Recovering Evangelicals

Piecing together what the previous four episodes showed us about the End Times and Christ’s second coming. After four weeks of talking to experts on various aspects of “End Times” theology, this episode is our chance to put together many pieces of the puzzle into a coherent picture. In part, this means we have to pull apart some pieces that had been put into the wrong place, or even didn’t belong to this puzzle, and add in some new pieces that we got from those previous four episodes. This debriefing was guided in part by feedback we received from our listeners as the mini-series unfolded (so it’s a little bit of a mailbag episode too). We talked a bit about a new theological worldview that emerged in the 20th century — “Dispensationalism” — which is responsible for the wild distortion of End Times theology within Evangelical circles today. And we contrasted that against another theological worldview — “Preterism” — which sees the highly symbolic images and events described in the Book of Revelation as having been fulfilled in the 1st century. We also felt we had to delineate one more time the negative impact of this traumatizing and damaging form of End Times theology, to impress on the listeners why this topic was worth devoting four episodes to exploring it, and why it needs to be pushed back on. Another question we debated: why the Book of Revelation is even in the Bible in the first place, if it’s so problematic and easily misunderstood. My point of view is that in the same way that Genesis is not a science book, Revelation is not a history book. Instead, it’s there in our Bible because the human authors thought that way, and human editors compiled the book into the canon we call Scripture. At the same time, divine inspiration could also come into play here in the same way that we suggested divine inspiration was behind the sordid story in Judges 19, 20 and 21 (Episode #98): the passage doesn’t so much give readers an accurate perspective on the Divine, but exposes the flaws of the human heart. Both Scott and I also compared our respective personal positions on whether the world will end in a violent, divinely-orchestrated destruction, or whether we eventually meet up with some kind of cosmic higher power (alien race? God?) that helps us get our act together; and what to do with the many passages predicting Christ’s Second Coming … “riding on the clouds”. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #82, where we talk specifically about Jesus being the Jewish Messiah. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A close look at apocalyptic literature written before Jesus (and with which he interacted), and long after him (including John’s book of Revelation). In this fourth and final episode of our miniseries on “the End Times”, we talk to Dr. John J. Collins (Prof. Old Testament; Yale Divinity School) about ancient Apocalyptic literature … a large genre/category of literature which deals specifically with End Times thinking in various groups of people at various times in history. We learned that there were two waves of Apocalyptic writings in and around the Jewish and Christian communities two millennia ago. One wave occurred two or three centuries before Christ, in response to the rise of the Greek Hellenic Empire which massively shifted world thinking, politics, science, philosophy, and religion at that time. This is also the period in which Daniel writes his book, and it is this wave of literature with which Jesus and other religious leaders of his era interacted (Jesus referring to the Son of Man and the coming of the Kingdom of God, being two great examples). But that literature had no mention of the rising of a personified Antichrist, or any “mark of the Beast”, or any “Rapturing” of believers. Nor did Jesus talk about these things. A second wave of this kind of literature came out in response to the destruction of the Jewish Temple by the Roman Empire a few decades after the death of Christ. A whole new geopolitical situation … a whole new national enemy … and a whole new set of questions for Jews and Christians alike. This would be the wave in which we find John’s book of Revelation, and his VERY different view of “the End Times”. And Dr. Collins also told us a bit about why John’s writing is so full of violence and symbolism and metaphorical imagery. And then, two thousand years later, Evangelical Christians with a very “high view” of scripture take this book of Revelation, read it very literally, and apply it all directly to their own geopolitical situation: the church struggling against a fully modern, Westernized, American, narcissistic and consumeristic worldview. As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … Find more information about Dr. John J. Collins at his faculty web-page at Yale. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #33, in which we talked quite a bit about predictions of the End of the World, including several made by Harold Camping. You may also enjoy a previous one in which Kerry Noble gave his dramatic personal story of being completely immersed into an Apocalyptic Evangelical paramilitary group who thought they needed to prepare for the Second Coming through guns and bombs (Episode #92). Episode image by Enrique Meseguer from Pixabay. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

