think these texts are bad, but I think they might have, they could have used some filling out and and yeah, I mean, if I was gonna put together the cannon, I'd probably do it a little differently. But who's to say that I would be right either? Yeah, but, but I mean I think yeah, I'm hearing about your friends I Think that's part of why we do the show too is to give people permission to, for one, take the journey a little slower. And and I mean Nate, we often use the phrase like give the Bible back to people like you don't. If you need it to, or you know, ultimately decide to leave the faith, then that's like absolutely fine, then that's your decision. But we just want people to know that the Bible, it doesn't belong to the, the group, that they necessarily learned it from and but that and then that also the extreme things that we hear from the other side of like this is all bunch of hogwash. Like that's not necessarily true either. Yeah but the middle ground is a really hard place to be, largely because I don't think there's a lot of people there. So we're kind of trying to to build it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and that's what we found was that there were. We started the show, right, we turn the mics on. We don't know. We think you know 10, 15 people are gonna listen to this thing and we'll be done with it in a couple months. I mean, honestly, that's what I was thinking was this will be a good like experiment for us. This will be a good learning experience. And so five years ago I guess six years ago we started recording just in our backyard and Sent it out into the world, and what we found was there are so many people on this journey of, at bare minimum, changing the way they relate to God, jesus in the Bible and the theology that they used to have, but at at the other end of the spectrum, like you said, people completely Done with it all, and so the show is really for all of those people in, in all those, in all those the ends of the spectrum there, right? So for the person that's like just starting to be like you know what? I'm starting to see some cracks in this whole system here. Like why do we talk about hell way more than Jesus did? Why do we know way more about hell than Jesus knew, you know? Like these type of things, and then that is something I wanted to get back to oh, we love that topic, oh, yeah, but then the other end of the spectrum, to right, where the person's like I'm completely done with this. Our hope is like okay, well, just let me just show you other ways to look at this, at these texts, and then also ways to Appreciate these texts but not let them limit you and be able to move past them, because we kind of believe that's what the biblical writers a lot of times would have been wanting us to do is to keep building right, keep progressing, keep moving forward what they were doing before, kind of the solidification of the canon.
Speaker 1:Yeah sure, so that's kind of, I Guess. I guess that's kind of like Catholicism e, where they kind of go throughout church history and A lot of this stuff that the Saints say and a lot of that stuff really applies. It matters.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, the way the Catholic Church like for them, the characters in the Bible almost extend, because they start adding on these Saints that you know most Protestants have never heard of like that's a good example of like there's a tradition to build here and it doesn't end in Revelation.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that's. It's also interesting too, because talking to like a Catholic or a Greek Greek Orthodox Priest or something like that we're not even at least to me, because I'm just like straight Bible, so we're not even like talking the same language and it's hard to yeah because he's yeah, you know, it's like, oh, is it in scripture? and it's like, well, it doesn't necessarily have to be. And I was just like what? Oh, like, oh, I thought, and obviously that's naive, but I was like, oh, I legitimately thought we were on the same page, that we could just like go through this and like if it's not in there, we're good, and it's like that's, that's not the case, there's a pope and I mean basically yeah, the only reason you can even ask that question is because you're post, you know, 300 ad or whatever. Yeah, there's a pope that can basically say anything, and if he says a phrase, after it's inspired.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, that's a little crazy to me, but.
Speaker 1:Blew my mind too, not necessarily saying it's wrong, but like it's the way people do things it doesn't feel. Doesn't feel great for me. But I also don't, like I haven't, like hardcore, looked into like why the Pope is Super, super important, like obviously it came from Peter and all that stuff, but you know there was still well, we'll get off of that, but what's that? What's that thing about? What's that thing about hell?
Speaker 4:you're talking about cuz oh, where do we start that?
Speaker 1:just sounded. That sounded interesting. You're like you're not even gonna believe what this is and I was like, alright, let's, let's see what we got here.
Speaker 4:Well, I don't, I mean. My journey with hell was.
Speaker 1:I journey with hell, yeah first of all.
Speaker 4:I mean I also grew up very influenced by Francis Chan. In my teenage years, I would say I was also radicalized, but just not in person like they was, but through reading crazy love and similar radical by David Platt.
Speaker 1:Like us oh yeah.
