What Theology Kills: The Revelation of Mercy and the Death of Easy Answers

How can we read a violent Bible without becoming violent ourselves? In the Season One finale, January Jaxon and Andrew McRae turn to the alarming imagery of Hosea and ask what happens when we stop expecting scripture to give us easy answers. Rather than explaining away its violence — or simply throwing out the passages they don’t like — they explore what changes when we approach the Bible humbly as an encounter with God instead of an instruction manual to master. McRae’s close reading of Hosea invites a revelation of trust, repentance, and the disturbing grace of letting our certainty die so that something far more alive can take root.

You’ll hear:

• Hosea’s radical implication that divine judgment isn’t a punishment that destroys us but a light that exposes what’s killing us
• How Internal Family Systems interrupts scandal by making room for a new desire
• Why the need to know what scripture means can get in the way of actually reading it
• Why the Bible’s disturbing passages may need our attention more than our allegiance or rejection

PLUS the most important practice for any Christian: actually reading the Bible.

Ideal for listeners interested in Girardian theology, Internal Family Systems as a spiritual practice, and engaging difficult biblical texts without defending OR discarding their violence.

Chapters:

• (00:00) - Introducing Hosea through Jezreel
• (10:43) - Understanding Hosea's context for "I desire mercy, not sacrifice"
• (11:48) -   "The Lord has a brief against the dwellers of the land"
• (13:53) - "Therefore the land does languish and all those dwelling within it are bleak"
• (18:20) - "And they played the whore while under their God"
• (25:34) - Did we break the Divine heart, or did we bruise the Divine ego?
• (30:26) - Repentance is something to receive, not achieve
• (36:27) - "Come, let us return to the Lord"
• (46:32) - Both Jesus and Judas expose human violence
• (50:14) - Why'd we call this podcast "Theology Kills" when we're all about nonviolence?
• (53:56) - Connecting René Girard's Satan and IFS unattached burdens
• (01:04:00) - The metric of "Does this look like Jesus?"
• (01:09:22) - Practicing IFS isn't about acquiring spiritual "muscle"
• (01:17:54) - Reading the Bible doesn't have to be, either
• (01:21:20) - Bible reading as revelation, not instruction
• (01:28:05) - What's died in us as we've made this podcast?
• (01:48:20) - Final credits
• (01:49:32) - Is Season One dead now...?

Theology Kills is exclusively listener-funded. Subscribe to us on Patreon for bonus audio, downloadable worksheets, and a friendly community to carry on the conversation.
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Note: This podcast is a personal exploration of theology, creativity, and human experience. January Jaxon and Andrew McRae are not medical or mental health professionals, and nothing in this podcast should be understood as medical or psychological advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Our discussions are general and are not a substitute for personalized care. If you need medical or mental health support, we encourage you to seek care from a qualified professional.

Creators and Guests

Host

Andrew McRae

Co-host

Host

January Jaxon

Co-host

What is Theology Kills?

Toxic theologies have been weaponized to wound, but the gospel was always meant to be medicine. January Jaxon and Andrew McRae blend Internal Family Systems theory with the mimetic anthropology of René Girard to uncover a Christ-centered theology of integrity that heals shame, fosters embodiment, and creates contagious peace in the midst of a world at war. Balancing scriptural insight with personal reflections and simple everyday practices, each episode explores the ways that violence warps our creativity, our relationships, and our sense of self — and how divine love sets us free.

[00:00:00] Andrew: Theology has killed my understanding of the Bible — watch what grows.

[00:00:06] January: Yes.

[00:00:06] Andrew: Right? Watch what’s about to grow.

[00:00:08] January: Exactly.

If you’ve ever wondered why a religion that proclaims unconditional love can feel so full of hatred, shame, and violence, you’re not alone — and you’re not wrong to want something more from Christian faith. 

I’m January Jaxon, 

[00:00:30] Andrew: and I’m Andrew McRae, 

[00:00:32] January: and this is Theology Kills, a podcast about letting our shame and violence die so that life and love can thrive.

Because we weren’t planning a 10th episode for this season — we’d planned to stop at nine episodes — we don’t have a presentation for this episode. And so instead what we’re gonna do here is we’re just gonna have a conversation and a lot of that conversation is gonna be your exegesis of several chapters of Hosea.

‘Cause you managed to find a number of Theology Kills threads in that story in particular. And what I think we’re hoping to do with this episode, rather than give anybody new information, I’m hoping that we can model for the audience how all of these different elements that we’ve been talking about for the last 10 episodes have come together in this one place. And now we’re gonna put ‘em all together and show people how this can produce a particularly fruitful reading of scripture, even when that scripture might be really intimidating and alarming and violent.

Hosea’s a scary book, there are a lot of people who are just like, “Nope. Can’t. Mm-mm.” Nope. With the whoring and the violence and the what’s with the names of these children? What is happening here? Yeah, I get it. I get it. But my hope—

[00:01:54] Andrew: Or they’ll be like, uh, verse six in chapter six is good. Let’s put that one up.

[00:01:58] January: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[00:02:00] Andrew: Cross stitch that on something and put it in a prominent place, but we’re not gonna read verse five.

[00:02:05] January: Yeah.

[00:02:06] Andrew: So like, Jezreel, the name of the first child in chapter one in Hosea verse four,

[00:02:13] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:02:13] Andrew: Okay, “I will visit the blood of Jezreel on you,” and so okay, something bloody happened at Jezreel, let’s find out what that was. Turns out it wasn’t just one thing. There’s some messed up stuff that happens in Jezreel.

[00:02:27] January: Yeah, yeah.

[00:02:28] Andrew: With the death of Jezebel at the hands of two random unnamed people.

Jehu’s killed the king of Judah and chased her husband off with a mortal wound. I don’t know if he’s dead yet or not, but he’s about to be. She knows, and she calls Jehu “Zimri,” which is like I guess it’d be like saying “Benedict Arnold” or something. You know, like it’s some guy that was known as a traitor.

And so, he is like, who’s with me? And there’s two people that are like, yeah, we are. And he’s like, throw her out the window. And they chuck her out the window. Blood goes everywhere. The horses trample her. He goes inside to eat. Jehu does.

[00:03:07] January: Dang.

[00:03:07] Andrew: And then he’s like, well, she is a daughter of the king. We should take care of the body.

And by the time they get out there, there’s nothing left but hands, feet, and skulls. So apparently he’s like, oh, well it’s fulfilled and God foretold that dogs would eat her body. And then her husband Ahab has about 70 sons scattered all over the valley and Samaria. So he sends a letter, Jehu [does], to all over the place saying, okay, choose the best son of Ahab, pick the best amongst them, put him on the throne and be ready to fight.

And apparently they’re all like, yeah uh, he just, he just killed both kings. Do we think we have anybody who can be one king? And so they’re like, no. Okay. Okay. We won’t put anybody on the throne. We’ll listen to what you say.

And he is like, okay, here’s what I say. Cut off the heads of those sons that you could have anointed one of them king, or whatever. Goes, that one, go ahead and cut off their head and send it to me.

[00:04:06] January: Yikes.

[00:04:07] Andrew: And they send 70 heads to Jezreel and they’re in baskets, and they get there and he is okay, pile ‘em up in two piles outside the city gate.

And the next morning he goes out there and he’s like, and ambiguous because question marks are not a thing in ancient manuscripts, but he either says, you are blameless to the people that are gathered there. Or he says, are you blameless? And it’s probably a question:

[00:04:32] January: Mmmmm.

[00:04:32] Andrew: are you blameless? He’s like, sure, I turned against my lord [Ahab], but who killed all these people whose heads you’re looking at?

And is that not the most like, gangster in — not in the like, positive sense of that word — just like mobster-thing. Like, that, that is dark. That is— giving people a first order that you know is gonna make them complicit. And it’s one thing if there’s a governing authority, and I’m like, okay, I’m gonna ask you to break the law so that we can go be lawless together. But he Is the law, right?

So he’s just asking them to do something dastardly. And um, the way it’s told, the narrative voice sort of makes it sound like this dude is the hand of God at work. You know what I mean?

[00:05:25] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:05:25] Andrew: This is the, he’s brought about this, holy cleansing of Israel. There are fulfillment tones

[00:05:33] January: And so Hosea is responding to that?

[00:05:35] Andrew: I hadn’t gotten that far! I was trying to read through the whole book this afternoon and I got, I got to verse four ‘cause that’s where the name Jezreel comes up. There was something in the back of my head, I was like, you don’t want to go read that story. Like you, you know, I didn’t. So I can’t, I’m in verse four of chapter one. And it just kept going, spilling into all this stuff.

[00:05:54] January: Mmm.

[00:05:54] Andrew: There’s a couple different Jehu’s so I was like, wait a second, how many Jehus are there? And, they both have Jehoshaphats but they’re different Jehoshaphats. And you’re just it was getting really confusing trying to tease it all out.

But yeah, “Elisha summoned one of his disciples. Tie up your skirts. Take along this flask of oil. Go to Ramath-Gilead. When you arrive there, go and see Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi” — so not the Jehoshaphat that you’re probably thinking of that was the king of Judah, different Jehoshaphat — “Get him to leave his comrades. Take him to an inner room, and then take the flask of oil and pour on his head and say, “Thus said the Lord: I anoint you King of Israel.’ And open the door and flee without delay.”

Now, some funny stuff happens. Because when the young man went, he arrived and he is like, hey, where’s Jehu? And he takes him in a room like, and when he leaves the, the people that that Jehu was with they’re like, who is that madman? Who’s that crazy dude? What was that all about? And his answer was like,

[00:06:59] January: WTF mate.

[00:07:02] Andrew: Exactly. “And he [Jehu] went out to the other officers of his master, and they asked him, ‘Is it all well? What did that madman come to you for?’ And he said, ‘You know, the man and his ranting!’”

And they’re like, you’re lying. They said, ‘Tell us the truth. He’s like, you know what it was about? And they were like, no, we don’t. He says, “Thus and thus, he said, ‘Thus said the Lord: I anoint you king over Israel.’”

So it’s kind of like, I can’t tell if he’s taking it seriously or not. Like the people around him think he’s a madman. I can’t tell if he’s being sheepish. Well, he said that God said that I’m King of Israel, or I like, I don’t know what the tone is.

But everybody around him took their cloak and placed it under him on the top step. Sounded a horn and proclaimed Jehu as king. Thus Jehu, son of Jehoshaphat, son of Nimshi, conspired against Jehoram.

There’s so much confusion in that. There’s definitely a part of me that would be just like, that would just be easier not to try to make sense of that being in the Bible.

[00:08:06] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:08:06] Andrew: Even the, I think Margaret Barker does something along the lines of this where she divides the first temple and the second temple, and she thinks that there was a debate in Jesus’s time about just how much of a god awful tacky imitation the second temple was.

It was basically like Babylon in, Israelite drag or whatever, like just. It was, and

[00:08:31] January: Amazing.

[00:08:32] Andrew: her reading of Revelation is that the whore of Babylon is the Temple in Jerusalem, meaning the Second Temple. And that to really understand what

[00:08:39] January: Interesting,

[00:08:39] Andrew: She sees this huge division and that it’s in what we call the Old Testament, right? Both sides are there.

Anyway, she has a way of creating a tension within the Jewish scriptures itself. And then she’s like, to understand what Jesus is doing, you need to understand the tension that he’s referencing. And she would say, he comes down solidly on the side of the First Temple, and would agree completely that this Second Temple stuff is just big, showy thing that like, has nothing to do with God.

And that’s part of the gospel message apparently. And so, I’m not ready to discount that out of hand, but when your whole framework begins with a line of demarcation between like what really matters and what missed the boat. You know what I mean?

In a sense, you can come through it and say, yeah, but you need both of those. You need the mistakes or the tackiness to understand what, what is actually wholesome in quality. Like, you need all of that in your library of texts. So it’s all a good thing. We’re not throwing anything out.

But it’s also like, yeah, but if it’s your job to stand over there and look tacky, or it’d be, it’s the two piles of skulls and this guy’s anointed by God, or is he, and like that’s what’s happening.

I’m like, so yeah, I didn’t get anywhere. But I think, I think perhaps what Theology Kills might say to me with regards to reading the Bible is that if what’s getting killed is knowing what the text is saying before you read it.

Yes, I just read something, I saw something, I understood something. But if I walk away with, okay, now I, I understand 2 Kings 9 and 10 and how that relates to Hosea [chapter 1] verse four, check. Like, if that’s what I end up doing, have I precluded the possibility of me ever reading those passages again?

And in so doing like, did I actually read it? It seems like part of reading it is always gonna end up being some sort of deferral to, yeah, I just read it, but I still don’t know.

