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Join the Libertarian Christian Institute as each week they explore, debate, and analyze the issues that are directly relevant to the intersection of Christianity and liberty. Always thoughtful, frequently controversial, and never boring (trust us), it is our hope and prayer that The Libertarian Christian Podcast serve as a valuable resource to the Church for years to come.
If you'd like to reach out to us and ask a question or submit some feedback, you can reach us at podcast@libertarianchristians.com, as well as on Facebook, Twitter, and of course, our website, libertarianchristians.com.
Matt Bellis:
[0:03] Welcome to the show that gets Christians thinking about faith and politics. Get ready to challenge the statist quo, expand your imagination, and tackle controversy head on. Let's stand together at the intersection of faith and freedom. It's time for the Libertarian Christian Podcast.
Doug:
[0:22] Welcome to another episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast,
Doug:
[0:24] a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute and part of the Christians for Liberty Network. I'm your host, Doug Stewart, and I have another host of another show from the Christians for Liberty Network, the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. His name is Alex Bernardo. He is no stranger to the show, and he's probably no stranger to you, but if he is a stranger to you, you need to go check out his show, the Protestant Libertarian Podcast. You can find that on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, etc. YouTube, you can find it everywhere. Alex does say it has a great show. He it's cross of biblical studies, libertarianism, sometimes a mix of both in the same episode. Sometimes it's just biblical exegesis. This guy really knows his Bible, which is why I have him on today. Because recently, Alex, you and I were at Acton University, there will be an episode, I think coming out where we kind of discuss these things. But we were at Acton University, and you and I were the early risers of the group of men staying in our hotel room.
Alex:
[1:17] We're not going to mention any names for the non-early risers.
Doug:
[1:19] No, we won't. We won't. People can do process of elimination if they're so inclined. You're earlier riser than I am, but we were both the early risers and we were downstairs in the hotel, I guess the breakfast area or whatever where they served the breakfast and you were sitting there and reading your Bible. I had come down after, getting water or coffee or something. And I saw you sitting there and I sat down, we started chatting and I noticed that your Bible was really, really marked up in a good way. You had highlights, you had like pencil markings, some writings in your margins. I don't know what you can describe for that. This is why we're going to have, I'm having you on because I want to talk about this. I used to be that kind of person when I was in high school. And when I was, you know, studying my Bible, I see my kids doing this, but it is not something that I do currently. It's not a current habit that I have. It's one of those things where I kind of like pine for that the days where that's the kind of thing that I did. But I wanted to talk to you about this because I know you read your Bible every morning. And yeah, so that's a long introduction. I've been talking for the most part for the better part of two minutes here. But thanks for coming on to talk to me about this, because I think I think there's a lot of people that could benefit from, you know, hearing how you do things. And it's also gets gets a little bit behind the man who has a show that's about biblical studies. So thanks for thanks for coming on here, man.
Alex:
[2:33] Well, thanks for inviting me, Doug. It's always good to talk with you.
Doug:
[2:35] So tell me a little bit about your background in Bible study. I mean, my guess is when you were three years old, maybe I'm wrong, you weren't marking up your Bible or five years old or whenever you could read. I don't know. How did it start for you when you began studying your Bible? What was that like? And then how did it somewhat evolve into, you know, what I noticed a couple weeks ago?
Alex:
[2:53] Yeah, I've always been a reader. And I do vaguely remember I was probably five or six years old. I had a children's Bible with a bunch of pictures and, you know, like two sentences on a page. And I remember like waking up in the morning and sometimes reading that by the light of my nightlight, like my nightlight was right by my bedroom door. And there was one morning I remember I was reading my mom walked in the door and she's like, what are you doing? But then there were, there were several years like in, in like late elementary school and middle school where I was going to church, but I was kind of just like a nominal Christian. And I didn't really think about my faith that much. And I was, I was brought up in a Lutheran church and in the Lutheran church, you have through three years of confirmation, that's 7th, 8th, and 9th grade. And in 9th grade, you have to go through a mentoring process where you're paired up with an older believer in the church, and they just kind of walk you through some of the basics of the faith. So during the confirmation process, obviously being in the Lutheran church, we kept on hearing about Martin Luther over and over again, and about Sola Scriptura, and about how the Bible should be the center of our faith. And so even though in 7th and 8th grade, I didn't really read the Bible at all, I just kind of knew that if I was going to take my faith seriously, that had to be a priority. And then my mentor, when I was in ninth grade, I was 14.
Alex:
[4:01] He just challenged me to read the gospels. He's like, hey, you're not reading this. And I was on the fence about my faith and all of that kind of stuff. And he's like, just read the gospels. And so I did. And I sat down over the course of about two weeks and read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and was just floored by what I saw in there. And I realized that a lot of what I had learned about the Bible was not quite accurate. Like I knew that it was important. I knew that it sounded like dangerous and urgent and all of that, but I didn't really know what to make of it. So I wound up giving my life to the Lord between my freshman and sophomore year of high school.
Alex:
[4:34] And I knew that if I was gonna take my faith seriously, I just had to read the Bible regularly. And really my reading plan in high school was just from my sophomore year all the way through my senior year was that I just read through the New Testament, like repeatedly. So I would start with Matthew, read all the way through Revelation and then restart. And I would dip my toes in the Old Testament a little bit, but didn't really get it or whatever until I went to college. And then I went to college for the first semester. I was a youth ministry major, And then I realized I didn't like that. And they had a biblical studies program. And so I changed my program track to biblical studies and the rest is history. So I very much believe that the Bible has to be at the center of my faith ever since I first committed to following Jesus. And that's something that I've carried with me throughout my adult life.
Doug:
[5:17] You say the rest is history. Was that an intentional pun or not?
Alex:
[5:20] Oh, no, not really.
Doug:
[5:20] But you know, you became a history.
Alex:
[5:23] Yes, for sure. No, yeah, that's true. That's true.