Speaker 4:And then the verse In Revelation 3, 16,. You know you're neither hot no cold, but because you're a lukewarm I'm about to spit you out of my mouth like that. Just, I Mean, at the time I was, I knew I was terrified and I had to figure out how do I make sure I'm not lukewarm. Looking back now, and with the help of therapists, I realized that that was literally trauma, and I don't use that term lightly because I, when I first heard about religious trauma, I was like, ah right, you know, let's, let's not get over reacting here. But but then I mean, I, I literally still to this day, have like physical bodily symptoms that that I can trace back to that period where I was terrified of of hell and of a God who I'm trying desperately to serve, like some somehow, like finding out that I didn't do it Right and I wasn't good enough and I was lukewarm. So so hell was very real to me and I was the kind of person who would like, whenever I'd go on a flight, I would request the middle seat because I wanted to make sure I had a chance to evangelize to as many people as possible wherever I was going, because I yeah, I just was like how could I not? And and I still think I mean I remember this is probably the peak of it like there was a moment on I just Likes, was sobbing on the floor in my house with my mom and my sister, probably when I was 17 or 18 or something, just sobbing, unable to stop, which is not necessarily my personality because I was like there are people dying right now who are going to hell, and I like, and and now and now, and now and now. And I was like there's absolutely nothing I can do about it. And I said, looking back now, I'm like that was the only appropriate response, like actually everything else is Is it like? If you really believe that, like how can you live life? And so. So I think I, because of how deep it was in me, I think when I started to look at it differently, it just it felt so incredibly freeing. And, and part of that journey was I, my undergrad was linguistics. Like I said, I was gonna be Bible translator, so took Greek in Hebrew, and then I was going to the master's program. I mean I thought, well, let's do a fun little word study on hell. And and I found out there's okay, there's four different words that are trans end up translated hell in the King James version. So in in Hebrew there's shale, which sometimes our translation still say shale, and then in the New Testament there's Gehenna and Tartarus and Hades, three different Greek words that are used in different contexts. So Jesus usually would use Gehenna, but sometimes Hades. Paul occasionally used Tartarus and sometimes Hades. I actually don't know if Paul used Gehenna and they all have different contexts and meanings and and I mean obviously just saying that doesn't necessarily like disprove hell, but it just Suddenly showed me like there is not a clear across all scripture picture of what we're talking about here. Like these people aren't even using the same word and when we translate into English somebody decided to translate all of them hell and that just we grew up thinking the Bible teaches all these different things about hell, when in reality they're saying different things about different things and they might be related in people's minds, but like they're all speaking Greek and they're using three different words and then when you actually look at it, in Hebrew every use of shale. Like it's not talking about Eternal punishment, like the Old Testament barely has a concept of the afterlife. It's Old Testament's very Like this life-centric is not a very professional way to say that, but that's what we're after. Yeah, and then I read, I was reading the translation of the New Testament by David Bentley Hart, which is really cool For anyone who's interested. You know, most Bible translations are done by a official committee which is, you know, totally fine, you're trying to do it as best as possible. But those committees are also, you know, driven by publishers and churches who, like there's certain translations you probably aren't gonna push away based on who your, your audience is, and I'm not. I'm not saying that like it's all just a big facade, but the the cool thing about reading a New Testament translation, but that's just done by an individual, is you don't have all of that, all the dynamics there. And so David Bentley Hart has this whole appendix in the back of all these significant words and why he translated them the way he did, and Hell was one of them. And so of course I go back and I'm reading the entry and In his explanation of essentially what I just, you know, told you about the different Translations and different vocabulary words, he also just stated that like historically, especially in the first centuries, like a belief in hell was a non-essential to Christianity, like this is not in the creeds. And when I read that I was like, well then I am done, like, if this is not essential, why, why would I keep it? And then the last thing in that I'm actually I happened I think couple months before it was when I was still just really holding on strongly to my, my roots, and I was in a class With a professor who was kind of leading this discussion with all of us, you know young conservative college students, and he kind of put out the idea of universalism. Like he was saying, you know what, if God just loves everyone and everyone gets to go to heaven, and we were just Furious like that. He could even Suggest that. And and yet me, being, you know, number one miss Bible of all the university, I, I was the one who knew all the passages. I'm like, what about this, what about this? What about when Jesus said this? You know what about the sheep and the goats and what about all of that? Like I knew all these passages. And you know what about revelation, what the lake of fire? And his, um, his response, responses didn't necessarily robot everything I said, but I mean we were all just like we will do anything to prove him wrong to prove that universalism is, of you know, false. And and in that moment, like I suddenly just felt, like I Kind of had this out-of-body experience where I just looked down at us I'm like how, how awful is this that we are so desperate to say that no, all these people do go to hell? Like, even if we're right, wouldn't we want him to be right? Like why don't we want to find out it? Could it be possible that nobody's going to hell? And so, like all those things put together, I think, is why I just Kind of where this journey ended up with me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah we did a series on almost a reticle called hell in heaven. This was I don't know which number it was, but if you want you can go back and check that out and I don't know six, seven part series. In the beginning we started with hell Because we wanted to start and look at the, the trauma piece, and so the first episode has like a I think it's like five, six, seven minutes of just Listener audio of them sharing their stories of things they were told, things they felt, things they experienced on this topic of hell in the church and Sunday school and different things like that. I mean some of them are pretty horrific and the trauma centered around this specific topic. I mean I haven't seen another one like it, another topic like this, with talking to I mean I probably talked to thousands of people who have, quote-unquote, deconstructed their faith or left their faith or evolved in their faith. At this point, I mean this is the number one topic is hell. It's there's, and probably two is topics around LGBTQ people and whether it's them or their friend or something