[00:10:44] January: And that connected for me with a passage that many, many, many Girardians love to quote, which is Hosea chapter six, verse six, which is the infamous I desire mercy, not sacrifice line.

[00:10:57] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:10:58] January: But we will come back to that. ‘Cause I think you wanted to give us some context for the larger arc of Hosea and what’s happening in the lead up to that line.

[00:11:06] Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I mean, you mentioned that and I’m like, oh yeah, we’re quote unquote Girardians here, we should mention that one. It’s kind of a big deal.

And you were saying, yeah, but we need to read chapter six, verse five. And I was like, okay, okay. And then I was like, but I’m gonna have to read the whole book now. You know, like, if I’m gonna be ready and I’m not gonna make everybody read the whole book.

I’ll talk a bit about the first three chapters at some point maybe, and what’s going on with Hosea and his story and how he’s instructed to marry somebody and he’s instructed to give these names to these poor kids. I, part of me is just like, I, I hope this is just like some sort of prophetic fiction thing

[00:11:44] January: A metaphor, yeah.

[00:11:45] Andrew: to make a point. I really hope so, but maybe not. I’ll never

know.

So in chapter four of Hosea, we really get into the message that Hosea is going to be delivering. And I’ll read here. I’m gonna be reading mostly from Robert Alter’s translation. I’ll mention if I’m not, but I’ll start with his. It says in chapter four, begins,

“Hear the Word of the Lord.” Right. That’s, prophets say that kind of stuff all the time. Yeah. So we’re getting to it. This is the moment, right? “Hear the word of the Lord, oh Israelites, for the Lord has a brief” — think, like, legal case, has a brief, right?

“The Lord has a brief against the dwellers of the land.” Doesn’t even say my people, Israelites, house of Israel. Just dwellers of the land. So already there’s tones of this-is-intense. And it is. This is an in your face thing.

“For there is no truth, and there is no trust, and there is no knowledge of the Lord in the land.”

Now Robert Alter’s using the word trust to refer to the hesed

[00:12:49] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:49] Andrew: word that gets, I think if you have the NIV loving kindness, usually hyphenated.

[00:12:54] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:55] Andrew: I can’t tell you what that word means. It means a lot. But he felt like there was sense, I think he translates it as kindness very often, but he felt in this context there was a sort of loyalty tone or fidelity but the fact that he chose the word trust,

[00:13:10] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:11] Andrew: already, I was like, wait, the fact there’s no truth and no trust? That’s the problem? I’m like, oh that, that is the quintessential problem, at least as far as Season One of Theology Kills goes. Like that is where it starts.

So I was already like, oh man, it’s actually in the Bible!

Okay. “Hear the word the Lord oh Israelites, for the Lord has a brief against the dwellers of the land. There is no truth. There is no trust, and there is no knowledge of the Lord in the land. Falsely swear, and murder, and steal, and commit adultery. They burst bonds and the blood spills upon blood.

[00:13:52] January: Hmm.

[00:13:54] Andrew: “Therefore the land does languish and all those dwelling within it are bleak. With the beasts of the field and the fowl of the heavens and with the fish of the sea too, they shall perish.”

So I mean, the language in verse three, that last part I was reading about, the different animals, the fowl, the fish, that’s gonna be bringing an Israelite mind back to Genesis, right? And creation. This is how intense this is.

[00:14:19] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:20] Andrew: That bursting of bonds being like, that’s the upshot. I mean, murder, steal, commit adultery. That sounds like a synopsis of the 10 Commandments, but like it leads to this violence, which is essentially a loss of relationship.

[00:14:34] January: Yep.

[00:14:35] Andrew: And so that’s the opening salvo. Is it a strike? I don’t, it feels like you get the tone, right?

[00:14:41] January: Oh yeah. God is not happy.

[00:14:43] Andrew: Yeah. The Lord God has an issue, has a bone to pick. And this case that he’s delivering against his people, it’s intense. And it starts with the priests, actually.

Verse four. “Let no man inveigh, let no man rebuke,” you got the parallelism there, which is always in Hebrew poetry. You got 1, 2, 1, 2, sometimes there’s a three.

[00:15:03] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:03] Andrew: Spoiler alert, in this one, there’s a three. But let no man inveigh. Let no man rebuke. You’re like, okay, okay. Don’t be bitter about stuff and don’t argue

[00:15:12] January: Pointing a finger.

[00:15:13] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. “…when your people inveighs against priests.” He qualifies the whole thing. Don’t rebuke the people that are rebuking the priests. Basically what he’s saying is like, okay, if somebody’s rebuking priests and inveighing against them and like—oh yeah, that, that’s, that’s fine.

[00:15:30] January: Mm-hmm. We actually need to hear that? Yeah!

[00:15:32] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’re gonna need and it, yeah, it comes hard and fast for the priests. Not just them. It doesn’t end with them. It certainly starts with them, but by verse 18 of chapter four, it’s more about just the people dwelling in the land altogether, the populace. Says “Whoring is all they care about. They barter their glory for shame.”

[00:15:57] January: Mmm.

[00:15:58] Andrew: That comes from the Jerusalem Bible.

In chapter five, verse two. They’ve dug a deep pit of straying. Now, this actually didn’t make it to the Jerusalem Bible. It made it to a footnote in the Jerusalem Bible that talks about they use the word corruption to mean when a text is a little unclear, meaning they’re not sure which vowels actually go to the letters.

They know which vowels got attributed later, hundreds of years later. But it just reads a little weird. Maybe there’s different texts or copies of it that don’t line up or whatever. So they just write the letters CORR. It stands for corrupted, but it doesn’t mean it’s evil or anything. It just means we’re not entirely sure.

[00:16:36] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:36] Andrew: And so this, they make sense of it. I think Robert Alter said they’ve dug a deep pit at Shittim, and so he inserts a place name Shittim because in the previous verse there were a couple place names and so he’s like one, two, oh, it’s a third place name. That makes sense.

But yeah, the footnote in the Jerusalem Bible, they said, oh yeah, like if you just read it, literally, this is what it says and doesn’t exactly make sense. So we’ve said this other thing, that’s what the footnote is. But I, when I heard they’ve dug deep the pit of straying. I was like, that’s scandal! Like,

[00:17:07] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:07] Andrew: that’s what Girard’s talking about! Like you’re going nowhere, but you’re just going off everywhere.

[00:17:12] January: Yep.

[00:17:12] Andrew: A deep pit of straying? I was like, this is, this is perfect. So, but again, that said, the, the translators didn’t actually go with that and I don’t know enough Hebrew know if that’s what, but anyway.

And that idea of straying, that fits with imagery we got earlier in the chapter in chapter four, verse 16, For like a wayward cow, Israel was wayward. Now shall the Lord herd him like a sheep in an open field?

Okay. And so the idea, ifyou’re moving a cow, and it’s singular, chances are it’s ‘cause you want it to go in a straight line because you’re pulling a plow behind it. And a wayward cow in that sense. If it’s going somewhere you’re not plowing effectively.

And if that sort of weaving is messing up your field, if that’s going on, are you gonna sit back and just look at it like—now sheep in a field, you don’t care where any one sheep goes, and they mill about or whatever. And that’s fine. A cow that’s like zigzagging all across your, the field you’re trying to sow seed in are you just gonna sit back like it’s a sheep and be like, okay, let’s see. You know, as long as it doesn’t go too far, it doesn’t go into the neighbor’s field, it’s fine. No! Is that what the Lord’s—?

So the straying thing is

there. Another verse here. “My people asks oracles of a tree, and his rod tells him what to do.”

Now, whose rod are we talking about? Chances are some sort of diviner type, I don’t know what the word is, but

[00:18:37] January: Magician. Yeah.

[00:18:38] Andrew: Magician kind of person. Yeah. And yeah, “my people ask oracles of a tree and his rod tells him what to do, for a spirit of whoring made them stray, and they played the whore against their God.”

Now, that’s Robert Alter’s translation, and he put in a footnote about ‘against’ and they played the whore ‘against’ their God, and he said, well, the actual word is under. But that doesn’t make sense.

[00:19:11] January: Ooh!

[00:19:13] Andrew: This—

[00:19:13] January: Oh, but doesn’t it though?

[00:19:15] Andrew: Oh, okay. Now, I’ve been using the word whore a bit here, and in our culture, it’s an insult first.

[00:19:22] January: Mm. Mm-hmm.

[00:19:24] Andrew: I mean, if we’re talking about sex workers, we don’t use that word. While I’m not trying to say that it wouldn’t have been an insult in that day and time, it wasn’t an insult first. This was a means of survival.

[00:19:37] January: Mm.

[00:19:38] Andrew: And as much as it is today, for some folks, it would’ve been a means. And so when you’re saying that it’s awful, it’s terrible, but it’s not an indictment necessarily of a moral failing so much as this is what this person has had to do.

And the first three chapters of this book are about, a man who was instructed by God to marry a whore. And that’s the language that Robert Alter uses. But I think to convey what’s going on here, it’d make much more sense for me just to say to marry a sex worker. But of course that’s way too PC and misses. That’s not a good translation either.

So I’m not faulting Robert Alter for the word.

So yeah, I started looking into this and they played the whore against their God. Now, the word that gets translated as against there is actually two words. There’s the word that means ‘under’ and then ‘from’ — from under — and they get put together.

Now, this ‘from’ word is a partitive preposition. It’s used to separate things. When you’re doing comparisons, this is bigger than that. You don’t actually have the ‘-er’ ending on the adjective. You use this preposition, right? So, if you’re coming from a place, you might use this so it’s like from under, and so it’s not hard in the English mind to go from under to out from under.

And that’s the idea that I think Robert Alter had in his mind when he is thinking about Hosea and his wife that’s playing the whore is that she’s out there, out from under his household, or his, whatever, she’s out there doing all that stuff out there, out from under his authority.

And that’s, and I didn’t do an exhaustive search. But I did a quick search and these two prepositions come together regularly. And the, the one the from one gets added into things all the time and so I, I didn’t find any that were ‘out from under,’ but I found some that were very clearly just ‘under.’ Like when we talk about the waters in Genesis one.

So there’s waters and the great expanse comes in and so there were waters that were under the expanse, and waters that were over. It doesn’t say there were waters out from under the expanse. Let’s think about that.

[00:21:43] January: Mm.

[00:21:43] Andrew: Okay? If the waters are out from under the expanse, where do they go?

[00:21:46] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:46] Andrew: Anyway, there are cases where this conjunction of words can very clearly just mean under. Okay. And so I started thinking about, well, okay. They played the whore while under their God.

[00:22:01] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:22:02] Andrew: And the full verse, “my people asked oracles of a tree, and his rod tells them what to do for a spirit of whoring made them stray. And they played the whore while under their God.”

It’s very clear in the first three chapters of the book that Hosea’s wife is sleeping with other men after they’re married. I think they’re officially married. They’re officially together in some sense. I’ve been using the word marriage, but there’s love marriage and there are arranged marriages. I think it’s really problematic in ancient cultures, to imagine that any sort of union starts with people being friends, being best friends, and being like, you know what? Let’s get married!

That didn’t happen. That’s not anything that ever happened in any of the Old Testament. Now, that’s not to say that people whose marriages were arranged did not become loving. I can’t imagine people avoiding love. I mean, yeah, proximity can do a lot of things and not always good, but yeah, love is gonna happen, right?

But, it got me thinking about, well, well what? Wait, what? What would that mean if the person is playing the whore while right there with you? And full disclosure of how my brain got from A to B, ‘cause I was like, okay, and his rod tells them what to do, I’m like, is that a sexual thing? ‘Cause we’re talking about whoring and the under I’m like, what kind of under are we talking about?

Now, if this was Ezekiel, I’d be like, I bet so. Ezekiel says some stuff that’s just outrageous. He must have learned it from those naughty Babylonians that he was hanging around with. I don’t think the ancient Israelites would talk that way, the way Ezekiel does. So but anyway I’m being a little, like my brain has some sexually graphic images here, but I don’t think that’s what has to be happening with under their God.

I think it just means that the analogy of the wife that’s running around is supposed to be one of Israel running around with other gods.

Now, if you’re the maker of heaven and earth. Like, heaven! You made heaven! And you made earth! If that’s who you are, and you see some of your creatures running around doing nonsense with nobodies, are you gonna feel, like, less than? Like, oh man, what’s that say about me? That’s… my glory can’t be stained with… I made you!! And you…?

Like there, yeah. The greatness of God is not threatened by our human nonsense. It’s just not.

[00:24:31] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:24:32] Andrew: But if I’m playing that game with a bunch of nobodies out there and God’s like, “Eh, yeah, I, I, I knew who you were before and I took you,” and then I come home and I’m playing that same game.

