Crazy Faith Talk

The apostle Paul mentions struggling with something he calls "a thorn in the flesh" and also a "messenger of Satan." But when he had prayed repeatedly for it to be taken away, God's response was "My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in weakness." So what is Paul talking about, and how do we make sense of this story--and the times in our lives where we struggle and the sources of our struggle don't seem to be taken away? Join us for this final episode of our series, "Bible Stories We Wish We Had."

In a particularly puzzling story from the book of First Samuel, King Saul consults a medium in the hopes of conjuring the spirit of the dead prophet Samuel for advice before a battle, even though he had just recently outlawed such magic-related practices himself! What is this story trying to tell us--is magic real? Is this really supposed to be the ghost of Samuel? What happens to us when we stop listening to God and miss the connection we once had with God? Join us to explore this strange story and all it leaves hanging for us on this week's episode!

The book of Genesis tells the difficult story of Abraham nearly sacrificing his son Isaac to God, and yet we are left to guess how Isaac felt about all of this. How old was he in the story? Did he understand what was happening? How did this incident affect his understanding of God, or his relationship with his father? And what are we supposed to do with a story like this? Join us for another episode in our series, "Bible Stories We Wish We Had" to explore this tale!

The biblical book of Jonah ends with an unanswered question: shouldn't God care about a whole city full of people (not to mention animals!), even if they are unworthy and wicked in Jonah's eyes? While many people know the first part of Jonah's story, with the great fish that swallows him, or even know about God's miraculous plant that grows up overnight to shade him, it's really this final question toward which the whole story drives. And yet we don't get an answer? How will WE respond when God turns out to be more gracious than we expected, or when God shows mercy to the people WE thought were unworthy?

In Mark's Gospel, Jesus casts out a "legion" of evil spirits from a man living in Gentile territory on the far side of the Sea of Galilee, and then he sends him back to his life, family, and community whole and well, to tell everyone what God has done for him. But... whatever happened to this unnamed man? Did he and Jesus ever cross paths again? How do we live with the open-ended nature of his story? Join us for this conversation, and what it might mean for us and the lives we only touch for a short time, here on Crazy Faith Talk!

In a well-known (but textually curious) story, a woman who had been caught in adultery is brought to Jesus by an angry crowd of religious leaders, asking him if he supports their plan to stone her to death. Jesus' response is strange at first--he starts writing in the dirt with his finger! What's going on in this story, and why don't we know what Jesus was writing? This is where our conversation begins in a new series, "Bible Stories We Wish We Had," where we'll explore unmentioned details, untold tales, and unspoken pieces of Bible stories that leave us wondering. Join us here on Crazy Faith Talk!

Jesus seems clear in the Gospels that his followers are called to love their enemies and to refuse to answer evil with evil, even forbidding his disciples from using their weapons to protect him in the garden on the night of his arrest. The rest of the New Testament has a profound sense of non-violence as well. But what do we do about the accounts of violence and warfare in the Old Testament, and the times God is described as authorizing that violence? Join us for the final episode of our series, "A Faith of Both Testaments," here on Crazy Faith Talk!

The Gospels and the rest of the New Testament speak pretty clearly about the Christian hope of resurrection from the dead, while the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament is a good deal more ambiguous. Sometimes those who die are said to be "gathered to their ancestors," or "go to the grave" or to be in "Sheol," which is depicted as a realm of the dead. Sometimes there is the imagery of life beyond death, of the destruction of death, or of God one day raising up those who have died, but these ideas all represent several different ways of speaking and thinking. How do we make sense of these different perspectives? Join us on this week's episode of Crazy Faith Talk!

When New Testament writers see details from the story of Jesus as "fulfillments" of the Hebrew prophets, should we think of them as predictions? Are they meant to be clues hidden in the ancient writings of the Old Testament, or are the New Testament writers doing something different when they quote the Hebrew Scriptures to point to Jesus? And how can it make us better Bible readers to know the original settings and contexts of those earlier writings when they are referenced or quoted by the New Testament? We'll explore these questions together in this episode of Crazy Faith Talk!

One of the most distinctive points of classic Christian theology is the notion of God as "Trinity"--God's existence as One Being in Three Persons, which is a way of saying that Jesus is fully God (as well as being human) and that the Spirit is also fully God. How have Christians read the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in light of the Trinity, and how is that different from how our Jewish neighbors read those same texts? And why might Christians have held onto their insistence that Jesus is fully divine? Join us for these questions this week on Crazy Faith Talk!