like that. But hell is far and away number one as far as kind of that first domino that that fell for people on this journey, and I see why. Because you want and I you like Shelby just said, like you, I think you get to a point where you want this to not be true, because of how damaging, how horrific this is to share with another human being this reality, right? And so that's where I say like, when I look back at my ministry days, it was so motivated by this topic. We'd be sitting, I remember, with Francis and a few of my other friends that were pastors as well, and we'd be sitting in this room most mornings. We were doing ministry in this Kind of area with a lot of gangs just outside of San Francisco called Hunter's Point, and a lot of gang violence. It's been. I just drove through about a year ago, six months ago, and totally different. They have completely pushed all of that out of this area of the city, which is crazy. This is right around where the San Francisco 49ers used to play. Anyways, it was shocking to see. I'm like, wow, it is completely different. I was trying to like see things that I recognized and it was all gone. But anyways, when I was there just six, seven years ago, eight years ago Very dangerous area, lots of violence going on, lots of gun violence going on and we'd be sitting in this room in the building that we were using sort of as a recovery house for guys and things like that, and We'd sit there in the morning and like this little Bible study time and we would just feel so compelled. Someone would say it or whatever. That like Either this is going to be our last day on earth and we're about to stand before God, or someone out on out on these streets that we were looking out the windows on it was gonna be their last day on earth and they were about to stand before God and and that finishing the sentences like dot, dot, dot and be sent to hell. And so we would just get up right then at nine o'clock in the morning or whatever, and Spend the next few hours just walking up. It was this big hill that led right out of where we were there and we just walk up this hill onto these streets, go into these projects and try to like talk to people, tell someone in desperation about this God and this eternal judgment that is coming. So, anyways, I just say like this was a huge part of everything I did, and so that's why, when I started questioning that, I mean everything sort of had to be reexamined then, because this was everything, this non-essential thing that Shelby just talked about had become kind of a lens to view everything through, or at least a linchpin right. It was essential to everything that I had believed, and so removing that or changing what I thought on that sort of started changing everything.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean even just the fact that like and this was, we have Zoom calls once a month with our patrons of our show, and on the last call, one of the questions we were discussing was, if there's no hell, what was the point of Jesus? And I remember I asked that question to my spiritual director at the time when I was like kind of initially starting to feel this deconstruction, and she like like gave me this kind of empathetic chuckle because she was like how you know how small Jesus has become if his only purpose was, you know, take it out of hell. And just that historically there's so much more to what Christianity is and what salvation means than just not getting into hell. Like, yeah, I can't emphasize enough that like this was a non essential and still is for many branches of Christianity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that that's definitely something I need to look into a little more because I know and correct me if I'm wrong but weren't most early Christians somewhat universalists? Probably I mean, I don't know that I could say that I heard that from somebody else on a podcast, but I was just like, if that's true, they probably had a fresher version of Christianity as far as, like, closer to the events than we do. So what? What do we think that there's?
Speaker 4:Yeah, you know, and I feel like they may have just even like the focus was not on going to heaven and earth or going to heaven and hell. Like I say earth because you know what really in Revelation gives kind of this vision of you know the new heaven, the new earth and and I think I mean Revelation isn't necessarily a perfect representation of what all early Christians thought kind of. I mean Revelation was the most contested whether this should be in the New Testament or like almost 5050. And but I think probably most early Christians just weren't focused on the afterlife, like it was more about. We are trying to change this world and like make this world into the kingdom, like the kingdom that's now and you know, the kingdom that Jesus seemed to be leading. That would be my guess.
Speaker 1:Okay, interesting. So at the end of the day, so do we agree on like Jesus is the Son of God, like Savior for sinners kind of deal, or is it? Is it a different approach there?
Speaker 4:I mean like, like I said, I don't. I feel like I don't know, I don't haven't landed on what, who I think Jesus was, and I don't know if I'll ever know. I probably won't. I mean, and after you deconstruct, I think you're not even really comfortable knowing anything anymore, because you're like I thought I was pretty certain before and now I'm so, so I don't know that I'll ever hold anything as dogmatically as I did before I do. I feel like there's a lot of things and I've said this a lot on our podcast like there's a lot of things you can choose to believe. Like there's, like you're not going to prove that Jesus wasn't the Son of God. Like you can't prove that you also can't prove that he was, and and so I think we all have the responsibility of you know figuring out what makes the most sense to us, based on our experience and our interpretation of the texts and the context. And so, yeah, for me, I mean I definitely waver. I would say I I feel I don't spend a lot of time thinking about Jesus as the Son of God, Like I don't necessarily think of him as an incarnation of God. Not to say that I'm necessarily right. I just have, I think, taken a step back and have found that that step back hasn't like things haven't necessarily fallen apart, like the person of Jesus is still still significant and and there's just so many possible ways that this could have gone Like, there's so many interpretations of Jesus, even among the early church and early Christians, and there was so much going on at the time that, like historical Jesus studies, is what I would love to delve more into. Because you know, we do know, we know a couple things and we base a lot on those couple of things. And even within the Gospels we see progression in how Jesus is viewed. Maybe, since we're on the topic of Jesus divinity, I'll just give my quick little little timeline of the Gospels, example of that. So Mark is written earliest. I don't know why we structure our Gospels Matthew, mark, luke and John would be a lot simpler if we did Mark, matthew, luke, john. But Mark was written first and in that Gospel and there's no birth narrative you, you meet Jesus essentially as he's being baptized by John, and and that's the moment, like that is the crucial moment, where God says like this is my son who might love, and and so in John, his like divinity kind of happens then like, baptism is where the dove comes, and it's just and it says like, and that's the moment for for Mark. Did I say John earlier? I meant Mark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but wait, it's Mark, we got it.
