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Two friends examining the faith they inherited, one patch at a time. Jacob and Sam are former church staff who believe Jesus invites us into a fuller picture of being human — one with room for doubt, critical thought, and perspectives that don't always fit the frameworks we were handed. Table Talk is a lab, not a platform. A place to look honestly at what's fraying, keep what's load-bearing, and practice integrating the rest in real time. Less explaining, more exploring. Good company for anyone discovering the surprising transformation downstream of surrendering certainty. Here's to faithful curiosity and patchwork spirituality.
W. Jacob Mancini (00:00)
I'm Jacob
Sam Strutton (00:01)
And I'm Sam. Welcome to Table Talk.
W. Jacob Mancini (00:04)
We're friends who left our jobs at the church learning what it means to be faithful to Jesus when certainty isn't the goal. This conversation is an extension of our years of questioning and wrestling. And we're talking about theology, books, culture, scripture, spiritual formation, and whatever else lands on the table. Here's to faithful curiosity and patchwork spirituality. Let's talk.
Jacob (00:36)
Sam, welcome back.
Sam (00:39)
Thank you. Thank you. Jacob, we're back. After I don't know, years. How long has it been?
Jacob (00:48)
Well, a common thread from all the months that have passed is this cup of mate that started with a promise.
Sam (00:55)
my gosh.
Jacob (00:56)
Yeah.
Sam (00:58)
It's not even the World Cup anymore.
Jacob (01:00)
I know, but I kept my promise, I drank this with the Argentina game texted it to you, and then honestly, I just
Sam (01:04)
Hmm. You did send me a picture.
Jacob (01:08)
yeah, dude, I just love mate. Yerba mate. If you haven't tried it in the traditional gourd, I'm ordering it online now. It's part of my ritual. yeah, it's delicious. It's smoked.
Sam (01:18)
Can I be honest?
Jacob (01:20)
It's smoked on wood embers.
Dried out, cut loose leaf. Yeah, be honest.
Sam (01:26)
I I've had mate before. It kinda tastes like you just I might I'm about to offend some people, bro. I'm about to offend like our two listeners who also drink mate. It kinda tastes like you just ran the garden hose through like the lawn mower bag at the end of a day of mowing your lawn. That's that's what it tastes like to me.
Jacob (01:47)
Bro, we just lost Argentina, man. All the listeners that we had there.
Sam (01:51)
The millions of listeners are all pausing the podcast. Yeah.
Jacob (01:55)
They're flipping you off. Yeah. No, they've they've
they've deleted us. We're canceled, man. But you know what?
Sam (02:04)
I gotta be a truth teller.
Jacob (02:06)
That description that you just said? That's wheatgrass. Wheatgrass tastes like that. If you ever had that at Jamba Juice, the little green shots,
Sam (02:15)
Mm.
Jacob (02:16)
straight up tastes like you're licking the lawnmower blades, dude. It's just grass. But I like that too. So I don't know what that says about me.
Sam (02:27)
You just you like grass, I guess.
Jacob (02:30)
Okay, but if you d if you're if
you're not drinking these things, what's what are you drinking?
Sam (02:35)
Half and half, Arnold Palmer. There he is. We're not sponsored, but you know.
Jacob (02:40)
Guest appearance, our first guest.
Sam (02:43)
Our first guest, Arnold. Yeah. I'm a big fan of lemonade. So anything with lemonade, I love lemonade.
Jacob (02:51)
Easy to please.
Sam (02:51)
Yeah. Anything
with lemonade.
Jacob (02:53)
man,
How's life been?
Sam (02:57)
Life has been overall good. Moving quick. I'm trying to remember what I was even doing last time we recorded. I don't even know if I had the same job that I have right now. okay.
Jacob (03:11)
Let's talk about it. What yeah.
Tell me about tell me about this new job. Just g you can give me the cliffs notes. I know about it. I know about it. But if
Sam (03:19)
I'm gonna be really embarrassed if yeah if I
Jacob (03:21)
anyone's curious
Sam (03:23)
yeah. I I work for an academic institution that prides itself on training champions for Christ. So I will leave it at that. But actually, I'll I won't. honestly, in our time together working in the college ministry, like I it just confirmed it for me. Like I love working with this population of college students, college age.
individuals. It's so fun to work with them. And so I'm a academic advisor now. And so I just help students pick their class and make sure that they graduate on time. which has been pretty fun.
Jacob (04:03)
could have used you when I was in college. I did the I had to do the fifth year. Yeah. Did not get the on time graduation. But
Sam (04:12)
It's surprisingly
very easy to do that. Like I'm actually it's kind of terrifying. Like if I make one wrong like recommendation, you're here for an extra year. I'm so sorry. Like it's just the way that it works. so you have to be very, very meticulous and very careful with how you tell students to structure their degree.
Jacob (04:36)
Or you could just have some fun with it. Send people on a journey.
Sam (04:42)
Like I'm gonna register you for something that you don't even have to take. Congratulations, you're taking archery this semester.
Jacob (04:49)
dude, yes. Okay. If you were going back in with what you know now about college, what would you have done differently?
Sam (05:01)
Okay, so something I am actually low-key frustrated that I didn't even realize. I was a psych counseling major. And so the psychology degree is built pretty much the same all the way until you get to the very bottom, and then you
have about like 15, 18 or so credits of like free electives that you get to choose what you do with them. I didn't know that you could double cognate and get a double degree at Liberty. So if I would have like
Jacob (05:28)
That easily.
Sam (05:29)
used my 15 free elective credits and done my psychology counseling from my cognate and then double majored in like developmental psychology, I could have gotten two diplomas from Liberty for the price of one.
Jacob (05:42)
What? They are you talk
Sam (05:43)
Yeah, you can get like a double degree. Yeah.
Jacob (05:45)
that needs to be talked about more.