Doug:
[5:26] So is this something that you do every morning? I mean, is there, obviously you brought your Bible with you when you traveled and that kind of thing. Talk a little bit about what your morning intention is, whether you do it in the morning or whether you get to it later in the day. What is your intention when you sit down? Sometimes people sit down and they're like, hey, I want to read this so that I can live for Christ today and, you know, just get steeped in the word of God and other people do it because they're doing more like my, I can imagine you've got a podcast on the horizon and you want to, you know, talk to a certain scholar about John 12 or some chapter and you're reading that and you're thinking about those things.
Doug:
[6:02] How does that all fit into your approach when you get up every morning to read?
Alex:
[6:06] Yeah. And I do, for me, it's always been, and I've had different ways of building this into my daily routine, but I do, I do try to make sure that I'm in the word every single day and I usually don't deviate from that. And for the most part, I will get up and work out in the mornings. And then while I'm eating breakfast, I'll read my Bible. And that gives me like guaranteed 15 minutes of Bible reading time. Every morning. And I really do believe in the authority of scripture. And I believe that what we find in the scripture has to determine our faith and our practice. And so I do read the Bible devotionally, but I also want to learn more about the Bible intellectually as well. And the older I get, the more I don't think you can really, if you're a Christian, you can't really play those two things off of each other. Like intellectual growth means I think greater discipleship and greater discipleship should entail intellectual growth. You have to have both of those things as you're reading the Bible. And what I'm trying to get out of it does a lot of the times depend on what I'm trying to accomplish. So for instance, like when I'm tasked with preaching at church or teaching a class at church, usually for a week or two, whatever it is I'm preaching on or teaching on, I will read that text and then all the texts that are relevant to that. And so I might go for a week or two where my 15 minute reading time, I'm like, I'm reading the same passage over and over again, and then maybe bringing in some of the Old Testament citations or things like that. But just for me, it's always been about having that discipline of making sure that every single day, no matter what, I'm getting that Bible time in there. And I will say for some people too, like there are some times, especially if I've, and maybe we'll talk about this in a little bit, but at the beginning of the summer, I went through Romans like very, very slowly, you know, a passage at a time.
Doug:
[7:33] Passage at a time.
Alex:
[7:34] And there were some mornings where I was just like, okay, I've been reading this for so long, staring at the text for so long, but I need to absorb this in a different way. So I would pop my headphones in and listen to Romans as I went for a walk in the morning. So, you know, you're still getting the text, but you're, you're hearing it instead of reading it. And sometimes, sometimes that helps you notice features of the text that, that you wouldn't otherwise. And so again, a lot of this goes back to the fact that I am, you know, just taking Romans as an example. I really want to understand the logic of the letter, like how, like how, how is Paul actually developing his argument? But I know that as I understand that better, that this is the hermeneutical process of trying to apply what you learn that will help me take Paul's insights and apply them to my life more effectively. So there's always that kind of that kind of dialect. So it's a daily habit, a daily part of my routine. And it's something that helps develop me both intellectually and spiritually.
Doug:
[8:22] I can't imagine you're the type of person that doesn't have anything on the horizon. So this next question may be completely irrelevant. But if you don't have anything on the horizon, and you don't have like a podcast
Doug:
[8:33] or a class or something, where do your interests go at that point?
Alex:
[8:37] Yeah, I mean, there have definitely been times in my life where it was like that. So, you know, when I was in when I was in college, I was always reading, always studying. So generally, like, you know, if I was taking a class on I'd like I took a class on the prison epistles. And so that semester, I read a lot out of the prison epistles. And, you know, if I was reading a particular book on some topic in the New Testament, whatever, sometimes I would open the table of contents for the book and see why I know that later on today, I'm going to read this chapter. Here are the texts that are in the chapter I'd go through and read that. I mean, so yeah, a lot of the times it is like designed for whatever book I'm reading or whatever I'm preparing for teaching. Like I'll read texts that go along with that. But when I don't have anything like that going on, there was a period of time where I wasn't in ministry and I didn't really have a lot of time to read books, there were kind of two ways that I would approach the Bible. One, I would just kind of go back to my default where I would pick a book in the Bible, like Jeremiah or something. I'd be like, oh, I haven't read this in a year, a year and a half straight through. And I would just read it straight through over the course of a couple of days. And then when I'm feeling like really lost, like when I get up in the morning, I'm like, I have no idea what to read.
Alex:
[9:38] I follow the lectionary. And for those of you guys that don't know what the lectionary is, it's a series of common readings that churches follow. And it's generally, it's a Gospels, something from the rest of the New Testament, a Psalm, and then an Old Testament reading every day. And about a decade ago, the University of Vanderbilt, their theology school, and you can get online and still get this. They have a lectionary that will sync to the calendar on your phone. So you can get online and sync this to your phone. And so if there's a day where I wake up and And I'm like, I don't know what to read. I'll click on the lectionary and whatever the four readings are for that day, I'll read them. That way I just have something to go to. But I mean, you're right. Like with where I'm at in my course of study, there's usually something that I'm interested in or something I've been thinking about. And so I'll just find some texts that go along with that. And that's what I read in the morning.
Doug:
[10:22] If somebody only followed the lectionary, what's the experience like?
Alex:
[10:26] I think it's really great. With the lectionary, you'll get through most of the Bible in three years. I don't think with the...
Doug:
[10:32] That's what I thought too. It was a three-year plan, right?
Alex:
[10:35] It is. Yeah. And like I said, a lot of the time, so like, you know, I think that with the lectionary, they will try to line up the Old Testament, the psalm, the gospel, and the New Testament. So they're all kind of like thematically similar. But basically, they will take a book and go through it like a lineage. So like Romans, you might be in Romans, go back to Romans, you might be in Romans for three or four weeks with the lectionary. The psalm reading might change a little bit. The Old Testament reading might change a little bit. But there's a lot of consistency with that. So you will get some of the narrative development as you're going through the lectionary, but then you also get exposed to a lot of texts that you might not otherwise read.