What I mean by that is God and Hosea are in this position together, right? With these partners that they’ve taken on. And both of them knew full well what degree of quote unquote “nonsense” they’re capable of.

But it’s not just nonsense. If I’m referring to people in ancient cultures as sex workers, I feel like it might be anachronistic. Did they have

[00:25:17] January: mm-hmm.

[00:25:17] Andrew: a free choice to make or was it something imposed upon them by their economic situation? I can’t make an absolute statement. And of course it’s no historian can, but would seem likely that what’s happened there was something that was driven by economics and necessity in ancient cultures.

But I started imagining God as someone who wouldn’t be threatened by “his woman” going around sleeping with nobodies. He’s the maker of heaven and earth. God, I’m using a masculine pronoun here ‘cause I’m gonna make Israel female. But like God’s saying, okay, okay, you played this game with all those nobodies, and it’s a transactional thing.

And that comes out in the text with things that she’s getting like flax and garments and stuff. Like, you’re out there trying to get something, to do something, with these nobodies. And you’re not gonna get anything from that. I know what you’re not gonna get. I know what you’re doing.

You’re playing a game with nobodies. But now you come home and you’re playing that game with me?

[00:26:22] January: Mm.

[00:26:24] Andrew: I’m supposed to be somebody to you.

[00:26:27] January: Yeah.

[00:26:29] Andrew: You are playing the harlot with me? What are you trying to get? What transaction are you trying to complete? Like what? What is it? Like—

[00:26:39] January: You’ve already been given everything there is!

[00:26:42] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, there’s a broken heartedness. I don’t think that’s God dealing with a smudge on divine glory that is like, oh, what if somebody sees, what if somebody sees this? No.

[00:26:56] January: Yeah,

[00:26:56] Andrew: There’s a broken heart.

[00:26:59] January: Yeah.

[00:27:00] Andrew: When that nonsense comes home, that’s what hurts God.

In chapter five, verse four, it says, and if you have a translation pulled up, go to Hosea chapter five if you can. In Alter’s translation, it says, “Their acts do not let them turn back to their God.

[00:27:20] January: Ooh.

[00:27:22] Andrew: “For the spirit of whoring is within them and the Lord they do not know.”

[00:27:27] January: Ooh.

[00:27:29] Andrew: Mine says their acts do not let them turn back to their God.

What does yours say in the first half?

[00:27:35] January: “Their deeds won’t allow them to turn to their God, for the spirit of prostitution is within them, and they don’t know Yahweh.”

[00:27:42] Andrew: Their deeds won’t allow them, their acts won’t allow them to turn back.

Now this word ‘turn back’ it’s used all over. It’s a very common word, but my recollection, and this is a faint one, but the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament is a big old, I don’t know, 12, 13 volume set of all these Greek words.

And I remember looking up repentance and this, is one of those words that gets at the idea of repentance. Like when people are describing repentance as just like ‘turn around,’ this is the word for turn around.

“Their acts do not let them turn back to their God.”

And because we’re doing the podcast that we’re doing, and I’ve still got the Heroine’s Journey and the Creative’s Journey in my mind, their Doings do not let them repent.

[00:28:28] January: Mm mm-hmm.

[00:28:29] Andrew: Their Doing.

[00:28:30] January: Ooh!

[00:28:31] Andrew: does not let them repent.

[00:28:33] January: Ooh.

[00:28:33] Andrew: because the spirit of whoring — the hustle that’s involved in that, the “I’m gonna make this happen because if I don’t make it happen, it’s not going to happen” — that spirit is inside them, and the Lord they do not know. Perpetual Doing won’t allow you to repent.

Yeah, this, this whole, this case that gets presented is chapters four and five.

We’re working our way to chapter six. I already read how chapter four started. Chapter five ends with, for I, and this is the, the Lord God speaking, “For I am like a lion to Ephraim.”

Ephraim is just another word for the northern kingdom. When Israel got split in half the northern kingdom we called Ephraim as opposed to Judah, although sometimes it’s called Israel as opposed to Judah.

Even though Israel’s everybody, sometimes Israel’s the northern kingdom. Hosea uses both. It’s a bit confusing, but when it’s Ephraim, you know, it’s that is that northern kingdom.

Hosea was prophesying to the northern kingdom. I think that’s right.

Okay. “For I am like a lion to Ephraim and like the king of beasts to the house of Judah. I, I will maul the prey and go off, bear it away, and no one will save it.”

That stutter, the I- I, that’s in the text. That pronoun gets used twice.

“I will go return to my place until they sense their guilt and seek me. When in straits they shall search for me.”

[00:30:15] January: Mine says “In their affliction, they will seek me earnestly.” Haven’t we talked about that?

[00:30:20] Andrew: Yeah, yeah. Straits, affliction. This searching. Yes. Yes,

Repentance is not something that you do, I don’t think. And feel like I’ve lived an example of perpetual Doing, being upended by a moment of repentance, and it was all an internal thing.

And this is new to me and far as like sorting out my parts and what they’re doing. But I started to realize that I have a bit of a storyteller inside me that just likes to tell stories, has fun, likes for other people to enjoy the stories. And actually doesn’t need an audience, can do it all on its own, and it’s just fine.

It’s also a coping mechanism. It’s a regulating strategy. When things are too much, tell a story about it. Okay.

I also have a part that is resentful of my storyteller. It’s particularly resentful of like, there’s been occasions where this part has wanted to ask a question, and the storyteller just jumped in, told the story about the full explanation, and then it didn’t make sense. And immediately there’s a second story that was told. It’s just boom, there’s the story and it’s how it goes. Isn’t it fun?

And this part’s kind of like, can we, can we just stop for a second and think about what’s going on? Can we actually ask a question without telling what the answer is immediately and a fun story to go with it. Uh, Can we, can we just sit in a question for a moment?

Right. So this is a part of me that, that is. That’s annoyed, and it popped out, I was in therapy yesterday. It came up and it was, I, it is a bit like a lion just coming out and be like, aagh! like, braagh! can you, can you just not! Like that kind of thing.

And so my therapist was like, oh, there was, there’s something there, I think. I was like, yeah, that one’s annoyed. I realized there was a part that was annoyed at these quick answers thwarting the potential for genuine curiosity. And he was like. Well, let’s turn our attention and see what it has to say. You can turn toward it and recognize that it’s here and I couldn’t. It was just like boom and gone.

And that, but I, I knew it was there. It took a little while, but it switched to this kind of like, I was speaking for it, which I, I knew was probably gonna be my storyteller, which probably annoyed the shit out of it. Anyway! Like, this is the part that’s gonna speak on my?!

If you can’t, if you can’t stop two seconds to just ponder a question, what makes me think that you’re gonna stop for two seconds and listen to what I have to say? You already know what I have to say, don’t you?

Like it’s coming out even now, like that was

[00:32:55] January: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[00:32:56] Andrew: And so the therapist is like, okay. Okay. So that sounds like something that part would say I think we’re listening to it and I was like, immediately it’s like, yeah, but I don’t. I don’t know that, that that part is using IFS principles to understand what’s going on right now.

Like I don’t think it quite gets the fact that just because I can say like, I just sees this one part that’s in the way and is always answering everything and it’s it, I don’t even know if it can see past it.

[00:33:25] January: Yeah.

[00:33:25] Andrew: And the, the therapist was like, yeah, yeah, we don’t know how much it knows about IFS or whatever. He didn’t use the word scandalized, but I was immediately like, this part is scandalized by my storyteller and I, for all I know, it can’t hear anything else.

[00:33:38] January: Yeah.

[00:33:39] Andrew: And it’s annoyed,

[00:33:40] January: uhhuh

[00:33:41] Andrew: beyond annoyed. That was pretty much the end of the session and afterwards, I, I’m really bad at trying to spend time with parts on my own. I, I’ve tried, but I think I just have a Self-like part.

[00:33:54] January: Yeah.

[00:33:54] Andrew: And for folks I’m saying LIKE, it’s like the Self, it’s a part that pretends to be the Self but isn’t actually, and just like trots around and says everything that’s supposed to be said. Like I feel like when I try to spend time with my parts, it’s just that one and it’s starting to annoy even me now. So like I haven’t done, I haven’t done a lot of that.

Afterwards I was trying to turn to that part and I was like. I suspect that I’m the one who’s annoying you right now and I’m the last one you want to hear speaking right now. And I can’t imagine that I’ll say the right thing ‘cause I’m constantly talking too fast. But perhaps you can hear contrition in my voice.

[00:34:34] January: Mm. Mm-hmm.

[00:34:36] Andrew: I don’t know why I said that, but that’s what I said to that part. I don’t know what that part heard. But that was, I believe, repentance happening to me.

[00:34:47] January: Yeah.

[00:34:48] Andrew: I didn’t up and decide to repent of overbearing behavior in my internal landscape. When repentance happens, it won’t be a conscious choice because in a way it’s like, at least if this is a template for it, like there, there won’t actually be a choice to make. It’s just you gotta, there’ll be a new desire.

[00:35:13] January: Yes.

[00:35:14] Andrew: And it’s a desire.

[00:35:16] January: Yeah.

[00:35:16] Andrew: Check this out, Girardians. This desire, this new desire is one that breaks through scandal.

[00:35:24] January: Yes, exactly.

[00:35:26] Andrew: I think, I really do think, I really do think that part must have perceived something other than just the part it was scandalized by all this time, in that contrition.

[00:35:37] January: Uhhuh. That’s amazing.

[00:35:40] Andrew: So as frightening as it may be to hear God say, I am like a lion to Ephraim and like the king of beasts to the house of Judah, I, I will maul the prey and go off and bear it away and no one will save it.

I will go return to my place until they sense their guilt and seek me. When in their affliction, they earnestly search for me. Right. This repentance, it seems terrifying! The prophet is searching for the language of, like, predators to describe this! Right? But what it’s after is a sense of guilt that creates a new desire.

You’re in a tight fix, but you want something, you want something new.

Now, that’s just chapter five, and we’re trying to get to chapter six, because chapter six begins, “Come let us return to the Lord for he mauled, but he will heal us. He struck, but he will bind up. He will revive us after two days. On the third day, raise us up that we may live in his presence and that we may pursue knowing the Lord. Like daybreak, his emergence is sure. And he’ll come to us like rain, like the latter rain he will shower the earth.”

Now, Robert Alter says those three verses and it’s, you can hear it. It’s not the prophet speaking, this is the people’s response. They just heard two chapters of like, oh, okay.

[00:37:19] January: Yeah.

[00:37:20] Andrew: And I don’t know about you January, and I don’t wanna foist reading on anybody, but this, these three verses sound to me like a double down on the Doing.

[00:37:31] January: Mm.

[00:37:32] Andrew: Come let us return to the Lord tell you, okay. He mauled us, but this is what he’ll do if we do. He struck down, but he will bind he’ll. He’ll do the things if we, we know this come

[00:37:42] January: interesting.

[00:37:44] Andrew: And I think that’s, I don’t think they just heard the thing and be like, oh, okay, so repentance can happen to us now, because otherwise—I think they’re doubling down.

And then the prophet speaks in verse four. “What shall I do for you, Ephraim? What shall I do for you, Judah? When your trust is like a morning cloud.”

Remember what they were saying about rain? I think I might’ve said the latter rain, that means the springtime rains. Right?

[00:38:10] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:10] Andrew: Oh, and as sure as the sun. Yeah. This rain-on-everybody language, it picks up the same image. “Your trust is like a morning cloud, like early dew that melts away.”

You have no trust! Saying you’re gonna turn, you’re gonna come back, you’re gonna do, do, do, do. Where’s the trust?

[00:38:30] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:38:31] Andrew: “Therefore, have I hacked among your prophets, slain them with the utterances of my mouth. And your sentence? Justice will come out like light.”

I was gonna let you read verse five because this is where we’re picking up with your stuff, but I’ve just been dumbfounded with how many Theology Kills Season One themes showed up in the beginning of Hosea

And I left some out! There’s more wine is in there too. There’s all sorts of stuff, but yeah, this is what leads up to Hosea 6:6and this conversation.

[00:39:05] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:06] Andrew: about the difference between mercy and sacrifice.

[00:39:08] January: Yeah. I have to say this first ‘cause I’m appreciating the point you just made about this is them Doing, because I always get hung up on that particular set of verses because there’s so much, especially in the New Testament, about imitating Jesus, or imitating Paul as he’s imitating Christ. We’re supposed to imitate God.

If I imitated those behaviors? Of inflicting wounds only to bind them up?

[00:39:32] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:33] January: We would call that abuse.

[00:39:34] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah.

[00:39:36] January: That’s what that would be. And so I’ve never been able to get a handle on those lines. But when you phrase it as they’re still in the Doing mindset.