The “Left Behind” series of books and movies have sown seeds of fear, doubt and anxiety, with life-changing and life-long psychological impact. We’ve already heard in the previous two episodes that many people who grew up in the era of the “Left Behind” series of books and movies were negatively impacted by those forms of entertainment/indoctrination. Some would say they were traumatized, the most frequent complaint being the fear of having missed the Rapture or of somehow being made to take the mark of the Beast. But many also experience life-long and generalized anxiety, fear, and depression which they trace back to those formative years. Those books and movies also shaped the minds of that generation: they are always suspicious of every multi-government initiative being the leading edge of “the one world government” … of rising politicians and celebrities being the soon-to-be-revealed Antichrist … of every innovation in banking being “the mark of the Beast”. And polling agencies tell us that they’re less likely to care about pollution, climate-change, rising sea levels, and habitat destruction … and the respondents will explain it’s because they think “Jesus is coming back any day, and then it’s all gonna’ burn anyway.” That’s quite a legacy that “Left Behind” has …. left behind. Which is why we’ve decided to produce four episodes in response to the recent release of another “Left Behind” movie back in January. Sure, this movie probably won’t be a blockbuster by Hollywood standards. It will probably only last a few weeks in big chain theatres, and maybe a bit longer in the smaller independent ones. But you can be certain that it will continue to be played in Evangelical churches, youth groups, rallies and colleges … and individual homes … across North America all year, maybe longer that. And it will be subtitled for release in other countries. We heard last week of the burgeoning wave of Pentecostals in the Southern hemisphere  — one estimate says a billion by 2050 — who fully embrace this very toxic form of Apocalypticism (and many share a border with Muslim countries). So this recently-released movie will certainly be seen by many more people than the Hollywood box office numbers might indicate, and will shape the minds of yet another generation of Evangelicals!? In this episode, we’re going to talk to two clinical psychological experts who specialize in a new and growing form of mental trauma: spiritual abuse. They come from two opposite ends of the faith spectrum: one an atheist Exvangelical, and the other a firmly-committed believer. But they share the common perception that this “End Times” thinking is dangerous and destructive. We’ll hear their stories and insights regarding the damage experienced by their clients. We’ll also ask both of them whether it’s possible that Apocalyptic-thinking is an inherently human trait. Both of them agreed that it looks like it is: our evolutionary heritage engrained into us a constant fear of mortal threats all around us waiting to pounce. As Marlene put it: “our nervous system is wired to be afraid … that’s what we’re starting with”. And Evangelical producers of these “Left Behind” books and movies are exploiting that, and “dialing it up to eleven”! As always, tell us what your thoughts are about this topic … If you enjoyed this episode, you may also enjoy a previous one in which Kerry Noble gave his dramatic personal story of being completely immersed into an Apocalyptic Evangelical paramilitary group who thought they needed to prepare for the Second Coming through guns and bombs (Episode #92). You may also want to listen to our previous episode with Dan Koch talking about clergy abuse (Episode #89), or two other interviews with Janice Selbie (Episode #46) and Marlene Winell (Episode #47) dealing with religious abuse. Find more information about Dan Koch at his web-site, his podcast, his music page, and this link to a free clinical tool that he developed for assessing spiritual abuse. Find more about Dr. Marlene Winell at her web-site and that of her counselling service called Journey Free, which offers help for individuals seeking one-on-one recovery coaching; a group support (online forum and virtual support meetings 3 times a month); a professional development program; and upcoming retreats (the next one being June 8-11 in Cape Cod). To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