Doug:
[11:10] So I don't know if you know who Richard Beck is. He's an experimental psychologist. He's written a few books. He's a Christian. He's written a few books about disgust. And he wrote a book that I interviewed him about. Actually, I think I interviewed him twice. One was called Reviving Old Scratch. It was about spiritual warfare. And he was basically sort of challenging progressives on dispensing with the idea of a real devil. And he's mostly progressive himself, but he's like, yo, guys, we can't give up on this. And then I think I interviewed him about his book on Johnny Cash. But in any case, he has this practice I learned a few years ago that he actually reads through the Bible in a year. And he picks a new translation every year and he goes, buys a translation and he just reads through that. It keeps the same reading plan. And so do you have any habits that are similar to that? I know that you're a big NASB 95 person. I can imagine that at some point the Bible that I saw is too filled up with your notes and highlights and you're going to need to go buy a new one. What does all that look like for you?
Alex:
[12:06] Yeah, so I've been reading the NASB for, I mean, I went to a restoration movement college. And the reason I like the NASB is that it's a formal equivalency translation. So there are really kind of two translation philosophies. You have your dynamic equivalency and your formal equivalency. And in a dynamic equivalency, the goal of the interpretation is to try to translate.
Alex:
[12:25] The Greek and Hebrew text idea for idea. So you're kind of free to add English words and phrases. You're free to rearrange some of the material as long as you're getting the basic idea across. Whereas with a formal translation and people that are in biblical studies or have a background in biblical studies like I do tend to to like formal translations a little bit more. They're more rigid translations, but they try to accurately capture like the grammar of the original Greek and Hebrew. And what I like about the NASB is it is fairly wooden. And the words that they have to insert to make the text make sense in English are all italicized. So you can kind of see where, so it just makes it really easy. If you're trying to do like a deep dive on what one of the writers of the Bible were originally trying to communicate, it gives you more of the sense of those ideas. And they also, it's not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but they also try to be very consistent with the way that they translate Greek and Hebrew words into English. So like in a dynamic equivalency translation, you might have like a Greek root word that's translated 10 or 15 different ways with a formal equivalency translation. They might only translate it two or three ways. So it makes it easy to see how those are. So anyways, that's why I prefer the NASB. And I've also been reading it for a long time. So I just kind of have like the syntax and the grammar and the flow of the NASB when I think about passages from the Bible. That's what I automatically go to. But I do think it is helpful to consult other translations of the Bible. And one of the things that I, you know, going back to this has been the study of the summer that I've been studying Romans, I'm gonna be going through Romans with my small group in the fall.
Alex:
[13:54] And so one of the things that I've done is I slowly walked through Romans throughout June. I actually picked up a different translation of the Bible, the Common English Bible, no, Christian Standard Bible. The CSB is what it's called, the Christian Standard Bible. I picked up another translation And now I'm reading through the letters of the Paul or through the letters of Paul and the CSB just to kind of get a different sense for the text. And I actually had a friend who I have a friend who's a Bible collector. Like he just he loves Bibles. And he actually bought me a copy of the CSB about a year ago. And I kind of looked at it like the translation. And it has been very helpful to read through Paul in a different translation just to kind of get the, you know, just to see what it was like, what a different translation team is. Is making of these texts. So I feel like that's been really helpful. Although the NASB has always been kind of my, my base text. I am in the position where like, I've had this Bible for about 10 years and like, it's literally starting to fall apart on me. So I am going to have to be in the market for a new NASB at some, at some point, but, uh, and I will always have that, but I, but I do find it helpful to consult other translations, even if you have a preferred translation.
Doug:
[14:58] Is this something you can get rebound? I had, I actually did that with one of my Bibles.
Alex:
[15:01] Yeah, so we looked into it. So I, and I have it right here. I love like the NASB Pew Bible. It's really small and the margins are thin and everything like that. As I get older, you know, I have to wear glasses unless I'm doing something like this or I'm looking at my screen. So I have a feeling that when I get a new one, I'm going to wind up having to get something with slightly larger text, you know, just because I'm getting a little bit older. Yeah, I did look into having my old NASB rebound because I was actually preaching one day and the Bible fell out of the cover like when I was on stage, which is not good. But then like to get the, this is like a $15 Bible and to get it rebound would have cost me like 80 bucks. I don't know. Maybe there's someone else in the area that'll do it for cheaper.
Doug:
[15:37] Yeah. No, that's about, that's about what it costs for me to do. One of the Bibles that I liked, which was an NRSB. What was it called? The, it was called the Life with God Study Bible. It used to be called the Renovar Study Bible from like 20 years ago. It was done by Richard Foster. Anyway, that's, that's a whole other story, but okay. No, I was just kind of curious at some point that, you know, the Bibles do physically fall apart.
Doug:
[15:57] I mean, I mean, there's a benefit there. I have to ask you, though, with the NASB, and I'm pretty sure with the translation you held up, which is what you had at Acton, The verses are very similar to the way the King James is, where it's a quote unquote new paragraph every, like, in other words, the paragraphs are marked with a mark as opposed to formatted as a paragraph. Am I correct about that?
Alex:
[16:19] Yeah, yeah. They, at least in the copy of the NASB that I have, when they switch to a new paragraph, the number for the verse will be in bold. That's how they mark the transition to a new slide.
Doug:
[16:31] What do you think of that practice? I actually don't think I like that. It was one of the things that when I went from King James, which did the same thing about italics with the sort of inserted words to help it make sense were in italics. So I like that. It was really good. But and I, you know, at the time I didn't think about or even know about it, that there was another way. But when I went from the King James to the NIV, it went from paragraph formatting to verse by verse formatting. And I kind of like that a lot better. But I know this is all personal preference. You and I have these arguments all the time.
Alex:
[16:58] Right. Yeah. About aesthetics. Yeah. No, I, you know, I can see I can see the value of both. And with the CSB that I've been going through, it's very much the same way where there is, there's a space between paragraphs. And sometimes they'll even have like paragraph headings that give you the title of the paragraph. So I think that especially if you're new to the Bible or first time reader to the Bible, that can be very helpful because it allows you to kind of break it up into smaller pieces.
Doug:
[17:21] It's familiar too.