[00:39:44] Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:39:45] January: They’re still in the in acquisitive desire. They are trying to impose that cause and effect on God,

[00:39:52] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:39:52] January: rather than that actually being how God wants to relate to them. And so then God is coming in and correcting their interpretation and saying, no, it’s trust.

[00:40:01] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:40:01] January: It’s mercy.

[00:40:02] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:40:03] January: My justice is to reveal this to you.

[00:40:06] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:40:07] January: So that’s when then we get into verses five and six, and I got very attached to Hosea chapter six, verse five, because I was very familiar with that phrase “For I desire mercy and not sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than burned offerings.”

[00:40:22] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:40:22] January: But the verse that leads into it is, “Therefore I have cut them to pieces with the prophets. I killed them with the words of my mouth,” and I was like, yeah, theology kills, right?

[00:40:34] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:40:35] January: Like this is,

[00:40:36] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:40:36] January: that’s it. That is exactly what is happening there. That it’s killing off, not us, but the acquisitive desires.

[00:40:45] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:40:46] January: It’s killing off the parts of us that aren’t really human and that’s not a comfortable process, yeah. But it’s for our health, it’s for our benefit. It’s for our good. It’s not to injure us just so that God can come in and bind us up.

[00:41:01] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:41:02] January: Right.

[00:41:03] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:41:03] January: That’s an abusive dynamic.

[00:41:05] Andrew: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:41:06] January: This is, I am cutting off your bindings and setting you free from what has been keeping you in hell.

[00:41:11] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:41:12] January: And so, I kind of reinterpreted the verse a little bit here, but I, I, speaking as someone who doesn’t speak these languages natively, I think I’m still getting at the gist of what it’s saying, when the way that I understood it was, “My judgment shines forth, revealing that I desire mercy and not sacrifice.”

[00:41:31] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:41:31] January: The judgment is to show us our sin, which we fucking hate being confronted by that. No, thank you. The light of revelation that shows our sins for what they are. That is the judgment and that same word, that gets translated as judgment can also be translated as justice.

[00:41:49] Andrew: Yeah,

[00:41:50] January: Which I think you just said is what Robert Alter does?

[00:41:52] Andrew: No, well, that was me being influenced by your email earlier. Robert Alter says,

[00:41:56] January: Okay, gotcha. Okay.

[00:41:57] Andrew: Uh, “And your sentence will come out like light.” But the sentencing, like this is the upshot of the whole thing.

[00:42:04] January: Yeah.

[00:42:05] Andrew: Now, and he also says that certain manuscripts, there’s a little article, there’s just one letter, that does ‘like,’ like this, like that or whatever.

Anyway, he was saying some manuscripts say ‘like’ light, the others leave it off, and he was saying the last letter of the word preceding it is the same. And there’s a special word for that. When you have two letters side by side, sometimes you forget to write it the second time. And so he’s like, it makes more sense. It was, it’s like light, you know, that’s, this is an.

And I was just like, wait a second, but your sentence, your judgment comes out light. That’s what your judgment is. Light.

[00:42:41] January: Yeah. Revelation.

[00:42:43] Andrew: What if that is? ‘Cause anytime people talk about textual variations and there’s a change that’s made, it seems like inevitably the opposite could also be a reason.

Like, “This is a difficult reading,

[00:42:54] January: yeah.

[00:42:54] Andrew: so probably, this is the one that’s more likely,” or like, “Oh, well this is difficult. Somebody must have messed up.” And I don’t know.

Anyway, so it’s hard to come down with textual arguments, certainly for people like us that don’t speak these languages or anything, but it was reason enough for him to put in a footnote . And more than some translations, his footnotes are rather spare and he thought it worth pointing out that maybe it’s not “like” light, maybe it just is.

That’s it. That’s, that’s the judgment. Poof! Light. You got it now. Look.

[00:43:24] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:24] Andrew: It just, it speaks so much to me, understanding that, I mean, I’ve, yeah, the storyteller part, I mentioned, I think, to you before we started that I’m started thinking of it a bit like a myth maker, and that’s, that sort of has a negative connotation in Girardian circles, but I think this part is ready to accept that negative connotation with regards to the contrition it’s attempting to show toward another part who I don’t think it’s capital self or anything, but it’s latched on to something that has to do with the gospel.

[00:43:53] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:54] Andrew: If the myth teller is saying, okay, okay, don’t worry. “I’ve told one story, I’ll tell another, call your sister, call your brother. Here’s the…”

You know, like, oh storyteller, it is gonna be great.

Like, okay, that’s what the myth makers do. And the gospel light says, “Whoa. Look at this, don’t wreck yourself on that.”

Like, whoa. What? wait a second! Is, is this a story? Like, are we gonna, what’s that—? Like, that’s intense! That’s a little unsettling to hear that.

[00:44:23] January: Yeah,

[00:44:24] Andrew: But I think that’s what the gospel light, it’s not about telling a story and knowing the end already and say, here it is. It’s like, whoa, you could really, really cause some damage. Don’t wreck yourself or anyone else on this. Do you see it now?

[00:44:38] January: Yeah.

[00:44:39] Andrew: What are you gonna do about that?

[00:44:40] January: Yeah.

[00:44:41] Andrew: That’s the gospel light. And if that’s our judgment, if that’s what we receive from God because of our sin? We are blessed.

[00:44:50] January: Absolutely. Absolutely.

Hmm. That was a whole ass sermon right there. Thank you.

[00:44:58] Andrew: Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

[00:45:05] January: I love you making that connection with the contrition and the repentance because what did it take for you to receive that? Not Doing.

[00:45:14] Andrew: No.

[00:45:15] January: Just slowing down and making space.

[00:45:17] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:45:18] January: Just paying attention, coming home to that relationship, desiring the relationship, which is exactly what Hosea’s talking about. I desire relationship with God, not performance for God.

[00:45:34] Andrew: I mean, Robert Alter continues his use of trust all the way through this passage. So for him verse six is “For trust did I want, not sacrifice.”

[00:45:43] January: Mm damn. There we go. Ooh!

[00:45:49] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:45:51] January: Yep. There it is. There it is.

[00:45:55] Andrew: Can you imagine that quote unquote “believers” that are just playing the whore, trying to make a relationship when he’s like, “You just—can you just be in a relationship with me? Like, what is this that you’re doing?”

[00:46:07] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:46:07] Andrew: What do you think you’re achieving? What are you trying to acquire right now? Like, what do you,

[00:46:12] January: Yeah.

[00:46:13] Andrew: Ah, but I sacrificed this for you. I sacrificed that for you. I sacrifice—you know, it’s can you just trust?

[00:46:20] January: Yeah.

[00:46:21] Andrew: That’s what I wanted. Yeah.

[00:46:24] January: Damn, son.

I, I think for me it makes Judas that much more tragic, from what we talked about last episode, that in the Matthew story, at least he had that guilt. He realized what he’d done. He goes, oh shit, I just sentenced an innocent man to death.

[00:46:47] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:46:48] January: That was not the right thing to do. And he does go looking for forgiveness. He tried to go and ask for forgiveness, but Jesus was already imprisoned. He couldn’t go ask Jesus.

[00:47:01] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:47:01] January: So he was stuck going to the only other place to acquire atonement, and that system let him down.

There’s an inability to forgive both ourselves and others in that system. And when we try to do repentance, that’s the system that we’re in. That system is not forgiving.

[00:47:22] Andrew: Yeah. He’s going to the people that are in charge of atonement.

[00:47:26] January: Yeah.

[00:47:26] Andrew: and how Atonement works. That’s why he’s there. And they have nothing for him

[00:47:32] January: Yeah.

[00:47:33] Andrew: apart from joining him in repentance. Because, unless they’re gonna exit the system with him, there’s not much they can help with. And they know that, and that’s what they say. And it sounds heartless and is. It’s like it’s really mean thing to say to some dude that feels like crap. And it’s also a really sad thing to hear somebody say that, that they can’t help.

But Jesus is calling us to repent from the system in which you do repentance. Right? And so if it hadn’t been told in Matthew’s gospel and mentioned at all, then it would’ve been like, okay, well Judas died alright whatever. He wasn’t that important anyway, but the fact that we can go ahead and say, yeah, actually, the archaic sacred plays itself out everywhere all the time. It’s such a human thing. Even while Jesus was going through it, one of his own disciples went through it at the same time. From the inside and from the outside.

[00:48:30] January: Yeah.

[00:48:31] Andrew: There’s a certain audacity, I think, with the gospel authors here, where they can allow both of these stories to be told at the same time and, and I think through the Holy Spirit, they can trust that we’ll be able to see them as completely different stories.

[00:48:45] January: Yeah.

[00:48:45] Andrew: I can only think on that level because of René Girard and what he said about the gospel of Luke, but I feel like maybe there’s a parallel here in Matthew that I haven’t seen before.

[00:48:55] January: And so then it transforms our understanding of repentance as not something we do for atonement.

[00:49:03] Andrew: Exactly. Yeah. Although there’s a flip side you can put to this of like what I was saying, the almost double barrel telling of the archaic sacred and the gospel message happening almost beat for beat, like in stereo, at the same time.

[00:49:18] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:49:19] Andrew: And, um, what I’m saying is not only how amazing it is that the gospel’s so different and can stand apart even in close proximity. You can go ahead and tell the other story, ‘cause this other one’s so transcendent, it’s not gonna be troubled by it in the least.

Yes. And you will never be so mired in the archaic sacred that the gospel message can’t shine through it.

[00:49:40] January: Yeah.

[00:49:40] Andrew: At that very moment. You know what I mean?

[00:49:42] January: Yes.

Goes back to what you were saying all the way back in episode two when we were talking about the misogyny that’s in the Bible and that we don’t have to ignore it.

We don’t have to pretend that it’s not there in order to maintain the purity of the gospel message, whatever, like it, no, no, no, the gospel light shines through even that.

[00:50:03] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:50:05] January: It exposes the misogyny in even its own text, and here it’s exposing the violence in even its own text.

[00:50:13] Andrew: yeah.

[00:50:15] January: I wanna talk a little bit about the title of our podcast, this idea of Theology Kills, and the difference between death that is lamentable and awful, like we talked about last episode with Judas, and death that is what good theology does, which is, killing off what’s keeping us trapped and actually setting us free in a meaningful way.

[00:50:40] Andrew: Yeah. The last episode, I think part of what we’re saying with Theology Kills is that if you do theology you’re gonna change. And anything that changes. I mean, it’s a paradox that’s as old as people trying to make sense of stuff. They notice this one’s kind of confusing, but if something’s changing, well, you’re saying it’s a thing and it’s changed.

So there’s a continuity there. It’s the same thing, but it can’t be a complete continuity. There has to be a difference. The final state is not the same as the first state, otherwise there’s been no change. And that’s,

[00:51:14] January: Yeah.

[00:51:15] Andrew: It seems like I’ve heard this in church more often than not, but yeah, something that doesn’t change, like, well, whatever it is, it’s dead. Right? It’s not alive,

[00:51:22] January: It’s, it is not alive. Yeah.

[00:51:23] Andrew: if it’s not changing. So yeah, Theology Kills, another way to phrase that is that, you will change, if you’re doing theology.

I mean, of course there’s the other sense of bad theology just kills life and leads to people being stuck until they are dead. But even good theology, the killing, there is a reference to the inevitability of change that comes from life, and that in some real sense change necessitates that stuff pass away.

[00:51:52] January: I did want to make sure that we get into a little bit of that, because I think that that can tell us something helpful about how we read scripture.

[00:52:00] Andrew: Hmm.

[00:52:01] January: Based on the definition of violence that we finally articulated in the last episode, which is the exile of someone or something that everybody’s together over here, except for —. That’s what we’re defining as violence in our particular theology here.

And so bad theology that kills, it’s erecting those barriers. It’s defining who’s out. It’s saying here’s the purity line, here’s who’s not allowed in.

[00:52:31] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:52:32] January: And that’s violent theology.

[00:52:34] Andrew: Yeah. It also occurs to me that repentance is a big theme for Jesus right from the beginning. And yeah, Matthew and Mark have repent for the kingdom of heaven is near.

John the Baptist’s whole thing about, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m gonna baptize you guys in water, but the one coming after whose shoes I’m not fit to tie, is gonna baptize you with spirit and fire. And then he gets into that he’s got the winnowing fan in his hand, right?

There’s gonna be a winnowing process. And so wind and fire are, like, that’s how the winnowing worked, right? So maybe the idea of repentance as a change wherein the grain is tossed up in the air and the wind is what pushes the chaff further away and the grain falls down ‘cause it’s heavier and you just get worked and worked and worked until the chaff is blown away.

