Zach W. Lambert | A Better Way to Read the Bible: Escaping Weaponized Scripture and Embracing Transformative Faith

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need Thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful, theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and today I am joined by Pastor Zach Lambert. Zach is pastor of Restore. He's actually the founder of Restore Church in Austin, Texas, as well as the author of a book we're going to be discussing a little bit today, of Better Ways to Read the Bible, that's published by Brazos. And so, Zach, welcome to the program, man. It's great to be here. Great for you to be here. Thanks. Thanks, man. I'm so excited to be here, too, man. Thanks for having me on. Yeah. So I mentioned in the pre-interview, I really enjoyed this. When I saw it in the catalog, I kind of work with Baker occasionally, and saw your book in the catalog, and it just felt like we'd have a really good conversation because I did some of this in a book I wrote on Christians and politics. And so you kind of start to see how the Bible gets sort of pressed into service of other agendas than actually the transformation and spiritual growth of God's people. And so, really fascinating topic. Talk a little bit about why you ended up going this route. Why did you write it? That's a great question. Also, I just want to say it's awesome to do this with someone who has read the book. I have a lot. I do a lot of these podcasts, and some people have, you know, read a blurb or something like that, so I'm super excited to have a conversation with somebody who's read the whole thing. The why behind it really is a pastoral reason. So starting Restore about 10 years ago, we started it very specifically with the goal of restoring people's faith in Jesus and the church because so much of that faith and trust had been broken by religious institutions, by people wielding the Bible more like a weapon that hurts people than a tool of helping and healing. And so we began with really that in mind, that kind of audience in mind, so to speak. And it felt pretty niche when we started in like, we started kind of getting everything together in like 2014-2015. The church officially launched in 2016, but now it feels like almost everyone that I talk to has had difficult experiences with Christianity, Christian churches, Scripture in general. And so the book specifically, right, I'm preaching to this group of people, which I'm also a part of, and talking about these sometimes familiar Bible stories or passages, but really engaging them in a little bit maybe different way than they heard in a fundamentalist upbringing or a more fundamentalist upbringing. And so they would always ask like, how did you learn that interpretation of, you know, Noah's Ark or the Tower of Babel or I do not allow a woman to speak, you know, the Paul passage. Like, how did you, how did you get this different interpretation? And so I talk about, well, I'm, you know, getting my doctorate at Duke. I'm reading all these books. I, you know, went to seminary, all these different things. And some people are like, I want to do that too, you know, but that's a pretty small percentage of people that are like, I want to do that same thing. Most people are like, well, do you have like a, like one book, you know, that you can give me that would be helpful? And so there were a few that were kind of like around the topic, so to speak, right? So you have like a book like Inspired by Rachel Held Evans that really goes deep into genre of scripture and things like that. You've got a lot of Pete Enns books that are fantastic. You've got books about things like liberation theology or something like that, but it didn't really feel like I could find a resource that really just said, hey, here is kind of a holistic, better way to read the Bible. Here are some harmful ways to read it that we've been given. How do we identify and discard those? And then here are some more helpful ways that have proven true over the history of the church, a better ways to read that, you know, you can apply. So the goal really is to say, I can read this. I can, you know, take in these lenses and then the hope is I can engage with the Bible holistically, whether it's Old Testament, New Testament, you know, wisdom literature or narrative storytelling, and I can come away with a better reading. And so it just didn't really feel like that resource, at least that I could find, was ready for people or readily available, I mean. And so, yeah, I was, I was like, maybe I should do something. So I preached a couple of sermons kind of testing it out and they got really good feedback. And then I'd had a couple of people in publishing kind of reach out and say, hey, do you have any ideas, you know, for publishing things, Zach? And I said, well, actually I do. I have this one idea from all these conversations, decade of conversations. What do you think? And that's kind of how it, so it really was like a pastoral need that I felt. Do you find that, you know, I don't, I didn't get the impression that your audience was sort of that deconstructive sort of audience, right? Not, not primarily at least. You know, we've heard a lot about deconstruction lately, but that doesn't really seem like what you were dealing with. So how would you describe the audience that you were dealing with? Like, are these just sort of, you describe them as just normal, everyday Christians who are trying to read the Bible as faithfully as possible? Like, what would you, what would you describe your audience as? Yeah, I would say that we talk a lot about that at Restore. We do both triage and transformation. So some people come in deeply wounded and they are, they're wanting to burn the whole house down. I mean, they're, they're deconstructing hard, right? And we want to come in and meet them where they are in triage and say, well, yeah, actually some