Alex:
[17:23] Right, yeah. And it makes it a little more manageable. I think the downside of that is that those section breaks are interpretations, right? So the translation committee has decided that the original author had a break in thought or a change in thought that's based on that and they're building that into the translation. And so that can kind of help lose flow of the text. And I think, and this is, again, this is just a matter of like, trying to appreciate the Bible for what it was instead of what we see it as in our translations today.
Alex:
[17:50] Even the chapter numbers and the verse numbers can give the reader the impression that every time there's a new chapter, the author is switching gears and taking the argument in a different direction. And that's not necessarily the case. The so-called textual apparatus was added in the Middle Ages just to make it
Alex:
[18:08] easy for us to locate passages in the Bible. But I had, when I was in school, I took a class on the gospel of Mark and we had to read a book called Mark's Story, which is an excellent book that just looks at Mark as it like, it looks at the narrative features in Mark. Like how does Mark develop his story as a storyteller? And one of the things that they, it was coauthored by three New Testament scholars. And one of the things they did at the very beginning of the book was they had a translation of the gospel of Mark with no chapter headings and no verse numbers whatsoever. And I thought that it was really interesting reading through that because it just made it feel more like you were reading through a story. Whereas having like the chapter and verse numbers, just, I think it's just like the Western psychology. We're just kind of used to seeing texts broken up by chapters. And so we, it's hard for us to overcome that. And so one of the things I would recommend doing, you know, if you're, if you want to get the sense of this, is you can get on BibleGateway.com and type in the Gospel of Mark, and then you can go in and take out all of the chapter numbers and the verse numbers and just read it like one long. And so I would recommend doing that. There's nothing wrong. Whatever Bible you have, I don't think it really matters one way or the other, but I think it's good to read it both ways, both as a narrative whole and with chapter markings.
Doug:
[19:19] Do you think for accuracy, they should be able to pull out paragraph markings? Do you just read one long paragraph?
Alex:
[19:24] Yeah.
Doug:
[19:24] Because Paul didn't write in paragraphs that we're aware of.
Alex:
[19:27] Yeah. Well, that's what's crazy about the original Greek manuscripts is that there aren't even any spaces in between the words. It's just a continuous stream of Greek letters. Right. So it is kind of interesting how we read that compared to it. Yeah. And this kind of goes back to the point that there's as long as I would say there's really no wrong way to read the Bible, as long as if you're a Christian, you're getting into the Bible. And I think that over time, as you become more experienced and more accustomed to reading the Bible, it's healthy to change up the way that you read it and just mix it up. If you're used to reading a Bible where there are paragraphs breaks, read a Bible where there aren't paragraph breaks, or vice versa. If you're used to reading a Bible without paragraph breaks, read one where there are and just kind of see what are the differences? How does the text impact me differently reading it in a different format?
Doug:
[20:13] You know, it's striking me that our conversation is about, there's this sort of meta analysis of what we're talking about, which is basically do what works for you to get you into the Bible, right? Like if that works for you to have a verseless Bible or to have a every verse is its own new line kind of Bible, you know, kind of do that. And what's interesting about that is we are, we are very accustomed to kind of having, having it our way, um, having the Bible our way. I mean, you could go too far. I don't know if you remember there's this list or like personalized Bible where it, whenever it said you, it would put Alex in that you get these printed. And I was just like, that's a terrible idea. That's such a terrible idea. I mean, I'm an individualist, but not that level of individualist.
Doug:
[20:53] But the idea that we need a fresh way of looking at the Bible, how do we keep the Bible fresh in and of itself? And there's a lack of scarcity in Bible translations. Obviously, we know this, we talk about this often about there's so many translations, you get into a small group and it's like, well, let's try this new translation that just got published three days ago. And then there's a new one next week. And, you know, it seems like there's too much, but historically there, there's been, Very, very few translations. And the hunger for reading the scriptures was from the fact that you didn't have much of it, right? And so you went to church to hear the scriptures read. If you had your own copy eventually, then you would cherish those things. You and I probably have a dozen different Bible translations sitting on the bookshelves behind us right now. Maybe yours are all copies of the NASB. But the the idea that we can just have it in any kind of way that we want is I don't know if it's, it's not wrong, but it definitely creates a different dynamic, different relationship dynamic with reading the scripture, because, as often as we talk about our attention span, it's almost like, well, I don't really want to read this translation because I'm so familiar with this. So let me read something that's fresh, right? And so we kind of get to sort of pick and choose. That's where the lectionary piece kind of comes in, I think really well, where, at least if, I know not everybody's doing this, but if there's a large number of Christians all reading the same four passages that particular day, there's something unifying about the body of Christ, doing those things, you know, all together. I don't have a question in there.
Doug:
[22:21] You can remark on anything.
Alex:
[22:23] Yeah, no, I completely agree with that. And again, I think that what really matters going back to the heart of this is just that we are reading the Bible. And I think that it's important to find a translation that works for you. Like I, when I first started reading the Bible in high school, I read through the message, which is a paraphrase of the NIV. Now I would not recommend the message in like homiletical settings or in teaching settings anymore, but if it wasn't for that, I would not have explored the Bible at all. And I realized like, you know, after reading the message for a year or so, I like upgraded to my adult NIV, you know, and then I kind of upgraded again. And so I've read the Bible in a lot of different translations. And I think just finding one that fits with you.
Alex:
[22:56] Given the place that you're in in life, like that's the best thing you do as long as you're in it and reading it. And then also I would recommend too, like at the beginning of every Bible that you're going to get, there are usually a couple of pages that talk about the translation and the translation philosophy. Just read that. It'll take you five minutes and you'll kind of know what you're getting into with every Bible. And that'll at least make you more of an informed reader of that text. And then, you know, as you get familiar with it, you can kind of see, okay, I like this. I don't like this. I'm not really sure about this. And you can explore other translations from there as well. But I'm the same way. I really do like the CSB, but I'm a big fan of the NRSV. I think that's a great translation of the Bible. I like the ESV a lot. The Catholics have a translation called the NAB. It's obviously based on Catholic text, so it has the Apocrypha and the Old Testament. But I think it's a really great translation. And in a lot of ways, the New Testament, the NAB's translation of the New Testament leaves the door open to a lot of theological questions in the way that Protestant Bibles don't, and I really appreciate that. So there are a lot of great translations out there, just kind of knowing what you're getting, going into a translation and finding one that works for you. I think that's kind of the best strategy, especially for beginner Bible readers that really want to get into the daily habit of reading through the scriptures.
