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- [00:00]
A
Wayfair issue 7 is almost ready to print and we can't wait for you to read it. It's all about the concept of trust. Trust in God, in ourselves and in our communities. And it centers women's wisdom and experience with trust, especially the trust in our individual relationship with heavenly parents that allow each of us to act with power and integrity in our own lives. Become a friend of Faith Matters or become a paid subscriber to Wayfair magazine by March 31st. To receive this beautiful issue in the mail. Links are in the show notes. Hey everybody, this is Aubrey Chavez from Faith Matters. One of the real challenges of studying the Hebrew Bible is figuring out how to make sense of stories of divine violence where a God of love seems hard to find. These passages raise real questions about the nature of God and what it means for us as we try to live faithfully. Our guest today is Riley Risto, Director of Latter Day Saint Peace Studies, who joined the church after a powerful mystical experience while praying about the Book of Mormon. It was an experience that has centered his life on Jesus and and shaped his lifelong effort to take Christ's teachings seriously in a world and a Bible full of violence and conflict. In this episode, Riley invites us to engage scripture through what's called a cruciform lens. It's the idea that if Jesus gives us the clearest picture of who God is, then his life and teachings should shape the way we understand every Bible story. Instead of letting the most troubling passages define our image of God, we begin with Christ and the cross and allow his life and his radical call to love our enemies guide the way that we wrestle with the rest. Along the way, we explore what Rene Girard's work on scapegoating might reveal about violence in scripture, what it really means to take the Lord's name in vain, and what a Christ centered reading might mean about justice. Underneath it all is the conviction that we're not meant to be casual observers of scripture, but participants trusting that honest wrestling can refine our faith and our discipleship for us. This cruciform lens has sparked new curiosity and breathed new life into our scripture study this year. And we are so excited to share it with you. And with that, we'll jump right in.
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B
All right, Riley. Well, thank you so much for being here.
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C
It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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B
Of course. Yeah. I wonder if maybe we could get started. I would love to hear. So we're. We're studying the Old Testament this year. You and I and Aubrey have had several interesting conversations about the scriptures, about divine violence, so many things. And I've always come away from our conversations just like with feeling like several light bulbs have gone off. So very excited to have you here for this.
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C
Thank you.
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B
I wonder if maybe you would start just telling us a little bit more about yourself, about your background and why, why you're interested in these types of topics.
- [02:33]
C
Okay, so quick, quick sketch of my background. I joined the church when I was 21 years old and before that kind of raised as a cne Catholic and went to church Christmas, Easter, and then, you know, later teenage years got more interested and so I started going by myself. And um, it was great for a couple years, but I think I hit this point where I walked out of the parish one day and the priest would stand outside the doors and shake everyone's hand as they leave and everything. And I just realized he didn't know me, he didn't recognize me. And at the time it was kind of an ego hit to have that realization. And so I think I just quit going for that reason. But I stayed super curious. And I mean, ever Since I was 9 years old, I've had fascination with the Bible. I just was always reading the Bible. I found my mom's red letter Bible in the bookshelf when I was that age and it just stayed on my, on my nightstand ever since then. And so I think that's where the curiosity started and I started looking around and things happen. You date people and pretty soon you're a Mormon, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ. So that was kind of the beginning of it. But like I said, I've just always been super curious about all kinds of topics and the most fascinating one to me is Christianity, is Jesus and anything scripture related. So it's just been a long term deep dive. I'm 50 years old in about a month and so I've been on this
- [04:15]
D
train a long time to see say more about this conversion experience because I'm sure it was dating people. But like, if you were already religious minded, like, what was it that was compelling about the church?