Sam (05:48)
I'm I'm trying. Every student that comes in that's like, I don't know if I want to counsel. I think I want to counsel, but I think I want to counsel like young adults, teenagers, kids. Anytime they say that, I'm like, immediately double major. It's not gonna cost you anything extra. It's not gonna take you any extra time, and you walk away with two diplomas.
Jacob (06:06)
Look at you, wounded healer. Just helping.
Sam (06:10)
Bro, bro, that my my constant
my constant catchphrase that I keep trying to tell myself like stop myself mid sentence from saying is back when I was a student or back in my day, I've said that more than like a hundred times already and I keep trying to stop myself because I was back in my day was like four years ago. Like it was not that long ago that I was a student there. And so I get this look from these students when I say that and they're like, bro, how old are you?
Jacob (06:38)
The
Sam (06:38)
So
Jacob (06:39)
have you seen that comedy bit from Kevin Hart and he goes, Damn What
Sam (06:46)
yeah, he's he's who's he talking to? He's
the guy who plays Roadie from like the Avengers.
Jacob (06:52)
That's what I'm picturing with the the student sitting across your desk. Yeah, you know, back in my day.
Sam (06:59)
I say back in my day a student goes, Damn. well. Well, they're Christian students, so they wouldn't say that. They'd say, gosh, dang
it.
Jacob (07:08)
Darn.
Sam (07:09)
Goodness.
Good heavens.
Jacob (07:17)
Man. well, I'm I'm glad that you are helping more of the next generation come into the marketplace with with more degrees. Because yeah. this generation that's coming up, dude, they've got enough up against them. Let's give 'em an extra degree. It's tough out there
being connected to younger people who are in that transformative part of their lives. It's energizing and
tapping into that
Man, it's great. I love being on college campuses because it just made me feel alive and more curious, more connected. and I genuinely think that it's never been harder, you know, to
Sam (08:01)
Yeah.
Jacob (08:02)
navigate this complex life, this complicated
Sam (08:06)
Yeah.
Jacob (08:08)
politics and our nation and all that. So for people who are just coming up into it, so much, so much compassion, so much desire to
be a resource. And the church
Sam (08:19)
Yeah.
Jacob (08:20)
can do that. I hope we as Christians are doing that anyway.
Sam (08:24)
Yeah. One of the one of the questions I've just kind of been like ping-ponging back and forth with God is just like I'm here, I'm doing this job. It's my nine to five. I enjoy it. I love the students. I genuinely enjoy helping them. but I've constantly been just asking, like, God,
how do I be a gift to these students when they walk into my office? I only get them for like 30 minutes and then they don't ever have to see me again. because they have they have like a hold on their account that has to be lifted and then I they have to go to this 30 minute success plan meeting with me. And part of that meeting, they have to have to go over their their degree completion plan and build it out with them. And then I also have to build some goals and these goals are optional. And usually they're like I try and do an academic, a career, and then a personal goal with them.
And the academic and career stuff, I just it makes sense for their degree. Let's like read this, go talk to this person. When I get to the personal goal,
One way in which I found that I can hopefully try and be a gift in these students like formation is I try to remind them that they're human. I try to remind them that they're a human in God's good world. And the way that I do that is for their personal goal, I just tell them, Hey, my personal goal for you, I like to call it a liberty hobby. and what I mean by that is find something here while you're a student that you can do that brings you immense amounts of joy and is life giving.
And the purpose behind that is you're going to experience formation in so many different spheres, right? You're going to experience it as an academic, you're going to experience it as a professional, you're going to experience it spiritually. One
of the ways
Jacob (09:56)
Yeah.
Sam (09:56)
that I think might get neglected is you growing personally and experiencing yourself grow and be formed personally. And what I believe is there are many ways that God speaks to us, but I think one of the ways that He actually ministers to us is by showing us the things that He's already put inside of us.
That respond to parts of his good creation like like nobody else. So, what is it in you that sparks joy and is just life-giving? When you do that thing, you enjoy it and love it and come back feeling more alive than you did when you first did it. and so I challenge students, like, go find that thing. I don't know if it's painting, I don't know if it's chess, I don't know if it's intramural volleyball, like go find it and
Jacob (10:40)
Yeah.
Sam (10:41)
Have that be a part of your rhythms in your life and have it be a way that God ministers to you while you're a student. So
Jacob (10:47)
I love that. Yeah. There's
Beauty in playing even a small part in in midwifing that for someone. That's a weird word, but like coming coming alongside someone to just to help them discover that there's
a divine electricity flowing through this life. You want to make sure you're connected to it. So go find it.
Sam (11:16)
Thank you.
Jacob (11:17)
And hint: It's not outside of you, it's inside of you. But
what draws it out? Yeah, I love that. and chess is one of those for me, which is one of the many.
nerdy things about me. But yeah, dude, I just launched portal chess with
Sam (11:36)
Yes, yes.
Jacob (11:39)
Yeah. anyone listening who doesn't know what portal chess is, I originated this game by myself because that's how nerdy I am. I just can sit down and just make up games. But then found a
partner, an opponent to actually try the game with in Sam Strutton. And then we developed it even more and and played it and our college students played it. Back in the day, dude, at our retreat, there was other nerds playing with me and I think with you too. Just
Sam (12:13)
I took.
Jacob (12:14)
getting schooled. Just I was sending them home, Just people are walking away in tears to get counseling after the pastor just
You know, just taking people down at my own game. So to take a game that we just made with poker chips as portals, bending the chessboard, you know, the geometry is all
Sam (12:37)
Dimensional. Three dimensional.
Jacob (12:38)
Yeah, it's dude we're open up dimensions on the chessboard. And then I took
That game that we made together. I never stopped loving that. And Claude Code and me have kind of solo just vibe coded it. And it's out in the wild now. So if you want to see it, go play a game. It's portal chess dot gg. and it was just it was one of those things that just made me happy and alive. And I'm glad I did it. if anyone ever plays it, awesome.
But similar to this podcast, it's more of I did that for me and there's something creative and there's something divine about it. There's just just bringing that into reality and manifesting it was awesome.
you and me still need to play.
