Episode 7: The Power in the Story with Jasper Peters
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Show Notes
Co-hosts
Jeff Chu
Find Jeff online: @byJeffChu on Instagram or @JeffChu on Twitter. You can also subscribe to Jeff’s newsletter, Notes of a Make-Believer Farmer on Substack.
Sarah Bessey
Find Sarah online: @SarahBessey on Instagram or @SarahBessey on Twitter. You can also subscribe to Sarah’s newsletter, Field Notes on Substack. Explore Sarah’s recent books on her website.
Featured guest
Jasper Peters
Born and raised in Denver, Colorado, Jasper Peters is a pastor’s kid and has experienced both great love and great brokenness in the church. He’s a United Methodist pastor and the founding pastor of Belong Church in Denver where he sees his vocation as inviting others to recognize and share in divine love and grace. He is a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder and the Iliff School of Theology. He and his wife, Kimberly, have two boys. In addition to his work as a pastor, he speaks and writes about justice, race, theology, sci-fi, and so much more.
“While we spend so much time talking about the authority of the Bible, perhaps instead we can find a way to engage with the power that exists in Scripture.”
Thanks to our producer, SueAnn Shiah, who also provided the music for this episode, you can listen to her album A Liturgy for the Perseverance of the Saints on Spotify, Apple Music, Youtube, or Bandcamp and find her at @sueannshiah on Instagram and @sueannshiah on Twitter.
Transcript
Intro
JASPER: There's a story here of people who've been brutalized. There's a story here of people who almost lost hope, but they remember that God loved them and God said, “I have not forgotten about you and I am seeking your liberation. I am seeking a way that your chains might be broken and you might go free.”
In the same text, in the same stories, some people will use and misuse and abuse the text in order to gain and protect power for themselves, all under the guise of biblical authority. And to them I say, “Get behind me, Satan. There is a better story.”
<<<MUSIC: IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL BY SUEANN SHIAH>>>
JEFF: Hello friends. I’m Jeff Chu.
SARAH: And I'm Sarah Bessey. Welcome back to The Evolving Faith Podcast, friends. We’re so glad you’ve decided to spend some of your time with us this week. Today we’ll be hearing from our friend Jasper Peters, who will be helping us wrestle with the Bible.
JEFF: I am not much of a wrestler.
SARAH: Except when it comes to walking little Fozzie. So speaking of our canine companion, which is too grand, he is too grand to be relegated to a mascot. I feel like at some point we probably need to let people know that the sighs and the groans in the background of this podcast are the dog. That he's a very noisy companion.
JEFF: I actually exiled him downstairs today, but yeah, you'll probably hear Fozzie on several episodes of this podcast. I promise he is not in pain. He just makes a lot of noises. He is such a weird dog. We actually don't know much of his story except that he's been through a lot. He's really old. He is deaf. And at one point the shelter wasn't sure he was going to make it. But he has been with us for two years now. We love him dearly, especially when he's napping and he's napping right now. And sometimes when he's napping, he falls off the couch.
SARAH: Don't we all.
JEFF: Do we? Do you?
SARAH: It felt right.
JEFF: I think we need to talk about that on a future episode. Okay. Enough about Fozzie and Sarah, who both apparently fall off couches when they're sleeping. Sarah, why don't you introduce everyone to Jasper?
SARAH: Okay. Jasper was born and raised in Denver so he was our local connection at Evolving Faith that year. He’s a pastor’s kid and, like a lot of us, he has experienced both great love and great brokenness in the church. He’s a United Methodist pastor and the founding pastor of Belong Church in Denver where he sees his vocation as inviting others to recognize and share in divine love and grace. He’s married to his wife, Kimberly, and they have two boys. In addition to his work as a pastor, he speaks and writes about justice, race, theology, sci-fi, and so much more. I hadn’t met Jasper in person before this weekend, and I cannot tell you how lovely and kind he is. He was such a joy to meet, and I know you’re going to love hearing from him. Here’s the lovely Jasper Peters, speaking to us from Evolving Faith 2019 in Denver, Colorado.