A historian takes us on a journey through two millennia of evolution of Christian understanding about “the End Times”. In last week’s episode, we compared two pictures of “the End Times”: one drawn by modern day Evangelicals, and the other drawn by Jesus while he was teaching in Palestine. And we found that those two pictures look completely different; the modern Evangelical picture always includes four main ingredients which Jesus’ picture just does not have: the Rapture the mark of the Beast a personified Antichrist complete global destruction (especially in America) I fully expect push back on that claim, so let me be clear: there are elements in the Gospel accounts which can be manipulated and distorted to resemble those four ingredients (John’s Book of Revelation is a different story). And the first two of those are the ones that are the biggest causes of anxiety and fear in people who suffer psychological trauma from the Left Behind books/movies (we’ll explore that psychological perspective next week). We wanted to understand how/why/when that understanding of “the End Times” changed so much in the two thousand years since Jesus. So we brought in Dr. Gord Heath, a Professor of Christian History, to take us on a journey through church time. At each important stop along that journey, I keep asking him: “is this where they start talking about the Rapture or the mark of the Beast?” [Remember: #1 and #2 in my list above, and which cause the most psychological trauma] And the same answer keeps coming up: “well …. no, actually.” Not until we get to the 19th and 20th centuries do we find that those four elements are brought in by a strand of thinking referred to as Dispensationalism. It’s completely a modern invention (when we’re measuring on a time-frame stretching 2000 years)!? We also found out last week that this Dispensationalist-invented version of “the End Times” is especially prevalent in the Evangelical world, Pentecostals being the strongest proponents of all. The only reason why I single this group out so starkly is that when I asked our expert historian to try to look over the horizon and speculate how this End Times thinking might change over the NEXT few hundred years, he also said that this theology is a “critical mark” of a Pentecostal thinking which has been on a dramatic growth streak in the southern hemisphere (Latin America, Africa, and Asia). In fact, he said they were the fastest growing strand of Christianity, and are estimated to reach over a billion across the globe by 2050! And here’s his ominous warning: that volatile mixture of exploding numbers of people looking forward to a global Apocalyptic Ending are in many cases situated … on the borders of many Islamic countries. You better buckle up your seat-belt, folks!? As always, tell us your thoughts on this topic … If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like the other one we did a year ago on “the End of the World” …. episode #33, or one we did previously with Dr. Heath, looking at the evolution of the Evangelical world and how it morphed away from Jesus’s Gospel Message … episode #39. Find more information about Dr. Gord Heath at his faculty web-page. Episode image by Myriams-Fotos of Pixabay. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

The latest sequel to a long series of books and movies just hit the cinema!? Yes, you read it correctly … yet another sequel in the Left Behind / Thief in the Night franchise of books and movies has come out. As if the previous ones which began coming out as far back as the 70s and 80s weren’t embarrassing and destructive enough. We talked to Dr. Aaron Ricker, whose current major research interest is Apocalypticism … in the Bible … in comic books … in modern action hero movies … and in the zeitgeist of our day. And together with him, we first looked at some of the statistics gathered by polling agencies re. the various beliefs pertaining to “the End Times,” the Antichrist, and “the Rapture” in society today (well, mostly in Americans). [Links for these data can be found below] We also looked at the fact that every Left Behind movie or book has the same four ingredients: the “Rapture”, an Antichrist who violently takes over the world, the “Mark of the Beast”, and global destruction. These are the hallmark features of this genre. This isn’t just a nerdy fun-fact: the reason it’s so noteworthy is that the “End Times” scenario that Jesus described doesn’t have any of these four ingredients!? At least not in any way that modern day Evangelicals understand these things. Disagree? Check out how we justify that claim. Finally, we looked at some of the dangers and costs — to individuals as well as to society — of this “End Times” thinking: the anxiety and fear that it creates in people, especially kids and adolescents, of having been “left behind” and now having to face a world-dominating Antichrist, global destruction, and ultimately …. eternal damnation. opportunity costs: some who get sucked into this way of thinking question whether to go to university, or to pursue important careers, or even whether to get married (or they decide to get married too early) … all because they think “Jesus is definitely coming back in the next year or two, so why bother? Instead, we should just get ready for his return.” making the situation on Earth even worse: the mentality that “maybe we can get Jesus to come back sooner if we just stir things up in Israel, or push international relations to the brink, or ruin the planet such that we humans NEED to be rescued (believe it or not, some people actually think this way)”. inaction