Sam (13:28)
Yeah. You should put it in the you should put it in the show notes. Just include a little link so people can go play.
Jacob (13:33)
Yeah, yeah. I will.
Sam (13:36)
I played against my friend Andrew, my neighbor. I taught him how to play and I lost. I don't think I've won a game of portal chest to this day. I'm I think I'm good at it. I'm not good enough to win though.
Jacob (13:48)
I'm glad you think you're good at it. man. What what would that be for you today or from the last year? What's a project or just something that you man, you put your hand to it and you thought, This is worship. This is divine. This is awesome.
Sam (14:08)
Dude.
For sure, for the people on YouTube who can see, Riftbound is a trading card game that I've gotten into in the last year that is extremely life-giving for me. for
Jacob (14:23)
Let's go.
Sam (14:23)
a lot of reasons, but my brothers in law were huge Magic the Gathering players, and they moved to Riftbound, which if you don't know, is based on a video game called League of Legends that I've been playing for like
13, 14 years now. And so I have in attempts to get closer with my brothers-in-law and and love them and and play with them, I've started playing I've started playing Magic a little bit and I didn't really like it because it felt like a lot of rules and a lot of things I didn't understand. Then Riftbound came and I was like, this is fantastic. I'm getting into this. And they
Jacob (14:56)
Mm.
Sam (14:57)
they sold all of their collection of ri of magic to start playing Riftbound. So not for me, but
Jacob (15:02)
Let's go.
Sam (15:03)
They started that and then now we're all just we all play. We go to the tournaments together. and it's like every time I play it I have so much fun.
Jacob (15:11)
you're competing in tournaments.
did I hear you finish top eight?
Sam (15:15)
yeah. Top eight out of nine people.
I have the promo to prove it. Somewhere.
Jacob (15:22)
Dude. But you were there. That's right.
Actually from the time we played, I think I I have some cards sitting on my desk still. But I
Sam (15:31)
the rune.
Jacob (15:32)
a rune. But no, I'm not I'm not good nor have I played more than that one game with you. I tried. but that's
Sam (15:41)
That's okay.
Jacob (15:42)
that's part of being in your new job. That's part of the joy of helping people discern that too, if they ever come
Sam (15:52)
Hmm.
Jacob (15:52)
back after that 30 minutes.
Do you ever
Sam (15:54)
Hmm.
Jacob (15:54)
have you had anybody come back yet and say, Sam, I found what makes me feel alive? I feel how God is ministering to me.
Sam (16:02)
I've had
I've had students come back, not for that reason. They're like, I need you to verify this course schedule, but never
Jacob (16:12)
Hmm.
Sam (16:12)
to tell me that they found something that brings them life, so
Jacob (16:15)
They're like, I need you to double
check archery. Are you sure about archery?
Sam (16:20)
I'm double sure. you need to do archery this semester. It is imperative that you take that class.
Jacob (16:28)
That's great,
man.
Sam (16:30)
I I know we've been like hinting at Genesis here and there and talking about different but not hinting, but we definitely mentioned it in previous episodes. but Genesis is always on the brain. And so it's actually a good segue. I was gonna see if you
Jacob (16:41)
It is. Yeah.
Sam (16:43)
wanted to talk about really anything in Genesis, but specifically I was thinking about
God's good world. Like that's a phrase that I've literally been using in my job. and how that at least for me, was something that I did not understand until probably like three years ago, I think it was you who kind of first challenged it in me, the good world versus the perfect world.
in creation. so I think we could talk about that. I don't know. Might be a good segue.
Jacob (17:19)
Absolutely. Yeah.
You know me. Genesis is always on tap. It's it's flowing.
Sam (17:27)
It's the it's the best book of the Bible.
Jacob (17:31)
It's the mainstay. Is it the best book of the Bible?
Sam (17:37)
Mm. Is that heretical? Is that
Jacob (17:40)
Ha ha.
I love talking about Genesis.
yeah, God's good world. when you first heard about God's good world, Genesis one, presumably, what what did you experience?
Sam (17:53)
I think to clarify for our listeners, I grew up understanding Genesis as
A literal story of how God created the earth and it was meant to be read one line after another, and this is exactly how He did it. And at the end of it, everything was perfect. It was paradise, it was everything that we could have ever wanted. and we went and royally messed it up. And that was kind of how I was
Jacob (18:33)
No pun intended.
Sam (18:33)
taught yeah.
Wait, what do you mean?
Jacob (18:37)
just in Genesis one, humanity is the the king and queen, you know, the image. Yeah.
Sam (18:45)
I didn't even think about that. That's good. That's good.
Yeah. We as royals messed it up.
Jacob (18:51)
Yeah. Ruling.
Sam (18:54)
for me when I was taught that I was very much taught it was a lot of binaries, a lot of like perfection and then sin and good and evil, which I think are are in there. Those there are dynamics of that in there. I think it was a lot of like Sunday school and kids' church and stories and the kids' Bible, and none of that I think is
wrong or evil or malicious. I was just taught a very simplified version of Genesis. but the word perfect is not in there. There
And then I think you asked the question one time, what can anybody do with something that is perfect? Can any improvement be made to anything that is perfect? And as I thought about that, I was like, No. And then I think your follow-up question was, W so what's the other option? And it kind of just hit me like a ton of bricks. I like, Okay, so the the only other option is failure if if it's
Everything's perfect. The only thing you can do to a perfect creation, the only option really is to mess it up. Either don't move and don't touch anything
Jacob (20:00)
Yeah.
Sam (20:01)
or mess it up.
Jacob (20:05)
Yeah, if you change perfection, then it is no longer perfection.
Sam (20:11)
Right, exactly. And I think my immediate question to follow that when I first learned that is like what was what was the point then? why did God create something good and not perfect? I don't remember your specific response to that, but do you have any thoughts on that?