of these things do need to be deconstructed. That was, that was pretty harmful, you know, but what we really never want to be is, is a deconstruction only space, right? We really are much more concerned with reconstructing something beautiful. You know, I think we can spend all our time critiquing the old and the wrong, but if we're not moving toward the better and the healthy and actually reconstructing and building something that is beautiful and Christ-like, then it really is, our impact is incredibly limited because all we're doing is kind of poking holes in the things that are wrong. We don't really have an imagination for what could be right. And that 2000 years of Christian history has a lot that is right about it. A lot that's wrong, but a lot that's right. And so I think, yeah, for us, we are attempting to do both triage and transformation, both help people deconstruct some harmful things, but really also not stay there, move into reconstructing healthy things. And so I'm glad the book read that way. The book is very much meant to be pastoral. It's meant to meet you where you are, whether you're, you know, right at the beginning of deconstructing something and you're really upset or you're kind of tired of like the deconstruction only world where everything is just what's wrong with it. And you want to have an imagination for something that's better. I want to kind of meet you in any of those places. So in the book, you talk about these sort of four ways of reading the Bible that may be, and this is my phrase, not yours, but sort of holding us back. They're really hindering us from becoming more Christlike. And that's literalism, apocalypticism, moralism, and hierarchy are the four. And so maybe what would be good just to give people a sense of how you're thinking through those. I think especially literal, right? Whether you use literalism or literal. I know in the circles that I've always run in, people get a little nervous when you start talking about not reading the Bible literally. And maybe for good reason, maybe just, you know, out of paranoia, because at the end of the day, even the most conservative biblical scholars know that you don't actually read the Bible literally. You know that there are allegories and metaphors and imagery and symbolism. And so talk about a little bit what you mean maybe of each of those four categories, just, you know, sort of in a, in a quick summary. Yeah. And then I'll probably have a few questions just based on what I've read in the book, but let's start there. Yeah, I think you made a great point about literalism. We can start with that one. The way I'm using it in the book is, you know, a literalistic or a wooden, an inflexible reading of Scripture. And I like your words. It is, it is holding us back from the fullness of what the text and the spirit of God through the text is attempting to do in our lives regarding transformation. Right. So literalism is really kind of like reading every biblical passage as if it must be factually, historically, scientifically literal, often missing things like genre, things like allegory, things like nuance. And again, we all, we all understand this, right? Like Jesus tells a par

I'll throw the whole Bible out. The pendulum swing reaction to that was this kind of like, no, all of it's true. Every word, it's literally true. And I'm actually very comfortable saying that the whole Bible is true. I am uncomfortable saying that we should read every part of it in a wooden, literal, and modern way, right? Because it was not written to modern audiences. So we have to do our best to understand context, culture, timeline, genre, all that stuff. And again, I would say one last thing about literalism. There are things in the Bible that are meant to be read very literally, right? Like when Jesus says the most important things are to love God and love your neighbor, he literally means that, you know? Like that's the most important thing. There's 2,000-ish verses about caring for the poor and impoverished and the struggling and the downtrodden. Like those are literally, we're literally supposed to do those things, you know? So I'm not saying all of it is allegory and metaphor. What I'm saying is we have to try to dig in and, you know, understand those things. Yeah. And honestly, I think when I was reading through what you, I thought you addressed it really beautifully because what I came away with after reading it was, we need to make sure that we have a little bit of a looser sense of what Scripture is doing and allow Scripture to lead and guide as opposed to trying to impose a frame on Scripture. It's almost like, you know, reading, like you need to read with a little magnifying glass. Anything beyond the magnifying glass is now blurry, right? And that's what it felt like you were kind of suggesting with that literalism idea. Don't, you know, if you have a hammer, not everything is a nail, right? So stop hitting everything as if everything's a nail. Just loosen up a little bit and let the Scriptures breathe and kind of show you where they're headed as opposed to you determining where you want them to go. 100%. No, I mean, again, I think that's like the third time you've said the way the book read to you, and it's exactly how I hoped. That's wonderful. I read it correctly. Better ways to read, better ways to read the Bible, you know. So yeah, the second lens is apocalypse, and it's, now this is more prevalent in some circles than others, right? So you might be reading this, and you grew up in a much more conservative space, and you're like, that wasn't part of what I was brought up with. But like for me and my church, like this apocalypse lens, which is kind of interpreting everything through the lens of like, hey, the whole world is going to burn anyway. Hey, like all that really matters is heaven and hell and afterlife and all of that kind of stuff. Jesus is coming back to