Real Bible Rob for Teens - Inclusive and Affirming Christianity Minister Rob Christ Podcast

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When I said the American church must repent of its white supremacy & its colonialism, I got howls of resistance of two kinds. First was the individual  response, They said, "Should I be responsible 4 what my ancestors did?" My answer was tough was tough, it was simply yes. As long as you are pushing ignorance & avoidance then you part of the problem. So yes in this case you must repent. The other thing was people saying, "Why do you talk about white supremacy and slavery so much? I'm not a racist," they say. I say we don’t talk about it enough. Because at its core is the idea when Christians think, “I’m better than you” that is so built into American culture.  When they hear this they say, "Well, we are all sinners!" But this is just an excuse and it masks what they are really thinking. Because people will say "I'm saved and those other people aren't." They will say, "I have the blood of Jesus and those non-believers don’t." 

In this helpful episode, I explain the problems with this kind of thinking. I tell a personal story of opposition and pain. Then I explain 1 Peter 3:18 and how it can get us out of this thinking. Finally, I give some wise advice on when to pick fights and when to be silent. Choosing wisely will really help you with your Christian witness. 

1 Peter 3:13 Who will harm you if you are zealous for good? 14 But happy are you, even if you suffer because of righteousness! Don’t be terrified or upset by them. 15 Instead, regard Christ the Lord as holy in your hearts. Whenever anyone asks you to speak of your hope, be ready to defend it. 16 Yet do this with respectful humility, maintaining a good conscience. Act in this way so that those who malign your good lifestyle in Christ may be ashamed when they slander you. 17 It is better to suffer for doing good (if this could possibly be God’s will) than for doing evil. 18 Christ himself suffered on account of sins, once for all, the righteous one on behalf of the unrighteous. He did this in order to bring you into the presence of God. Christ was put to death as a human, but made alive by the Spirit. 

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This is unexpected. Paul is done ranting and his urging becomes much more gentle in last chapters of Romans. If this seems weird to you, these chapters are also misused by Christians for some pretty aggressive things that Paul never intended. Paul urges unity and understanding, but people often use Romans 12:2 for exclusion and separation and Romans 13:1-7 for bullying. Knowing what they really say and how some people use them can show you how people use the Bible badly to support their ideas. In this helpful episode, I celebrate the beauty of these chapters while showing you the pit falls. It’s important to be a skeptical reader, especially when something doesn’t sound right. If you do it well, you can really enjoy and feel uplifted by Paul is really saying in these chapters. 

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You are told about your sin all the time by preachers and the church. It is really easy to get stuck into thinking that everything is personal. Your personal relationship with God. Your personal morality. Your personal sin. It is all on you. But the Bible actually says very little about individual sin. By far most of the Bible talks about the sins of the nation, sins of the community, sins of the church. So why is there so much about your sin and so little about the sins of society? There is a very important reason. It is all about the power. Personal sins are very important and can separate you from God, but many more people are hurt by the sins of society. In this episode, I talk about the main parts of the Bible that talk about sin and why it is so important for you to know the difference. 

I will talk about the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Amos, Jeremiah in the Old Testament. Romans and Revelation in the New Testament. 

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Jesus showed mercy to Peter many times, especially when Peter did the awful thing of denying Jesus three times. We know Peter had a temper. He blurted out things. Jesus even told him to shut up in Mark 8:33, when he said "Get behind me Satan!" Peter was being an opponent. But each time he was forgiven by Jesus. So why was Peter so mean to Ananias and Sapphira who then dropped dead? No mercy was shown to them, even though their crime was so much less. This was only a few weeks after Jesus had shown him mercy. It is so out of character for Peter and the grace of God. Something else is going on here. In Acts 2:44-45 and Acts 4:32-47, people sold everything and gave it to the apostles.  There are several strange clues in Acts 5 that the deaths of Ananias and Sapphira were likely about enforcing the rules, certainly by punishment or even murder. There is always a story behind the stories in the Bible. The early church was struggling with who they were. I this intriguing episode, I describe why this looks like it could have been a coverup rather than God's judgment. 

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Jesus is Lord! What do you think when you hear that? Most Christians when they hear it in church say "Yes, right on!" But when I hear it on the street, or on social media, or when it is said about politics, I do a double-take. "Jesus is Lord" comes from Romans 10:9 and carries a lot of baggage. It can be great. But it also can be used to bully people. In this episode, I tell you about Romans 10 and why Paul said that to say "Jesus is Lord" with your lips is so important. Instead of separating people, it is really about supporting people and bringing them together. This is the main theme of the whole book of Romans. So go ahead and say "Jesus is Lord", but make sure you are saying it with love and devotion and never to put other people down. The love of God is so much bigger than we imagine. We should never use these verses to exclude people. 