Doug:
[24:04] Yeah, I'm going to fact check you a little bit. The message was not a paraphrase of the NIV. I thought, Eugene Peterson, he was preaching through Galatians in his church and they were using the NIV and he realized that people were struggling with it. And so he decided to go and do his own translation from the Greek text itself. So I realized that people use the word paraphrase as like, well, I'm going to take something and I'm going to re-summarize it and reuse the word paraphrase. That's not what he was doing. So in a very real sense, it's a translation. It is also a very highly dynamic equivalency translation. And so it feels in some ways like someone just went in and said, all right, well, I'm just going to paraphrase the end. So, I mean, I get the understanding, the impression. The only reason I bring that up is because only recently did I actually come across an article or something about... The difference between a paraphrase and a translation. And people were kind of pointing out the idea that people think that the message was a paraphrase. And I think what they're trying to do is they're trying to say that this is a very, it's a looser interpretation in some sense, or sorry, not interpretation, translation in some sense, than of course the NASB, but it still isn't technically a paraphrase. Because he actually went back to the Greek and Hebrew text to work on them.
Alex:
[25:17] Yeah. Oh, he's obviously a very intelligent guy too. I didn't, I didn't know that he was, but yeah. But, uh, well, and one of the interesting things about all Bible translations that Bible translations are products of particular, like cultural linguistic conventions, right? So like the King James version makes a whole lot of sense given the language of the 1600s, but a lot of the meanings of those words have changed. And it's funny because there, there are some, like sometimes in our church, they'll reference the message during the sermon. And some of the of phrases that Eugene Peterson makes in the message made a whole lot of sense in like the 1990s or early 2000s or whenever he translated the message. Yeah, but they don't make a whole lot of sense today because our language has shifted in the last 20 or 30 years. So you always have to be kind of aware of that as well.
Doug:
[25:59] So like if Eugene Peterson were younger and living today, he would, Jesus says to his disciples, bruh. Yeah, he'd probably do something like that. Yeah, for sure. That's crazy. Have you read his book? There's a book he wrote, right? Late 90s called eat this book. And it was, and it was about the, the phrase comes from in Revelation where I think the, is it the apostle John has to eat, eat the scripture or eat the book that he was given?
Alex:
[26:21] Yeah. Yeah.
Doug:
[26:21] Eat the scroll. And he actually was talking about, I didn't realize this, that up through the 1600s, up to the 1600s, a lot of the translation efforts in scripture were meant to be vulgar, meaning they were meant to be in the vernacular of the people, not vulgar as in vulgarity that we're familiar with today. And when, when the King James version was commissioned, it actually did something that most translations didn't do which was make it all flowery language in the king's language which was a very different situation and he ties that back to the idea that Koine Greek was, the common Greek as opposed to like formal classical Greek and that the early Christians felt like part of, part of God condescending to humans was to speak in their language and not speak in some of this like flowery language. And, you know, I read that book about probably, gosh, 10, 15 years ago, something in there. And I remember thinking, wow, that's not the impression I get from like conservatives who think that the Bible needs to have this sort of formal sounding language and that reading the scripture in our own language and vernacular is actually, you know, a really valuable thing. I didn't mean for this conversation to go on to translations or whatever, but But it's too bad Eugene Peterson isn't here to have you or to be on your show to talk about that book. But if you ever get around to it, it's a really good book. I think you would actually really like it.
Alex:
[27:39] Yeah, it's cool.
Doug:
[27:41] All right, let's talk about tools. You know, when I, you know, our little encounter at the hotel in the breakfast nook, so to speak, or the breakfast cafe was you just had your Bible and a highlighter or a pen. I don't even know if you had that. Maybe you were just reading it. But other tools that you use, whether on the computer, whether just Bible study tools, Do you do commentaries, study Bibles? Do those have any value? Where do you bring in other voices when you're studying the scripture? And at what point do you do that? So, for example, I know you're thinking about Romans, right? I don't know if you've read Scott McKnight's Reading Romans Backwards. I know there's, didn't Gorman do a book on Romans as well? I'm sure you've read that. So what is it that at what point do you bring in those sort of voices into your
Doug:
[28:26] readings of the text, whether or not it's for purposes or whether it's just for personal use?
Alex:
[28:31] Yeah, that's a really good question. It's kind of I guess it's it's really a conversation. There are times where I'll just read the Bible and then I realize that there's something I'm confused about and I'll go and seek out a resource to help me better understand that. Or there are times that I'm reading a book and I'm like, oh, well, that's something I haven't really considered. And I'll go back and reread the Bible based on whatever argument is being made. Now, if you like look behind me on my, my shelf back here, I have my, and there's another shelf on the other side of this where I have like all my biblical studies works back there. You know, a lot of what I've done since I went to school was like, you know, just whatever topic I'm thinking of, I'll get on Amazon. And ever since having the podcast, it's awesome. Cause I can just get on IVP.
Alex:
[29:09] Or I can get on ear bins or fortress or whatever, and just request a book and they'll send it to me for free. But back, you know, back in the days before the podcast, actually I had to buy these books myself, but I would get on Amazon and I'd be, okay, I'm really interested in this subject in the Bible, or this is a theme that I keep on seeing recurring, and I'll buy a book and then kind of read that book along with the Bible. So I feel like that's kind of seeking out resources to help me to better understand the scripture. Now I know, and I've used in the past study Bibles, and there are a lot of really great ones that are out there. I can't think of any off the top of my head because it's been a long time that I've used a study Bible myself, but I know that there's like an archeological study Bible, and then there's some out there that are really good, that give good background information, in the text. A lot of what I do is going through these monographs though, and just kind of trying to break down these ideas. And with, uh, with my study on Romans, I've been reading over the last, I don't know, I want to say like three or four months, I've read several monographs on Romans and then some on Paul in general. And I recently bought about four commentaries on Romans and I've been slowly going through those as well. So kind of getting a little bit of a mix of both, like, you know, thinking about Paul.