kind of like kill every one of his enemies, and so that's a justification for us being okay with things like, you know, killing our enemies and stuff like that, right? Like I remember being in churches, I was a seventh grader, I think, when 9-11 happened, and I remember in the church that I went to, we had Revelation-based sermons for a few weeks after 9-11 that were basically like, hey, so, you know, like the radical Islam is demonic. Jesus is existing to eradicate demonic forces, and so us going to eradicate all of, you know, what ended up being kind of all of Islam or all of what was happening in some Middle Eastern countries is like God's plan, you know? And so what ends up happening is all that stuff gets wrapped together and it becomes really an unhelpful way to read. And it also is kind of the ultimate trump card, right? Because if you might want to have a conversation about something like creation care, which exists all throughout Scripture, especially in the Genesis account, but that's easily met with, well, who cares? The whole world is going to burn. Like who cares how we take care of it now? You know, that's actually a much more powerful argument than, well, God made it and entrusted it to us in the Garden of Eden, right? Like to care for it and let it flourish. Well, it's all going to burn. It's a kind of a trump card argument. So that's the second one. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. The third one is moralism. And this is a little bit similar to literalism in that the Bible does have moral imperatives in it, right? So I'm not saying morals don't matter. I'm saying that if you reduce the Bible to just a moral framework, right? Just a list of do's and don'ts, then again, you're really not reading it for all it's worth. It's these lenses, like you said, are holding you back from getting everything you can from it. And then the last one is hierarchy, which is really just kind of leveraging the Scriptures to prop up power structures, you know, which usually elevate some and diminish others. Sometimes that's based on race or gender or status, things like that. And an easy example of this, right, is like if you're familiar with something like the curse of Ham, you know, that comes out of the story of Noah and one of his sons gets cursed, right? And Ham is the one that gets cursed. And there's a pretty prevailing theology that's not as prevalent anymore, but was for a really long time, especially in the early United States, which was that, well, all dark-skinned people, especially like people of African descent, are the descendants of Ham. And so God all the way back to Noah said that these other brothers will rule over Ham. And so we're just doing, and it became like an excuse for chattel slavery, you know. And so you see how that hierarchy lens, when applied in those ways, can be, you know, obviously incredibly damaging. Let me sort of reverse trend and walk back through a few of those before we get to the four ways that you could read Scripture better. The apocalypticism is something that I've run into throughout my career. So I grew up Lutheran, which you don't really have, we didn't really deal much with eschatology. I mean, I didn't realize till much, much later that Lutherans are all amillennial. Just, you know, so I mean, you know, it wasn't part of the work and I went through catechism and the whole deal. And it just, you know, it wasn't a big part of what Lutherans conveyed. And so that was kind of interesting. But then I went to school at Moody Bible Institute, which is a, you know, dispensational school, pre-millennial, pre-trib rapture. And it became a big thing. I mean, post-tribbers were a little crazy. Amillennialists were absolutely nuts. You know, you read the scripture as if you're, you know, you're getting raptured. And we even had discussions in some of the pastoral classes about, you know, the different pastoral preparation you might do if you believe in a pre-trib rapture versus a post-trib rapture. And so I, you know, I ultimately sort of disabused myself of that and went to Wheaton and Trinity. But, you know, where things got a little looser. Yeah. But I'm amazed at how much the apocalyptic lens, and I would say even the eschatological maps, begin to dominate the way that we think about these different books, particularly the book of Revelation, but also, you know, the book of Daniel, how we think about nations, how we think about, you know, modern-day relationships between nations, particularly of Israel. Like, you've got all of these things that are sort of swimming around, particularly right now in the political realm. But I really felt like your chapter on apocalyptic was extremely relevant to it. So I don't know whether you want to comment on any of that, but not the specifics, but, you know, how you, are you seeing sort of a renaissance of this more now and amping up of it and intensification? Yeah, for sure. I mean, yeah, we have, you know, I grew up Southern Baptist, so the apocalyptic lens was certainly a part of what we did, but then I went to Dallas Theological Seminary. So, I mean, I, you know, and that's just as dispensational as the school as Moody. In fact, those are, I think you make the argument, those are the two institutions that propagated dispensationalism and pre-trib and all that stuff more than any others in the States. And so, yeah, you had this massive rise of the theology, which, you know, dispensational specifically is not that old, and I talk about this quite a bit in the book, about kind of when it came about and how it came about. But then the kind