So it seems like He’s opening an image there for us, John the Baptist is, of the Spirit as a wind that blasts grain that’s been tossed up in the air, knocking away the chaff.

[00:53:34] January: Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And I think that’s important in so far as the change that’s happening to come back again to our Being and Doing, it’s not something that we do, it’s something that happens in us

[00:53:46] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:53:47] January: that we receive. It connected for me specifically with how René Girard talks about Satan

[00:53:56] Andrew: Hmm.

[00:53:56] January: What René Girard says in his book, I See Satan Fall Like Lightning, is, “The devil does not have a stable foundation. He has no being at all. To clothe himself in a semblance of being, he must act as a parasite on God’s creatures. He is totally mimetic, which amounts to saying non-existent as an individual self.”

And so, the image that I got was not that we have to do some kind of spiritual warfare to kick Satan out of the system. ‘Cause he has no being to fight against.

[00:54:31] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:54:31] January: You can’t even do that. Good theology, when something’s dying, it’s something much more akin to giving the parasite nothing to feed on than it is like actively going and exterminating the parasite.

And then of course, that connected immediately with the Robert Falconer interviews that we’ve been listening to ad nauseum for how many months now.

[00:54:56] Andrew: Okay, so that’s where my brain is. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:54:58] January: Because Falconer talks about unattached burdens as parasites.

[00:55:02] Andrew: Yeah. He feels that unattached burdens is a poor label for it, because it makes it sound like it’s just a thing,

[00:55:08] January: mm-hmm.

[00:55:08] Andrew: a splinter that can be removed. Whereas for him, they have agency. They’re alive. I mean the title of his book, The Others Within Us I think, yeah, he felt like, if you’d label something, an unattached burden or a guide right from the beginning, you’ve already decided whether it’s good or bad.

And that’s a problem. It’s a practical problem when you’re doing therapy. And maybe these things are as nasty as all get out, but I mean, he’s anthropomorphizing here, but they seem to be nourished first and foremost by fear.

[00:55:39] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:40] Andrew: So his whole point, he said that there are shamanic traditions that if you see a thread that attaches you to one of these entities, you cut it off. And he’s like, no don’t cut the thread. Follow it.

[00:55:50] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:51] Andrew: See where it attaches to you. There’s work to be done there.

[00:55:55] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:56] Andrew: And principally he said that they seem to live off fear. So gather all the parts that are afraid one by one, let them interact with Self to the point where they’re not afraid, and these things have nothing to hold onto.

But then he said an interesting thing. He said that even after fear has been taken care of, anger can become a problem.

[00:56:16] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:56:16] Andrew: And if these parts that aren’t afraid anymore, or other parts that are invigorated by the, absence of fear—the angry parts can attack this thing with—he was using the image of a spear that you would use as an offensive weapon, but he’s like, the spear turns into a hook.

[00:56:31] January: Yeah.

[00:56:31] Andrew: They know that. They know that they can hook you with your anger. And they’ll try to make you angry. Again, he personifies these things, and he does it just as a pragmatic thing. That’s how it seems to work best for him as a therapist and best for his clients when they personify them. So that’s how I’m talking about it here.

But yeah, an attention that is fearful or an attention that turns to anger,

[00:56:54] January: accusation,

[00:56:55] Andrew: yeah. Here’s the thing. In my book, it is perfectly okay to be afraid of God

[00:57:00] January: Mmm.

[00:57:01] Andrew: And to be angry at God.

[00:57:03] January: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:04] Andrew: And to say all the things you’d say to somebody who scares the crap outta you or enrages you. You can say all of those things to God at any point, but if you’re getting,

[00:57:15] January: Yes.

[00:57:15] Andrew: if you’re getting the feeling that this other to whom you’re talking can only be happy when you’re afraid or can only be happy when you’re angry? That’s not God. Right. God will tolerate your fear and anger, but if that’s what it’s built on, you’re not building a relationship with anything that you need to be building a relationship with. Period.

And so, I’m trying my best not to say that fear and anger are problematic in and of themselves. They’re not.

[00:57:41] January: Yeah.

[00:57:41] Andrew: In fact, you can direct all that fear and anger toward God and just, yeah, it’ll transform.

[00:57:47] January: Yeah.

[00:57:47] Andrew: But if it’s not transforming, if your fear and anger are not transforming, then you’re in a trap.

[00:57:53] January: Yeah.

To back up there just a little bit, I think we should probably introduce Falconer and the idea of unattached burdens. ‘Cause we’ve mentioned his name a few times, but we haven’t talked about him properly. But I feel like he’s gonna come up in this episode again.

And so Robert Falconer is someone whose work I’m still fairly new to, like within the last couple of years. But he is an IFS instructor and an IFS therapist. And he is unique in the IFS world in that a lot of IFS is very focused on the science of it. It’s very like, this is an evidence-based therapeutic method and here’s all of the numbers and the data about why it’s trustworthy and here’s all of the studies that say that it works. And, you know, all of that is great. That’s good stuff.

But what IFS therapists, who were actually using this tool with clients, kept finding over and over and over again was that if they went deep enough, sometimes it stopped being therapy and turned into a spiritual encounter. There was something other than the client in the room.

[00:58:58] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:58:59] January: And so when those other energies are helpful and beneficial, IFS tends to call them guides. But when those other energies are invested in terrifying or harming the client

[00:59:14] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:59:14] January: IFS calls them unattached burdens.

And this is a seriously woo-woo subcategory of IFS that a lot of therapists won’t go near. And you don’t have to. You can do IFS and probably never encounter this, but for those who do encounter it, Robert Falconer has become the person who takes you seriously.

[00:59:36] Andrew: Yeah.

[00:59:37] January: So everybody has ended up going to talk to Robert Falconer about these experiences that they had because he would actually listen and stay curious instead of insisting that he already knew what the story was gonna say. And the result is that he’s become this “expert.” I mean, he would I think despise that term, so I’m not going to artificially apply it to him.

But, he is the most practically experienced therapist when it comes to these spiritual presence experiences. And he has an amazing book that he’s written about it called The Others Within Us which, I’m gonna be totally honest here. I don’t know what to do with.

Like, every fact that’s in there that I’ve been able to personally verify has been accurately represented as far as I can tell. He’s done so many interviews and encountered this same phenomenon in so many different cultures. And it’s a phenomenon that doesn’t exist in my personal experience and doesn’t fit into my worldview at all.

Like, I’m a fairly woo-woo person, but it is way the fuck over my threshold for woo-woo. Way the fuck. And yet, it’s so well presented. And Bob himself, every time I hear that man speak, I’m like, this person is so sane.

[01:01:01] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:01:02] January: Right.

[01:01:02] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:01:04] January: Calm and grounded and funny and totally disinterested in whether you believe him or not. Like he has no investment in convincing anybody of anything. He’s just like, yeah, here’s what I got. Take it or leave it. That’s cool.

[01:01:20] Andrew: I was just gonna add that sometimes the people that interview him don’t come across quite as sane as he does, in my experience.

[01:01:27] January: That is true.

[01:01:28] Andrew: But yeah, no, yeah, yeah. What he says, just so much of it, just sounds like common sense and yeah. We should add that for folks that find what he’s saying to be a little unsettling or just like, oh, come on, you can’t be serious, he does turn to the idea of legacy burdens as something that is researched and scientifically supported, that there’s stuff that’s in us that affects our behavior, that’s not us.

[01:01:53] January: Which, if you’re a Girardian, you’re like, well, duh.

[01:01:56] Andrew: Exactly. You’re just like, okay, yeah,

[01:01:59] January: Yeah. Obviously, I got all of this stuff from the others who came before me. Of course.

[01:02:03] Andrew: Yeah. And it gets called epigenetics in the science realm. They’ve been able to reproduce things with rats where they have male rats. They teach them to have an alert response to a certain smell that is otherwise a pleasant smell. But they train them through electroshock to have this twitchy, nervy response to whenever they smell this stuff. And then they’re able to see that response in later generations of mice or rats and stuff. I don’t know. I don’t know. I, I can’t, but it’s it’s out there.

I haven’t heard him say this, but it occurs to me that the same way, we talk about the humane treatment of animals, generally what we mean is not, that like, oh, well, animals are people too. Which, you know, maybe they are, but there’s something about being human that says, let’s treat these animals like, like we’re human.

[01:02:48] January: Yeah.

[01:02:48] Andrew: You know, I, I, I mean, I’m just talking about lab rats, so maybe that’s why this is jumping in my head, but like,the humane treatment is like, look, there’s ways humans behave toward others in the world, whether they’re human or not.

[01:03:00] January: Yeah.

[01:03:01] Andrew: I’m human and that’s enough for me to have respect for animals.

[01:03:05] January: Yeah.

[01:03:05] Andrew: I think that’s what humane treatment of animals means. And there’s something about that, that rings so true, for me, and I, I think it relates to my understanding of Girard that humane treatment may be for our benefit, before anything else.

[01:03:19] January: Yeah.

[01:03:19] Andrew: Rather than a firm assertion that these spirits are personal. Okay. Maybe we’re just personifying them because when humanity’s at its best. It’s personifying the other. It’s encountering another.

[01:03:31] January: Exactly.

[01:03:32] Andrew: And his approach to these is not at all the exorcist sort of like fight it off. It’s more…

[01:03:39] January: “Begone in the name of Jesus!”

[01:03:41] Andrew: Yeah. It’s more of a this is some entity that’s lost its way, like it’s in a system where it doesn’t belong. And he’s trying to convince it there’s other places where it’ll be better. Like this isn’t a sustainable environment for it and he’s actually acting in its interest…

[01:03:58] January: as well as the client.

[01:04:00] Andrew: Exactly.

[01:04:01] January: Yeah. And that’s, I mean, that’s the thing that draws me the most to his work, is that what he describes when it comes to quote-unquote “getting rid of” these unattached burdens, these bad spirits — you can’t hear me rolling my eyes, but I’m rolling my eyes right now — his approach feels like Jesus to me.

[01:04:23] Andrew: Hmm.

[01:04:24] January: His approach feels like that exact combination of, “I see you, I care about you, I want the best for you, and also here’s the boundaries.

[01:04:34] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:04:35] January: “You’re hurting this person. You don’t get to do that.

[01:04:37] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:04:38] January: “That’s not gonna happen anymore. You don’t have to go somewhere else where you’d be happier. I’m not gonna force you, but you can’t stay here I’m drawing that line.”

[01:04:48] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:04:49] January: So that’s kind of good enough for me to keep taking it seriously.

[01:04:52] Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:04:53] January: Right.

[01:04:53] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:04:54] January: Like I, I’m just gonna let it sit there and be fucking uncomfortable and not fit well in my mental landscape. I don’t know what’s going on. I wanna know what’s going on, but I don’t really feel like I have to know what’s going on.

There’s something going on there. People are having a real experience. I can figure out whatever language I’m going to use for that. They can use whatever language they’re going to use for that, whether that’s unattached burdens or spirit possession or whatever.

The metric for me is, does this look like Jesus?

[01:05:27] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:05:28] January: And for me, Bob Falconer’s method does. The word that he uses all the time is respect.

[01:05:34] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:05:34] January: It’s the most respectful method. But for me very specifically, it’s a non-violent method.

[01:05:41] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:05:42] January: In our sense of the word violence. It is not trying to exile anyone or anything. We are respecting the personhood even of the evil entity, which does not mean that we’re allowing it to just have its way.

[01:05:56] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:05:56] January: Does not mean that.

[01:05:58] Andrew: Yeah. The creator of IFS, his big book for lay folks is No Bad Parts. The idea that there’s no part of you that is just straight up malevolent and out to get you, even the parts that decide that suicide is the only option. When you press them on why, they’re like, “Well, it’ll stop the pain,” or some, you know, something. There’ll be some answer that is, it shows that they have concern.

[01:06:24] January: Yeah.

[01:06:24] Andrew: It’ll be misguided. It’ll be a rationalization that is not founded, but there’s some kernel of concern for who’s there. And, the thing that changed his understanding of that, that, well, there are things in there that aren’t parts.

So like he’s affirming that there’s no bad parts, but there’s bad stuff. Because he was encountering a, I mean, he was treating it as a part, but it was malicious. And it just it never came to the place where it could welcome its own presence in the system, right?

[01:06:53] January: Mm. Mm-hmm.

[01:06:54] Andrew: It was always like, it wanted to do harm to his client. It got to the level of suicide ideation kind of thing.

And, and he was like, well, why? why is that a good thing? How will that help her? And, eventually the final answer was something like, “well, ‘cause it means I’ll win.”

[01:07:09] January: mm-hmm.