Speaker 4:I was thinking about John the Baptist, you know, and then then Matthew and Luke. They both include this birth narrative and and that's kind of the moment will be at conception or birth where, like, god becomes incarnate. So you're seeing, like the the it's getting pushed back to okay, it's not. It's not that some human being became divine, but, like, from the moment of conception he was divine. And then you get to John and it's in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God and it's taking it all the back to like he was with God in the beginning and that you don't see that in the Gospels either, and so, so, so it's just, it's just interesting and makes me pause and want to know more by seeing that the, the way Jesus was viewed, also developed, and you can read a lot more about that in how Jesus Became God by Bart Ehrman. It's a really in depth study and it's hard to read. Honestly, I started reading and I put it down because for a long time, a long time, I deconstructed everything except Jesus. I was like I can't touch this, because this person is so incredibly significant to me and as someone who's gone through a lot of grief and loss and tragedy in my life, beyond the story I told earlier, I was like I can't lose this person who I was told I can never lose, like this is the one thing that I thought I could count on. So for years I have stayed away, which is why I think you know I might be pretty far ahead on biblical studies but I'm a little more behind on historical Jesus studies, because that was just so emotional and so significant to dig into.
Speaker 1:So what do you do with the Holy Spirit then? Because I feel like that's at least not clear, but definitely shows up a lot in, like you know, the whole entirety of the Bible.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I mean, you know, if we want to, if we want to, the Holy Spirit's there from literally Genesis one, from the, you know, the Spirit hovering over the water and that, that word and the word, interestingly the word in Hebrew and Greek they both mean spirit, wind, breath, like all kind of three of those connotations, which is really cool and here we can. If I haven't been heretical enough, I'm going to probably get it even more so.
Speaker 1:But we're on utterly heretical today.
Speaker 4:I'm like a huge Star Wars fan and I'm pretty sure I am a Jedi, probably just Ray incarnate. Yeah, I'm a big fan of the the sequel trilogy and I don't really care what everyone else thinks, so that's just who I am, and that is a bold statement, but continue.
Speaker 3:I mean it's better than one, two and, like the, the 90, the 1999.
Speaker 1:It depends on who you ask but Well, the Star Wars holiday special was awesome, though you got to know I'm just kidding.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's the bold statement.
Speaker 1:That was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 4:That's the worst thing probably anyone said on this whole episode. I'm just kidding, but the like a lot of times when I, when I try to just be really honest about like where am I at in spirituality, like the Force is, is a pretty close analogy for how I feel like the Holy Spirit might be. I mean, obviously I am in some ways going out on the limb. I'm just saying how it feels to me of just like this, this force that connects everything and is part of everything and is everywhere. You know, and I mean obviously we have verses that say that very thing. And have I ever used the Holy Spirit to, you know, turn on a light switch across the room? No, as hard as I have tried, but I don't know if I would say it's clear in. I mean, I don't know that I would say much of anything's clear in the Bible. That's another whole topic to talk about.
Speaker 1:I was just saying it's clear that it's like Jesus, like it's, it's definitely like you can. There's hints of it in Old Testament, like some people say it's. You know the whole things about Jesus and some, but there's definitely hints there. But like New Testament, you know Jesus Christ, son of God, that sort of thing. But yeah, the whole narrative of the Bible is Obviously there's God, the Father, so however you want to describe what that is, and then there's the spirit.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, all three persons of the Trinity here we just got to go out on one by one, I guess gotta do it which I mean it's an interesting place to know. Like even that the Trinity is not really a clear concept in in scripture, like in the Bible as we know it, like we've you know, we take a lot of verses and we put them together to form our doctrine of the Trinity, but like nobody was really working with a doctrine of the Trinity during, the time, we definitely had a had to make that happen because yeah but it was disagreeing like crazy. Which is just one of those, I think, instances for me of like just don't assume that things are as essential or that they need to be understood as essentially as we thought they did you know, not to say that they may May Aren't true, but maybe they just don't need to be as dogmatic or as specific as they are. But yeah, I mean, we did a whole send a series on woman and the Bible as well. So the whole first episode of that talks about the gender of God. It's just since you mentioned God, the Father, and yeah, that was a big one for me too, but I don't know if that's Worth getting into right now or not.