to support Israel at all times is because the Bible tells me to do that. And the pushback is, well, the nation of Israel in the Bible and the kind of, you know, political entity that is current Israel are not the same thing. But, you know, for somebody like him or for the millions of people who ascribe to this, it is exactly the same thing and there's no nuance. And because, you know, they are the ones that kind of like, quote-unquote, win at the end of Revelation, depending on if you read through the dispensational lens, then like from a geopolitical standpoint, you wanna be on the side of the people who God has preordained to win, right? Yeah, so anyway, yeah, it's tragically relevant right now. When I think the interesting part that I, and I don't know whether I was reading this in, but I saw your literalism and your apocalypticism sort of bleeding together. For sure. Those two are so closely intertwined because the way that people read the texts, particularly of Revelation, but also, like I said, of Daniel, Ezekiel even is in there. You know, the way those are read and the way they're understood has a lot to do with the literalism. 100%. Far less to do with the moralism and the hierarchy, probably. Absolutely, absolutely. But definitely with the literalism. So I found that fantastic. Last question I'll ask on the moralism side. There's been, so I was reading through this chapter and I've kind of followed some secular thinkers like a Jordan Peterson, who's doing far more work on biblical studies now. Yeah. Right? And when I listen to him, I'm sort of fascinated that he comes to some of the insights that he does. Like, I like some of those observations. I think it's interesting. But at the end of the day, I walk away going, he just made God subject to morals. Mm-hmm. Right. You know, he reverses it. Yeah. Goodness doesn't flow from God. God is an expression. It's a way of referring to goodness. Yeah. And I think moralism, when I was reading through that chapter, that's what kept coming to mind. It's like we elevate this sort of wholesome living as opposed to shooting for holiness. And the Bible becomes just a sort of a way for us to have good etiquette and to live as relatively kind people. Yeah. And so I really found that to be a fantastic chapter. And I'm wondering if you can comment on how you relate that to something like, you'll know what this is. It's a way of reading Scripture so that you abstract a principle, that principalization, the ladder. You probably had it at Dallas, right? Oh, yeah. Like the ladder of principalization. How closely intertwined do you see moralism in that? Yeah, completely intertwined, I think. I think that, you know, one of the problems with this, to zoom out a little bit, but especially when it comes to moralism, the problem with the reducing the Bible to a moralistic framework, as I said, it doesn't allow us to read the Bible for all it's worth, but it also is really difficult because there is not a consistent moral framework that's presented in the Bible, right? Because that's not really what it's trying to do. So I have this Rachel Held Evans quote toward the end where she talks about, like, if you go to the Bible looking for reasons to wage war or moralistic, you know, excuses to wage war or to pursue peace, you can find both of those things, right? Like you can find a story in the Old Testament, rip it out of context and say, well, listen, God told them to go to war. God's telling us to go to war. But then you can go to the disarming of Peter and Jesus says, you live by the sword, you die by the sword, right? So there's not even a consistent moralistic framework here, which means that it's just incredibly ripe for taking things out of context and, you know, like it was a Dallas seminary professor I quoted in the book where I said, you know, what is it, a proof text or something like that. A proof text is a pretext for a whatever or something. But basically, yeah, this idea that like, if I just am grabbing one verse here or there and using it to support my moral framework, or like you said, I'm extrapolating principles rather than actually doing the deep exegetical work in the text and trying to figure out, you know, what, what God is actually asking of us. Then I think we not only miss what it's trying to do, but we can abuse it, um, in ways that I think God never intended. Yeah. And one of the, I was an Old Testament law guy in my PhD. So I did most of my work in Old Testament law. And one of the passages I always found fascinating, Jesus is teaching on divorce in the gospels. Pharisees are coming in. They ultimately asked him, why did Moses give us a certificate? Why did Moses allow us to give a certificate of divorce? And Jesus's answer is, is not, well, because that's the ideal way to do things. This was God's plan from the beginning was for you to have certificates of divorce. And like, it wasn't that, it was because the hardness of your heart. And so that teaching in the Old Testament, like we have to reckon with the idea that many of the things we see in the law, and I would argue in narrative and various other places, aren't expressions of an ideal that we should be shooting for. These are provisions that are made because we are unideal and left to our own devices, we will become more unideal. Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. And I think God is progressively attempting to move us toward the ideal, right? And you see that, but he meets us where we are, you know? I mean, that's the whole, the whole idea of God, you know, transcending to us, condescending even to us in the incarnation of Jesus Christ, like God moving into the neighborhood. And like Eugene Peterson says in the message of the John one translation, Jesus is coming into our world, like, you know, and emptying himself of a lot of the power and privileges that, you know, he carried into the space so that he can meet us where we are and move us forward. Right. And I think that's, that's the beauty, like the, the accommodation of God towards humanity, meeting us where we are and moving us a little bit forward, even knowing that the ideal is way over here actually is, I think, such a beautiful picture of God's patience and character and love