Alex:
[30:16] From a big picture perspective, what are the issues in Paul and how does that relate to my readings in Romans, looking at monographs about specific issues in Romans and reading commentaries, all of those kind of help inform my perspective on that letter. And I think that's really true of every, you kind of need all of that, right? Like it's helpful to find a good commentary if you're reading through a particular book, like if you're going to read through the gospel of Luke, find a commentary on Luke that you can go through, but then maybe also find a book on the gospels that just gives you some general background information about the gospels, that will help you kind of see the larger picture of how that was designed to work. And I think that that's really helpful. And the great thing, especially for people that are new to the Bible, is that there are so many like popular level commentaries that have been written. So a great example, I got this on my desk here. I just, this is like 130 pages long, but this is Beverly Roberts-Gavinta's short commentary on Romans, when in Romans. This is an excellent little introduction to an apocalyptic reading of Paul's letter to Rome. Now, Beverly Gavinta wrote like a 550 page commentary on Romans, right? Which is like a lot to get through. So you don't have to read that one. You can just go and find the shorter version and you'll get all of the main ideas. And so I think that there are a lot of really, and, or if you are someone who's very experienced with the Bible, but like if you're a pastor or someone who's in a teaching position and you don't have a lot of time, it's easier to find these like shorter resources. And there are a ton of them out there. Uh, and for me, like I even, you know, that, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm very kind of technologically backwards, but, uh, it wasn't really until last fall that I started using AI.
Doug:
[31:41] You're behind. You're not backwards.
Alex:
[31:42] You're right. I'm not backwards. I'm behind. Right. It wasn't even until last fall that I started using AI at all. But basically what I did when I started, like, like once I realized that my small group was going to be going through Romans and I wanted to find some supplemental material, I got on chat GPT, which is, it's kind of creepy because chat GPT knows a lot about my faith because I'll ask it questions and it kind of knows which direction I'm going. And I was just typing, I was like, hey, I'm looking for some commentaries on Romans. Here are the parameters. Here's kind of what I'm trying to get at and what I'm trying to accomplish. And it gave me a lot of really great suggestions for that. So using tools like that to help you find resources that will help you develop your Bible understanding, like there's just a lot out there. And I also want to recommend too, for people that want to dive into text deeply, there's this phenomenal resource called the Blue Letter Bible, blueletterbible.com. And you can pick your translation, go through the translation, click on a passage, and it will give you that passage both in English and in Greek. And you can click on individual words, get the Greek background, see where those words and those roots are used in the rest of the New Testament. So for people that want to dive into the text more deeply, that is such a helpful resource. And then with BibleGateway.com, which is pretty popular, you can, on Bible Gateway, bring up different translations and set them in parallel to each other. So, for instance, if you're someone who was raised in a KGV church, but you want to see how the KGV stacks up against the NRSV, you can bring them
Alex:
[33:03] up side by side and kind of read them in parallel. And I find that that's really helpful, too.
Doug:
[33:07] Okay. What's the role of memorization?
Alex:
[33:10] I think that it can be overplayed, especially given the amount of different translations that there are. Like, but I do think that it's very important. And I think that what I mean by that is I think that it's less important that we memorize text word for word. Although I do think that if there is a passage that you find very significant or very important, there is a lot of benefit in memorizing particular passages. I think what's more important is to try to memorize the flow of a particular work. Like when you open up the gospel of Mark, if you're familiar with the gospel of Mark, you kind of know what's in the gospel of Mark, where it is, you know how the flow of Mark works. And I think that memorization on that level where it's not wrote, I'm memorizing the Bible word for word, but trying to understand the sense of it, like how it works. I think that that kind of memorization is a lot more helpful. And I'll give you a good example.
Doug:
[34:00] Of- You mean like memorizing the basics of where things are in the text?
Alex:
[34:04] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like knowing your way around the text.
Doug:
[34:06] The story of the woman at the well is in John 4.
Alex:
[34:09] Yeah. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah.
Doug:
[34:10] Like knowing those kinds of things.
Alex:
[34:12] Yeah, like the Olivet Discourses and Mark 13. I think that that's really helpful. And one of the things that I will say about this is that, you know, I used to be really impressed by people that memorize large portions of the Bible. But when I went to Bible college, there were several students that were there that had been, it was a restoration movement school. So I think it was called Bible Bowl back in the day. But basically it's like a, it's like a competition where kids memorize passages of scripture. It's like academic team, but for the Bible, right? And so I met some kids that had been in Bible Bowl and they had large portions of the Bible memorized, but it was very clear that it hadn't really impacted their discipleship at all. Like they knew a lot of the Bible, but it didn't really have an impact on them. And then when you ask them questions about like the flow of a particular text, they didn't really seem to kind of get how it all held together. And my daughter is in Bible quizzing at our church now too. And I see that dynamic play out where like memorization is great, but memorization only matters if you understand how the texts are working. And then most importantly, if that impacts your discipleship. So I do think there is some benefit to memorization, but we also have to make sure that memorization isn't, I have like one snapshot picture of one portion of one text and I'm gonna ignore everything else in the text at the expense of the one verse that I memorized.
Doug:
[35:20] Yeah, no, I get that. So let's talk, let's talk a little bit. I was talking about tools and Bible study tools, but what I kind of forgot to ask was markings in your Bible. Like, you know, I sat down and I think, I'll just say my own journey in highlighting and marking just regular books, right? My particular goal would be if I got if I didn't have time to reread this book or if I wanted someone else to just spend 30 minutes reading, you know, reading my highlights, what would I highlight? Key phrases, you know, you know, great quotes that are like things you would quote if you were to like make a graphic out of it and, you know, say, hey, look at this. Look at this person, you know, Jonah Goldberg said this thing or Scott McKnight said that or N.T. Wright. Those kinds of quotes. So like, if I'm skimming back through the book and all I did was read the highlights, I would be refreshed in my memory as to what that book is saying. When it comes to scripture, when I was younger, I would do things that would be meaningful to be personally things that I would be, you know, sins that the Bible was telling me to be mindful of. I would highlight those because like those are relevant to my life at that moment at age 16 or whatever, you know? And so, you know, as an adult, I don't really have a rubric for marking things. So I'm a little stuck not marking anything. And I just decide, well, I'm just going to keep reading because I don't know exactly what to mark up. Because as soon as you start sort of a process, you're kind of like you're in, right?