Romans 10:1 
Brothers and sisters, my heart’s desire is for Israel’s salvation. That’s my prayer to God for them. 2 I can vouch for them: they are enthusiastic about God. However, it isn’t informed by knowledge. 3 They don’t submit to God’s righteousness because they don’t understand his righteousness, and they try to establish their own righteousness. 4 Christ is the goal of the Law, which leads to righteousness for all who have faith in God.

5 Moses writes about the righteousness that comes from the Law: The person who does these things will live by them. 6 But the righteousness that comes from faith talks like this: Don’t say in your heart, “Who will go up into heaven?” (that is, to bring Christ down) 7 or “Who will go down into the region below?” (that is, to bring Christ up from the dead). 8 But what does it say? The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart (that is, the message of faith that we preach). 9 Because if you confess with your mouth “Jesus is Lord” and in your heart you have faith that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 Trusting with the heart leads to righteousness, and confessing with the mouth leads to salvation. 11 The scripture says, All who have faith in him won’t be put to shame. 12 There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, because the same Lord is Lord of all, who gives richly to all who call on him. 13 All who call on the Lord’s name will be saved.

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Lots of people fight over the reality of the Bible and God. Maybe you have thought, "Why should I believe in something that I can't even believe is real?" Many people say that God must be real. They say that the disciples would have never put their life on the line for a lie. But we all know that isn't true, because many people have died for lies in history. So why should we believe? In this challenging episode, I say we are usually asking the wrong questions and using the wrong methods of proof when it comes to faith. I tell you a story about learning what truth is and how we need to think about history differently. If you understand this, it helps you understand how to be a better person both for yourself and for the people around you. 

Notes from the adult Real Bible Rob episode:

The Jesus Seminar and its work to elucidate a historical Jesus ran out of steam. Robert Funk, Marcus Borg, John Dominic Crossan and others did done a lot of great work to put the gospels in historical context. They famously voted on the historical plausibility of the Jesus narrative using colored beads. But by the time the Jesus Seminar disbanded in 2006 after twenty years, they really have seemed to only show how tenuous the historical Jesus really is. I argue in this insightful podcast episode that the main problem of the Jesus Seminar is that they were answering the wrong question. They fall into the same trap of historical criticism that fundamentalists do. They rely on fact rather than narrative. This is a major fallacy of biblical apologetics. I describe how Walter Brueggemann's book "The Prophetic Imagination" was a watershed describing the shift to Narrative Criticism and other biblical interpretation methods that are much more widely adopted in today's scholarship.

I was talking with someone who I really care about. He was frustrated that the liberal church he grew up in was obsessed with Historical Jesus, and the Jesus Seminar with Marcus Borg & John Dominic Crossan. He thought it cheapened the divinity of Christ, he was stunned when I agreed. The Historical Jesus sought to answer the wrong question however. It had its purpose, but whether Jesus, his life and the bible is historically correct is a fools game that comes from the enlightenment. It's the same game as fundamentalists play. It adds to scripture rather than illuminates it. That's why I love Walter Brueggemann’s work so much. It's the narrative that's important not historical fact. Even history is narrative depends on the author & the perspective of the reader. A very important lesson I learned in seminary. Prophetic Imagination is not a luxury, but the heart of biblical interpretation. God speaks to us in stories not bulletin points on PowerPoint. 

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Sin is a hard topic because it makes us feel ashamed. It makes us worried about being saved. But most of all it is confusing. In this fascinating episode, I talk about the science of sin. Do we have instincts like animals? Do animals sin? Must something be intentional to be sin? These are confusing questions, because we have been taught to fear sin. Paul tells us a lot about Sin in Romans 6 in a very interesting way. If you look closely, you can see that Paul invites us to not worry about sin, but to just be in Jesus. If Sin is a character in a play and Death comes from Sin, then Jesus is makes it so we don't have to be afraid, because when we are in Jesus we have already died and been raised in him in new Life! Paul makes these like characters so we can look at them without fear and that we can just live full lives without having to keep score about sin. 