rather than like, oh, well, it's just, you're either like you're doing it or you're not doing it. Like God is actually accommodating us and moving us forward like a shepherd does, you know? Yeah. Yeah. We're going to be off the path sometimes on the path sometimes, but the general trajectory is always in one direction. Exactly. Well, let's get to the, let's get to the good things, the things that will actually help us. So you talk about the Jesus lens, the context lens, the, I got it on my screen over here, flourishing lens and the fruitfulness lens. So let's start with the Jesus lens. Like there's a lot of sort of covenant theologians that would find Christ everywhere. Right. I didn't get the impression. That's what you're talking about. The Jesus lens, right? So let's make sure that that's not confused, that you aren't confused. So I'm kind of setting that up so people aren't confused. What do you mean by the Jesus lens? Yeah. And, you know, hope being cognizant of the fact that I'm talking to an Old Testament Torah PhD in this, you know, I, I would say when it's really this idea of interpreting scripture through the life teachings, character of Jesus as Jesus is the fullness of God in human form. I think that I have some theological anchor points for my, both my personal faith, but also kind of my pastoral practices. One of them is this very classic Trinitarian, you know, view of Jesus as God fully God incarnate. And as Paul and a couple of gospel writers talk about kind of the fullest picture we have of who God is and what God is like. Right. And so if we are going to attempt to follow God or even to be Christians, which means little Christ, we're attempting to follow the way of Jesus and Jesus has to kind of be the ultimate interpretive lens when we're engaging with things that maybe feel contradictory. So for instance, right. If you have the thing that I talked about earlier, where maybe a traditional interpretation of like, uh, Jericho or the Canaanite genocide is God ordered Joshua to kill, um, every man, woman, child, and animal in, you know, Jericho and burn it all down, whatever. Yeah. But Jesus tells Peter, you live by the sword, you die by the sword. He disarms Peter. A lot of theologians would say he disarms us through that process as his followers. Um, what I would say is we have to say, we're going to start with that Jesus centric interpretation. But I think where I'm a little bit different maybe than, um, your average theologian or whatever is that I'm saying that I'm not saying then we throw out the story of Jericho and Canaan. I'm saying we, we work to understand it better. Right. And if we know, okay, um, like I feel confident saying God doesn't order genocides. Right. So what are some other options for the Canaanite story? Um, and there are a bunch, right? Like there are some kind of historical critical options around. Um, well, uh, you know, not actually, actually everybody

in this conflict. So anyway, there's a lot of options. So that's what I mean by the Jesus lens. Yeah, I think that's, I mean, I think that's really helpful. Yeah. I just think that's really helpful. I think it's good not to throw sort of out the old stuff. Obviously, as an Old Testament guy, I don't want to throw the old stuff out, but I recognize that there are really serious problems in reading the Old Testament for modern readers, because we don't fully grasp and we don't really want a God who's going to order the destruction of the Canaanites or, you know, various other things. And so those are real challenges in the Old Testament you have to figure out, but I do think Jesus is the appropriate lens for that. The way Jesus reorients Israel and his followers, really, through the Beatitudes, we see it come out in his temptation. We see it just all over, all his fingerprints all through the gospels and in his teachings, we do see a reorientation of a lot of these things, a call to different sorts of living because we're entering a new covenant age. Exactly. I mean, I think that's well said. And your example with divorce and Moses earlier is beautiful. I mean, he's basically saying Moses got you here, but I'm going to take you here, you know. And I think that that's true in a lot. And we still see the heart of God in Torah so beautifully, right? We know what to look for and we can dig deep into it. But as you said, right, like Jesus is coming in a new covenant way to kind of move us forward in that space. Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. All right. The context lens. I think you talked a little bit about this earlier, you know, where you're talking about creation and understanding the ancient Near Eastern context a bit and those kind of things. And so is that the only kind of context you're talking about? Not the only, but it's a big piece of it. I think, you know, you have historical, cultural, but you also have literary contexts that I think we probably are less engaged with, right? OK, so for instance, we'll read a passage, you know, like in an appalling letter where it says, you know, greet each other with a holy kiss and we'll say, kind of probably cultural, you know, like I'm not. We don't really do that anymore. I haven't adopted that practice yet. Exactly. Yes. Most people have not, which is great. And so, yeah, I think a lot of us understand that like cultural stuff intrinsically. But, you know, I think we don't do as much around kind of the literary context and genre. Like you talked about Revelation, Daniel, Ezekiel, even just what Revelation is, you know, as a piece of writing. If we could understand that a little bit better, it would actually take care a lot of the apocalyptic and literalism lens if we just were like, oh, this is actually, what is apocalyptic literature, you know? And is it like, you know, a minute by minute prediction of the future? Well, not really. Like that's not what any of it actually is. So then how