Part 2: Jasper’s Talk
<<<<TRANSITIONAL MUSIC>>>
Just a few years ago, I found myself as a pastoral intern in a large downtown congregation. And I learned really quickly that downtown all sorts of interesting things can happen interacting with affluent folks, business folks, but also folks who had slept on the stairs of the church the night before. And one day I was exiting the building, and I saw a man who I had seen earlier in the day, and in fact, I think he had slept there overnight. And I saw him right up against the street standing over a garbage can. And he was wrestling, and ripping and tearing at something. And as I got closer, I realized that he was holding a Bible.
And he didn't seem to be angry. He didn't seem to be upset. But I saw him take a chunk, it looked like a chunk that started in Leviticus, probably all the way through Psalms, and it was like a really big rip, and he throws it in the garbage can. And I'm wondering, is this an opportunity for me to be pastoral in some way, shape, or form? I hadn't taken a class that had spoken about anything like that thus far. But I thought to myself, mostly because I have a wildly active imagination. I imagined myself pulling out my phone and saying to him, “My friend, don't you know that all Scripture is God breathed and useful for teaching, rebuke, rebuking, correcting and training and righteousness? This is the Word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.”
I didn't do that. I didn't say that to him in that moment. But I did want to check in, and so I asked him, “Is everything okay?” And he smiled at me, and he says, “Uh huh.” And he rips another chunk and throws it into the garbage. And at that moment, I could have walked away. But I was just so curious. And I had this deep desire to somehow be helpful, be pastoral, be of service. And so I said, “Is there anything that I can help you with? Or are you upset with this book?” He said, “No. But it's full of lies.”
And he threw the rest of it in the garbage can and he walked away.
At some point, someone told him something about the Bible that he believed was true. At some point someone told him that this was an authoritative document. At some point, someone probably told him, “This is my Bible, I am who it says I am. And I can do what it says I can do.” Y’all don’t watch enough TBN. That's all right.
But at some moment, some cross-section of his life, he ended up on the street in front of my church, incredibly angry and disappointed in this Bible. I've been upset with God before. I've been upset with Scripture before. But there was something about seeing him rip those tissue paper pages that made me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps I felt like the religious authorities of my youth were looking over my shoulder and waiting on me to somehow defend the sovereignty and love and graciousness of God by defending this book.
I think that someone did a great disservice to this man at some point. And I think that we have done a great disservice to so many others, because we have told them that in these pages, they can expect a certain set of things that so many of us have found not to be true.
I have a deep and abiding love for Scripture. I remember learning Scripture, I remember learning to read with Scripture at my mother's knees, beginning to my first opportunity to memorize anything. And the first thing I memorized are the words to the Lord's Prayer, “Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” This book introduced me to a loving God, early in my life, more than the experiences inside of a church, more than friends. I found God in these pages. And I found a God who loves me, who encourages me, who inspires me to go and do every bit of good that I possibly can. And yet, the more that God's love took hold of me, the more that it became difficult to read the text in the way that I always had.
The more that God's love grew in me, the more that I wanted to wrestle, that I wanted to push back. And sometimes I wanted to take an entire section, rip it from the book, and throw it into the garbage. The same book, the same volume, the same work that introduced me to the love of God, the more that I learned, at some point, I found that I just couldn't pick up the text in the same way. And at first, I thought that there was something broken inside me. And after a while, I realized that there was something breaking open inside of me.
Eventually, the love of God helped me to discover what the Scripture could be. But also what it wasn't. It wasn't authoritative, at least not in the way that I had used that word before. It wasn't authoritative, at least in the way that we sometimes argue over. And we've been given this great and amazing gift full of thoughtfulness and wisdom and love, and we have turned it into a battleground. And I don't think that it has to be that way.
Warning, and perhaps I'm going to get in trouble in a moment here for not properly respecting the authority of Scripture. But it won't be the first time that I've gotten in trouble for that. As a student at the University of Colorado Boulder, just a few handfuls of miles from here, I—see, well, I mean, we can talk about it.