[01:07:10] Andrew: Right? I’ll win. That’s not—the reason why I wanna have that in our head is that an exorcism is an expulsion. It says, I see you, I know you, you don’t belong. Out.

Bob Falconer’s approach is always assume it’s a part, assume it’s a part, assume it’s a part, assume it belongs, and if it refuses to be a part of the system,

[01:07:35] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:36] Andrew: if it’s not there to help, if it can’t come up with a good reason, then it’s not a part of you.

And so it is sort of this well the door’s been open forever, you haven’t come in, so I guess you’re leaving. Right?

 You’re not happy here, you’re just trying to stir stuff up. So...

so I think there’s a bit of a difference between how he might use the word de-possession and exorcism as far as these spirits. It’s sort of a mutual realization that like this, this isn’t working for anybody.

[01:08:07] January: When he can get one to cooperate, yeah.

[01:08:09] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:08:10] January: He talks about a number of cases where they didn’t wanna go without a fight, basically.

[01:08:15] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:08:17] January: And he just talks about it as okay, we’re just gonna sit here and we’re gonna remove every connection that you have to this client. We’re going to take away that nourishment.

[01:08:24] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:08:25] January: But the thing he said that connected so particularly to Girard for me, he says in one interview somewhere that any sufficiently developed ecosystem is gonna have parasites. And he just put it in plain old scientific You know this because this is how our world works.”

And I was like, oh yeah, duh. I mean, again, I go to a church that’s a permaculture farmstead. We talk a lot about ecosystems at my church. So like this was, this was very evident to me of like, oh yeah, like of course.

If I’ve got this fractal picture of reality in my head, that is how I conceive of the world, if there’s a parasite in the ecosystem of the biological level of this planet, then okay, it makes sense to me that there would be parasites at the spiritual level in whatever is the cosmic level of physical existence. Okay. Okay, I can get my head around that that far.

[01:09:17] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:09:19] January: I can. I can get on board at that much.

[01:09:22] Andrew: He’d mentioned that generally interaction with spirit, but for Western culture has always been a very physical thing. And the interviewer was asking him about, how do you develop interoception? What would you do? And he was like, I think curiosity is really what matters.

If one of my clients is curious about their internal landscape, if that’s where my client’s at, then I feel like, okay, I don’t need to make sure they do it right or anything.

But there was another moment where the interviewer was relaying his experience. He’s like, I’d never seen a psychiatrist before. But he had had. sessions with somebody who was trained in IFS and he was, like, this IFS stuff is, it’s magical. But he used the phrase flexing of muscles

[01:10:03] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:10:04] Andrew: And yeah, Bob Falconer was saying that he was really reluctant to use the image of developing muscles. And he didn’t want to encourage anyone to think of this as getting in the gym, putting in the time, working, and getting stronger, so as to be like, raggh!

[01:10:24] January: Doing!

[01:10:25] Andrew: Exactly. He’s like, it’s really so much more about getting rid of the stuff that’s in the way.

[01:10:30] January: Yeah.

[01:10:31] Andrew: There are things that are blocking and you just need to get, and I think he said them meaning parts, but he like,

[01:10:38] January: Yeah.

[01:10:38] Andrew: you need to get them to step back. You just need to get people to step back.

[01:10:43] January: Yeah.

[01:10:43] Andrew: And so anyway, I found that to be really interesting. I, obviously, I felt like it cohered with major theme in our first season here and like the title of our podcast, as far as growth resulting from other stuff falling away.

I’ve been thinking like, the idea of Theology Kills, how does that relate to reading the Bible and what needs to die in order to read something.

And I’m not sure exactly, but the image of getting in the gym and working out and like pumping iron so that you can do the activity better? This sort of intermediary, let me put this in between me and the goal, so that when the goal arrives I’ll do it perfect?

[01:11:25] January: Mm.

[01:11:26] Andrew: That sort of training mentality is very much what has been presented to me since going to college where I was a Bible major, a Biblical Literature major.

[01:11:38] January: Mm.

[01:11:39] Andrew: And I just recently watched a documentary called Hellbound, where um, he’s interviewing Westboro Baptists protesting 9-11 memorials as part of it. He’s also talking to um, Michael Hardin, Sharon Baker Putt, there were a few names there that were familiar.

Anyway, it’s about hell and our understanding of hell and where it comes from. And one of the things that he does really nicely is he says that there seem to be three buckets: eternal conscious torment, annihilationism, and universalism. And there’s various threads to each of those three.

It’s not like there’s just three.

[01:12:16] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:12:16] Andrew: But of all the views out there. they skew toward one of those three. And then, he puts up,10 scripture references, under these three columns.

And he is like, on the surface level, just at first reading, these verses look like eternal conscious torment. These look like universalism, these look like annihilationism. I forget who’s saying this, not the documentarian, it’s one of the people he’s interviewing.

Just says that people are gonna latch onto some of those verses and use them to interpret the others.

And, um, yeah. I think if we’re gonna read scripture, one of the things that might die when we actually read it is a belief or conviction or even a suspicion that we know what it’s saying.

[01:12:57] January: Yeah.

[01:12:58] Andrew: Right. And until we let go of that, are you actually reading something if you already know what it’s gonna say? No, you’re not.

[01:13:05] January: Mm. Mm-hmm.

[01:13:07] Andrew: And so that’s something that has to die, in a way. and I have run into folks that, that I respect that they’ll paint a caricature of criticisms that they might face and probably have heard real people say these sorts of things to them.

Bbut you know, like, “Oh, you just, you just pick and choose the verses of the Bible that you want,” and they’ll be like, “Yeah, I pick and choose like everybody picks and chooses. That’s, part of it.”

And I think as a description, yeah, that could very well be true. Like, we’re gonna latch onto some things, hold them more tightly than others, put something in the center, which mean the other things are gonna be on the margins of our interpretive schema. Right? So if it’s just meant,

[01:13:46] January: Which you have to do with the Bible, ‘cause there are so many contradictory stories in it. Yeah.

[01:13:51] Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:13:52] January: Anyway, you’re saying.

[01:13:53] Andrew: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I’m, I’m with it, that like, you have to do it. But I think there’s a difference that’s being overlooked with the, “Oh, you’re just picking and choosing.”

If the picking and choosing means an implicit expulsion of well, I’m not gonna read that one. I don’t need to read that one. That verse isn’t worth the contemplation that this other verse is. That’s what’s being insinuated in the accusation.

But the response is saying I’m emphasizing something. I’m taking this verse and I’m allowing it to guide my reading of the other verses. So it’s,

[01:14:30] January: hmm.

[01:14:31] Andrew: it’s not a pick and choose as in a sorting of like sheep verses and goat verses or whatever, you know, like, it certainly can be. But I don’t think that’s what people are saying when they respond, “Oh yeah, I pick and choose.”

But maybe they are! Maybe they are saying that.

[01:14:47] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:47] Andrew: And if they are, I am, I’m worried a bit by it. ‘Cause it sounds like doing violence to the text in terms of how we define violence, right?

[01:14:57] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:14:58] Andrew: If we’re excluding certain passages and being like, oh no, if we include these or spend too much time with these, then it’s bad news. That sounds like a violence.

To get back to where we started with Robert Falconer’s discomfort with the image of muscle training for preparing for your adventure in your internal landscape. Like, like it’s gonna be some like American Ninja Warrior course that you just, you need to…

[01:15:29] January: You mean, you mean your inner landscape doesn’t feel like you have to go in there and do battle, Andrew? That’s, that’s unfamiliar to me.

[01:15:36] Andrew: No, it feels like that. It feels like I’m just looking at the hand-bike and being like, are you serious? Are you serious? I gotta do what right now? That’s torturing.

But no, his discomfort with that and rather than allowing things to step back.

In some sense I think I did succeed in doing that this afternoon. Like I had a goal, I’m gonna read Hosea, and I kind of knew I wouldn’t get through it all. I knew myself well enough to know that wouldn’t happen, but I probably thought I’d get to chapter six ‘cause that’s, yeah, and I got to verse four [of chapter] and I was like, no, I need to find out what Jezreel is. It was, yeah, I was not enthused about it, but um, yeah.

So part of me feels like I did much less than I set out to do. And that maybe that exact same part of me feels like I did way more than I could have hoped, by allowing myself to be stopped and…

Because, yeah, I could have been like, okay, Jezreel’s something bad. Like, I think I knew it had to do with Jezebel. I think I had those two words in my head together. And so I could have just oh, okay, “bad stuff,” but I, I didn’t, I didn’t allow myself to put in a substitute for what it might mean.

And I don’t think I came up with something to tell. What is, why, why was he told to name his first born…? And yeah, I don’t know. I spent a couple hours on it. Maybe that’s not enough time to answer the question, but something tells me that if and when I do answer that question, I might have made a mistake. And then it’s more like weeding out, well, this is what I’m not gonna say about Jezreel.

I’m not gonna say that it’s just, like, a nifty little gloss for “bad stuff.” ‘Cause it’s not. like there’s very detailed, intricate weaving of bad stuff that’s going on. It’s not something that needs to be glossed over, and maybe I will succeed in fleshing out exactly what Jehu’s doing there between those two piles of skulls and what Hosea’s doing when he’s lamenting his wife trying to play the whore with him.

I don’t know how to make that connection yet, but I, I don’t know. But I guess what I’m saying is I think I feel okay with striking out readings as too simplistic and letting them die. That’s something I’m comfortable with doing, and oh, yeah!

Now I remember why I brought up the Hellbound movie!

Because you can imagine what the Westboro Baptist people were saying about hell.

[01:18:01] January: Sure.

[01:18:02] Andrew: The folks that are like, it’s simple. Just read it. Either your eyes are open and you can read, or you’re making it mean what you want it to mean, but you’re not God, guess what?

[01:18:11] January: It, it’s totally clear. It’s right there.

[01:18:13] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. You’re just not taking the Bible seriously.

[01:18:16] January: Yeah.

[01:18:16] Andrew: Either you take it seriously and read it or you’re not being serious.

And this professor, she had heard that remark from somebody somewhere about it. And she was like, you’re telling me I didn’t take this seriously? And she’s like, in grad school, I sat through the history of Eastern Grecian empires.

I, dunno, some history course. She’s like, I don’t care about any of that. But I needed to study that. ‘Cause that’s the context that these texts were written in. And she’s like maybe you should put in the work first before you tell someone to be serious when they read the Bible.

So I could totally feel and appreciate the indignation. And there’s a part of me that’s like, man, I wish I had been to grad school in biblical literature, so I could be like, amen sister!

Because I, but I, I didn’t, I didn’t do that stuff past undergrad. So like, definitely there’s a part of me that’s like absolutely right. She’s the one taking this seriously.

But is that not exactly that image that the interviewer brought to Falconer that he pushed back on? Like, that woman, she was in the weight room, lifting,

[01:19:19] January: Yeah.

[01:19:20] Andrew: ancient languages and like ancient history and knew! But is that what we’re inviting people to do when we suggest they read the Bible? Because it’s not actually realistic,

[01:19:33] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:19:33] Andrew: It wasn’t for me.

[01:19:34] January: Yeah.

[01:19:35] Andrew: And I, I’ve actually spent too many hours trying to learn biblical languages and I’m not to the point where I can pretend like I can do it seriously.

Part of the reason I talk so much about language acquisition and stuff second language acquisition is cause the number of times I failed at trying to do it. That’s sort of my familiarity with it.

I have the utmost respect for the scholars that were in that documentary and that woman in particular, and I would not for a moment caution her against being outraged at people that tell her that she’s not being serious when she reads the Bible.

She should be outraged when people…

[01:20:12] January: imply that…

[01:20:13] Andrew: anybody implies that to her! Yes, she’s been serious about it. And there’s something enviable there, at least for me.

But that’s not the paradigmatic model Bible reading.

[01:20:24] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:20:25] Andrew: Yeah. It is something for the elites to do, the people that have the education and then they can preach it to us. But that doesn’t sound like my tradition at all. It doesn’t sound like that’s the church that you’ve fallen in with, and it doesn’t sound like that’s a common position.

[01:20:39] January: Well, it’s not my experience.

[01:20:40] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:20:41] January: I walked into this with no education. I didn’t know the history. I didn’t know, like, there’s a million and a half layers of context and language and culture and all kinds of things in the Bible that can nuance our understanding of what’s happening. But you don’t need anything to get what it has to offer except to sit down and listen to it.

[01:21:03] Andrew: Mm-hmm.

[01:21:03] January: That’s it.

[01:21:04] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:21:05] January: The gospel is in those pages. No matter what language you read it in, it’s there for anyone to encounter, but you have to be willing for an encounter with a person and not just an interpretation.

[01:21:18] Andrew: Yeah.

Now I know you…

[01:21:20] January: It’s not an instruction manual.