can we understand? So that's a lot. I mean, context is a broad thing, but I'm trying to wrap all that stuff into it. Yeah, I mean, whenever I teach, I'm teaching through Revelation in a couple of different spaces right now, which is kind of fun. And what I usually tell people is, you know, you can tell an action movie as soon as it comes on. Like there are different marks to an action movie that you know are going to be there, especially if you're used to like 90s action movies or 80s action movies, right? You sort of have this, it was basically just a big pattern, right? And if something didn't happen, right? If there wasn't some sort of gratuitous violence in there, you're like, I don't feel like this is really an action movie anymore, right? And so you kind of knew where it was going. You can do the same with, you know, romantic comedies or any genre of film that we're really aware of and understand deeply. Once you get into it, you just sort of know what to expect. And I'm like, the problem that we have in reading Revelation is that we don't know what this is. We're not deeply engrained in it enough to just sort of embody the world and go, no, that's, you know, that's not what it's doing. This is, you know, that's a ball, not a strike. That kind of feel to it. That's a great way to describe it. Yeah. And yeah, and then we miss a ton of the things that would have been pretty obvious to an original audience. That's right. That's right. Especially under the thumb of the Roman Empire, all the not so subtle nods to Roman emperors and the Roman Empire that are all throughout that we just miss. Yeah. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free retirement defense guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. Yeah. No, I mean, I was just teaching through the letter to the Philadelphia, the church in Philadelphia, and one of the things that we're tempted, I think, to read past is that reference to, I will put the name of the new Jerusalem on. You're like, what is that? Why is it that they get to be fixtures in the temple? Like, and that they never have to leave. And what does it mean that they have the new Jerusalem name on them? Like these would have been really powerful polemics and rhetoric back in the day, and they convey something that's happening that we just sort of read past. And so again, when we're thinking in terms of those maps, trying to lay an eschatological map on top of that, that gives a lot of systems, a lot of problems. But if we're just reading it naturally, kind of lead you somewhere. Kind of doesn't. Yeah, totally. All right. Flourishing lens. I really like this one. Flourishing lens, I thought was super cool. And so I just want to hear you explain it. And then we'll talk about it probably a good bit here. Yeah, this is, you know, one of my favorite parts as well. Probably this and the fruitfulness are two of my favorites. I think flourishing for me really is, it's rooted in why Jesus came, right? So whether you have the Luke 4 discourse where he preaches at the synagogue, his hometown synagogue for the first time. And he says, you know, I came to set the captives free. I came to give good news to the poor and sight to the blind, all that. Or something as simple as John 10, 10, where he's dichotomizing himself with kind of evil embodied and saying the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy. I came so that they may have life and have it abundantly, have it to the full. That really is Jesus's intent that we would all, all of humanity would experience this flourishing. That's most clearly actually depicted probably in Eden and in the new heaven and new earth. So kind of like Genesis 1 and 2, Revelation 21, and, you know, that where it's like this fullness, this flourishing, this equality, it's, you know, and this, this depth of relationship with God and each other walking and talking with God, supporting and caring for each other. And then I think that's what the kingdom is, right? That when Jesus, what Jesus talks about more than anything else is the kingdom of God, this place where everybody flourishes. And so if that is really over and over, Jesus's kind of main intent is for our flourishing both now and forever. Then our biblical interpretations should be leading us to helping people experience flourishing. And I talk a lot about this discipline of liberation theology, which is essentially says, okay, well, God's ideal is flourishing. There are things that get in the way of that. I would call that stuff sin, personal and systemic sin that gets in the way of us experiencing flourishing. And there are people that have experienced some more than others, right? And so God's desire is to liberate, to set free all of us from those things that get in the way of our flourishing. And some people, because of circumstances far beyond their control, a lot of times have a kind of a bigger gap between where they are and the flourishing that God intends. And so that theology essentially says liberation theology essentially says God as the parent, the good, good father of all of us is going to see his children in most distress and start there, so to speak, right? Like you have, and you see this in the work of Jesus going to the margins, going to the people who had been pushed out of society or people who had, you know, experienced really severe pain, struggle, suffering, starting in those places to move them back in. And so my whole connection with the way we