It's a nice place to be if you're theoretically progressive, but as a person of color, Boulder’s sort of a funky place. So be aware of that as you as you travel around, but I'll say, I'll say that as a student at the University of Colorado Boulder, I'd be on my way to class. And I would discover these people who weren't a part of our campus community, but they felt compelled to be there anyway, they would stand with large signs saying hateful things to my friends and to myself, and they would open this text for which I had a deep and abiding love and appreciation. And they would say all sorts of terrible things. And they would use it as a way to tell me and my friends that we're going to hell.
I can't tell you how many times instead of going to class, I put my book bag on the ground, I pulled out my text, and I argued right back at them. And I argued for all the sake of love and appreciation and grace and mercy against all of their hateful rhetoric. As a side note, it took me 10 years to get that degree.
I probably should have gone to class, but I was determined not to let them make Scripture into something evil, not to make Scripture into something that is a weapon, not to make Scripture into something that is horrible. And yet, every time I did, every time I would offer up an argument for the sake of grace, they would say, “Well, you don't appreciate the authority of Scripture.”
And I'll say yes, in this moment, I'll say I don't appreciate the authority of Scripture. Because the authority of Scripture is the thing that has been used to break down and beat down too many people for so very long. The authority of Scripture was what oversaw the kidnapping of people on the African continent, the authority of the religion and the religious authorities and the authority of Scripture is what oversaw these kidnapped people being baptized before they were crammed on ships, where most—where very many of them, up to 40 percent sometimes, would perish. I don't have a use for the authority, be it scriptural or otherwise, that is used for the abuse of beloved children of God.
I thank God that we're learning to read Scripture, not from the top, not, not from the stations of power, but instead, from the bottom. I'm so grateful that we're hearing voices who've never had access to power and never had access to authority and yet, they're helping us to read the text and see the truth and mercy and power. They're helping us to see that God in the course of this text is after a radical inversion of reality, where the first are last and the last are first. And where there are things that are beautiful, even in the midst of a broken world.
I appreciate the way that we can use Scripture, and we can we can see it in different ways in the history of this colonized nation. In the history of this colonized nation, we see that some folks use Scripture in order to justify Manifest Destiny, right. They would read, and they would say, “Here is a tale of the children of Israel. Look, they have encountered and inherited the Promised Land. And so it should be for us.” And so they use the text to justify the genocide of Native peoples, the enslavement of people of African descent, and so many other horrors. And all the while, they would read the text and say, “This, of course, is what God desires for us.” But I love the fact that my ancestors and others would take that same text, they would just have to rewind a little bit, they'd go a little bit further back in the book, and they would say, “There's a story here of a people who've been enslaved.”
There's a story here of people who've been brutalized. There's a story here of people who almost lost hope, but they remembered that God loved them and God said, “I have not forgotten about you and I am seeking your liberation. I am seeking a way that your chains might be broken and you might go free.”
In the same, in the same text in the same stories, some people will use and misuse and abuse the texts in order to gain and protect power for themselves, all under the guise of biblical authority. And to them I say, “Get behind me, Satan.” There is a better story. There is a better story being told, one that is deeply rooted in freedom.
I was speaking to my mother, and I asked her, “How is it that you first encountered Scripture?” I had, I had a suspicion that it was the same as the way that I did, at her mother's knees, and she said, “You're right, but you're a little bit wrong.” She reminded me that my grandmother experienced depression. And there were many days where it was hard for her to get out of bed. And my mother, before she could read, before she understood many of the things that she understands now, she said, “I was always happy on the days that she would reach over to her nightstand table and get that little black book. Because she would open up that little black book, and especially on the days when she would read the pages that had the red letters.” She said when my grandmother would open up that book and read the pages with red letters that she would find the strength and the power and the ability to get up out of that bed and to be the mother that my mother needed. To be the mother that her sisters needed, to be the daughter of God she was called to be. I submit to you that while we spend so much time talking about the authority of the Bible, perhaps instead we can find a way to engage with the power that exists in Scripture. There's power wrapped up in those pages. There's power wrapped up in these stories. There's power wrapped up in the way that we can engage and see ourselves, see our own salvation, see our own stories being played out again and again and again.
In the mercy that comes from God, I suggest to you, my friends, that we abandon the battleground over biblical authority, because authority is about who has and maintains power. And instead, if we can understand the way in which the text offers a power to those who engage with it, those who argue with it, and yes, sometimes those who are willing to rip it apart so that they can see it and understand it in a better way.