on important issues: “if Jesus is coming back in the next year or two, then why bother trying to save the planet (pollution; global warming; environmental collapse and species extinction), or fix the inner cities, because it’s all gonna just burn anyway, right?” a distorted attitude re. foreign affairs, especially when it relates to Israel, because “this is all part of the plan”. unnecessary suspicion about any enterprise that involves a variety of governments, because they all start looking too much like “part of the one-world government that paves the way for the Antichrist”. Next week, we’re going to look at the history behind this way of thinking: how it has evolved over the past two millennia. And the week after that we’ll hear from two clinical experts who specialize in this kind of trauma. As always, tell us what you think … If you enjoyed this episode, you might also like the other one we did a year ago on “the End of the World” …. episode #33. Our guest, Dr. Aaron Ricker, can be contacted at aaron.ricker@mail.mcgill.ca Statistical polls discussed in this episode are available at Pew Research and at Lifeway Research. Episode image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay (and modified). Movie promotional image from Amcomri Entertainment and Stonagal Pictures. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Trying to find a silver lining in a very dark cloud: does it take an esoteric literary tool to redeem this classic Sunday School story? Remember the story of Noah’s Flood from when you were a kid in Sunday School? The pictures of a smiling Noah stepping off a cute little ark with happy animals, and a happy sun beside a bright rainbow in the clear blue sky? At the time, did you notice all the dead bodies buried in the mud under the ark? Yeah, my teacher avoided that part too. This story of Noah’s Flood is a Trojan Horse for many people. The parts of it that are in plain sight are perfectly fine. A sight to behold. Beautiful even. And so you let your guard down and embrace it. But it’s what’s hidden inside that can eventually destroy one’s faith. It certainly did destroy mine. For many who grapple closely with this story, it’s the incongruity between the details of this ancient Semitic story and our modern understanding of science which erodes faith. There’s just so much evidence against the story. Not just pieces of evidence, but so many different kinds of evidence. From geology … archaeology … genetics … ecology … hydrology … cosmology … engineering (of the Ark) … history (evidence for civilizations before and after the Fundamentalist dating of the event which show no evidence of a global flood). Even evidence from the Bible itself: the “Nephilim” which haunted the Semites even after the Flood!? And so one often feels forced to either choose science or the Bible, because it seems you can’t have both. [Although appearances can be deceiving.] But another toxic ingredient in this story is the basic morality which you have to accept. That an all-loving and all-powerful God finds humans to be so evil that he has to wipe them out. And to do so by drowning them, rather than a painless and immediate annihilating snap-of-the-fingers . Ironically, the text says it’s their violence that he finds so abhorrent, and yet his solution to the problem is … oh so very violent!? And finally, there are so many details that quite anthropomorphize God. He seems to be repeatedly making mistakes. First He says he shouldn’t have created humans, then later that he shouldn’t have destroyed them; and then his solution to the human problem evidently fails because there’s just as much evil after the flood as there was before the flood (and some would say that some people — “the Nephilim” — seemed to have survived the flood). What’s that common saying in baseball: “Three strikes and ….”? And that puzzling scene where God smells the meat that Noah is barbecuing (as a sacrifice), and finds it so pleasing that his anger is cooled: what’s that about? In this episode, we talk to Dr. Dustin Burlet, who focused his PhD project on the story of Noah’s Flood. In particular, he used a specialized literary tool called “rhetorical critical analysis” to reveal a whole new perspective on this story: that the latter actually reveals the compassionate, loving and provisional side of God! And I’ll admit that I can see how he gets there using this kind of linguistic and literary analysis. I just wish it didn’t require a specialized literary tool (one that only some scholars know about) to get there. I’m not trying to be insulting here, but I’m sure that even if a handful of scholars from different universities got together for beer and conversation at some major conference, and one of them said “we should apply some rhetorical critical analysis to what you just said there, Frank” I’m sure at least one of those other learned scholars will say “and remind me what that is again.” And more to my point, the average lay-person engaging with this story that was supposedly written for the benefit of anyone who wants to engage with God’s word just simply isn’t going to scratch