- [04:27]
C
To be honest, not a lot was compelling about the, the church at the time. That wasn't at all the motivation. I took the discussions and it started out in a group of some of my best friends, like observing, you know, being friendly and stuff. And I'm like, guys, this isn't working for me. I need to ask some questions and I don't want to hurt feelings, so let's just, I'm going to do this solo. And so from about the third discussion on, I just did it solo. But I remember the missionaries asking me that question after, I think the second discussion, they're like, will you be baptized? No, there is not a chance. I don't know anything about this. And you know, this is, let's, let's have some conversations first, you know, but really almost none of it had to do with the church or anything else that was church related. It was, I had a bit of a mystical experience, you know, that was my first, first ever experience like that where the missionaries had actually asked me to pray about the Book of Mormon, the church and all that stuff. And I'm like, I just don't know anything about it. What have I got to pray about? You know? But I was reading scripture and I would typically just read the New Testament for the most part, but I switched over and started reading the, the Bible or, I mean, excuse me, the Book of Mormon. And that night as I finished, I put my scriptures down and I got down next to my bedside to kneel and pray and I just asked a question and said, if, if you give me the answer, I'll, I'll follow it, you know, and, and so that's, it was a very powerful experience, the first I've had like that. And that was, wow, I just trusted that.
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B
What, what was the message did you feel like at the time,
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C
at the time, I mean, the question I asked really framed how the answer came because it wasn't is the church true? It wasn't anything like that. It wasn't a, A, it wasn't a proposition necessarily like that. It was just, will this bring me happiness? And happiness seems today, looking back, sort of a shallow thing to ask about, you know, but at the time that's, I thought, wow, this is a good question to ask. And so that's what I asked. And, but that's, wow, that's the question I asked and that framed how I, how I responded. Yeah, because the response was super clear. And. Yeah. So then the next day I called the missionaries up and said, you know, where do I sign up, basically?
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B
Wow.
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C
Wow.
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B
I'm curious if you have gone through any reinterpretation of that experience over the years.
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C
Yeah, I mean, even just what I mentioned about the question itself is sort of a reinterpretation, but I don't second guess any of it because, I mean, my life is awesome. It really is. I mean, I've got a fantastic family, I love my church community. I don't need to second guess it necessarily.
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D
Yeah, I mean, I, I'M this is, this is so fascinating to me because I can see how that would set you up for a lot of flexibility in your experience in the church that, like, you weren't, you weren't there for one reason that was good enough. It was like, this is a. This is a place to grow and wrestle and like that. That just seems like such a great way to start a real journey.
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C
Well, you bring up a good point, because I think one advantage. I don't want to call it necessarily an advantage because it's not something I have, that I'm competing with other people, but it feels like an advantage to have grown up outside the church and, and just not being bound up in. In all the things that you're taught when you're a child that you accept without any kind of critical thought or reasoning about it. And so I didn't have any kind of preconceived notions about things, and I could just kind of look at each thing that came my way objectively. I see that as being a real advantage for me personally, not against anyone else. I mean, all my kids are born in the covenant. Right. So I'm sure that there's great advantages to that, too.
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B
So you've been, you've been a church member for almost 30 years, it sounds like. Now, do you feel like there. You have wrestled with your, your church experience in that time, or is it.
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C
Oh, there's constant wrestling. Yeah. I mean, that's. That's what it means to be part of Israel, you know, wrestling with God. That's.
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B
Yeah, yeah.
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C
That's what the name means.
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D
Yeah.
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C
And so I'm constantly wrestling. I love that process of wrestling. And it's, it's never, for me a question of, you know, wrestling over is this the true church? That's just not a proposition. That's interesting to me. I mean, I know it is for a lot of people. I know it's a key part of their testimony. It just doesn't matter to me that much. It really doesn't. I'm happy where I'm at. I love the church. I love my church community. I love the additional blessings we get in in the form of scriptures that we can, you know, you know, look at and learn from. And so all that's great. But is the church true and all that? Like, yeah.
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B
So if you were, if you were forced to go up on Fast Sunday and bear your testimony, what, what would your message be where you're at today?
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C
It's a testimony about Jesus 100. Like, that's. That's what it is. Everything else is scaffolding. The church, prophets, all the teachings, scriptures, everything is scaffolding for Christ, to hold him up and to support him. And so, I mean, I go straight to the top every time. I don't know, you've probably heard my testimony a couple times in church. I mean, that's where my focus is. And there might be circumstances in my life that will, you know, push me one direction or another about where my testimony goes specifically. But it's always going to come back to, to Jesus.