Jacob (20:30)
I had the same shape of my upbringing and my experience with Genesis one and the Bible's creation story. and in some ways there's actually a a a little bit of a canned response there that I think I I began with this and I think many people do. Yeah, it the only thing you can do to perfection is break it. And that's what happened.
So that actually can flow a little bit in terms of some of people's expectations, or certainly mine, when you look at, yeah, the fall is coming. So that's what happens. We did fall out of perfection. but it was a big shift for me in my own learning and curiosity to try to look at the Bible and just truly learn and see it for what it was.
the first
Chapter in the first two chapters are these parallel creation stories that are all about how good it is. And that is a different starting point, right? if it's about goodness and you have a full vision of God's good world, it's like it's a complete sentence. It's a complete chapter, it's a it's even two chapters.
And so there's a whole story there before you get to what happened and whatever happened, it doesn't appear to be humans flinched and then perfection was altered and now we f fell out of perfection and now everything's broken. It appears to be God set creation in motion on these tracks called goodness, flourishing, abundance, rule you know, rulership. So there's responsibility and there's
There's some kind of commissioning or entrusting and and there's a project, there's an unfolding. So it's anything but static, you know, whereas perfection is totally immutable. Creation is you know, fish are swarming and there's creeping and crawling things everywhere, and and you have it's just every picture is this vibrant.
explosion of life, dynamism, flow, energy, and unfolding into very good. Like the the goodness in Genesis one, crescendo's
God Himself is taking notice that is getting better. So it's like
Whatever we have, it's not this sanitized perfect vision. And it's not like we're all floating on a cloud in heaven with God and nothing could ever it's like, dude, there's a leopard in this tree, and then over here the waterfall is going and there's something floating down it. And what is that? I don't you know, let's go explore this, let's go find out. So I yeah.
as soon as I could sink my teeth into that and realize like the starting point of the Bible is different than I thought. then maybe life with God is different than what I thought because for me it was a bunch of, you know, because we've all fallen out of perfection, this whole thing's gonna burn. Like the earth is bad, sin is bad, you're bad. And so like God is really mad.
At all the badness. And so he's gonna torch it and he's gonna torture you too. So let's get the hell out of here. the story of the Bible isn't about heaven and hell, right? It's a the story's about heaven and earth from page one to
The last page of Revelation, there's God created the heavens and earth, and then there's the new heavens and new earth. So it's always about heaven and earth. But yeah, that was big for me, man. That was a big tectonic shift for the starting point.
Sam (24:15)
I'm trying to remember the exact way that that Tim Mackie says it. I think he says like
The goal was never to get the hell out of Earth. It was to get the hell out of Earth. It's like the the Yeah, it's
Jacob (24:25)
yeah. That's it.
Sam (24:26)
like it's the I don't know how he uses punctuation there. But to get the hell out of Earth. Yeah.
Jacob (24:29)
Not to get the hell out of Earth, to get the hell out of Earth. I love it.
Sam (24:35)
I think
Once that veil or that like I started seeing that a bit more clearly and like past my Sunday school answers, one thing that stood out to me almost immediately was like, if if I'm gonna hold to this perfection creation, then how is it that God can look at his perfection and say, that's not good? When he's looking at hu human,
Jacob (25:00)
in Genesis two.
Sam (25:01)
yeah, when he's looking at human being alone.
that that shook I think that was kind of like the final like push over the edge because I was like, Yeah, wait a minute. If it is perfect
Jacob (25:13)
Yeah.
Sam (25:13)
and he created it perfect, and I
Jacob (25:16)
Yes.
Sam (25:16)
was I also the the kind of the the rude awakening to like this is not literal, it's literary, it's it's poetic, it's it's painting a picture, right? It's not telling you exactly how it happened.
And so that combined with kind of like the introduction to humanity, to human, to dirt being, and how it's not good that dirt being
Jacob (25:42)
Yeah. Dirt bag.
Sam (25:43)
is a l dirt bag. Sack of dirt.
Jacob (25:45)
Sorry, Adam. Yeah, totally. Yeah,
that's well, I I cut you off. I wanna hear that thought.
Sam (25:55)
I was just gonna say that like then you're sitting there at the end of or near the end of chapter two and it's like, Hey, it's not good that this human is alone. that like shook
Pretty much my whole understanding of it because I was like, okay, if God created it perfect, why is it not perfect? Why is he addressing it as not good?
Jacob (26:21)
Yeah. Isn't that funny how without consciously seeing it, we read the word good, but we but we say perfect. Like people did that all the time in Table Talk back in the day. You know, coming
Sam (26:34)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jacob (26:36)
in and and actually just ask someone, you know, hey, what was the state of the world in Genesis one? Or you know, when God created things, how would you describe it? People say perfect all the time. It's not in the text.
Sam (26:47)
Yeah.
Jacob (26:49)
Not only is it not in the text.
But before the fall, not good is in the text. So you have this negative portrait. What when you say it's not literal, it's literary, is that what you said?
Sam (27:01)
Yeah.
Jacob (27:03)
For someone who's never heard that before, that already sounds th threatening on one level. Because it it sounds like
Sam (27:09)
yes.
Jacob (27:09)
you're s it sounds like you're now just playing fast and loose with the text. Is that what you're
Sam (27:14)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (27:15)
doing?
Sam (27:18)
Exactly what I'm doing. No, I'm just kidding.
Jacob (27:20)
How dare you?
Sam (27:24)
I think it I I think you I'm gonna put this back on you. I think you were the one who first used that exact language with me. but I don't please forgive me if you were the one who said this. Again, it there's so many sources, so many great things that have shaped my understanding of this. I can't remember if it was you or somebody else. but somebody's
Jacob (27:46)
Why w why would
I f why would I forgive you? Are you about to say something bad?
Sam (27:50)
No, I'm about
to say something I'm about to say something that would make you look good, but I can't remember if it's if you said it or not.
Jacob (27:56)
okay. Then I yeah, no,
I'm sure I did. Go ahead.