their head for a second or two and then say: “I guess I’m going to have to apply some rhetorical critical analysis to this.” And I don’t think I’m far off by saying they’ll never hear their pastors mention “rhetorical critical analysis” in a Sunday morning sermon. Am I wrong? So, again, using this tool, it is indeed possible to pull out a message that the story of Noah’s flood is about compassion, salvation, provision, and hope. But I myself am still left with the images of God opening up floodgates and turning on sprinkler systems, and then watching so many people struggle desperately till they die by drowning, including kids, babies, and pets, let alone a reasonable number of adults that I have to believe were around who really didn’t do anything deserving of being drowned to death. If we maintain that he’s all-powerful and all-loving, why couldn’t he just identify the worst trouble-makers and just … vaporize them. And then as soon as a few other characters started getting out of line, vaporize them too. And keep vaporizing until finally the people get the message and start staying in line. That’s what our police do using speeding tickets, and the government does with tax cheats. How is that not a better way to solve the problem than to just completely and utterly destroy everything and everyone on the face of the earth, as well as the face of the earth itself? Or is this instead a story written by an ancient Semitic people who experienced a major, catastrophic flood at some point (apparently floods happened every year in that part of the world, and there would always be “the big one” that Grandpa would remind his clan of), and they, together with their Sumerian and Akkadian neighbors, tried to process that event in the way that they always did: they tried to see it as a divine act sent for some particular reason. I’m now leaning much more in that direction. As always, tell us what you think … Check out Dr. Burlet’s book at Amazon. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #31, where we talked to David MacMillan, who was working his way up through the ranks at Answers in Genesis until he had his own Plato’s Cave experience, saw through their rhetoric and distortion ……. and left. Episode image by Gerhard from Pixabay. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

In giving up or changing so many core “traditional” Christian beliefs, how can we still call ourselves “Christian”? In an episode two weeks back, one of our guests challenged us to look at what now defines our Christianity This was in response to us listing one traditional Christian tenet after another which we were now redefining, softening, or even rejecting. Apparently, even an atheist was wondering if we were giving up too much, and taking a path which diverged so sharply from main-stream Christianity!? Around the same time, another one of our listeners posted to our private Facebook discussion group an interesting article published in Salon magazine: “Not quite losing my religion: Being a liberal evangelical isn’t always easy“. Many of the things in that article resonated so much with me personally, and with the question/challenge articulated by our guest two weeks ago. Both those events were the spark that led to this episode. And Scott and I thought the author of that article — Nathaniel Manderson — was the perfect guest to bring on to unpack the topic: his life story that eventually led to him becoming an ordained Baptist minister who passionately challenges many aspects of Evangelical thinking in his articles for Salon magazine was a perfect fit for the topic and for our podcast. We ping-ponged our way through many questions around this central question of what it means to be a Christian: the claim that it can be (must be?) seen as a “personal relationship” with the Divine why do we feel the need to put an infinite Being into a finite box (personhood)? … is it to control God? could you have Christians who don’t believe in a Theistic God? does calling God “a creative life force” diminish him too much … or does personifying him diminish him? what does it mean to say that Jesus is divine? did Jesus always know that he was more than a Jewish Messiah bringing a message of liberation for Israel, or did he grow to realize his bigger broader mission to all humanity over the course of his teaching ministry? can we be sure that the words of Jesus were recorded accurately (and/or that we have misinterpreted some of them)? what does the label “Evangelical” really mean, and is it still worth hanging on to it? As always, tell us what you think … Find out more about Nathaniel Manderson at his webpage at Salon. Episode image from Cruz&Co Business and Taxation Services. If you enjoyed this episode, you may also like Episode #42, where we talk specifically about the “Personal Relationship”, or Episode #39 which explores what Evangelicalism is all about. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