Speaker 1:So where do you, where do you stand? And, and either one of you can answer, but what would you say? Like hell is like. You kind of told me what it isn't, but do you have a clear cut what it is?
Speaker 3:maybe hey, oh, I guess I mean, when you actually said that's like not a easy question, because well, yeah, I mean it isn't, it isn't.
Speaker 4:I mean maybe an easy question, but maybe not satisfying.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I mean even just asking it like and that's how I think of it in my head too Right, like, so what is hell then? Right, it's like well, hold on here, let's get back to what we just learned, right, which is that these are multiple words that were that we're Translated to one word. Right, so, like I think and she'll be, we'll have to help me out here, but I think she all is like the grave, right, like that's literally Under the ground or in a cave, wherever that body is being like it says in the Old Testament that you know Abraham went to shale.
Speaker 4:So like it's not meaning this place of eternal punishment, it just literally means like he died.
Speaker 3:And I'm I would be guessing that that one does not. They don't translate that as hell there, right, like they don't say Abraham.
Speaker 4:Right so.
Speaker 3:I was. It's interesting how we are careful about, you know, that one we're like. Well, of course, abraham didn't go to hell, right?
Speaker 4:So that one we will translate.
Speaker 3:Definitely, but it's but we're laughing about, but we're laughing at that, but like, think about that, like we are making these Translation, translation decisions Because of context, because of what we, what we think right, so so I think that's interesting. Just to look at each of these words, I believe Gehenna was a literal place in just outside of Jerusalem, like it was the, the kind of the trash heap where they tossed garbage and burned, and there's the story of I think that isn't that where the children were.
Speaker 4:Now I'm getting I've gone out of sight of my knowledge, but yeah, I mean it was a literal place, but you know also likely and you know an analogy, because it was this place where there was constantly fire burning, because it was burning up the, the garbage, and it was, you know this horrible. Nobody wanted to be there. So also, yeah, an analogy for something more significant. Yeah but um, I Mean, I think for me and Nate we. I don't know, nate, did you want to finish your thought?
Speaker 3:Yeah, go ahead and hold on, hold on here.
Speaker 4:Hold on, here he's looking.
Speaker 3:So I got it because everyone gave me these weird looks. Okay, gehenna, where children were sacrificed to false gods. All right, there is a, so like there was idol worship and anyways, so look into that. But there was, yeah, the, the perpetual fires burning in this place.
Speaker 4:So so well, we have translated that as hell and Mostly gotten our view of hell from Dante, I mean really with the divine comedy and the apocalypse of Peter, which you may have never heard of, but was kind of the the bridge between the cannon and Dante, and then it just fell out of disuse.
Speaker 3:So I've never heard that one if you read Dante it's it sounds much more like at least the picture that I have of what hell the the motivator for me, of like that hell, that Motivating hell that I had in my head, much more word-for-word Dante than it is word-for-word the scriptures, of Interesting the Bible. So so it's hard to decouple those right. It's hard to take Dante out of our understanding of what the Bible is right to even be like. Well then, what's hell then? It's like well, maybe it's not as Defined and complete, and maybe this whole, this idea of this place that people go after they die, maybe we're getting that from Dante and not actually from the Bible. So to me I've I've pretty easily let that one go as Not something I really think about at all anymore. It not only does it not motivate me to do anything, because I think it's a bad motivator and should not be motivation. But even for someone who still believes in that place, like that's a? I don't think not, I think someone who believes in that place, yes, it should be, it should be motivating. But for someone who's like understanding that there's different interpretations and they still think there's some sort of punishment, the afterlife, like I still think that is, you only get really bad things when you use that as a motivator that I found. So, yeah, it was a fairly easy one forgot where I was going without, but basically it was a fairly easy one for me to To leave behind when I realized, oh, this is not, this is not something that's defined in scripture. And then the next step if we want to get utterly heretical, right which? we're saying we do right. The other one is like, if Getting to the place with certain scriptures and I think we may be in a different place on this one grant, I'm not sure, but getting to a place with certain scriptures where you're like, if that is what, what hell is, is it's this new place, this place of eternal Torment. We had someone, one of these stories that I referenced in the first four or five minutes or whatever, of that hell series. We did episode one. One of the stories that one of the listeners shared was that in a Sunday school class I believe it was a Sunday school class they were told that you will be being tortured in hell for as long as this. Imagine a bird picking up like a drop of water and going and dropping it on the rock of drabaltor and and, and going back and getting another drop and dropping it again, another up and dropping it again. Imagine how long it would take for the, the rock, to to Basically disintegrate because of the erosion of the of the water. And that's just day one of hell, basically, and it's like a Sunday school.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:But I mean, that's that's what they, that's what I used to believe. So it just put into more Visceral terms, right, but like that's what I used to believe, so anyway, I Lost my train of thought.