[01:21:23] Andrew: Oh, man. Did I tell you that, anecdote I have about it was a Bible study in somebody’s house, and I was saying facetiously, like with a mocking tone of voice about oh, ‘cause the Bible’s an instruction manual. Like, you know, because I was about to say what I really thought.

And I was saying it loud and animated and whatever, and holding court and somebody on the other side of the room who wasn’t listening didn’t have context, just heard “the Bible’s our instruction manual to life,” and was like, “Amen, brother!”

[01:21:51] January: Oh, dear

[01:21:51] Andrew: in all genuineness. I was like, oh.

[01:21:53] January: Oh, dear

[01:21:56] Andrew: Yeah. I was like, ah, my go-to thing is like, do you ever just pull out the instruction manual to your microwave and read it again for fun? Like, has that ever happened? Okay. So maybe the Bible is something different!

Like that, that was usually my go-to image but I didn’t, I didn’t deliver it at that point because this other guy, I was like, oh, I don’t wanna make him the butt of my joke. I trying to make some other person who’s not here the butt of our joke, so we could all laugh at their expense while they’re not here.

But yeah. I, I seem to recall I know you spent a lot of time reading the Bible, but I know you also spent a lot of time with your roommate at least, and maybe a good friend too on occasion.

So there’s the text, the Bible, there’s you, and then there’s these two others that were kind of alongside.

[01:22:42] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:22:43] Andrew: I don’t know how to phrase the question exactly, but like, the comment you made a second ago about, for you, you had no training, you had nothing, you just had the Bible. You didn’t actually mention whoever it was that was with you, and I was curious if that was an omission or not.

[01:23:00] January: You know, it’s, it’s a good question. In terms of my getting what was in those pages, for me personally, I don’t think that talking it through with them was what led to me getting it. It was what led to me refining and maturing my understanding for sure.

[01:23:18] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:23:19] January: And going deeper into the text.

[01:23:21] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:23:21] January: And all of that was essential. I, I don’t wanna dismiss the importance. I mean, it was the most beautiful way to be introduced to scripture. [It] was getting to read through it with my two best friends who had very, very different understandings from each other and very, very different understandings from me.

And the fact that we could all come together with our attention on this text and our differences. It’s not that the differences didn’t matter. The differences were important and we wanted to bring them to the table and bring them into conversation with each other. And that was wonderful.

[01:23:52] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:23:52] January: I would recommend that to anybody.

[01:23:54] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:23:55] January: But in terms of what was needed for me to get it, I think that had a lot more to do with my particular mental state at the time my life had just completely imploded. My front door had been kicked in by police officers. My partner of 12 years had been taken off to prison. I had just been scapegoated for the entire thing.

I mean, it was a godawful experience, and I was in a giant pit of shame and self—I mean, I was literally in hell.

[01:24:26] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:24:26] January: There’s no other word for what that experience was. And I could not see any hope of ever getting out of it.

[01:24:33] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:24:34] January: And being in that state of affliction, it was so obvious, that the gospel was talking about a whole different way of existing in the world

[01:24:45] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:24:45] January: than what I was experiencing, what I was receiving from other people, what I was inflicting—. Like all of that was the worldly paradigm, the system of transaction, and then there was this other way of grace.

When theologians talk about Scripture being readable only through revelation. I, that was my experience.

[01:25:07] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:25:08] January: I didn’t do anything to be able to read it in this way.

[01:25:11] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:25:12] January: That was entirely an interpretation that was given to me. And I have no earthly idea why I got it, and the person next to me didn’t. And that’s kind of infuriating and confusing and what do I do with that? ‘Cause then I just feel like I’m the crazy one.

[01:25:26] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:25:26] January: But I also just had this visceral experience of love and acceptance and encouragement to get up tomorrow and do better. But not in that doing, achieving, you gotta put in the work kind of way.

Just in, in this no no, no, you’re free to get up tomorrow and do better. Like, you get to choose to create something with the rest of your life.

[01:25:48] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:25:48] January: It’s not defined by what just happened to you, what’s been happening to you, what happened to you as a child, right? You are not stuck in anything that’s in your past.

It’s part of who you are. You don’t get to disown it, but it doesn’t define you either. Love defines you, so now what are you gonna choose from here? And I, I really do think that that visceral experience that I had was really, really important to open something up that was in me.

[01:26:16] Andrew: Wow.

[01:26:17] January: And then the Spirit just took it from there. And all there was for me to do was say yes or no.

And I could have said no! That was part of why I was so inclined to say yes, was that I didn’t feel like I wasn’t being given a choice. I was perfectly free to walk away from the whole thing

[01:26:32] Andrew: Exactly.

[01:26:33] January: But I was like, oh my God, this feels so much better than the misery I’ve just been dealing with for the last year and a half. Like, yes, please, where do I sign up for this?

I think I just cried through the first five or six church services I went to. It just felt like every single word from the front of that room was for me personally and specifically.

I don’t always feel that way in church anymore. Sometimes I do. I wish I did. I wish I felt that more often.

[01:26:59] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:27:00] January: It’s easier to stay devoted to it all when you’re regularly having that experience, but none of this is about what the experience is either, right.

Like, it’s the creative choice of. What are we gonna show up for? What are we gonna stay devoted to? Where is the aliveness?

But anyway, so the question you asked was, how important were the relationships in the early reading of scripture? And for me, I think the affliction was a bigger impact on

[01:27:28] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:27:28] January: my ability to hear what was going on.

[01:27:30] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:27:31] January: The relationships then came later.

[01:27:34] Andrew: Yeah. And so, um, I mean, that is—whatever hangups we might have with how the church presents itself through architecture and wardrobe and all the accoutrements that are involved—it’s hard to miss the fact that the target audience is those who are afflicted.

[01:27:50] January: Exactly.

[01:27:50] Andrew: Whether the church succeeds at its aim, that’s the clear target. And so you were there hearing those words preached, in that space. So yeah, no, that it makes sense that that would be more influential.

[01:28:03] January: Yeah.

So I’ll toss you a question there that we haven’t really talked about. What, if anything, do you feel like you’ve had to let go of or die to, as we’ve gone through this process of creating this podcast?

[01:28:20] Andrew: Well, I may have shed this like 25 years ago, but I only just now realize that it was a death.

[01:28:26] January: Mm.

[01:28:26] Andrew: And maybe I’m still in the throes of that. But to keep it on theme here with this episode of reading the Bible as a spiritual practice, I’ve recently had my relationship to my education jostled.

[01:28:41] January: Complicated.

[01:28:42] Andrew: Yeah. It’s always been a part of my identity.

[01:28:45] January: Mmm.

[01:28:46] Andrew: I’ve always thought of education as something I did well. As a student.

[01:28:51] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:28:51] Andrew: To the extent I’ve succeeded in being a good teacher, ehh... jury’s still out. Whatever! Ain’t done with that. So, you know, maybe. And I’m not worried about that. But Schoolwork for me was a very calming exercise.

[01:29:06] January: Mm.

[01:29:07] Andrew: Math problems. Oh, did I love math problems! ‘Cause it’s just right there, and you do it! You just do the work, you turn the crank, and it was calming, I would say, almost meditative for me. Physics was enticing to me, because, sort of put some flesh on the math problems.

[01:29:27] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:29:28] Andrew: They weren’t completely abstract.

[01:29:29] January: Yeah.

[01:29:30] Andrew: And so, yeah, Physics was very enticing to me. So that’s what I decided to study when I had a choice. And that was college.

I also intentionally went to a Christian school so that I could study the Bible. That was important to me. I was aware of the fact that there was more study to be done than just what happened at Sunday school,

[01:29:51] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:29:51] Andrew: what happened in the pulpits. I knew there was a higher level. And I was like, yeah, reading the Bible is important. And I wanna do that well.

[01:30:00] January: Hmm.

[01:30:01] Andrew: So I was studyin’ physics, but I was at a school that would expect me to take Bible classes and I switched my major after three semesters to biblical literature.

[01:30:11] January: Hmm.

[01:30:12] Andrew: And it really boiled down to like. I don’t care about being a physicist. Like there’s nothing exciting about being a physicist. It’s very calming

[01:30:22] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:30:22] Andrew: to like sit down and have 20 physics problems to do and just go put yourself in a quiet spot in the library and do all the problems nice and neat and succinct and like I’d always do it in pencil. Not ‘cause I was afraid of mistakes, but because it was gonna be elegant when I was done like these.

[01:30:42] January: Line up the dominoes and knock ‘em down, huh?

[01:30:44] Andrew: Yeah. Which is fun!

[01:30:47] January: Yeah!

[01:30:47] Andrew: Yeah, who doesn’t like playing with dominoes a little bit? And so, yeah, the switch was like, okay, what do I want to do with my life? Not, how can I best calm myself?

[01:30:58] January: Yeah.

[01:30:58] Andrew: Because that’s physics. But that’s not what I wanna do with my life. Calm myself.

[01:31:03] January: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:31:04] Andrew: I wanna read the Bible.

[01:31:06] January: There might be more here than mere nervous system regulation?

[01:31:09] Andrew: Yeah, exactly! Right? And so, and this is the dumbfounding thing to me, is that, I don’t think I knew. I think I was doing that from the beginning.

[01:31:19] January: Mm.

[01:31:19] Andrew: Like,

[01:31:20] January: Mm-hmm

[01:31:20] Andrew: from kindergarten. I think that was always what it was for me.

[01:31:23] January: Mm.

[01:31:24] Andrew: Until I switched my major to Bible and the classes were more difficult for me.

[01:31:30] January: Hmm.

[01:31:31] Andrew: That was a little unnerving. ‘Cause I’d always done really well in classes. I mean, I still did okay. But I didn’t excel. It’s not as easy to know whether you got all the points or not. That was a little unsettling and I, at some point I went to the counseling center, and this was a student counselor, he was not a trained, licensed therapist or anything. I think he might have been a sophomore and I was a junior, when this conversation was going on.

[01:31:57] January: Hmm.

[01:31:57] Andrew: Then I was like, oh yeah, I always got straight A’s in physics and math and stuff. But then I switched to Bible and now I’m thinking about doing, and he was like, whoa, what? You’re always getting straight A’s in Physics?!

I’m like, yeah. I think he’d read a book or something; he acknowledged that he was quoting something, but he was like, don’t, don’t be afraid of who you are.

[01:32:16] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:32:17] Andrew: And I remember that vividly and just how offensive that was. And I didn’t know why it was so offensive.

[01:32:25] January: Interesting.

[01:32:25] Andrew: Until like, I think this week really, that I’ve been thinking about. ‘Like, cause he was telling me that who I am is somebody that knows how to numb himself and calm himself down with these problems sets and doing them perfectly and elegantly.

[01:32:38] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:32:38] Andrew: That’s who you are. Just do that and everything inside me was like what? That’s not who I am!

[01:32:45] January: Feel free to fuck all the way off!

[01:32:48] Andrew: This is the counseling center!?

But like I can see that now, just why it was so offensive. At the moment, it was just a visceral thing.

[01:32:59] January: Wow.

[01:33:00] Andrew: And uh, so that was no help.

[01:33:02] January: Yeah.

[01:33:02] Andrew: But what, what I’m trying to get at is that the difficulty of the Bible classes following that made sense. Of course they’re gonna be more difficult. I have a natural aptitude towards certain subjects but not others and

[01:33:14] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:33:14] Andrew: that’s was the frame. But no, the Bible will not be merely a calming technique.

[01:33:21] January: Yeah.

[01:33:22] Andrew: That’s what died. The Bible will refuse

[01:33:25] January: Yeah.

[01:33:26] Andrew: to be a simple calming technique. At least refuses to do so with me.

[01:33:32] January: Yeah. Yeah.

[01:33:33] Andrew: Maybe it’ll do that for other people when they need it as they need it. And I’ve got no problems, so please don’t take offense at me if I’m, if, if the Bible’s just something that calms you down when you need it. That’s nice. I’ve, I got stuff like that too.

But um, yeah, I think that was, in a sense, a death of what the Bible could be for me.

[01:33:53] January: Mm.

[01:33:55] Andrew: I didn’t know

[01:33:56] January: Sure.

[01:33:56] Andrew: what physics was doing for me. I, I didn’t realize that it was a way to feel at ease in my own skin. It was a safe, secure, no unknowns except those unknowns for which we’re solving X, Y, and Z. And we’d solve for them and then we’d move on to the next problem.

I didn’t know that that’s what I was doing. I thought I was just training and excelling.

[01:34:15] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:34:16] Andrew: And I was like, okay, so now I’m gonna train in the Bible and excel.

[01:34:20] January: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

[01:34:21] Andrew: And it wasn’t that, and it wasn’t soothing either. It was so disturbing.

