In this episode John and Gregg investigate how (and how much) we see God as being involved in our lives, and how the perspectives on Christianity that we’ve been discussing / proposing differ from much of typical evangelical Christianity.

John mentions Wayne Jacobson’s The Jesus Lens, which walks through both the Old and New Testament.  John wonders what to make of the new explanations Wayne gives and the new perspectives and understandings that he and Gregg have been delving into. Gregg wonders if John is coming to an equilibrium between the Christian messages of his upbringing and this new content.

John notes that he almost feels that these new perspectives are “too good to be true,” in that this new sense of Christianity does not turn on angst, duty, and brute force.  John particularly values how these perspectives remove the excess mystery from being a Christian and relating with God, whereas his experience is that churches often use “mystery” to keep people from asking questions that they don’t want to have to try to answer.

Gregg sees his interaction with John, during John’s spiritual journey, as a counterpart to testimony: people in relationship telling each other the things that we see in them (versus testimony, which is most accurately sharing accounts of one’s relationship / understanding about God with others).

The post 36: Embrace the Grappling appeared first on Untangling Christianity.

In this episode John compares grace and love.  Specifically, John contrasts a listener’s story and Gregg’s story (both being fairly radical departures from the Christian norm) with his own path of not overtly departing from these norms.  John’s epiphany is that the message of love makes far more sense than the message of grace (to him), because grace seems to begin with the notion that someone is horrible.

Gregg notes that grace implies a jarring sense of contrast with what one believes one deserves and so grace seems to show up better in relief, against a backdrop of wrongs committed.  So Gregg contrasts grace and love: experiencing God’s grace is typically framed as receiving what one does not deserve, but Gregg’s experience of receiving God’s love was receiving what he needed but considered to be impossible.  So the upshot is that if one sees oneself as being thoroughly undeserving of God’s love (God’s love is nonsensical to that person), they will necessarily experience God’s love first as grace.  But the pardon and gift implicit in grace find their source in God’s love–they are an expression of love.

Ultimately then, in Gregg’s view, the purpose of grace is to habituate us to being in a love relationship with God: first to accepting God’s love for us as love (so that we may see ourselves as deserving of God’s love), second to be able to give that love back (so that we see ourselves as capable–capable of being rightly related to God, to ourselves, and to others).

Overall, Gregg argues that grace is a subset of love, not the reverse.  And so if one cannot but focus on the things that one has done wrong, then grace is the route to God.  But the message that we should understand from God is NOT to be preoccupied with our wrongs.  Instead, God’s message to us is: “Be preoccupied with me, because I am terribly preoccupied with you.  I have been waiting for, calling to you, watching for you from a long way off.”

And so Gregg wonders: if grace is important to you but grace is a subset of love, how much more important might love be to you?  Or, if you are focusing on grace but your spiritual life is frustrating or unsatisfying,  might you need to re-focus on love?

The post 35: Love is More Than Grace appeared first on Untangling Christianity.

In this episode John and Gregg discuss listener feedback from Joanne, on Episode 31. Joanne commented on relating to God as “father” and “abba.”  Joanne explained this with reference to Romans 8:15, which refers to people being adopted into God’s family contrasted with earlier parts of Romans that also touches on slavery–a topic Kyle Idleman hit hard in Not a Fan.

Gregg identifies similarities in both Joanne’s and, earlier, Melinda’s comments and in his responses to both, where Gregg distinguished ‘how’ something takes place versus ‘why’ it takes place.  While John wonders about the significance of adoption in contrast to slavery, Gregg clarifies the context and purpose of the book of Romans.  In brief, Romans argues for the legitimacy of Jesus as the messiah who fulfills the covenant and bears the consequences for Israel’s failure, in Israel’s place.  In this way, the promise to Abraham is also fulfilled and as such non-Jews are now invited to enter into right relationship with God.  Hence “adoption.”

Yet adoption explains ‘how‘ this invitation was made possible.  And while the Christian’s relationship with God comes about through salvation and results in adoption, Gregg argues that Christians are mistaken if they understand their relationship with God to be about salvation.  Instead, Gregg believes that relationship with God is better understood on the basis of ‘why‘, in two senses.  First, ‘why’ (from what motivation) did God promise to invite non-Jews into relationship with God-self, and ‘why’ (for what purpose) does God seek this relationship?

So Gregg notes that understanding our child-parent relationship with God because we have been adopted (as a result of salvation) amounts to proving our rights or validating our claim to such, but instead we should be focusing on the relationship with God itself.  Yet John notes, with Easter approaching people will be focusing on Jesus’ sacrifice as all the more important because we were undeserving of what he did on our behalf.