Alex:
[36:39] Right.
Doug:
[36:40] How do you think through all that?
Alex:
[36:41] Yeah. And that has changed over time. And again, I think that there's no real, there's no wrong way to do this. And I know a lot of people, I mean, my daughter's a good example of this because she's going through the Bible for the first time and she'll take her highlighter. And if she thinks that a passage is important, should have highlighted. There's no like real philosophy other than this stood out to her. It was something that was significant and she wants to be able to go back and take a look at that. And I think there's a lot of benefit to it, especially if you're a first or second or even third time reader of the Bible going through and, oh, I really found this important. I think that this makes sense, highlighting it. That way as you're going back through, you kind of know, oh yes, I remember that I was thinking about this at one point. For me, since I'm using my NASB as more of a study resource, and since I got the thin line, there's no scripture, there's no like cross-references. And that's something that I think if I ever upgrade to a bigger NASB because I'm getting old and my vision is not good, I'll probably get one with the cross-references because my CSB has that and it's really helpful. But a lot of what I do in my NASB is as I'm going through a passage, I'll mark in the margins any cross-references. So if there's a quotation from Isaiah 9 or whatever, you know, right? 9-I-S, period 9, so that I know where that citation is from. But then I really look for key phrases and key words in the passage. And especially if I see a word repeated over and over again.
Alex:
[37:56] Then I will, I'll emphasize that word or underline that word. Because then when I go back and read it, I'm like, okay, at this point in the text, so a good example of this is like in Romans chapter one, Paul uses the phrase, hand them over three times. So it's obviously significant to his argument. So I went through and underline all of those. And then in the margins, like, okay, he's got this in verse, I don't know, like verse 18 versus 22 and versus whatever it is, 29. And then I can kind of cross-reference that. Or then when it comes to, I can go back to Romans as an example, because I've been in that a lot this summer, you know, as I've been reading through it very slowly, I just see a concept like grace or gift or whatever. And so every time I see that, it's obviously a major theme in Romans. So I'll underline every occurrence of that and then try to put like the references on the side. Okay, so I know that Paul uses grace language extensively in chapter six. He uses it in chapter eight. He uses it in chapter 11. So like where we're seeing him using this term repeatedly, how does this contribute to his overall argument? So that's the way that I tend to highlight my text, just trying to really get into a sense of the flow of the argument. When you, you know, and I was actually, I was preaching a couple of weeks ago and I was talking about this in my sermon.
Alex:
[39:07] Because we were talking about, we were talking about the Sermon on the Mount and the way that Jesus was kind of constructing his ideas in the Sermon on the Mount. And actually, if you are listening to this, I put this up as an episode of my podcast. You can go, it's like, I don't know what the episode number is, but the Sermon was on worry and the Sermon on the Mount. But I was talking to my congregation about how those conjunctions and the Sermon on the Mount are really important because these aren't just a bunch of disconnected ideas that Jesus is presenting. These ideas are meant to be connected. So like even going through the Bible and highlighting or underlining all of the conjunctions so that you know, oh, okay, the idea that came before is connected to the idea that came after.
Alex:
[39:44] These are the kinds of markings that I make in my Bible. But like, as I've been going through the CSB in Paul over the last couple of weeks, I've not been highlighting anything. I've just been sitting down and reading it without making any markings because that is a different approach to the text that I'm used to. And I find that to be valuable and helpful as well. Just kind of like, okay, so instead of going in and being like really, you know, really intentional about marking it up, just kind of reading it and letting the text wash over you. I think that that can be beneficial too. But again, I don't think there's any right or wrong way to do it. As long as if you're seriously engaging with the text, you're, you're, you're, you know, marking up your Bible in a way that helps kind of get it into your memory, whatever, whatever that might be. And again, a lot of, a lot of that depends on your goals. Like if you're trying to read the Bible because you're prepping for a sermon, you're probably going to annotate it differently than you are if you're reading it just purely for devotional purposes. And then, you know, one more thought on that too, is that you can get on and I go back to Bible gateway again, but, and I've done this before in the past, you can get on Bible gateway and actually print off like whole, whole books of the Bible. Let's say you're going through Colossians, you can print off all four chapters of Colossians and on a piece of eight by 11 paper, make the margins really wide and then just write it, whatever you want on the margins. And then you can like take these notes as you're going through there without tearing up like your Bible. So there's, there's no like real wrong way to do it. Just make sure you're engaging with the text.
Doug:
[41:05] All right. I want to ask you one final question and then, wow, we filled the time faster than I thought. I feel like we've been on for 15 minutes and we're in a full episode here. What have you, if you think back through the years of, you know, going through stuff, trying different things, were there any practices or habits that didn't work for you or that you just said, you know, I know some people do this and I tried it and I'm going to move
Doug:
[41:27] on or you tried an idea yourself that just didn't seem to pan out?
Alex:
[41:31] Yeah, so I just trying to do the reading through the Bible in a year. I gave that an honest shot a couple of times and I couldn't do it because I found that I would get, like my mind would get me off on these side quests where I would wanna read like 10 other things that were related to whatever that day's passage was. And I almost felt like for me, it was kind of constricting. Now, again, if you're new to the Bible, I think that that is an extremely helpful way to keep you locked in and on track. And so I highly recommend that for people. But for me, it just didn't work because I'm kind of curious about these other issues. And this is like really, really goofy. But like when I was in high school, I would get up and read the Bible every morning before school. But I also wanted to make sure that I stuck with it like during the day. So no joke, I have my message translation of the Bible. And in my version, it was a study Bible with like an apparatus and everything. And it broke the text up into these really small brackets between paragraphs. So like I put a Bible on the top of the toilet in my bathroom. And I've always drank a lot of water. So I go into the bathroom a lot. And so like I had this like, this challenge where I could not allow myself to use the bathroom until I read one paragraph out of the Bible. So I would go in the bathroom, open it up, read it, and then use the bathroom and leave. That was not like very efficient at all. And I would not recommend doing that.
