Exploring My Strange Bible

In this teaching, we'll continue exploring the portrait of the first "church" community in Acts ch.2, specifically how they committed to sharing their resources with each other. This shows us a core habit of the church from the beginning, crossing over the boundary lines between ourselves and other people, and releasing our time and resources into their lives. Why is it so hard to share our stuff? Why does church play such a critical part in helping us learn this habit? We explore these questions in this episode.

In this teaching we'll explore the first depiction of "the church" in Acts ch. 2. What we discover may surprise you! We see a group of people committing to each other and to Jesus so they can learn new ideas and form new habits of living and thinking together, all centered around Jesus. Being open to new ideas is not the first thing that comes to people’s minds when they think of Christians. That's because we've lost a key part of the mindset of a "disciple," a word that means "learner." So let's change that, and learn how to become learners all over again, Jesus-style.

This episode draws together all the ideas of the previous three lectures. We explore the images of eternal death and what these images mean, and the images used by Jesus in his teachings about God’s final justice. In the second half, we talk about the images of new creation, resurrection, and eternal life. We explore what Jesus and the Apostles have to say about this. Then, we focus on the last two pages of the Bible and ponder the beautiful hope of heaven and earth reunited in the renewed creation. FREE STUDY NOTES

The definitions of human life and death on pages 1-3 of the bible are based on the idea that humans can live in a state of death. The goal of God’s rescue mission is to take people out of “living death” and transfer them into a mode of “eternal life” here in the present. According to the biblical story, these are the two ways to be human being - to be among the living dead or to be among the truly living. Keeping this in mind, in this episode we move onto a new part of the story which is the Old Testament vision of final justice. Why does God have to bring divine justice into human history? What does the Old Testament say about what comes after God’s final justice? This is where the ideas of new creation and resurrection come in. This material is all crucially necessary to understand what the New Testament is trying to say about heaven and hell. Listen in as we talk about all of this and the origins of eternal life and resurrections in the Old Testament. FREE STUDY NOTES

In this lecture we tackle the biblical word “heaven," and what that does and does not mean. From there we tackle the language about life and death throughout the rest of the bible. What you’ll see pretty clearly is that biblical authors don’t see death as something that just happens to you at the end of your physical life. Rather, from page 3 of the bible on, both life and death are present realities. Basically, the concept of zombies is a biblical idea. Most of these ideas aren’t mine. I brought together what I thought were the best scholarship and thinking and observation mixed with my own observations and synthesized it into these lectures. I encourage you to get your bible out and notebook, or whatever you need, and take a listen! FREE STUDY NOTES

In this first episode we explore the popular misunderstandings and distortions of the concepts of heaven and hell in Western culture. This will help us rediscover what the Scriptures are actually trying to say. This is really just an effort to clear the ground and help people rebuild these concepts. We start on page 1 of the Bible and work through it, looking at the themes of life, death, the grave, eternal life, and eternal death, etc. I’ll just say this… prepare to be surprised. I was surprised as I dug into this and brought it all together for myself and I find that people are both surprised and also have their imaginations ignited when they encounter what the bible is actually trying to tell us about these very important themes. FREE STUDY NOTES

In this teaching we explore how Jesus' concept of prayer included asking God to act and acting oneself. We'll focus on the Lord's prayer, and discover within it a vision of praying and acting that promotes dependence on God as well as action. At the end of this teaching, I play the Lord’s Prayer, sung in ancient Aramaic by a Syrian-orthodox nun in Jerusalem.

In this teaching we'll explore the ancient practice of fasting, withholding food from yourself for a symbolic and intentional reason. This practice marked the lives of many ancient Israelites, of Jesus himself, and it was a habit that was carried on in the early Jesus-movement as well. However, this practice was also accompanied by regular periods of feasting to celebrate God's generosity and grace. What exactly are these habits? How do they balance with each other? Why is it important to have both? We explore these questions in this episode.

This teaching is called “Solitude & Community”. In the New Testament, "church" is the gathering of Jesus' followers into a community of support and worship. But in the life of Jesus, that communal practice is also matched by the habit of regular solitude. What is this practice all about, and why was it so important to Jesus?

This teaching comes from the final chapters of the Book of Revelation, where we find many images about the time when heaven and earth are brought together. The phrase "eternal life" for many people conjures up images of a non-physical, spiritual world where you live forever with God. This is not the idea of "eternal life" in the Bible, so let's check our assumptions at the door and open our minds to learn all over again what it means to hope for the arrival of eternity!