I'm not actually suggesting you rip apart your Bibles. There's still a part of me that's still really freaked out by that idea. Metaphorically.
My hope is that in the context of our dealing with Scripture, especially as many of us have experienced processes of deconstruction, and perhaps reconstruction on deconstruction, and mobilization, for those of us who have inherited a great faith, and yet we continue to wrestle with what it is and what it means, rather than appeal to biblical authority, or else have people say to us, “Well, you don't appreciate biblical authority. You don't appreciate the historicity of Scripture” or some other fancy word. I paid a lot of money to learn those words. I can show you my student loan statements. It's paid off quite well.
I would say that instead of getting caught up in those arguments, perhaps can we recognize that in this text, when we find stories of those who have been outcast and marginalized and broken down and forgotten, and again, and again, and again, we see that the power and mercy and grace of God continues to show up in our Scriptures, continues to show up in the way that we read the text. And even for me, it continues to show up, because every time I open my Bible, I have the opportunity to remember my grandmother, who found power, who found power to get up out of the bed. Who found power to be a mother and a grandmother when she read these words.
The first Scripture that I memorized was 2 Corinthians, Paul speaking about a thorn in his flesh. And I'll leave you with this sentiment. And perhaps it can be true for us. He says that God said to him, “‘My grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness.’ So I will boast all the more gladly of my weakness so that the power of Christ may dwell within me.”
I don't always know what to make of the text. I don't always know what to do with it. I don't know whether I'm wrestling well, whether I'm failing to honor the tradition, whether I'm failing to honor all those who've come before me with brilliant interpretations and expositions. I don't always know what to do with the text, but I approach it in humility, recognizing that God's power can be made perfect, even in our weakness.
<<<<TRANSITIONAL MUSIC>>>
SARAH: If you’ve been listening to and loving this podcast, join us for Evolving Faith 2022, the live virtual conference. It’s on October 14 and 15.
So many of us are engaging in good, hard, holy work right now to cultivate love, reimagine and build a faith that works not only for us but for the whole world, and to find our way in the wilderness together. We need to be reminded of what matters, about who is alongside of us. We need connection, inspiration, good conversations and laughter and, we need some hope too. We are gathering not in spite of these turbulent times but because of them. So please join us.
We have set a big, rowdy table in the middle of the wilderness, and together, we’ll have a feast. We’re saving a spot for you.
Go to evolvingfaith.com and register today. You won’t want to miss this moment with this community, It’s pretty special. Okay, now back to the show.
Part 3: Conversation
JEFF: If I am understanding Jasper correctly, part of what he is inviting us to do is to set aside the intellectual arguments about what Scripture means and to feel, to feel through a revisiting of our ancestral stories, what kind of power Scripture has had in the lived experience of our elders. And that invitation is so compelling to me because I do think that those of us who came up through evangelical churches in the West often have this tendency to think about Scripture and to analyze and exegete and defend rather than to feel its power. And Sarah, I'm curious how this sits with you, given your own family's history of faith.
SARAH: Yeah, I loved that story about his mum and his grandma. It does make me, I don't know, a bit sad that we don't talk maybe more about that mystical side of Scripture because we're always working to defend it or wrestle with it. And I don't know, in my own life, I've had many experiences with Scripture of the sort that he talked about. And it's been such a key part about how I enter the text, how I feel I am often being read by the text, and even now the ways that I'm being formed by Scripture. And I know that some of that is, like, pure stubbornness, you know, almost that contrary part of me that's like, “No, you don't get to have the corner on the Bible.” It's also for us. And even though I know that you and I have talked before about how we don't we don't read it the same way we once did. But that power that he talks about here, I still, I still long for that. And I also still feel it and experience it.
JEFF: I wonder what it's like to have that gatekeeper mentality that you referred to, you know, not just around Scripture but so much that has to do with the church. I guess so much of my life has been about being gatekept. Is that, is that a word? I don't know if that's a word.
SARAH: It is now. It's a word now.