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B
I mean, well, let's just keep going down this path a little bit more then. Like, what, what is it about Jesus? Why, why Jesus?
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C
I'm just absolutely fascinated by his life, his teachings and his example. And I have been since I was a kid. You know, that red letter Bible, what it, what it does, I think it was an niv, but everything that Christ says in the Gospels is in red letters. And being young, not knowing what that was, I would read the red and go, what's different about that? Why is that different than the black script? And I just early on became super fascinated by those, those red letters and the messages in the red letters. And I mean, at the time, I didn't know that was strictly Jesus speaking. But then it, it became clear as I grew up and I'm like, oh, wait a sec, you know, it's always in the first person here. This is Jesus speaking. And so that's, that's just the foundation of everything for me.
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B
I've been thinking a lot about this topic too, and I think it's true that in the church, we've probably over the past 20 to 30 years, we have redeveloped a real emphasis on Jesus. On Jesus. And I wonder if sometimes though, I wonder if Jesus would be interested in the way we talk about Jesus. Like in the sense that we say his name a lot and we say we should be Christ focused and we say we're grateful for Christ. But I wonder if sometimes, and feel free to push back on this. This is just like a pet theory I have. But I wonder if sometimes, if he heard that, he'd be like, guys, I'm not about, like, Jesus isn't about Jesus so much. Like, I was trying to get you somewhere. Like endlessly talking about me wasn't really the point. And Jesus, he did talk about himself sometimes. I'd be curious actually looking over the red letters, like, what percentage of Jesus is saying, focus on me versus There's a broader message here that I'm trying to get across.
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C
You know, in the Book of Mormon, there's a lot of Jesus. His name is always in the book. It's throughout the Book of Mormon, whether it's, you know, another name for Jesus, whether it's Savior or, you know, mediator or whatever, or it's just Jesus. His name is all over the Book of Mormon. And I think that is helpful and can be counterproductive both. And I think taking the Book of Mormon as an example of how we use it is pretty important because if we, if we take what we know about Jesus, his life and his teachings and his example, and we overlay that onto the Book of Mormon and all those places where his name is used and all this, and then we, and then we compare that life teaching example to how his name is invoked in the Book of Mormon. Do they, do they match up when we read it? Do we have this, this picture in our head of New Testament Jesus, you know, teaching his disciples? And is that the picture that we get when we read the, the Book of Mormon citations of Jesus? Yeah, and I think we.
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D
Do.
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C
We. We can do the same thing in our lives today. Like, we. If we're constantly talking about Jesus and testifying of Jesus, does. Does the Jesus of the, of the New Testament come through in what we're saying about him and what we're thinking about him and how we act in his name? You know, people say that you shouldn't take the Lord's name in vain. And I think that has a specific meaning. I don't think it means don't. Don't say Jesus even in. In an exclamatory sense. I think what it means is don't take his name upon you and then do something that's completely antithetical to what he taught and how he lived. I think that's taking his name in vain because you're taking his name upon you. Right. So taking his name upon you in vain. I think that's.
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A
Wow.
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C
Yeah, that's the part that we need to.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Be wary of and be careful. John, chapter 17 is one of my favorite passages of Scripture where he talks about the oneness that he has with the Father and how he wants that same oneness for us with the Father through Him. He is that. That passage to the Father. He's that mediator with the Father. He shows the Father to me. He makes it clear who the Father is, and I love him for that.