[01:34:28] January: Yeah.

[01:34:29] Andrew: And I went to a pretty conservative school. They were not trying to rock the boat with the kids coming in. They wanted their students to go back to their home churches and be like, proud representatives of everything their parents wanted them to be before they left.

But they were, they [my professors] were very knowledgeable. And they weren’t afraid of questions,

[01:34:51] January: Hmm.

[01:34:52] Andrew: and they encouraged questions. And that was enough for the experience to become very, very unsettling.

So, yeah, this podcast has given me language to understand what’s happening.

I think the only language I would’ve had for it, before this podcast would’ve been a Girardian stumbling block. Is the Bible a stumbling block for me? Is that what’s going on?

[01:35:12] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:35:13] Andrew: And it probably has been on occasions, but that doesn’t get at the fullness of like, theology has killed my understanding of the Bible. Watch what grows.

[01:35:23] January: Yes.

[01:35:24] Andrew: Right? Watch what’s about to grow.

[01:35:26] January: Exactly.

[01:35:28] Andrew: I couldn’t have said that before our conversations. But when you ask me what has died in the making of season one of Theology Kills.

Yeah. There’s what I said about I’ve received language to describe a death that I underwent decades ago. And that’s really, really helpful, but it’s not an answer to your question.

And maybe, maybe you’re just thoughtful enough not to point that out when I don’t answer your questions. But I feel like I need to draw attention to that. And, and I don’t know that I have an answer to it. But the lesson that I learned long ago about the Bible but didn’t have language to really comprehend, it [the Bible] will refuse to be busy work.

And I know you disdain, you can’t stand busy work. I loved it. It was my comfort food. Right. It’s just where I went. It was zen like, you know, I just would get in the flow. I loved it and I can love the Bible, but it’s never gonna be like that.

It’s never just gonna be flow. It’s always gonna be disruption. And I learned that when I switched my major.

[01:36:36] January: Mm.

[01:36:37] Andrew: And that was a death of something. And I think what I’m in the process of grieving now is that it’s not just the Bible that’s like that.

[01:36:48] January: Mm.

[01:36:49] Andrew: When I study anything — study, research, interrogate, investigate, learn. It ain’t gonna be a flow state thing.

[01:36:58] January: Interesting.

[01:36:59] Andrew: The masters in their flow states, they do that stuff with the things they’ve mastered. If you are learning by definition, you haven’t mastered it.

[01:37:08] January: Yeah.

[01:37:09] Andrew: IFS is a big thing. I’ve never studied psychology, I’ve never thought about therapy models, let alone like been in any proximity to them.

And it’s very clear, I’m not gonna master this. And yet I can approach it. I can study and I can learn, and if I learn something, that’s learning, right?

[01:37:31] January: Yeah.

[01:37:31] Andrew: I don’t have to learn everything. I don’t have to turn it into what physics, and calculus before that, and algebra before that, and grade school math before that—I don’t have to turn it into that.

[01:37:41] January: Yeah.

[01:37:42] Andrew: in order for it to be educational. So I think that’s something that’s dying for me right now in the midst of this. It’s not completely dead.

[01:37:50] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:37:51] Andrew: Because I still, I still struggle with that. That I’m talking about IFS and I’m like, wait a second. I’m just, I’m talking out my ass here. I don’t know what I’m saying. Do I? Like, like this isn’t, why am I saying this out loud? Like, okay, I can say it out loud to January, but to the whole internet?! Like that’s not! What am I?

And yeah, if I’m just learning out loud, I’m more okay with that now than I probably would’ve been a couple years ago,

[01:38:18] January: Mm-hmm.

[01:38:18] Andrew: before we started this. So that’s, that’s something that’s, that’s dying. Although, I gotta say, just because I’m coming to grips with the fact that I can study something without any prospect of ever becoming a master or having any mastery over the subject. I’m coming to grips with that, but I’m still using this stuff to numb out, like, yeah.

Hopefully I’m not just learning that I can… that I can numb out on all sorts of stuff no matter how competent I am in it. I can, I can numb out at the stuff I’m incompetent at as well as the stuff I’m good at. Hopefully that’s not what the death is leading to. I don’t know.

If that’s the birth that’s coming... may it have a glorious life for as long as it lasts.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don’t know, do you feel like you have uh, yeah, sorry. Too much attention! Uh, January. Yeah. Let’s, do this

[01:39:32] January: Legit.

[01:39:32] Andrew: Lets do a switcheroo, dear co-host. Is there anything that’s died for you in doing these conversations, this podcast?

[01:39:41] January: Absolutely. I mean, it, it’s a little bit harder to articulate for me. I’m more comfortable with that process of death and rebirth than I think a lot of people are. And again, I’m gonna facetiously refer to the fact that I have four Scorpio placements in my astrology chart.

So yeah, for me it’s been a perpetual unfolding over the whole couple of years that we’ve been working on this first season. But it’s been all kinds of things. I mean.

I had to let some fear die to even send you an email asking you to do this podcast with me. It seems so ridiculous to me now sitting here a couple of years later, how terrified I was to send on that email.

[01:40:27] Andrew: I’m pretty intimidating. Oh, I, I, yeah. Yeah. I’m pretty intimidating.

[01:40:33] January: Absolutely. Yeah. Uhhuh.

But it’s true. I was, even if it’s funny to me now, that was my reality at the time, and then I had to let go of the fears of exposure. You know, we, I mean, I say we wrote the episodes together. I wrote the episodes, and then we went over them together and

[01:40:57] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:40:58] January: I mean, this is like the deepest beliefs of my soul, you know? To share them with another person was very, very scary. There was a lot of exposure there for me. Even just bringing them to you, let alone then bringing them to an entire public audience.

Oh my God, the internet can listen to my inner thinking now. Fuck me.

So that had to die and I’ve had to be brave enough to learn how to put myself out there. Going to COV&R for the first time, the Colloquium on Violence and Religion. We did that this summer. Got to go talk to a bunch of really cool Girardians and not just take in what they were saying, but we got to share that we had done something too, and

[01:41:44] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:41:44] January: point them at this podcast.

[01:41:46] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:41:47] January: There was a lot of anxiety there for me to listen to and tend to, in order to be able to do that.

And again, on this side of it, it seems ridiculous that I was nervous about it. They were wonderful humans. We had a great time.

[01:42:00] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:42:01] January: But I have a lot of baggage about my lack of academic qualifications, if you will. ‘Cause that’s a big deal in my family of origin. Academic excellence is kind of a defining feature of our family. And then I came along and had undiagnosed ADHD and completely faceplanted, barely graduated high school, did not go to college until I was 30, only got a two-year degree and then gave up on it.

It didn’t work for me the way that it worked for everybody else in my family. And so there’s a lot of parts of me that believe that I have no right to be sharing all of this stuff. ‘Cause who the heck am I to talk about theology?

I’ve never taken a class in this. Isn’t that something you’re supposed to have an education in?

But that’s, you know, that’s an enculturated belief, right? That the expertise I have because of a lived experience of all of this, which is really what it is, right? That’s why I can’t shut up about all of this, is because I have had a lived, embodied experience of encountering Jesus.

Having an experience of revelation that completely changed my life in the best possible way. That has become a trellis for my aliveness that has just taken off? And my life is growing in all of these fantastic new ways despite all of these fears that I have in my brain.

And for me, theology is what made all of that possible. IFS helped, for sure. As a spiritual practice, I obviously have some feelings about how great that is. But the Christian conversion, I think, was really what made IFS as effective for me as it was, because it was that converted understanding of I have fucked up about as badly as it’s possible for someone to fuck up. By my own standards. By my own values.

[01:43:56] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:43:57] January: That’s what I think of myself. And to encounter something so much larger than me that didn’t try to bullshit me and tell me, oh no, it’s okay. You didn’t mess up. That’s fine. It was like, yeah. Yeah, I see that you did something that you’re really not proud of. I see that’s here and that hurts.

[01:44:15] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:44:16] January: I’m gonna be right next to you in that, and then I’m gonna extend a hand to you and ask if you want to get up tomorrow and do better.

[01:44:22] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:44:23] January: Let’s do this together. You’re never gonna be alone in this again.

I mean, that was the most transformative experience and everything else in my life has flowed out of it. And I can’t shut up about this stuff. ‘Cause I’m so excited about it because I really do, I really do believe that, that experience is available to absolutely anyone who reads the Bible whether they have any kind of education in it or not.

And that the only thing getting in the way of that is our culture and our fears and all of the garbage interpretations that we’ve been fed about, being Christian means disowning or exiling parts of ourselves. And I want to be part of undoing that narrative because I think it’s incredibly toxic and harmful and flat out wrong.

When I read scripture before the face of God, the only conclusion that I come to is that that is wrong. And I might be wrong, I might be completely off base and talking a whole bunch of garbage on this podcast. I don’t know. None of us can know for sure. But I’m unbothered even by that prospect,

[01:45:35] Andrew: Yeah,

[01:45:36] January: because the experience of love has been so visceral and so transformative that, I can confidently trust that even if I’m totally out of order on everything I just said,

[01:45:47] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:45:48] January: somebody out there needed to hear it. And if I needed to be wrong for that to happen, then fine. Okay. I’m cool with that.

[01:45:55] Andrew: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jesus encounters people who are mistaken. In fact, he’s pretty good at that. That’s one of the things he does best. So we don’t have to be worried about how wrong we are.

[01:46:07] January: Yeah. We’re gonna be wrong. It’s gonna happen. Welcome to being human.

And we have to care about being wrong too, because when we’re wrong, it impacts other people. We were seriously wrong about the crusades and thousands of people died. We were seriously wrong about eradicating indigenous peoples in the Americas and thousands of people died,

[01:46:30] Andrew: Yeah,

[01:46:30] January: maybe millions. Probably millions! Our wrongness has consequences, and I want to spend the rest of my life getting up tomorrow to do better, but not out of that clingy, striving, Doing mentality. Simply because I am receiving the peace and love that I am offered by the God whom I encounter in scripture, in Jesus Christ.

And then I am invited to go do something creative with all of that love and aliveness and peace, and I want to. I’m excited about that.

And that joy and enthusiasm, I mean, people tell me all the time that it’s contagious. Even if their enthusiasm isn’t pointed in quite the same direction as mine, when I show up with that kind of aliveness, it gives them permission to own up to theirs.

[01:47:20] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:47:21] January: And that’s amazing to watch happen. And my God, it is the most humbling honor every time somebody says that.

[01:47:28] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:47:29] January: So I guess that’s what I’m hoping that this season of Theology Kills is gonna do for people, is to help them let go of whatever the things are that are keeping them trapped in shame and despair and angst and anxiety. Not because the world isn’t a scary place, it fucking is. It’s terrifying out there right now, and that’s legitimate.

But we have the power even in the midst of that to participate in creating a whole new way of being human together. And I just get whole body goosebumps with that and I wanna share it. I wanna give that to anybody who will listen.

[01:48:09] Andrew: Yeah.

[01:48:11] January: Does that feel like an acceptable note on which to end the season?

[01:48:14] Andrew: Yeah. Thank you one and all.

[01:48:17] January: Thank you, Andrew.

[01:48:18] Andrew: Thank you, January.

[01:48:21] January: That wraps it up for Season One of Theology Kills. We do still have some bonus interview episodes coming down the pike at you— 

[01:48:30] Andrew: That’s right. That’s right.

[01:48:31] January: —so stay tuned for those. There will be more content and there’s pretty well guaranteed to be a season two, I think. Tell me where I’m wrong?

[01:48:38] Andrew: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. There’ll be one. Yeah.

[01:48:41] January: It’s definitely gonna happen at this point. Yeah. We are sufficiently into it to keep doing this. So stick around. There will be more. But, for now, we’ll uh, let you all go explore what this looks like in your life.

If you wanna stay in touch with the podcast, come find us at www.theologykills.com, or you can join our Pod Parish on Patreon. There’s a link to that on the website as well. It is patreon.com/TheologyKillsPodcast. 

If you want other ways to stay in touch with us, there is potentially gonna be a new offering in the works here pretty shortly. Looking at developing a How to read the Bible with your Body course.

That’s in development. So if you’re interested in that, come check us out. And I think that’s all we got. Until next time.

[01:49:29] Andrew: Yeah. Well done.

[01:49:31] January: Thank you.

[01:49:32] Andrew: Is season one

dead now…?

[01:49:51] January: Nope. Just being born.

[01:49:53] Andrew: Maybe? Yeah. Okay. Yeah, for us, maybe. All sorts of other people, yeah, out there.

[01:49:58] January: Yep.

[01:49:59] Andrew: Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. It was just born.