Sam (27:59)
you or somebody else said it like this. to read Genesis and to try and pull from it an exact, literal creation account is like looking at the Mona Lisa and trying to count the brush strokes. That's not the goal. That's not what it was made for. It's not what you do when you go and look at a work of art.
Your goal is not to count the brushstrokes and determine exactly how it was created. Your goal is to admire it, to look at it, to see it from different angles, to see hues and colors and expressions of things that you didn't see in it before. And so when I I know you were the one who used the language literal to literary. And that distinction, at least for me, helped me take a step back and instead of
looking at Genesis as a means to defend how the world was created and all of the arguments that are surrounding, you know, how the world came to be, how creation happened, the Big Bang, millions of years, thousands of years, whatever you think, it t it gave me a a chance to step back and breathe and look at Genesis in a completely different light, where I was able to recognize that literary is introducing me to all different types of
Writing styles, genres, tools that are being used from a completely different culture and context and time frame that I had no idea existed. Because my Bible is supposed to be the story, the A to B of how we got to where we are and the B to C of what Jesus is doing about it. If you I was taught to read it like that, right? I was taught to read it like a like a novel, like a fairy tale. But when you introduce the concept of literary.
You did it alongside introductions of different literary designs and different things that I had never even seen in the text that are there to do exactly what I was talking about a minute ago. Help you see and admire and appreciate the Mona Lisa that is there, the art piece, the masterpiece that is there,
But that's what I mean when I say literary versus literal.
Jacob (30:12)
Yeah. I
Sam (30:13)
Yeah.
Jacob (30:14)
I love you talking about it is better than me talking about it. and it's more of a live wire with you with the the conversations you're having, even if you're just even if you're just
saying God's good world with that with that behind it, man, that's that's a good vibe, you know? And that's it's a gift to even just hold that up for someone even if it's just that one phrase. but what a treasure trove. it wasn't me that said the the Mona Lisa thing. That sounds more like it came from a book and it's I I love it. I think that's a good
Sam (30:52)
Did
you look it up?
Jacob (30:54)
No,
when I learned that the Bible is not a science textbook, and it's not even
a story of creation to Jacob's birthday, you know. But it the Bible is a library. It's an ancient library that has texts that have all kinds of authors, men, women, people who lived in totally different cultures. And that's
not going to fit together the way that a best selling book will today. when you go to a library, you don't just pull two books off of two shelves, mash them together and pretend like you have one story. So it's like we come to poetry in psalms, in Song of Songs, in in all there's all kinds of
One thing I love about Old Testament divine speech is usually poetry. And so that's kind of fun. So like God speaks poetry. So there's something about even the art of that poetic language in scripture that is reflecting the divine and meant to convey something that's not prose. There's ancient law code, there's narrative. So there's so many literary genres, different bookshelves in the library, so to speak.
And yet they actually do fit together, but it takes time to understand how they do, right? It takes humility, it takes curiosity. When I saw that Genesis 1 is a poem and not a scientific account, it's certainly not a defense of seven-day creationism. when I saw that.
It fits together the way a poem does with these refrains of, and it was good, and it was good and it was good. There's evening, there's morning, there's a there's a a pattern to it. There's a chiasm. This is what I learned from more Jewish sources that understand, you know, chiasms hide in plain sight clues. And yeah, what what I see your hand go up.
Sam (33:17)
I was just told this the other day. I I know I don't sorry, I'm totally interrupting.
Jacob (33:22)
I was just rambling. Go ahead.
Sam (33:24)
I I have not read Revelation like in its entirety, and I think I got that from you. Because I think I remember you saying one time
Jacob (33:33)
yeah, don't touch it.
Sam (33:34)
you were like, like, don't touch Revelation until you've read through like most of the Bible, because it's it's you're gonna get lost in it. but I was told by somebody the other day,
Pastor, friend of mine, and he explained to me he talked about how revelation is a giant chiasm. which is kind of like a I mean, try and verbally explain what this is to an audience,
Jacob (33:59)
Right. It's a symmetry.
It's a literary folding.
Sam (34:04)
Yeah.
Jacob (34:05)
Yeah, you can fold up the story, the elements, you know, you could get like A B C C B A. So they there's
Sam (34:15)
Yes.
Jacob (34:16)
sim there's symmetry there. Sometimes A B C A B C just repetition. Same concept though.
Sam (34:21)
Yeah.
Yeah. What he was talking about was in Revelation. Revelation is one giant chiasm focused on the center where there's just this baby that's born that changes everything. And then it it
Jacob (34:35)
Hm. That's cool.
Sam (34:36)
goes out from there. And so again, I have not read Revelation. 'cause I just don't think I
Jacob (34:42)
Disclaimer.
Sam (34:43)
would get anything. Yeah, I've not I don't think I'd get anything from it. I mean I'd probably get something from it. I just don't know if if I would trust what I get from it.
but that that was just Yeah.
Jacob (34:52)
yeah, you would get things from it.
Sam (34:56)
Helpful things. I don't know.
Jacob (34:57)
Yeah, that that's cool.
Sam (34:57)
Yeah.
Jacob (34:58)
that's what the chiasm does as a literary device, is it brings your attention to the center through that symmetry. so it's literary origami. and there's chiasms within chiasms, even. once you are trained away from some of the Western literary education that we get in school, which is
Read something and then read it again. And if there's something you don't understand, then diminish it, you know, deprioritize it so that you can then kind of build your propositions about the text and draw conclusions about what you do understand. looking at this ancient wisdom literature from the Hebrew Bible.
In particular, it's like almost the exact opposite. If there's something that is odd or misplaced, or you start to notice some patterns, that is there so that you would get stuck in it and like go into it like sinking sand and then emerge into a whole subterranean level beneath the text of meaning and symbolism and discovery, self-discovery. But no one's trained to read like that. So we read good and we see perfect. And we read Genesis one and we've never noticed that.
The whole thing is chiastic. Yeah. Were you gonna say something else? I I saw your your eyebrows go up.