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D
I want to get to Hebrew Bible specific questions. But, but just one more on this. Like, where do you feel like that this trust and love came from like, was it the red letter? What it, was it the red letters? And just like that resonating with you deeply like this living. Is it that, that just felt so resonant that that's how you kind of entered into this experience? Or, or was it something more mystical? Like where did your, where did this,
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C
like so many things come from? Some of it is intellectual, some of it is spiritual. Some of it is the examples I've had. I mean my, my family was an interesting one growing up as a kid. My, my parents weren't super religious, but they came from very spiritual religious backgrounds. I mean my grandma was a very spiritual person on my dad's side. My grandparents on my mom's side were very staunch Catholics. I mean every week, Knights of Columbus, like hardcore Catholics. And so, I mean their example was always great to me, you know, and if they would attribute that to Jesus in any way, I was like, okay, that's Jesus then, you know, and that's, that's the right way to live. Because their example was awesome. But a lot of it's been an intellectual spiritual journey too, where things just make sense to me when I read his words, the way that he lived and taught was a way that can, it's not only protective, but it might save us if we'll, if we'll grab onto it, if we'll grasp it.
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B
Right.
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C
And that, that way is non violence, non retaliation. It's pure love. And, and it's, it's such a difficult way. It's, it's interesting to me how, how people will say I'm a Christian and yet reject the, the main crux of what it means to be a Christian. If Christianity was easy, it wouldn't even be a thing. But it's so hard. It's so hard and it's so unique amongst the world's religions that it changed the world at the time that it emerged. And what is unique about Jesus as compared to every other teacher, every other archaic religion? What is unique? He says, love your enemy. And that's like. Yeah, that alone the hardest thing.
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B
Yeah.
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C
So if you, if you just extrapolate from that your actions, enemy love, radical enemy love. If you extrapolate from that how you should act in the world, that that has the potential to change the world. That one thing.
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B
I agree completely. I. Let's talk about then the tension that exists in the scriptures because I think a, you know, in for a first half of life view potentially is that you take that entire Bible and all of it aligns. This is self aligning. All of it works together. And I think people then start to say, actually there's some real tension here. Potentially especially the most crude way to break it up is like Old Testament, New Testament. So I do want to get here especially because these are active conversations that we're having this year in Sunday school. How is it that Jesus affects your reading of the Old Testament? And do you find the tension in it that I'm referring to?
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C
Yeah, tons of tension. I think it's intentional.
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B
There you go.
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C
Yeah, it is. So Jesus to me is, is the central, his life is the central point of human history, objectively. I mean, you look at human history before, during and after the world completely changes. So we, we need to really treat Jesus as that center point. And if, if we are Christians, if we call ourselves Christians and we want to be disciples of Christ, then we center Christ in the way that we live, in the way that we read scripture, in the way that we teach and understand things. We center Christ. And why do we do that? Because Christ said that if you have seen me, you have seen the Father. And he said, I do only those things which I see my Father do. Okay, so that tells you something, right? Right at the get go. It's Jesus is the perfect picture, the perfect revelation of his Father. In fact, Hebrews chapter one also says the same thing. Hebrews chapter one, verses one through three. But really just verse one is probably.
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B
You have to install the gospel library.
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D
I have it open
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C
because I think that Paul says it so explicitly here. God, who at sundry times and in diverse manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom He hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. It's actually verse three that's the important one here, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high. Okay, so he is the perfect image of the Father in the flesh. Find me find any of those places in Scripture where God in person showed up and taught and was the example to prophets and people. They're so rare. You got Moses in the burning bush, you got Adam and Eve. But the, the first spiritual death is being separated from God in person. And that's, that's an inheritance of the fall as we learn right in, in our theology. And so what do we have to rely figuring out who God is what his character, nature, how he interacts with his children. What do we have to rely on for that information? Well, we have the testimony of tons of people throughout the Scriptures, old and new. And then we've got this perfect picture in Jesus. And if you're a Christian, again, you center that he was here in the flesh. He's God in the flesh. He's part of the Godhead in the flesh. And so that's the most reliable picture we get of who God is.
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B
Okay?