JEFF: I just have a really hard time understanding what it's like to be the gatekeeper. And that has been true across the theological spectrum, sometimes even simultaneously, not conservative enough or evangelical enough, as well as not progressive enough or whatever enough.
SARAH: That's a—it's a hell of a high to be the one who's deciding who's in and who's out.
JEFF: Am I, am I in or out right now? And don't pretend you haven't been tempted to cancel me.
SARAH: Never. You're going to outlast all of us, especially me. You know, I did see reflected back in this talk a lot of our, I don't know, frequent conversations. But when, when Jasper said that, “The more God's love took a hold of me, the more that it became—the more difficult it became to read the text in the way that I always had.” The more that God's love grew in him, the more that he wanted to wrestle, that he wanted to push back. And he talked about sometimes wanting to take like an entire section of the Bible and like rip it from the book and throw it in the garbage. Both of those things felt so true to me.
JEFF: I was on a reporting trip in Uganda in 2015, and I was trying to understand the spiritual lives of queer people there because so much had been written about the homophobic and transphobic atmosphere in Uganda. But I never got a sense of what that did to the spirituality of LGBTQ folks themselves. And there was this striking moment when I visited the home of this lesbian couple, and one of them told me that she had started taking her Bible and literally cutting out pages that she didn't like. But then she stopped because she felt it seemed a little sacrilegious. And she just said to God, "I will just not read those pages." There was something so wonderfully honest to me, but also a little shocking, about her ability to express that to God. I was brought up to be such an obedient little Baptist boy that I can't imagine taking an actual pair of scissors to an actual Bible. And I'm not sure I could even say that out loud to God, "I will just not read those pages." But the truth is, there are sections of Scripture that are hard for me, and there are sections of Scripture that I like better than others. And then there are sections of Scripture that read beautifully. And then there's Leviticus and Numbers.
SARAH: I've definitely had the experience of telling God, “I'm just not going to read those pages.” And I think, I think that's okay. God's not panicking about quiet times and pages logged. I think sometimes we place all this pressure on ourselves and on the Bible. Like we have to force things before it's ready. And I'm still, I mean, this is not a surprise to anybody, but I'm still, you know, charismatic enough to really trust the Holy Spirit here. And if folks are really struggling, I often say it's okay to take a break. If the Bible is a source of pain and grief for you, then for heaven's sake, rest, right? You don't, you don't have to force it. And perhaps there's even an invitation from God to simply meet with them elsewhere for a bit. The Bible isn't the same thing as God. God will meet you in the Scriptures, but God isn't limited to a quiet time and a carefully articulated theology and this nice, tidy set of answers. God will be faithful to meet with you where you are able to be. And I'm, of course, I'm particularly thinking of a lot of people in our community who have had trauma or had Scripture used against them, who have been gatekept. And it's actually perhaps, you know, those good places of renewal and life where you meet with God, whether that's music and community or poetry or, you know, friendship, whatever. It may create a pathway back to Scripture eventually. But you'll have been, I don't know, like fed and cared for on the way.
JEFF: I really do hope God isn't limited to a quiet time because I'm really bad at quiet times, and I've always been ridiculously undisciplined about them. But I agree with you that we absolutely do not have to figure everything out right away, and it can be good and life-giving to step away for a bit. But I would also say this. Sometimes it's okay to be uncomfortable. Just because you're struggling with Scripture doesn't mean you're necessarily in danger. I don't think Scripture is all meant to be easy. The Bible isn't a giant book of personal affirmation and peel-and-stick gold stars. Sometimes it's going to be challenging and feel tough and seem difficult, and the way to deal with that is not always around but through. Sometimes.
SARAH: Right. Discomfort and anger are not necessarily negative things to be avoided. Or so you tell me.
JEFF: This conversation is truly a dream for you, isn't it?