Liberate politically so that there's a freedom to do as we please. Whereas if we read the sort of, let's say, Exodus narrative, that narrative is a political and spiritual liberation that doesn't lead to unrestrained freedom, but newly restrained freedom. It's a life under the commands of God. And now God is Lord. And so I don't think every liberation theology does that. And I really like the lens you painted. What I'm kind of wondering is if you see that liberation theology, let's call it an impetus, right, that trajectory of liberation theology being enveloped by your hierarchical lens on the other side of the fence. You know, I mean, the use of Exodus to justify the Revolutionary War, use of Exodus to justify Southern slave owners in the Civil War. Right. Like you have these moments where that liberation idea is taken up and used for human agency. And I just found it fascinating to see you work that through the flourishing lens, in part because I've done so much work thinking about it through what I am now calling the hierarchical lens. Does that track for you? That's a great insight, James, for real. Yeah, brilliant. I think that absolutely tracks. I think we, you know, a simple way to put it is maybe we talk a lot more sometimes about what we're freed from than what we're freed to, you know? And we just really get obsessed with, I'm free from all this and I'm freed to anything I want. When actually I think God's pretty concerned about, yeah, freeing us from things, but also freeing us to something that is, yeah, constrained by the kingdom of God and the lordship of Christ and all of that stuff, right? And I think that, I do think that we just, we live in this, you know, sometimes a world that's much more comfortable in black and white, much more comfortable in the binaries. And so we really end up focusing either on, you know, kind of like personal salvation only or social liberation only, you know? When I think that actually God is concerned with the intersection of those two things. Yeah, it's both. I think the gospel of Jesus is always both personal and communal, right? It's both spiritual and social. And you see that again in the work of Jesus. And you see it a lot in some of the people who've done, you know, some of the most important things as far as like liberation, you know, in our country's history. So you have, like, I listened to a ton of, like, Dr. King's sermons and, you know, he famously talked about how, like, the cross is a stumbling block for some, but for me, I see it as the centerpiece to both personal and social liberation. And I think that idea that it's both of those things together. But to your point, it's hard because you're going to get pulled in a direction, you know? And we see that all the time and it takes a lot of intentionality and effort to say no, both, both of these things. Well, and I think that's partly why I really love that you brought it up in the flourishing lens chapter because it felt like more often when I hear about liberation, it's a liberation on its own, liberation theology on its own. And it's sort of leading to towards some sort of utopian vision where, you know, there's a little bit more freedom for everyone. Everybody is actually flourishing. There is that real strong emphasis on care for the poor and those kind of things, but it starts to feel to me like it leans into, to use your lenses, a moralistic lens. Let's, let's care about other humans, which on the face of it doesn't seem bad. Of course. Yeah. But detached from, you know, a theological constraint, it actually doesn't do that much. Right. And then that hierarchical lens where it's like, well, let's accomplish this through liberation. And you start to get into those weird just reversals. Like this would work better if I was on top and you were on bottom, don't you think? Right. Yeah, absolutely. And so I love the way you put it in the flourishing chapter because I think that captures the real trajectory and impetus of what liberation actually is, is that we're moving to a point where we are more dependent on God as opposed to being independent from him. And in that dependence, we find our path to flourishing. Yeah. True freedom. Yeah, absolutely. So I love that chapter. I thought, yeah, that drawing in of liberation was beautiful in that chapter. And I'm glad we got to talk about that a little bit. Same, man. Same. Well, fruitfulness, let's talk about fruitfulness and then we'll, I got a couple other questions and we'll close it out. But yeah, talk to me about fruitfulness. Yeah, the really easy way to explain this is that, you know, Jesus said, you'll know my followers by their fruit. You know, Paul says the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. So, you know, we need to be examining ourselves all the time. One of the pastoral questions I get constantly is essentially like, am I doing a good job as a Christian? You know, like that underneath so many questions, right, is like, I want to do good. Am I doing good? And so one measure that we use all the time is, are my beliefs and behaviors producing more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, etc. in me and in the people around me? And if they are, if it is, then that is the fruit of the Spirit of God at work, right? And so the same is true for our biblical interpretations. Is it producing more of those things? If so, then the Spirit of God is at work. If it is not, then again, similar to flourishing, it should at least cause us to re-examine. I'm not saying it causes us to throw it all out or to flip it, you know, go a full 180 like we like to do, but it should at least cause us to go back and do some examination. Good. No, that's good. Talk just a little bit about, so you've got these eight lenses, essentially, four good ones, four bad ones. What are some of the underlying skill sets that you see today that people really do need to develop in order to even use those four lenses well? We're talking about some pretty complex ideas. You know, when you talk about the Jesus lens and you think about, hey, let's privilege Jesus' teachings. Let's sort of root ourselves here and recognize him as the full disclosure of all who God is without throwing this stuff in the Old Testament now. That's easy for us to say, but in practice, both you and I both know that's really difficult to do. So that's what I'm wondering