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C
And so if. If we center that and then we look at all scripture through that lens, that's called a crystal centric or cruciform hermeneutic. Hermeneutic is just a way of reading or a way of understanding. And so what a lot of people do is they'll take that tension of all these contradictions, and you only have to read a few verses in line with each other to be like, hey, you just said this, but now it says this rather than do that. Start with who you are. You are a Christian. You center Christ, you believe in Christ, and then work from there. Work outward from there, both in the past and in the future, throughout Scripture or in just your life. And so by doing that, it's an inversion of the typical pattern we tend to when we're studying Scripture. We. We read chronologically, and we think, okay, we're going to start with Adam and Eve. We'll work through Moses, Abraham, the prophets all the way through, and the picture that they paint of God becomes manifest in Christ. But does that picture actually line up? A lot of times we'll say in, in the Old Testament and Hebrew Scriptures, there's the angry, vengeful God. I think that's a euphemism. And I think we. We make a habit of euphemizing something that is not just anger. This is not just a little bit of vengeance. There's genocidal acts throughout Scripture. And so how do you reconcile that to Jesus? If you're reading chronologically, you know, through here, and you're like, oh, God is Jesus is the same as this Old Testament God?
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B
Yeah.
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C
So I invert it. I go the other way and I say, I'm a Christian, so I'm going to read through the lens of Christ. Everything that I read in Old Testament, in the Book of Mormon, and even going forward in the New Testament through revelations, everything gets put through that lens. Does the tension still exist? Absolutely. And I think it's intentional, as I mentioned. And the reason I think it's there is because we are Called not to be casual observers, but participants in figuring out how to live in this world, participants in understanding who God is and how he interacts with his children. If all we do is observe and take other people's word for it, then we're not exercising our own agency. And God wants every generation to be here and be tested and understand and learn and grow, be transformed. Does that mean we don't, you know, listen, read, learn from, rely upon the scriptural record or prophets? Absolutely not. All it does is it brings into the equation your own personal authority and autonomy. Yeah. Your own spiritual witness. So.
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D
So what does that actually look like when you're. I mean, I. I'm thinking just a few. A few weeks ago, reading just the story of Noah, which feels like a kid story, you know, because it's cute and you might decorate a nursery that way. But then when I'm, like, reading it to our daughters, and it's so disturbing when you don't euphemize it. Like when you really think about what actually happened in that story and that. And that the violence is coming directly from God is like God is sending the horror. So. So what is in that example? Or if there's another example you want to talk about? Like, what does a Christocentric lens look like in a story that. Where the violence is coming directly from our God?
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C
Yeah. I guess you have to ask the question, too. Is it coming directly from God in every. I mean, we can take their word for it.
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B
Yeah.
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C
Or we can analyze it through the. The Christian lens. You know, and so I. You always have to ask yourself that question. But I. I get your point. Like, you can look at it in a cartoon book, and there's this cute little. Yeah. You know, ark that's floating on the water, and giraffe heads poking up over the edge of the. The boat and everything.
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B
And all the dead, drowned bodies.
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C
Yeah.
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B
What.
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C
That's what they don't show you. Right, Is where's all the dead floating bodies. Yeah. And that's how we euphemize and that's how we minimize is. And we deflect because we. We try to do it through obfuscation. We try to make it look like a cute little kid story. Yeah. You know, this is not cute. And the. The Amalekites and the Midianites and the Egyptian sons. It's very. It's very violent. And I don't believe that's who God is because I believe in Christ.
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B
Yeah.