Gregg contests this notion: while the servants of a sovereign are not deserving of the sovereign’s sacrifice–children, when faced with a parent’s act of sacrifice, would never consider themselves undeserving.  So Gregg argues that me must understand all of these notions by seeing God dually as parent and sovereign and ourselves as children and servants.

The post 34: Beyond Salvation | Listener Feedback appeared first on Untangling Christianity.

Today’s discussion is kicked off by comments that listener Melinda left for Episode #25, which is also related to Episode #20, were the topic of grace versus love was also raised.

Gregg then turns to John to define and contextualize the notion of grace is in the evangelical world.  John equates grace with ‘pardon’ and as something that should prompt gratefulness from Christians (which in turn means stopping sinning and fulfilling the “great commission”).  Gregg summarizes this as grace being a hinge between the old testament period and the new covenant, and grace being a contender for the central notion in Christianity.

Gregg finds it difficult to identify examples of grace in his human relationships and instead sees grace as being rather distinct to God.  Further, he categorizes grace as an outworking of love, where grace (as gift, on the example of Romans 4:16) is a primary mode of the expression of God’s love.  Yet the gift at the heart of grace begins back in Genesis 12 with God giving a promise to Abraham before entering into a covenant.

Yet for Gregg, understanding ‘how’ God acts is not as important as understanding ‘why’, both as the ‘why’ of impetus (from what motivation did God act in this way?) and the why of purpose (for what ultimate purpose did God act in this way?).  Gregg argues that ‘why’ God acted as God did is plain: “For God so loved the world…”  He also argues that God’s goal in acting this way–in loving us–is to offer the possibility of including us in God’s Kingdom.

For these reasons, Gregg argues that we have not understood God if we stop at ‘how’: we need to understand (orient ourselves around) ‘why’ God acted.  Further, Gregg ties this in with understanding God both as sovereign and as father / parent.

The post 33: God is Not an Idiot–Grace and Truth | Listener Feedback appeared first on Untangling Christianity.

This episode starts with John thinking more about topic of justice from the things Gregg shared in Episode #5. Gregg takes issue with John’s assertion that we’d all be better of if we all assumed other people were always doing the best that they can. Gregg wonders exactly what that means, especially when the stakes are very high.

John observes that some Christians are very focused on the idea that one day God’s justice will reign on the earth. Gregg sees this preoccupation as problematic and the easy way out. Gregg relates to his own orientation–that God loves him furiously. As a result, for example, Gregg is not focused on wishing justice for the wrongs previously done to him by his father.

Gregg observes how in the story of Job that God doesn’t respond to any of Job’s questions, but instead responds with God’s self. In the same way Gregg has experienced God showing up for him in a way that is real and meaningful and as a result he doesn’t need God to set past wrongs straight.

The irony to Gregg is that experience and emotions are trusted in positive situations when they relate to feeling connected to God, but discounted and mistrusted in negative contexts. Gregg relates experiences from graduate school where he and others questioned doctrines and viewpoints that didn’t square with their own study and the frustration of having these topics closed to further discussion by the professor.

Gregg finds this problematic and notes the trickle-down affect it has when other people put faith in the viewpoints of others without completely doing their own work. As a result malformed ideas spread in Christian culture as “truth” without allowing room to question or grapple with them.

Next we look deeper into what Gregg means by reformed theology and predestination against the backdrop of Augustine and John Calvin. Gregg observes that reformed thinkers are very focused on knowledge, appeals to scripture and high view of God’s sovereignty. Gregg believes this emphasis fails to balance or factor in personal experience, real life experiences, and love.

As Gregg focuses on the idea of love he draws parallels between parent/child relationships and human/God relationships while noting that the good relationships between parent and child go far deeper than obedience–love is a central part.

And so Gregg contends that putting God’s sovereignty as the highest priority does not reflect the priorities he sees in the bible resulting in an over emphasis on on holiness, truth, and justice and under emphasizing mercy, love, and compassion.

The post 32: Justice is Easy appeared first on Untangling Christianity.

After a long journey we’ve finally arrived: Chapter 14 of Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman, the book’s end.  This is perhaps our most important episode on this book as it gets to heart of what we find wrong in Idleman’s “reward and punishment” approach to Christianity.

So in the place of Idleman’s view that following Jesus means obeying (i.e., “letting go” of what is keeping us from following Jesus), Gregg proposes three interrelated steps that necessarily precede and prepare for obedience (and explain why obedience may not be possible or even intelligible, depending upon someone’s current circumstances).