How long will it be before AI becomes one of the staff members at your own church? How long before AI is generating sermons for the pastor? Image from the Religious Studies Project Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a household word, but many people don’t appreciate how pervasive it is in our society. We’re all familiar with digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google, and also with the variety of spelling and grammar checkers. But how many know how AI is behind weather prediction … scanning X-rays to come up with a disease diagnosis … pre-screening job applications … forensic accounting and tax auditing … criminal investigations and parole board prejudgements? We know that AI re-directs our questions to the right desk at the bank, or your university, or a major business. But how many know that one can consult AI for personal advice, psychological counseling … even spiritual matters: Buddhism and Roman Catholicism have begun to use very limited versions of AI in spiritual guidance. How long will it be before AI becomes one of the staff members at your own church? How long before AI is generating sermons for the pastor? You thought OpenAI’s “ChatGPT” was just a problem for learning institutions concerned about students using it to generate essays? We looked at how easy it was to use it to generate a sermon on the Second Coming of Christ, or Penal Substitution, or the utter wickedness of the heart of humanity. But there are other forms of AI out there, and once the software becomes available to the public, who’s to stop them from using it for whatever purpose suits them? The genie is now out of the bottle! AI models are “trained” by simply feeding them gigabytes of a certain type of information, and letting it look for patterns in that data set (X-rays; weather reports; criminal convictions). But what if the data set is distorted by humans? Criminal convictions and parole hearings in the past, for example, were often tinged by racist influences on/in humans: and when those historical decisions were fed into the AI intended to pre-screen parolees, its pre-decisions started to reflect … a subtle racism! In the same way, other AIs trained on historical data from the internet started to reflect their own sexist ideology. And here’s where the problem becomes particularly worrisome. AIs such as ChatGPT were trained by a diet of millions of pages from the internet and digital books that were existent as of a couple years ago. But now that AI is being used to generate essays, books, songs, music, and art … all of which quickly become part of the information smorgasbord on the internet … its own output becomes part of the curriculum for future versions and applications of AI. In other words, it not only teaches our future humans, but also begins teaching itself! It creates a pedagogical feedback loop. Who knows where that road leads?! Combine that idea with the growing use of AI in religious applications: AI creating sermons, blogs, internet articles, and theological textbooks. Could the day come when AI influences theology? If AI can become racist or sexist, can it become Fundamentalist? Could it eventually create a new religion? If you ask me, this is something we need to think about a bit more carefully. As always, tell us what you think … To learn more about our guest Dr. Beth Singler, visit her website. To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

Five exvangelicals compare notes about our decisions to either reject or reconstruct a faith system that just wasn’t working for us. Image by Sunny Sunflower from Pixabay Picture a gymnasium full of “kids” celebrating their 30-year high school reunion. After graduating from the same school, they all took different paths through life. Joined completely different professional societies. Mixed in different socioeconomic circles. But now they’re all doing the same thing: talking about how they’ve learned what’s really important in life …. that it’s not all about money, power, and control … showing pictures of their kids and grand-kids …. and looking for ways to re-connect and enjoy life together. And as the evening wears on, and the huddles get smaller and tighter, the conversation morphs gradually toward the unknowns and the unanswered questions. In a way, that’s the experience that Scott and I had this week, talking to three of our listeners who started on the same path as we did, who made a choice radically different from our own …. and yet found that we arrived at the same spot. All five of us had fully bought in to an Evangelical/Fundamentalist worldview. And we all had a similarly introspective, inquisitive, open-minded personality. All five of us took courses in religious studies at the college/university level, four of us doing so at the graduate level. But so much thinking, searching and learning generated so many questions and so much cognitive dissonance that we had to reject the faith system we started with. We all became exvangelicals. But that’s where our paths diverged. Two of us started reconstructing a new Christian faith system that just made more sense of the world around us, radically different from the one we started with, while three of us decided there wasn’t enough worth salvaging from the ruins. And in this episode, we had that reunion experience I referred to above. We compared notes: believers vs atheists. We raised questions and shared perspectives that many of our listeners will relate to. About certainty. Doubt. Wanting to believe, and yet finding it hard to do so. Whether the label “evangelical” is worth hanging on to. As always, tell us what you think … To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive

We look at some of the common ways that believers [mis]understand this, and share some other perspectives on the how’s, who’s and what’s behind it. Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay Is the Bible divinely-inspired? Often the first thing that Evangelicals will do when asked that question  — after voicing a very vigorous “YES!”  — is quote 2 Timothy 3:16-17, which begins with “All scripture is God-breathed …” The problem is, that’s not the question that was asked. To begin with, Paul is NOT talking here about the Bible! He’s writing this before the Bible as we know it even existed: before the Gospels or any of the non-Pauline books (from Peter, James, Luke, and one or more Johns) had even been written, and hundreds of years before a number of books were selected out of a large pile of sacred writings circulating at the time and collated into what we call “the Bible”. He’s probably referring in part to the Old Testament books, but who’s to say he wasn’t also referring to yet other books? He uses a phrase which in the original Greek means “sacred writings” and which is translated in our modern English into “all scripture”. The Old Testament itself endorses many other ancient Hebrew books — “sacred writings” — that are not in our modern Bibles: the Annals of Samuel the Seer (1 Chronicles 29:29) the Records of Nathan the prophet (1 Chronicles 29:29; 2 Chronicles 9:29) the Records of Gad the Seer (1 Chronicles 29:29) the Visions of Iddo the Seer (2 Chronicles 9:29 and 12:15) the Records of Shemaiah the prophet (2 Chronicles 12:15) the Book of the Wars of the Lord (Numbers 21:14) the Book of Jashar (Joshua 10:13) the Annals of the Acts of Solomon (1 Kings 11:41) Annals of the Kings of Judah (1 Kings 14:29).  Paul would also have been studying from other Hebrew religious books which were available to him. Some of these are collated into what we call the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha: you may have heard of the Book of Enoch, the four Books of Maccabees, and dozens of other ones. And if modern day Fundamentalists hang their hats on the words “all scripture” — as in “ALL scripture” — then what does one do about other “sacred writings” and “scripture” that Paul would have known about? He would have known about the religious “sacred writings” of the Greeks and Romans (in fact, he quoted from a couple Greek philosophers), and that their slaves and business partners might have had their own “sacred writings” or “scripture” from yet other religions. And then there’s the strange word that Paul uses: a compound word that literally means “God-breathed”. It’s only used once in the Bible, and only a few times in other Greek literature, so scholars really don’t know what to do with it. Does it mean “dictated”? Most translators and scholars have opted for the translation “inspired by God”. But even that: what does that mean? How does that work? Did God put images in the heads of the writers? Did he actually fire the neurons in their brains? We look at a number of the “how’s” that likely played into that inspiration: the zeitgeist …. worldview … of the cultures they lived in circumstances and events in their personal lives and in the world around them the way humans are wired … our tendencies and mental peculiarities that we inherited through evolution (or through creation?) our emotions and values We also looked at “who” might have been behind these subtle forms of inspiration: the agent behind that inspiration. It all depends on how you define “God”. We don’t all agree on this! And finally, we look at the object of that inspiration. Do we have to say that only the Bible is divinely-inspired? That it’s uniquely inspired? Why not also those other ancient Hebrew books that aren’t in the Bible? Why not some of the Greek philosophical writings that were circulating at the time, and which completely re-shaped human thinking and was incorporated into Christian thinking? What about modern authors (I would nominate NT Wright, Philip Yancey, Peter Enns, and Brian MacLaren)? What about certain songs on the radio, poems, classical literature that really get you thinking deeper thoughts, asking existential questions, and re-organizing your life? I even think modern science and medicine are divinely-inspired: God motivating humans to search for truth and to apply that knowledge to the betterment of humanity. As always, tell us what you think about what we had to say about this … . To help grow this podcast, please like, share and post a rating/review at your favorite podcast catcher. Subscribe here to get updates each time a new episode is posted, and find us on Twitter or Facebook. Back to Recovering Evangelicals home-page and the podcast archive