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C
So you have to ask yourself those questions. And then. And then you start to ask, well, what's the point then? Why. Why is it in there? Or what can I learn from it? As. As Terrell said in the interview that was reposted, it's not so much we're reading history and just memorizing facts and dates. It's like, what can we actually learn from it? And that's where a few key teachers, for me, have really helped. And the most important has been Rene Girard. I've talked to you guys a little bit about Rene Girard. Girard is a French anthropologist, literary critic, philosopher. He's just a polymath. He's a very smart person. He's part of the French Academy, passed away in 2016. But one of the great minds of the 20th and into the 21st century wrote many books, including his kind of breakthrough book called Violence in the Sacred, that posited that these stories that we have from scripture, but also ancient myth from the ancient near east and other places, they. They present a picture that tells a story about humanity. And there's a lot of common elements which have been drawn before by folks like Mirce, Eliade, Joseph Campbell, who are very, you know, adept at breaking down myth and finding those common elements. And one of the things that Gerard found is that, yes, these. These stories all point to common elements across cultures. The difference that he invoked is that they're true stories. The. The flood is a true story. The. The Egyptian enslavement of Israel, and they're wandering in the desert. It's all true stories. And the caveat or condition that he throws on that is, what is. What is truth? You know, he asked the question like, what is truth? And truth is obfuscated. It's hidden things buried beneath the myths. So you guys are probably familiar with the idea that when you talk about the flood story, for instance, as a myth, you're not denigrating it. You're not saying, oh, just. So you're saying it didn't happen. No, it's not. It's not about that. It's. It's about the process of mythologizing stories. The. The Girardian interpretation of all of these stories is that they're true, but they mask or mythologize real violence, and that mythology becomes ritual, and the ritual helps to bring a community together. So every. Every ancient religious story begins with some kind of violence, and usually it's a murder, usually between brothers. So Romulus and Remus, Cain and Abel, they're all murder stories at the beginning, and then mythology comes out of that, and then ritual comes out of that. And those reminders of the violence help us to come together as communities. And so what, what Gerard would posit is that there's mimetic tension. Mimetic is imitative. And so ancient society, you would get this mimetic tension that would build from sameness. Too many people alike fighting over either limited resources or ideas or power or whatever. And the way that a priestly type character would intervene to fix that is they would step in and say, well, we need to make a sacrifice to the gods. And the object of that sacrifice is going to be some. Someone that doesn't fit within the parameters of our normal community. And so they would pick out a foreigner or pick out, you know, and they would. And that that act of violence, limited though it was to just one individual, would cohere the community. And so when you see acts of violence throughout scripture, you can see this model. You can overlay this model and say, oh, there's a scapegoating going on here. What the Bible does and what Gerard identifies in the Old Testament as being unique amongst ancient scripture in what he would come to call the Judeo Christian tradition, is that it takes the perspective of the victim instead of just the majority or the killer or the aggressor. And so sometimes what looks like really bad violence is an inversion of this pattern of scapegoating that's happening progressively. And so in the very beginning of Scripture, you'll see all these acts of violence. And then you start to see as scripture, as the Old Testament progresses towards the prophets, the later prophets, that violence and sacrifice, the sacrificial model of ritual which is based on actual scapegoating, starts to wane, starts to trail off to the point where Hosea in chapter six says, for I desired mercy and not sacrifice, and a knowledge of God more than burnt offerings. And that's such an important scripture. So mercy, which is another word for loving kindness, hesed, as President Nelson talked about, as opposed to sacrifice, mercy versus sacrifice. And the culmination of this arc of a changing of our idea about sacrifice and what. And violence and how it's employed in scripture, that arc and how it progresses towards Christ, it culminates in him by saying, you know, I never really wanted this stuff. And he quotes Hosea and he says, go and learn what it means. I desire mercy and not sacrifice. And the way that, you know, the Hebrew scriptures are written, a lot of times you'll, you'll have these overlapping verses. I desire mercy, not sacrifice, knowledge of God, burnt offerings. Then there's there's an equivalence that can be made between those. So mercy, knowledge of God, sacrifice, burnt offerings. Right. They. They kind of equate with each other. And so knowledge of God is equated to loving, kindness, to mercy. But that doesn't sound like the God that we know from ancient scripture. So that that tension that we see of the examples of extreme violence and extreme love and favor and chosenness cast against, you know, all this violence and evil is that we deal with the tension by using Christ as the picture of God, understanding what he desires from us and resolving. Resolving the tension individually on an individual level. And then hopefully as a community, we start to resolve it as well. But the, the story of Israel is. That's our story. And it's. It didn't have a. It didn't have perfection at the beginning, didn't even have perfection at the end of their story. And we're still in the story, but in terms of the Hebrew scriptures, we didn't have perfection, but we did see an arc. And that arc took. Was taking us towards the Christian revelation.