Sam (36:12)
Thinking as you're saying that, we also read in light of knowing the whole story. for me growing up, it's like, I know the Sunday school story of Jesus. He died for my sins. And like, okay, why do you have to die? Well, we messed things up. And so we read in that like light of understanding. why did this happen? Why is it this way? Okay, how did we get here? And we kind of like reflect back the things that hadn't even happened yet when Genesis was.
being written. So
Jacob (36:38)
Sure, like the
an anachronistic in yeah,
Sam (36:42)
Yeah.
Jacob (36:43)
world view of the
Sam (36:44)
Which
Jacob (36:45)
Bible itself. Yeah.
Sam (36:47)
which which can be helpful. I mean, when you look into the New Testament and you start seeing all of these apostles like reinterpreting texts from their scriptures in ways that are not there. Like like I would I was just doing this the other night with at a Bible study. you see Paul like totally bend scripture to say something that it
Doesn't really say in the Old Testament. It's not, it's not what it's talking about. It's not at all what it's talking about. But somehow, in the light of the revelation of Christ, Paul can see into his scriptures and see Christ there.
what I didn't know growing up is I knew we could do things like that. Like I knew you could look into the Old Testament and you could see what is the term? Christy Christological, like you could see Jesus in the text. I knew you could do that as a as I was growing up, but what I didn't have was a respect for what the text was before you could do that, right? So I grew up like seeing and reading the New Testament and seeing
Paul do that and go back and say when it was talking about this, it was talking about Christ. When it was not in any way, shape, or form talking about Christ. like I think Isaiah,
Jacob (37:56)
sure. Yeah.
Sam (38:00)
like especially the verse I we were talking about the other night, like was Isaiah was talking about like how and he will be born of a virgin, and like that, like the context within Isaiah of that verse has nothing to do with Jesus.
But
Jacob (38:17)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (38:17)
I forget which one of the gospels it's in. But whoever Matthew, yeah. when he quotes that, he sees Jesus there.
which is awesome. It's cool. But I grew up seeing that and then doing that and then not really.
thinking much of it because then I thought the whole goal was to go see Jesus in the Old Testament. And there wasn't
Jacob (38:36)
Right.
Sam (38:36)
like anything else to be gained other than Jesus in the Old Testament. But there's there's wisdom.
what we're talking about is something that I had never considered in the fact that there's beauty and wisdom and depth inside the text and you don't have to be looking for Jesus to see it. there's patterns and things that you can see in the text and types and and shadows,
there's things that you can see in there that are beautiful to see, but I some t I really couldn't see them until I kinda took off my where's Jesus, like where's Waldo glasses and like where is he in there? If I took those off then I could see there's context here that makes this very beautiful and very much more deep than I had ever understood it.
Jacob (39:22)
Yeah, I think that's the shallow end of Christological interpretation is you turn the old testament into a where's Waldo for any icon that could be Jesus, any symbol, I say shallow not be not to undercut any of that work, but I think
you forget that the actual ancient people for whom this was wisdom literature, the people that brought us th these texts, were not doing that. So you can ask the question, I I did. It's like why the hell did they write this down then?
And like, why was it preserved painstakingly, generation after generation? Why do we have this? And it's it's easy to say, well, because it's the Bible and it's and God preserved it so that we could get to Jesus, so that we could then play where's Waldo. But I that's just I'm not I don't buy that. I did especially when you consider that Jesus himself grew up reading these texts, right? Like these this was his Bible, and so there's something.
There's to use a gaming fantasy analogy, there's a world-building essence to these texts, like especially to Genesis 1 through 11. But there's some wisdom deeply embedded that is essential not to launch us into feeling so good about ourselves that we see Jesus everywhere, but to becoming the kind of people, in my view, who can
live an inc an incarnate experience of being human that is anything even close to what Jesus lived. And he did it by taking the Hebrew Bible on its own terms. Like that's what he did.
Sam (41:12)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (41:13)
That's how he read it. That's how he walked it out. when he says in the Sermon on the Mount, I didn't come to abolish Torah but but to fill it full. And you know, he's seeing his life and his vision of what,
the kingdom of God is all about. It's just, it's flowing from the Old Testament.
one of my favorite scholars talks about a christotelic reading as a better alternative. So it's like Christ can still be this full revelation that that you know
We're pointing towards Jesus. But telos the the the trajectory, like the the aim and the direction. It takes world building to even like have a canon to shoot the Christ cannonball forward. and for me to get concrete with this, dude, Genesis one is a poem, not a not a science textbook. Genesis two is a whole different creation narrative. So
If you want to break your literal framework for the Bible, just page two will do it. Just stick with it. Two pages. because the order of creation is different in Genesis two.
Chapter one, there's water, and then there's land and sky. and then all you know, all these creatures, all these beings, and partners. But in Genesis 2, God is not surrounded by water. He's surrounded by dry land. He's in a desert, and it's there's nothing there. And so then there's the first thing that actually
appears in the desert is a spring, is water. So it's actually it the whole image of chapter one is turned inside out. Chapter one starts in watery chaos and then eventually you have land and that's kind of this the action is happening on the land. And in Genesis 2, it's nothing but land and then there's a little bit of water and the action starts when God rolls up his sleeves and starts to mold a human. It's like the first thing that happens is God makes a human and then only later in the story does God make animals.
dude, the Bible on page two is trying to disorient you, which is so funny that we have made so much of our scripture reading and so much of our theologizing into certainty projects, right? Because page two, it was supposed to inoculate us from that.
Sam (43:33)
Mm-hmm.
Jacob (43:34)
It was supposed to say, You you think you have creation figured out, but here's a curveball.
And so when I I saw that, when you see the not good, why is that there? Like, why is there anything not good? Why is God the one identifying it? Dude, it's a whole rabbit hole, as you know. I actually, funny enough, between our the last time we talked and and today, I actually got to share with my small group at my church, we call ourselves Faith Talks, which is so cool. we're like the young
parents group, you know, we're all sleep deprived and I love when there are friends at church. I got to actually share over the summer we took turns and kind of did like a summer teaching series. And I picked Genesis one. So I got to go up and whiteboard and and look at what what we're talking about here and share that. And totally struck me, I'll have to show you this picture.