Speaker 4:Well, I I want to piggyback off of yours with two Thoughts, just from listening and to clarify I think we're part of where we you're coming from. First is Like, even when we'd say, like the Bible, you know the Bible doesn't say this, or the Bible, you know, doesn't teach this, like Probably what's going through maybe your head or maybe some of your listeners heads is like, but I can think of a verse where it does say that and, and I think the issue is and this is we talk about a ton on our podcast is we really shouldn't be using the phrase the Bible, anything like the Bible says this or the Bible doesn't, because the Bible is not a unit Like, it is a collection of texts, and one text may very well teach a very scary sounding Afterlife punishment we begin the ashing of teeth. Yeah, right right, those, those are in there, and then another text may teach a very different thing or just not talk about the weeping and gnashing of teeth. So I think like a really important part of this conversation is like we can't just say the Bible says this or doesn't say that, like it says a lot of different things and Like you know as you probably know from lots of conversations you've had like you can kind of find verses to support Most anything you want to oh yeah, there's no doubt about that. Yeah, so. So that's, that's one thing. And then, and then I think to just Answer your direct question of, like, what is hell? Yeah, I think for us, we I don't I don't even really know what I think about an afterlife at all, much less a heaven in the hell, and I Mean it's a little scary just because I don't love the concept of death. I loved the idea of Heaven or resurrection, and and I still like. I mean, you know, apparent Nate tells me that the science says that the likelihood that we are in a simulation is higher than the likelihood that we are not. So who knows, there's there might be the old simulation. Yeah, so so I'm like hopeful that there's. You know, I don't want to be one of those people who's like, yeah, I think when we die we're just gone. But I mean, maybe that's also kind of the Jedi in me, of like I feel like we're connected to something that's bigger than just dust and but I don't know what it is and I don't feel like I can, in honesty, to what it's like to be a human, like just to my own emotions. I can't. I can't imagine that anyone in 80 to 100 years of life could possibly be bad enough to earn an eternity of punishment Like that just doesn't mathematically make sense to me, and you know. So if I get find out that there is, like you know, some form of a heaven and a hell like it would only thing that would make sense to me would be like some you know kind of purgatory period in which then everyone eventually like becomes their best self or something. Because to think that God would, would punish someone eternally for this just brief blink of a life is just like I can't imagine. That that's not a good person, much less a good God.
Speaker 3:Yeah, farewell, Shelby Hansen.
Speaker 4:Quoting right quoting farewell, rob Bell.
Speaker 1:So my, that's kind of a. So, really, what kind of leg do you stand on? Because it feels like you obviously think that there is the scriptures are useful, you think that you know they're at least useful text to read and some of the things in them are good things. So where do you? You kind of stand on the leg of like you pick and choose to what you think would have the best outcome, to like real life scenarios, or do you just kind of know, I'm sorry, yeah. No, that's just kind of for me. I've I've heard kind of the thing of like so God is the ultimate good, so he basically defines what good is. So basically anything he does is good because he defines it and we don't really have like the capability, because we're small humans, to be able to like completely understand the mind of God. And basically you hit this line in the sand of either a you believe God is a good God and you trust him, even if you know he tells you to basically Abraham Isaac kill your son, and then realizes that he is a good God Because he like obviously didn't do that. But like where do you stand? On the idea that you're not going to be able to be good God? On the idea that basically he's an ultimate good creator who defines what is good and we it's more like discovering the truth than it is like finding out the truth, like while looking within. It's more of a external truth that is set rather than an internal truth. That's kind of what I was trying to say.
Speaker 4:No, thanks for articulating that. That's well. First of all, nate, you have any thoughts that you want?
Speaker 3:to go for I'll let you feel this one.
Speaker 1:Oh, how much you feel this one.
Speaker 4:I mean, a lot of what you're saying is very familiar, like that's. That is, I think, was where we started to. I mean, what you started with of like God is the ultimate good. So like whatever, whatever he does is good, like that is definitely what I grew up with. And which I think it's like. Beliefs like that are also what made it so terrifying to start deconstructing. Like I because you are, you're taught to that you can't trust your own intuition at all. Like it's the kind of what you're just saying of like is this an internal or an external journey? And the external is really the only valid journey in those like at least in the way we were usually raised to see it, and that anything that's internal you know you're like, well, your heart is deceptive and, yeah, you're a small human being and and I mean, obviously we are small human beings in a huge galaxy, so that's an easy one to believe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. That's not something you can change with my mind. No, probably. No, I'm not going to.
Speaker 4:There's like other planets.
Speaker 1:What are we even talking about?