SARAH: So life-giving. What do you mean there's no peel-and-stick gold stars? So for sure—I mean, absolutely, there are there are passages of Scripture I'm thinking of right now. You know, often times I think, you know, called like the clobber verses that are sort of used to kind of whack people into someone else's idea of submission. As a woman who dares to have an opinion on the internet every now and again, I've had, you know, 2 Timothy shouted at me more in my lifetime than anyone should. So I understand that. It's been, it's been part of my own journey to really wrestle with Scripture, to seek to understand it, to be uncomfortable, to let myself question and get angry even. I loved my Bible. I still do. And so that's maybe where that stubbornness is coming in that we talked about earlier, right. That often the verses that were, you know, meant to silence me, or being used by people who meant to silence me, were being misunderstood and misinterpreted and misused. But that doesn't negate their impact either, right. And so I still have a lot of questions. And most of those questions are because of that very thing that Jasper's talking about here: that the very thing that has been a source of love and freedom and forgiveness has also been a tool of oppression and pain and suffering. That both exist is true. And so I do think that it's good work to remember both of those things that, you know, for those of us who have had, you know, a mostly good experience with Scripture to not forget the ones for whom that story isn't always true. You know, Jasper talked about learning to read Scripture not from the top or from a station of power but from the bottom. And I think that's so important.
JEFF: I think of the fact that my first Bible teacher was a Chinese woman, my grandmother. And I guess I'm lucky in that regard because it was modeled for me from my earliest childhood that you don't need an MDiv, you don't need a PhD, you don't need a pulpit to encounter Scripture in real ways or to interpret it, or maybe most importantly, to live it out faithfully. The culture of some churches almost turns Scripture into this unapproachable thing, this book that so venerated that the average person dare not say anything about it without a diploma and/or a mediator. And that's just not the way I think it should be.
SARAH: You're taking my lines. You're speaking my language because I am so well documented on being suspicious of those very credentials at times, right. I'm, you know, the token low church one who's in there. It's just it's kind of ridiculous. But yes, in complete agreement.
JEFF: Because credentials have so often been used to dismiss and demean people who don't have them. I think it’s completely valuable to have folks who have the credentials because they can often bring a perspective that's helpful or some background information that can be illuminating. But this is another reason it's so important to read Scripture in community and not just individually or in isolation, because another person's lived experience can be helpful and illuminating too, and the next person's doubts and questions can also be helpful and illuminating. And the next person's reaction to the text from a different culture in a different social location can also be helpful and illuminating.
SARAH: That's been exactly my experience. And so when, when Jasper was talking about the story that he found in Scripture, eventually the story that he found about people who had lost hope but remembered God loves them and is seeking their liberation in the same stories that oppressors were using to justify cruelty and oppression. Even his response to that abuse of Scripture is, is that, that “Get thee behind me, Satan,” right? Which I mean, that's energy that I love. So I need to bring that “get thee behind me” energy to the next time someone hollers at me, “I suffer not a woman to speak,” you know.
JEFF: It's hard, though, because sometimes I'll read a passage about someone else's liberation. And even though I crave similar freedom, I have to wonder, does that get to apply to me? Or I'll see in Scripture a story of how God shows up for a character, and I'm almost afraid to wish for the same thing, almost afraid that it could be true for me, because I don't want to be disappointed if it doesn't seem to happen. So the thing I am questioning, the thing I'm wrestling with, is where is that line between drawing inspiration from others experiences as recorded in Scripture and reading the Bible as your set of personal promises?
SARAH: Well, it's a risky thing, right? For so many reasons. I mean, welcome to the whole conversation. Those of us who were raised in the prosperity gospel, Word of Faith kind of thing, that is a thing I think I'm still wrestling with. And it does make me wonder, you know, how do you, how do we, respond to the folks who often accuse us of not, you know, valuing Scripture or not having a high view of the Bible? You know, Jasper kind of touched on that and encouraged us not to get caught up in those arguments. But what do you think?
JEFF: Well, I found that usually those folks who accuse me of not having a high view of the Bible don't really want to engage in a genuine conversation. It's more about finger pointing than anything else. But if we're going to encounter this question honestly and candidly and in good faith, I think this is where a trusted community matters. I don't particularly care what a random person who doesn't really know me has to say about how I read Scripture. And I do think the communal experience of Scripture, which is how so much of it was experienced in ancient times, that matters. It wasn't ever primarily a book to be read in isolation. So many of the psalms were sung in community. In most synagogues still, the entirety of the Pentateuch is read either every year or every three years, so that the community of faith gets to experience it together.