Hanging in our room of the church is a quilt. Just a big quilt with a bunch of Bible verses on it as the patches. And it's like, it's cool. I'll I'll put the picture in in the show notes and and share it. But anyway. Starting with God's good world and starting with a little more humility and curiosity opens the Bible up. And it opens Jesus up because.
rather than just why did Jesus die? Well, because we sinned and he's trying to save us so we can go to heaven. Dude, what a what a flat and thin and lame story. It just that that story is the worst. And I gave myself to that story for so much of my early life. And I am not that.
Person anymore because that story isn't even really connected to the Jesus that thought I was following and now know this transformative wisdom teacher anyway. of one good question to ask that we could always that we could explore or that we could leave listeners with is
If Genesis three isn't the starting point, then there's something before, right? There's something that was good. And then there's something good in the end of this thing. how do we connect those dots? And I I think that's a really, really, you know, rich area of exploration.
Has been for me. and NT Wright has a well known analogy he uses to talk about the whole Bible that I also love. He says, Imagine you discovered five act play from Shakespeare new discovery, but act five is lost to history.
So you have this five act play, but we only actually can account for four acts.
Then you want to do a performance of this lost Shakespearean masterpiece. So who do you hire? You hire the best of the best who are going to pour over those first four acts, right? They're going to memorize, they're going to like get this text into them. Why? Because they're going to perform act five.
Because like the the story, the true masterpiece is there's a fifth act and and it has to be the story is not complete without it. And so one way to think about the Bible is it's not God's love letter to me, then all about me, so that I can be an actor. It's this world-building, rich universe creation starts in goodness. We're gonna
completely reorient you and then disorient you again and like take you on this wild ride of learning and searching and becoming. And then within these four acts that we have revealed to us, the church now gets to live in act five, improvising and trying out new creation in life and acting it out and performing it. And like that's a vision that is so alive for me.
Sam (47:44)
Yeah, I know that that was fantastic.
I would just resummarize a a different way to ask that question for any listeners too. It's just like going back to like if the goal is not to get the hell out of earth, but to get the hell out of earth, what is that like I questions that I've been I've been wrestling with for years now is what is hell? What's it doing in Earth? What does it look like when it's gone? And do we do we see that? Are there pockets of
good creation all around us. Are there are there pockets of Eden that are still existing that can be created. Yeah, if the if the if the beginning sets us up with a good creation
What is our role to play in a creation now that
It's both good and not good. You know, that as a whole I that's what I've been wrestling
Jacob (48:36)
Yeah. Dude, I think
Sam (48:39)
with.
Jacob (48:40)
let's stay there just for just for a few minutes. it's good to pin try to pin some of these things down even as the wrestle's
Sam (48:46)
Okay.
Jacob (48:46)
still happening. I one thing I don't want just for our friendship too, is is to like wax poetic and just ask questions into the air and never actually like, you know, get under the bar, you know, and like actually lift the weight.
how are you thinking about that right now? If God's trying to get the hell out of Earth, did God create hell? Who's like what's it doing here? And like how are you answering some of those questions that you asked?
Sam (49:15)
Yeah, yeah. man.
Think one thing that we didn't one thing that we didn't even address in Genesis, and this might be the next episode, but I I feel like it kind of helps direct this question maybe. we didn't even talk about what the hell humans are doing here. Why are we here? Right? We just kind of talked about
Good versus perfect in the beginning, but we didn't even address why we're a part of good in the beginning anyway. Why why are we here? and I think that the answer to that question
I have come to understand as partnership, right? as invitation into expanding the goodness that God started, the tracks that He put creation on, right? If He put the if He put creation on these tracks, then humanity's invitation is to push whatever creation is on those tracks further, and t to enjoy it along the way. so then
What is hell?
it's
Things that
push creation back off the rails, off the tracks. And and Genesis has a lot of poetic language about that. Chaotic waters and things that where there life could not thrive, where there wasn't flourishing, there wasn't abundance. not that it was evil, but it just wasn't a place that God called good yet. And so I think the way that I'm kind of working through hell, and that's been a huge deconstructing topic for me.
for the last couple of years.
I I've come to understand hell as as areas where God's creation has derailed and how we experience that.
Jacob (51:17)
Yeah. Totally.
That's deep and that's yeah, go ahead
Sam (51:23)
I didn't really answer your question about if we're if what what do we you know, boots on the ground coming down from the ethereal poetic Bible side of this? What does that look like? Yeah, what
Jacob (51:33)
Wee parachuting down Yeah.
Sam (51:36)
does it look like to to be a part of decreation, or or off the tracks creation? What does that look like when that's a part of the world around us and what do we do with that? I mean
I think going back to what I was saying about like my students at at Liberty, one tiny way that I think that I am I think pushing back against hellspace decreation off the rails reality is
Trying to use language like you're a human and God's good world to help students and the people around me in a small way potentially reorient their thinking.
To view their place in this
good world or their their opportunity, their invitation to partnership, their what did you call it? Their ability to tap into that like that lightning, that what did you call it, that energy, that that divine electricity.
Jacob (52:41)
Mm-hmm. Divine electricity. Yeah.
Sam (52:44)
Yeah. I just practically speaking, in what ways am I helping other human beings around me recognize the good world that they're in and the pockets of not good that exist around us in the various depths and ways that that all plays out in reality. and hopefully helping people recognize that
You do have a part to play. And if this is the act five that you're talking about, you're not just some extra. You're not just some stage hand. You're not just some person who moves the, you know, the props in and then not the I mean, if you are one of those people and you're in the theater, you're awesome. And you're listening to this
Jacob (53:31)
Yeah.
Sam (53:31)
for some reason, thank you, 'cause props and everything makes everything great. Even if you are that kind of person.