is, you know, for people who are listening to this and want to read your book, I would really recommend they read your book. What are some of those other underlying skill sets they need to develop in addition to these ones? Great question. I think that's the first time I've gotten that question. It's an excellent question. It starts with humility. There has to be this understanding, number one, that you probably have lenses you're unaware of, you know? Like we all are bringing biases, experiences, things like that. I talk a lot about how we read the Bible over the shoulder of the original audience, you know, that we have to do some extra work to try to, you know, we're not going to get things as intrinsically as they did. You know, we're not, you know, ancient Hebrews. We're not first century Near Easterners. And even they argued about interpretation, you know? So, yeah, it starts with some humility. That's number one. And number two, I would say you really need some healthy and diverse community that you're doing this stuff with, right? Because that is how you're going to miss the least amount of things, you know? Like if you're talking about this stuff, like you and I are, like we have some similar backgrounds and stuff. We also have some really different things, different educational lenses, different, you know, pastoral leadership positions and theological leadership positions, all that stuff. We're getting to have this conversation where there's some stuff that, like, we already bring that's really similar, but there's also stuff we bring that's really different, the way we're viewing that, you know? And then we can actually learn a lot from each other. And so if we're participating humbly in that healthy and diverse community, then you're able to be like, okay, so I'm interpreting the Jesus lens through let's just never read the Old Testament again. Right. And then you have somebody else in the room who's saying, actually, the Exodus story was massively important for, you know, my people's liberation as a black person in, you know, in the world, right? As like a theological justification for it, right? I have no idea, you know? Wow, I didn't know that. So thank you. So those kind of conversations, humility, healthy and diverse community would be the two big ones. Okay. That's helpful. Well, we're about out of time. I usually ask my guests just one sort of closing question. So I'll throw it out there to you and you can answer it however you want. It doesn't have to be related to the book or even any of our conversation, but obviously it could be. What do you think the church needs to do today in order to be and make more faithful disciples of Jesus Christ? That's the big question. That's such a good question. I think we have to stop using Jesus and scripture as just justifications for whatever it is that we already believe and want to do. And we have to attempt to...

Humbly and through introspection and through community, like I just talked about, allow ourselves to be transformed toward the likeness of Christ, you know? Because Jesus as a mascot for politics or ideology or whatever makes a terrible Savior, you know? And it's actually, and same with the Bible, you know, wielding the Bible to win arguments. And this is not, people do this on all sides, you know? Grab a Bible verse and use it like a club to win an argument. And, you know, we're actually supposed to be melting our tools into plowshares, you know? I mean, our weapons into plowshares, right? Like we're not supposed to be weaponizing the text. In fact, we're supposed to be putting away the weapons and cultivating like mutual flourishing and love for each other and all of that stuff. And so, yeah, man, I think if we would really kind of put down the weapons, drop the stones and try to engage with Scripture and Jesus in ways that allow ourselves to be transformed rather than grabbing them to support whatever we already believe, I think that would change some things. I don't remember, I don't remember you referencing this in the book, but I think it fits so well with the ethos of your book. If you're familiar, Dietrich Bonhoeffer was at this ecumenical conference in Bland and he gets up and he tells the people something like, you know, isn't it clear from everything we've said today that we're more enamored with our own thoughts than we are with the words of God and Scripture? We need to be reading the Bible against ourselves, not for ourselves. And I just, I always love that quote. I'm like, it's sort of classic Bonhoeffer. I'm sure it's even more powerful in German, you know, it sounds like grittier and angrier. But I just love that quote. And so I think it resonates so clear that what you just said, let's let the Bible be our final authority for life and faith. Let's not put it under a different authority and pretend it's the final authority for our life and faith. Yeah. Well said. Very cool, man. Well, I love the book. We'll have the link in the show description, everybody. So this is a Brazos published book. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it on Brazos. You can get it on Baker's publishing site. All those are connected. Zach, really appreciate you being here, man. This was a big, great conversation. I enjoyed it and I love the book. I'd highly recommend it to folks. That means so much to me, man. Thank you for having me on. I loved this conversation too. Really appreciate it. Take care and really thanks for being on the show. I hope to have you back on again. And everybody, thanks for listening to this episode of Thinking Christian. We'll catch you next time. Take care. I just wanted to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. It's a crazy world out there, moms and dads. I'm Katherine Segars, host of Christian Parent, Crazy World, the podcast that tackles tough topics to help you be a godly parent in an ungodly world. Subscribe at lifeaudio.com.