SARAH: Maybe that's, that's part of why it's good to remember that we're not as alone as we think we are when we begin to ask those questions. You know, often we are handed that very small box for God or for the Bible, although some of us, of course, are taught that that's the same thing, so bless our hearts. You know, the possibility of thinking differently about something like biblical authority or atonement or a different way to understand 2 Timothy feels like you're in dangerous waters when the truth is, is that you're being faithful. There are so many ways to read and understand and live into the Bible. And that's where that communal aspect of reading the Scripture, I think, is really important.
So one of the things that occurred to me while we were listening to Jasper is I was reminded that he's Methodist, you know. And some of what he was saying here kind of almost reminded me of that Wesleyan quadrilateral way of understanding Scripture, that you understand the Bible through the text itself, you know, I guess, but you're also reading it through tradition and reason and experience. And I think that that's legit, right? It's a, it's a helpful and more honest way than just, you know, bleating, you know, “Sola Scriptura!” as if you're the only person who's ever been able to be objective about the Bible, which congratulations. But there is also this little nagging thing in me, and I don't know whether or not it's the Holy Spirit, but that this often also feels like the invitation to a conversation with Scripture, because there is also the nature and character of God, too. Like, the reason why I wanted to wrestle with 2 Timothy or other passages is precisely because they were being used to marginalize and silence and oppress people who are made in the image of God. So clearly we're missing something here. If we know and believe that God is love, then that's the lens that we're going to bring to everything. And then, of course, we're going to want to kick over those rocks. We're going to want to grapple or need to grapple with those passages too. And so, you know, community is part of that tradition. There's also the community of God, the community of creation, the power of God's love that comes into our interpretation and our understanding of the Bible, which, you know, maybe is a good way for us to begin to wrap up, because I was really struck by how wise Jasper was to say, “I don't always know what to make of it. I don't always know what to do with it.” And even that feels like freedom to say out loud: I don't know whether or not I'm wrestling well, whether I'm failing to honor the tradition, whether I'm failing to honor all those who've come before me with brilliant interpretations and expositions, and as you said, with a faithful life. I don't always know what to do with that, but. But he talked about approaching it in humility and recognizing that God's power can be made perfect, even in our weakness. And I think that's perhaps our invitation to approach it in humility from wherever we land now and trust in God's love and power even here.
Part 4: Outro
<<<MUSIC: IT IS WELL WITH MY SOUL BY SUEANN SHIAH>>>
JEFF: You can find all of the links mentioned on today’s show as well as information about our friend Jasper Peters and his work in the world, links and graphics to share, as well as a full transcript of this episode, including Sarah Bessey’s closing sermon, in our show notes at evolvingfaith.com/podcast.
Sign up for my newsletter at jeffchu.substack.com. Find photos of Fozzie on Instagram @fozziefozz. I am also on Instagram at @byjeffchu; it is the only social media platform I don’t detest.
SARAH: And you can find me, Sarah Bessey, at sarahbessey.com for all my social media links, my newsletter, my books. The Evolving Faith Podcast is produced by us, Sarah Bessey and Jeff Chu, along with the formidably gifted SueAnn Shiah, who also provided our music. So thank you for listening to this episode, friends. And until next time, remember—you are loved.
<<<<TRANSITIONAL MUSIC>>>
JEFF: Throughout our time together at Evolving Faith, there is one thing we’ve heard over and over from you: We need community. Being in the wilderness can be really lonely. You can feel too isolated—even those of us who are profoundly shy introverts. We all need companions for the journey. We need folks to accompany us and be alongside us.
So we are delighted to invite you to join the Evolving Faith Community online, a new space we’ve created—and we hope you will co-create with us—for better conversations, deeper connections, questions big and small, and content that we hope will be inspiring and meet you where you are.
It is free to join the Evolving Faith Community. Our desire is that you might find some fellow travelers in this oasis with whom you can feel a renewed sense of belonging and maybe even some hope. So come, explore, and share. All you have to do is go to community.evolvingfaith.com and sign up. We can’t wait to greet you. See you there.