Doug:
[42:43] I was going to say, if you really have to go, you're not actually paying attention.
Alex:
[42:46] Well, that's it. Yeah. You get to the point where you're like dancing, like, oh my gosh, I need to make sure I make it or whatever. So that practice was not effective. And then I used to be too, and I think that this was good in my earlier days of studying the Bible, but not as much now. I used to really be locked into, I'm going to sit down and read a book of the Bible from start to finish and not go anywhere else with that during that time. So if I'm reading, I go back to Colossians or whatever, because it's such a short letter. If I'm reading Colossians, I'm going to, even if it takes me two days, I'll read two chapters one day, two chapters the next day. I'm going to read through all of it. And regardless of the Old Testament citations that Paul uses in that letter, I'm not tracking anything down until I get done with the very end. And I think it was kind of helpful in the beginning, but I've moved away from that. Like, I think it's sometimes it's more important to, to slow down and, and instead of like arbitrarily thinking, I got to get through two chapters or three chapters a day. Sometimes if you really want to dive into it, you might only get through a verse or two in a day, but you've cross referenced your Bible. You've really thought about it. And even like, like with Romans, I committed in June, I was like, it doesn't matter how long it takes. I'm going to go through Romans as slowly as I need. And there were days that I'd be stuck on like one or two verses. And I had a notebook sitting down next to me and I would like even hand write out the verse and just kind of be like, okay.
Alex:
[44:00] There's something here I'm just not getting and just really work on trying to understand those two passages. So I don't like, I don't want anyone to come into this thinking, oh, I only read one verse today and I kind of failed because that was my mentality. It's like, oh, you have to get, there is no benchmark. If you're seriously engaging with the text, one verse or sometimes even like one word, if you're really hung up on a word or if you think, oh, there's some significance to hear to this, there's nothing wrong with diving into that. So I think just, again, one of the things that I would encourage everyone listening to this to do is don't make, don't give yourself an arbitrary benchmark and then think that you failed and you've not met that benchmark. Mark, make your goal to just engage with the text. And however you do that, it's going to help you grow. I promise that.
Doug:
[44:41] Well, yeah, I mean, there's certainly like there's a difference between reading one verse and being like, OK, yeah, I'm done and reading one verse and ruminating on it and doing a cross-reference, which which technically means you've actually now done more than one verse, even if your goal might have been to read the whole first chapter of Ephesians or something and you read the first verse and you're like, well, wait a second. Why did Paul say it this way? Let me check all these other places where Paul, you know, starts his letters or something. It's the time spent, I think, in some sense that matters more than the sort of distance you run. So, yeah, that's kind of a mixed metaphor, but yeah.
Alex:
[45:15] Yeah. Or even like, or even like the Lectio Divina, you know, like where you're praying through the scriptures. I think it's great. Like if you find a passage that really hits you, especially if it's a passage that has to do with discipleship, I love your enemies or something along those lines. I think sometimes it helps to maybe just open up your Bible to that one passage. And if you spend 15 minutes looking at that verse, praying through it and thinking about how that applies to your life, that might be a lot more effective than just speed reading through three chapters just to check off the box and get it done for the day.
Doug:
[45:42] Yeah. Well, Alex, I look forward to the next episodes that you are doing on your show, because I know some of the things that are in the works. And, you know, whenever any other people are listening to this, they need to go and listen to your podcast. Where can they find you online besides looking up the Protestant Libertarian podcast?
Alex:
[45:58] Yeah, so like you said at the beginning of the show, my podcast is available on all major platforms. You can follow me on YouTube at ProLibertyPod, and I need as much help as I can get over there. The YouTube algorithm's really weird and hard to break through, and the more people I have following me, the easier it is to do that. So find me on YouTube. You can follow me on X at ProLibertyPod. I'm not a social media fighter, so if you're looking for a warrior, that's not going to be me, but I try to post as much relevant content to people that like liberty and the Bible on my pages as possible. And then also, I'd be remiss to not mention the fact but I have a new book coming out, Politics, Economics, New Testament Interpretation, September 15th. I'm extremely excited about this book and I cannot wait for people to read that. So I'll have more information coming up very soon because the release date's not too far away. So all of those places, you can find me, follow me and all of that. And yeah, so yeah. And two, if you have any questions about this, you can email me at theprotestantlibertarian at gmail.com or DM me on Twitter. I don't check my DMs on Twitter very often. So emailing me is the best way. And if you have questions about the Bible or how to get into reading it or whatever, please like reach out to me. I just, for my, for both my young daughter and for my young adult small group, I developed a very easy reading plan that has most of the major passages in the Old Testament. So you can read like 25 verses a day for 10 weeks and that'll get you through all the main ideas of the Old Testament. I'd be happy to send that to people that want like a way into the Old Testament or just any other thoughts or questions you have about it. I'm always here for you. So feel free to reach out to me.
Doug:
[47:22] Excellent. Well, Alex, thank you for joining me for this, man.
Alex:
[47:24] I really appreciate it. I appreciate it, Doug. Thanks, man.
Norman Horn:
[47:29] Thank you for listening to another episode of the Libertarian Christian Podcast. If you liked today's episode, we encourage you to rate us on Apple Podcasts to help expand our audience. If you want to reach out to us, email us at podcast@libertarianchristians.com. You can also reach us @Lciofficial on Twitter. And of course we are on Facebook and have an active group you are welcome to join. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.
Katherine Williams:
[47:55] The Libertarian Christian Podcast is a project of the Libertarian Christian Institute, a registered 501(c)3 non-profit. If you'd like to find out more about LCI, visit us on the web, at LibertarianChristians.com. The voiceovers are by Matt Bellis and Katherine Williams. As of Episode 115, our audio production is provided by Podsworth Media. Check them out at Podsworth.com.