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean all you have to do is go look at the ocean and I'm like we are just minuscule.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But I think there's just also a lot of premises and assumptions that, like, when you go through deconstruction, you're like you're, there's so many analogies that for deconstruction, but you, just you, by default, have to reexamine every single brick of this house that you're, you know, in in the analogy deconstructing, because you know you, you take one that you thought was absolutely essential, like six day creation or hell, and you find out that's, you know, either not true or not essential and you're like, well then, what else is it? You know priority culture, what else is it? And then so even a you know premise like God is the ultimate good, like I don't have that's not my starting point, because like, how do I know? And I think emotionally, like that's kind of why it started from this moment of, of tragedy, and you know, and then I've, you know, I know children who've been abused and and, and I mean there are, you know, children who are dying of starvation while we have this conversation, and so I'm like I don't, I don't, I'm not convinced enough of the premise that God is the ultimate good. Yet like I'm not saying I'm right, just saying like I can't, I'm not all on board, and so that's for one. I also am not like, even just the, the, the person which this is going to. Yeah, I mean, if we haven't gotten a reticle enough, this will be it, but like I mean, obviously I already talked about Star Wars and the force of like maybe it's the, the maleness that we use around God, that makes it hard for me to interact with this, with God, as, like a literal person, like this literal man, like I I don't, I don't know how to, how to put into words what I'm saying, but like, when we say he is the ultimate good and he, whatever he does, it's right, I'm like, how do I trust that? Like? I know I'm small and not as big as this God that we're talking about, but why is that reason enough to assume that that that this other God is, is, is right and is good? Like what if this God is just a bigger being and then there's bigger beings than that?
Speaker 3:Like, I don't know, I just remember kids on the playground right, Like where these huge beings and there's little kids and some of them would like squish the ants right, and they were or they put them in, like put them on a pine cone and like flying around like a spaceship, and they do create little houses or little mazes with with bark chips and like. I think you just imagined an ant down there going like well, you are so much larger than I am and so everything you know more than I know, and so everything. Your ways are harder than my ways, like we do. We know way more than those ants.
Speaker 4:We're infinitely more than those ants. We're infinitely more developed than those ants.
Speaker 3:But no one's saying that second crater is the ultimate source of good. No ant should be saying that. Right, that's a, that's a stretch. I'm just saying like, just because something is larger than you, just because something knows more than you, does not necessarily mean they're the ultimate source of everything good and the definition of everything good.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and they may still be good, but but like all I that's all I'm really saying is like this the premise that God is the ultimate good, Like it's a philosophical premise that we're choosing to believe that.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:And everyone's choosing what premise they're going to believe.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would definitely agree with that of just. I mean, there's you definitely hit the line in the sand of whether or not you're going to like. That's where kind of the faith thing comes, in, which, obviously, if you're going to like, think about everything logically, which you know. That's kind of why I threw the Holy Spirit in the mix, because that kind of like there's definitely the logic and the rationale of it, but then there's definitely like, at least to me, like an all powerful God and like a Holy Spirit too. That basically just doesn't like. It doesn't defy logic, but it basically like the Holy Spirit is just like a whole different ballgame of like it's actually interacting, like it's not just like truth on a page, like it's like the Holy Spirit living inside of you, like that's a different thing entirely to me.
Speaker 4:I mean, that's the branch of like and you probably talked about this with the Catholic people that you interviewed. You may have that like traditionally there's these three pillars, you know, which is scripture, tradition and experience, and that interaction with the Holy Spirit is the experience branch and it's it is essential, like it's part of the essential Christian experience of like this is what that's what it means to be a Christian and to believe. But what I think is like interesting and should be also considered is when people then deconstruct and you know having conversation like this like a lot of times when, like, when I bring in, okay, my experience now, like that is often not considered valid of like you know well, because because then suddenly it's like, okay, well, are we just, are we just using your own intuition now, but why is the experience? You know, if I'm just, I'm not saying it's the Holy Spirit, I'm saying it's my, you know what I'm thinking in my own mind and heart versus someone who may say, well, the Holy Spirit, like revealed this to me, and those things might both be true, like I'm not saying that that person didn't interact with the Holy Spirit, but just it's one of those things where, like this is someone's experience, and this is someone's experience and one person's, you know, believes that it's divinely related, and I am saying that it's just me. But why is Like it says? It doesn't feel fair often that me saying this is what I'm feeling, you know, it isn't as important as, like well, this is what the Holy Spirit has has revealed to us and I mean, I'm not trying to, not trying to make people deconstruct Like that's, that's not my agenda. In fact, that's a large reason why I didn't speak up for a long time.