First comes belief: whether the notion of a divine being seems plausible for a given person.  Second is understanding: rightly conceiving of who God is and what the human / divine relationship is supposed to be.  Third is trust: having both the basic belief in the divine and a firm understanding of the specifics of who God is and what the divine / human relationship is about, obedience requires a certain degree of trust based on our past experiences that indicate that God is indeed trustworthy! Without these components it’s unrealistic to think people can blindly obey God as a lasting behavior.

Further, Gregg notes that Jesus seems to say “if you love me, you will obey me” yet Idleman reverses this: “obey me in order to know me / relate to me!”  In Gregg’s view God desires that I be all that I fully can be and, as this occurs, I understand that God truly has my best interests at heart.  This is our basis for trusting God.

John notes the subtleties between “trust” and “surrender,” where trust is an active response based on proper information, whereas Idleman advocates surrender (which is more resigned and almost defeated).  Gregg agrees: Christians typically explain disobedience via sinfulness, but as this generally means “fallenness” it offers no real explanatory power.

So Gregg posits that we understand obedience (or a lack thereof) by translating these situation with God into situations in everyday life and asking ourselves questions: What would I think of that?  How would I respond?  John offers an example from He Loves me, by Wayne Jacobsen (which John highly recommends).  From the ensuing discussion obedience has different meanings depending how we view God.  If God is simply “Lord” (as Idleman seems to propose) then we are only servants.  However if God is also “Father” then we also sons and daughters, which is a different relationship and orientation.

Further, just as you can’t command someone to “enjoy yourself with me” or “love me” (because these things are “responses” to previous experiences), so likewise with God: Gregg believes that we obey God based on what we have experienced of God.  So in the New Testament Jesus does not command: “do what I want and then I’ll help you.”  Instead he first heals, feeds, and relates to people, meeting them “where they are at.”  Thus Jesus establishes relationship in order to create understanding, cultivate trust, and this results in many things, including obedience (so the one who loves God indeed obeys God because obedience is the product of a relationship characterized by love).

As we have argued numerous times in earlier podcasts, Idleman’s top priority for Christians of “following” seems to overlook the greatest commandments (loving God entirely, loving myself rightly and loving my neighbour likewise).  And this finds its counterpart in the notion, as Gregg argues, that God wants us to be ourselves and, as C. S. Lewis writes at the beginning of the Narnia series, God “gives us ourselves.”  We are a gift, to ourselves, from God and we have been given ourselves to have relationship with God, as one who knows me more truly that I know myself and loves me more deeply than I love myself.

Gregg closes by noting how Idleman’s misunderstanding of God’s love and character can be clearly seen in his final example.  Here Idleman likens how God loves us to how Idleman’s own father proposed to deal with his wife’s hypothetical infidelity: by threatening to break her new boyfriend’s legs.  Gregg demurs: because Idleman has so badly misunderstood God it is not surprising that he characterizes Christianity as the choice between heaven and hell, reward and punishment.

The post 31: Coerced Obedience | Chap 14 of Not A Fan by Kyle Idleman appeared first on Untangling Christianity.

Gregg opens with his view that Chapter 13 from Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman is among the most important in the entire book.  This is because it connects to (and helps clarify) the book’s core message: insuring people make “the right decision” and spend eternity in heaven.  In John’s words, the chapter emphasizes the need to “get your fire insurance policy in place before it’s too late.”

So when Idleman presents scenarios to motivate readers to make “the right decision” now and not put it off, John finds this inconsistent: when you love someone you are naturally committed to them and desirous of “doing the right thing” or spending time together–you don’t “put it off.”  So John highlights the irony that Idleman wants us to force (or even guilt) ourselves into a deeper commitment to Jesus, yet the relational content of Christianity is so sparsely presented!  For John, this presentation is ultimately empty and unsustainable: while the Bible may truly present who God is, such “truth” has no “reality” because there is no relationship (and so no life) in it.

Next, Idleman characterizes adult conversion to Christianity as occurring in moments of desperation when we are willing to “surrender all” to God.  John equates this with the book’s contention that becoming a Christian means becoming “a zero.”  Gregg also disagrees: because relationship with God is based on love (as the command to love God entirely), so the desperation + surrender model was never meant to be the norm.

John concludes that Idleman’s presentation of committing to Jesus is disjointed.  Gregg concurs: the New Testament examples of commitment to Jesus all include contexts of preexisting relationship with Jesus (where people have either experienced his goodness and relationality or heard from those who have).  So Gregg argues that God’s love is related enough to human love that we must experience it in much that same way as we experience human love: over time, in real situations & circumstances, as being related in some specific sense to me, etc.