Maybe I'm that kind of person. Maybe I'm the person who's just moving the props when the when the lights go dark. but regardless, you have a role to play in act in Act Five
Jacob (53:46)
Mm-hmm.
Sam (53:47)
and your participation in it will it will drastically reshape how you view life entirely. And I think that that's
Beautiful. I think that recognizing the opportunity that you have in your life to live it.
Jacob (54:03)
Dude, I think when you're talking about the props and the stage hands, I think the point is whether you are performing lines or moving props, the point is there's no script. The point is it's improv. So when we say God's good world, and when we break free from perfect, and when we look at the vocation of humanity.
From Genesis one, which is rulership, and Genesis two, which is partnership. Undoubtedly partnership, God's asking this dirt bag, which by the way, in Genesis two, God doesn't create a man, Adam.
Creates a human. So the word is actually Adam in Hebrew, which means human. So Adam means human. And then so we've just we just slapped a capital A on it and said that's his name. But Adam, Genesis 2 says God creates Adam from the Adama. Human from humus, which is an English word meaning earth, dirt, stuff. So it's a little play on words. But yeah, so Adam is actually not the a proper name, it's actually just a human. So fun fact.
I love that you brought this. I love that you framed all this too in just a a simple thirty minute conversation with students who are never going to come visit you again. where you're just dropping one line. But dude, behind that line is this life changing invitation.
Because it's it's an invitation to take up the mantle of our humanity, to hear the the calling of the divine. And I think that is a double-edged sword. It does both mean like there's so much goodness at our fingertips for us to enjoy and for us to connect with and to enjoy it, to enjoy the ride. And
There's a responsibility to say, man, this thing has been derailed. And I was at the wheel for some of that. Like I have directly driven this goodness, this opportunity, this relationship. And man, for me, when I think about what does it look like to get the hell out of me, it's hell is not, it's not an eternal place of torment that God made for me. It is.
First and foremost, it's a cavern of my heart that I've tried not to see. it's been repressed or it's been I you know, I've denied it and I've I've projected my shadow onto other people and my fears. And dude, the first thing that I do as as a follower of Jesus is try get the hell out of me. Try to heal, try to reconnect with the parts of my own
my good life that I have allowed to fall apart, right? Or that I have that I'm responsible for hurting others or or being hurt myself. And like that's the beginning of of this whole project for me is man, being human is this invitation to do that work. It's this invitation to step into goodness, healing, to get something back that was genuinely lost or marred or warped at some level.
Starting in me and then and then going out from me, in my family, in my community, in my in in I talked about this earlier briefly, you know, look at our politics, look at our country.
It's not okay. It's hell. I think the church more than ever has an opportunity to be a witness, a prophetic witness, to say, you know, dude, we're going down in flames. And so you're either crazy if you're talking about God's good world right now, or you know a secret, an open secret that most people either aren't.
brave enough to believe and say, hey, there's actually goodness here and we can, we can pick it up and we can work with it. Or, you know, or or that people are just, they've lost hope. And so what you're doing is cool. I I think I'm always interested in taking the maximum amount amount of responsibility and getting the maximum amount of enjoyment, like both both sides of that coin, when it comes to God's good world and saying,
Dude, how can I get in on it? How can I get in that flow of just abundance and play my part and improvise and have a hell of a good time? Cause it it needs to be fun. bad improv is not fun, you know. and then also like improv has a shape. There's a faithfulness to it. There's four acts behind us that build the world that we're in, that give us this vision, pen ultimately in.
Jesus, this revelation in a human life. And it's like, dude, it's my, it's, it's my bit now. It's I'm moving my prop and I don't know where to put it. Where's it going? I gotta feel it out. What's what feels right here? oops, I put it in the wrong spot and blew the scene. Guess what? I'll try again tomorrow. You know, I'll take I'll own it. So I don't know. I think the way that I'm doing that most right now.
practically to be to be as to be as much of a dirt bag here on a a dirt person or on the ground in the earth. I think I for me, I've been learning a lot about myself. I've been learning quite a bit about how undisciplined I am and how my lack of discipline has a cascading effect and like a chemical reaction kind of thing where I just don't show up as the dad I want to be, the husband I want to be,
And I end up participating in or being complicit in little hells of laziness, little hells of you know, the backyard looks like a jungle. My little slice of creation that get to rule is all out of control because I'm not doing the work. And it's like a little hell, you know, it's like there's there's nothing but ants and bugs out there and which I hate. So
I'm trying I'm working on this. I'm getting up earlier. I'm trying to increase discipline in my life. I'm trying to I'm taking these steps. I'm getting coached. So just that yeah, just to share.
Sam (1:00:29)
I was gonna say that's that was awesome. That was I I feel like that that grounded the conversation. I feel like you landed the plane with that.
Jacob (1:00:40)
Did I land the plane or did I derail?
Sam (1:00:42)
Well, I mean we were we were you were just talking about how God created lots of good animals and now you you hate the things that creep along the ground. So I don't know where that puts you in God's good world, but
Jacob (1:00:57)
Confused. God, why did you create so many mosquitoes in Texas and ants that bite my son?
man, love this conversation and love you. I'm glad we get to do it. Also, just yeah, I didn't even know we were talking about Genesis and
From the quilt in my church classroom to tonight, man, it's it's good. It's a it's a gift to be on this path of of learning. And even though I think I can talk at times like, dude, I've already read the books, I'm taking new things away from from tonight yeah, grateful.
Sam (1:01:42)
Yeah, me too.
I've said it before, but this space is
It has been when we were at C B C and continues to be just sacred, safe space and I appreciate. having this conversation with you and having this space and you holding it with me.
Jacob (1:02:03)
Hundred percent, man. And
To close. We will be back.
Eventually. We we will come back and hold the space again. with all of the beauty of God's good world unfolding in between now and then, don't forget the only thing that matters is faith expressing itself in love.
Sam (1:02:31)
Peace.