Speaker 3:Yeah, but well, that's what I was gonna say too is just, you know this interview, you know we're talking about certain things or whatever, but like our goal and our vision is not to try to Change someone honestly, like from where they are. It's like we talk about a lot on the show of like this idea of a stream, like your ideas are the top of the stream and Then how you live your life and what you introduce into the world is kind of like the bottom of the stream and like follow, follow it back up the stream to like the ideas right, and sometimes you'll find some pretty crappy ideas about the Bible or about God or about Jesus or whatever, or about hell, and leading to some pretty ugly ways and I think this is true of, like my life in the past Some pretty ugly ways of living right of like the, the water that's coming out of the end of that stream. The things I was doing were not actually really helping people and and so they were healthy for you at that right right. And so, like that's what I care about. I care about like so much more now, regardless of what you believe, all right, I only want to examine what you believe if it's leading to some pretty horrible things in the world or some pretty bad things In the world, or if you're just not a healthy person, right, I saw that a lot too, myself and others. We were not healthy, right. But I only want to examine it if, if that's the case, or if someone's not doing well with the theology they used to believe, like literally has trauma, that kind of. That's a lot of what we deal with on our show, but I but we're not like going out and like seeking out people to try to convert to some new thing you know or like we don't have a thing to convert from some thing. Right, and I think that's the difference with almost theoretical at least, with Shelby and I and and others that are in the deconstruction space is like there's there's often a lot of like anger and bitterness in the deconstruction space and definitely I've heard those stories from listeners of things they experienced in the church Before the call. You know you had mentioned some people talking to you about church hurt and those that type of thing. Yeah, that's, that's definitely there and I don't want to diminish that at all. That was not Shelby and and mine's experience at all. Yeah, we had wonderful experiences. This, this was the group of people that brought casseroles when you were sick or your family was going through something Right, or we were, we were like there for and we were, you know, hanging out with before the church Until midnight, you know, before prepping for the church Christmas pageant and performance.
Speaker 4:Yeah, we're all going downtown together to you know, serve homeless people and like, yeah, we had wonderful, wonderful churches of people that are still meaningful to us.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and largely like people that are doing Good things and trying to introduce good into the world, and so I'm not going to try to be like hey, you know, stop, stop that, change what you believe about this thing or that. Like hey, it's like if they come to me and they want to like talk about these things and they're like they're questioning or they're wondering or they're like Trying to expand or evolve into something, like hey, let's talk. But our show and what we do, the work we do, is largely for people who find themselves on this journey For sometimes, things that they chose, sometimes things that happen to them, whatever reason, not being able to believe a certain thing anymore because of something they saw or experienced, we're there for them. We're that, we're that net to catch these people and and provide a way forward. If they still want to interact with the Bible, jesus, god in any way, or just want to understand it in light of some of the things, or understand the things they've gone through in light of these texts and and History and culture, that kind of thing. Like we, we want to be that for them. But yeah, we're not trying to like convert someone to something or change someone or or or stop something that's working for someone right like if something is really someone we don't want to stop that.
Speaker 4:That's, and that's the same, like it's the same, teaching Jesus said of you know, a tree is known by its fruit. Yep, like it's, yep, that's still great. Yeah, that was very wise and I think you know, when we talk about like we had these wonderful churches growing up, you know, and that we still like, we're within 10 minutes of both of those churches to this day, and when I think about Like what, what would I change there? The one thing that maybe not one thing, what? But one of the ways that we do feel like that general evangelical Christianity of North America is is harming Society. There's, you know, there's a couple ways, depending on which, but but like, even the churches we grew up in, the role of women was really what's the word? Just, I mean, there were no women teachers and there still are none to this. I don't think there's even women small group leaders, unless it's a women of all of the group, of all women, and and like what that teaches girls about their own worth is harmful, and so that's one of those things where, like, for the most part, I Don't have any issue with people who are trying to do the best they can to follow the, the best teacher of the world, in a way that you know, loves your neighbor as yourself, like a man. But some of the interpretations of, obviously, this branch of Christianity are harmful, and so we we aren't okay with just Not, I guess, acknowledging that yeah, what?
Speaker 1:what I'm trying to do is just let really anybody, even if like Hardcore, disagree with them, not necessarily like argue with them, but just I just want to like hear your point of view, because I got an amazing job. Yeah, I'm trying to be like. Hey, by the way, have you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior?
Speaker 3:Yes, and then be like every head bowed and every eye closed. Is that over gonna?
Speaker 1:I'm just just let me know right now Like I, just, I just want to hear you know your stories and your journeys of just like that's a that's a huge deal.
Speaker 4:Like the fact that you're that kind of a person says a lot about you and I mean, I do think that's the only way forward, not just for Christianity but also for our culture as a whole, to like the depolarization that's necessary for us to just be able to talk and not we don't have to agree on everything and we're all Still valuable human beings.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I love listening to your podcast too of, just because I probably do disagree with 70% of it, but it also like, I Enjoy it and it doesn't like be like, oh man, I gotta like. It's just like. Oh, that is a super interesting perspective. Like it's not like man, that's gonna change everything about this. It's like man. I've literally never thought about that once.
Speaker 4:Well, that means a lot.
Speaker 1:That's maybe I give that a shot to think about, once you know so.
Speaker 4:I really hard and I don't. We don't necessarily always exceed. We try really hard to not be, I guess, not misunderstand people on the other side of the aisle, to and not what's the word like a tribute, you know, malice or this intention, when there is none, but just share our own journeys and where we're at and anyway, thank you for saying that and I hope it. I hope it continues to feel it.
Speaker 1:Thanks for listening to the across the counter podcast. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us five stars, wherever you got this podcast. Thanks, you'll.