Romans 6 begins the heart of Paul's letter. Paul speaks in an imaginary dialogue in his arguments to the Romans. He asks a rhetorical question like "Should we continue in Sin in order that grace may abound?" and then says "By no means!" again and again. Sin is portrayed like a character and Christ is the alternative that defeats Sin. We don't have to be slaves to Sin anymore! In this episode, I talk about Sin expansively. What make destructive behavior in animals not sinful? Why is it sinful when humans do these things? Most people will say it is because animals have no choice and they operate out of instinct, but humans are far more instinctual than we realize. So there much be another explanation. Matthew Croasmun's book provides a fascinating discussion about the emergence of Sin in the Christian consciousness. I also reference my discussion with Mattie Mae Motl in Season 2, Episode 15 and her recent Substack article on Romans 6 & 7.

Resource: 
The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans
by Matthew Croasmun, 2019

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People take the Bible way too seriously. By reading it out loud and you can see the humor . Paul was a master at using exaggeration to shake up his audience. He often uses "vice lists" where he throws the kitchen sink. Romans 1:18-32 is the famous rant against pagan worship. While its audience is not clear, it purpose is. It sets up the rest of the letter. In this fun episode, I do a dramatic reading of two passages to highlight how it must have sounded to the listeners in Rome when Phoebe read it to them. I also give a few other examples of diatribe being used in the New Testament. I also make an endorsement for Eugene Peterson's The Message, which does such a good job of making Bible reading fun. 

Romans 1:28 And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them over to an unfit mind and to do things that should not be done. 29 They were filled with every kind of injustice, evil, covetousness, malice. Full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, craftiness, they are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters,[g] insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, rebellious toward parents, 31 foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. 32 They know God’s decree, that those who practice such things deserve to die, yet they not only do them but even applaud others who practice them.

Romans 3:9 What then? Are we any better off?[c] No, not at all, for we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under the power of sin, 10 as it is written:

“There is no one who is righteous, not even one;
11     there is no one who has understanding;
        there is no one who seeks God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
    there is no one who shows kindness;
        there is not even one.”
13 “Their throats are opened graves;
    they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of vipers is under their lips.”
14     “Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16     ruin and misery are in their paths,
17 and the way of peace they have not known.”
18     “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”

This hodgepodge comes from a scattering of cherry picked verses. This is where I will take you down a rabbit hole for a moment. I promise, it is worth it. First is total depravity.  Paul cites a grab bag of verses in Old Testament, from Ecclesiastes 7:20, Psalms 5, 14, 53, and 140 and sprinkles in a little Proverbs 1 and Isaiah 59 for seasoning. That’s an awful lot for just 9 verses.

Revelation 21:6 Then he said to me, “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life. 7 Those who conquer will inherit these things, and I will be their God, and they will be my children. 8 But as for the cowardly, the faithless,[f] the polluted, the murderers, the sexually immoral,[g] the sorcerers, the idolaters, and all liars, their place will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Revelation 22:13 I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
14 Blessed are those who wash their robes,[c] so that they will have the right to the tree of life and may enter the city by the gates. 15 Outside are the dogs and sorcerers and sexually immoral[d] and murderers and idolaters and everyone who loves and practices falsehood.

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The conquering of Jerusalem by the Babylonians was the worst thing that ever happened to the ancient Israelite people. Some of the people were dragged off to Babylon and many of them were left behind. For 50 long years, they were separated. Then suddenly King Cyrus allowed the people who were taken away to go home, back to Jerusalem. Would the people be able to get along with the people who stayed behind. In this episode, I tell you about the troubles of the chief priest Ezra, what it was like to have people against him. It is the like the story of a teacher of mine, who moved to Korea. They felt in between. They weren't sure they felt American or whether they felt Korean. Many people who come from other countries feel like this. Perhaps you have felt confused about where you fit. The books of Ezra and Nehemiah are all about finding a new sense of home. 

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The Bible is all about language. Many stories are about misunderstandings and whether people can understand each other. The Tower of Babel story in Genesis 11 is at once a very old story and a story we can understand. Who hasn't been confused when someone is speaking a different language than us? I tell the story of a Korean man that I know who said that the story is not a negative story like we think it is. Instead it is a story about diversity and how we are all human beings with a common origin without being exactly the same. The Tower of Babel is closely connected with the story of Pentecost in Acts 2.  Again the meaning is not so simple. The coming of the Holy Spirit meant that people could speak in each other's languages and understand each other. We don't know if that means that they miraculously spoke in each other's languages or that this was a symbol for having a common purpose and understanding in the Holy Spirit. Either way it is a vision of peace and unity that is possible when we understand each other.