In other words, commitment to God can and should be based on criteria that are clear, accessible, and truly motivating us toward full and meaningful relationship.

The post 30: Swallow the Pill | Chap 13 of Not A Fan by Kyle Idleman appeared first on Untangling Christianity.

In this episode we riff on comments Charlie left on Episode Two, about the Bible.  Charlie shares his conflicted feelings about how he views the Bible and and also his observation that many people just want to be told to a more literal view of what the Bible says instead of doing their own work to understand the Bible better.

So we explore the notion of Christians and non-Christians as being like different “tribes” and the their inability to relate to each other is often because they can’t find a common starting place, and which is ultimately an unproductive situation.

The conversation then turns to the topic of “dialog and dispute,” and how many Christians overly emphasize dispute and “setting the facts straight” in way that does not love or seek to understand other people.  We reflect on why some Christians might feel the need to work so hard to protect the truth (as though attempting to protect God).

We wrap up by drilling into Gregg’s response to Charlie about experience.  Gregg raises the importance of understanding the world based on our understandings from the bible and understanding the bible based on our experience of living in the world–existence.  It’s not one or the other but both.

We encourage listeners to leave a comment with particular books or resources that have helped you to understand your beliefs or God’s love better.

The post 29: Biblical Extremes and Openness to Dialog | Listener Feedback appeared first on Untangling Christianity.

In this episode John and Gregg discuss Chapter Twelve from Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman.  John observes Idleman building this chapter around the idea that we are to go wherever God wants us to go and that it won’t be comfortable or easy.  What doesn’t add up here, when contrasted with other parts of the book, is Idleman’s directive that we need to say “Yes” to God before we even know the request.  This doesn’t make sense in light of his heavy emphasis earlier in the book about Christians being very cognizant of what they are committing to when they decide to be followers.

Gregg argues that this inconsistency is born of the fact that, in laying out his message, the author is side-stepping main directives for Christians (such as loving God, self, and neighbor). And because these directives are higher priorities compared to “taking up our cross,” Gregg believes Idleman is obligated to work out his views in light of the “greatest commandment” and others scriptures (that may seemingly contradict his position) instead of focusing on one. If Idleman cannot make the directives he’s putting forth square with the whole of scripture, then his views are arguably incorrect.

John is also put off by the author’s orientation towards “going” and “doing” (things that are difficult and will hurt), and never towards “being.”  Gregg agrees but also tries to navigate a middle way here by noting that our relationship with God is primarily a love relationship, and that love and madness are proximal in many ways.  So love enables deviant actions relative to honour and shame, and today love promotes activities that cause us to forego convenience and benefit.

Finally, John questions the idea, popular in evangelical thought, that we are responsible to bring the gospel to others (and that this will always mean sacrifice and suffering).  Gregg demurs: this orientation may either come from loving oneself poorly or from taking too much responsibility for others (rather than letting God be God–an idolatrous practice!).

The post 28: Make Sure It Hurts | Chap 12 of Not A Fan by Kyle Idleman appeared first on Untangling Christianity.

This is John and Gregg’s second discussion of chapter eleven from Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman. John observes a continued message of “try harder” and “it doesn’t count unless it’s painful,” combined with an orientation (as noted in previous episodes) that appears to lead to untenable conclusions.

Further, instead of placing his message in a cultural context of the time or reconciling it with other parts of scripture that seem to conflict with it, Idleman appears to be intent on taking a very literal directive in Luke 9:23 and applying it exactly to our lives today.  Gregg attempts to recast the message he sees Idleman drawing from Luke 9:23 as, “an invitation to orient ourselves towards our culture and society as Jesus did for the reasons that he did it.”

Seemingly absent from Idleman’s message is “WHY” Jesus sacrificed and suffered, which Gregg attributes to Jesus’ love for us and for God.  Idleman instead focuses on “WHAT” Christians should focus on–“following” Jesus and doing that he did (and particularly, experiencing pain and suffering).  To that end, John wonders what exactly the word “follow” means as it relates to God, noting that explicitly “following” another person in a human context lacks relationship and is ultimately empty.  Similarly, Idleman’s message seems to lack consideration of individuality, creativity, and personal expression.

Finally, Idleman contends that only by “dying to ourselves” will we find “true life and real life in Christ.”  Yet starkly absent is any explanation or picture of what “real life or true life in Christ” is.  It seems to be a pre-supposed or assumed that everyone knows what this is because Idleman spends zero pages explaining it or describing what it looks like to him.

The post 27: Life Not Death | Chap 11 of Not A Fan by Kyle Idleman appeared first on Untangling Christianity.