- [34:26]
B
Yeah. Let me potentially challenge the idea that there's tension here, maybe from a couple of different developmental levels. The first being, like, if you're seeking a cruciform hermeneutic, and you sort of like, take, at least at a superficial level, the idea that the God of the Old Testament, Jehovah, is Jesus, like, they're the same being, then in order to arrive at a cruciform hermeneutic, you have to look at the entire corpus of what Jesus did, including what we can, maybe what we take it for at face value in the Old Testament. And so you, you can't just look at what Jesus. So the challenge is you can't just look at Jesus in the New Testament and what he preached and what he taught and say, okay, now I understand Jesus, and it's all about peace and it's all about loving your enemies. Because Jesus is also the God of the Old Testament who very much has enemies and very much, you know, supports and in some cases, participates in their destruction. And so how would you respond to that challenge? Saying, no, no, no, you're just missing. You're missing a crucial piece of Jesus that exists in the Scriptures.
- [35:37]
C
Yeah. So this, this is where it can get challenging for people, and it's. It can be challenging for me too. And I don't claim to have all the answers on this, but the way I resolve it for myself is that. And I hate that this becomes like, it's not a fallback to Always say that even prophets can be mistaken. It's true. But I don't want to use that always as the default.
- [36:00]
B
Yeah.
- [36:01]
C
Prophets are fallible. They wrote. Because then you can just make the Scriptures whatever you want to.
- [36:07]
D
Yeah.
- [36:08]
C
Right. The most reliable picture of Jesus to me is contained in the Sermon on the Mount. It's attested by multiple witnesses. It's the message that he has for the Nephites when he visits them in Third Nephi. It's a Sermon on the Mount. It's the crowning sermon of his life. And then that same sermon is essentially acted out in the Passion. He lives up to what he teaches. He does what he says he wants us to do. I think it's reliable, and I do think that's the best picture of Christ.
- [36:46]
B
Yeah.
- [36:49]
C
As far as Old Testament or Book of Mormon examples of where a person or a prophet or warrior or anyone says, God commanded this. If it doesn't comport in some way with those teachings on the Sermon on the Mount, then it causes me to think, okay, well, dig in a little deeper here.
- [37:09]
B
Yeah.
- [37:10]
C
And I don't necessarily need to reconcile everything, but what I am called to do, as I said before, is participate in this disambiguation. And it needs to be done because otherwise we. We make God out to be somewhat of a schizophrenic, to be honest. He acts this way here and acts this way here, and then commands us to do this over here, but then says, love your enemy. It's like, how do we balance that except through Christ?
- [37:45]
B
Yeah.
- [37:46]
C
I don't know that there's any other way to do it.
- [37:48]
B
Yeah. Well, that kind of gets me into the second challenge, which I think again, would be a little bit coming from a different place. But this idea that we can potentially reject some of the violence in the Old Testament as adequately representing or personifying God and God's will is actually the product of a dualistic mind, meaning that we have laser focused on the mercy side of the mercy justice paradox. And I think we see this in development, that our pendulums tend to swing. And typically the most mature people do integrate both, sort of like the both and the two competing virtues. And so I'm wondering if a more mature person with a different challenge to you might say, yes, mercy, but not to the exclusion of justice. And because God's ways are not our ways, like we, we can't, we can't tell God what's acceptable in terms of justice. If you. Again, and maybe they're coming from a, from a perspective of. And that's the, that's the non, dual view to look at this.
- [39:00]
C
Yeah. Well, first of all, I don't think mercy and justice are at odds with each other. I, I, I don't accept the, the definition of justice that equates to retribution. I don't think that's God's way. I don't think that's what Jesus taught. I think, I think he taught non retribution for those that do evil unto you, you do good unto them type thing. Yeah. So I don't accept that, that mercy, justice, paradox. I don't think it's a paradox at all. Just as it's usually spoken about in the Old Testament relates to giving the poor their, their share of God's bounty. It's jubilee, it's, it's the Sabbath. It's ways in which God deals justly with those who don't seem to be blessed on the surface. And he wants us to deal justly with our brothers and sisters. So I don't, I actually see justice and mercy as very much overlapping concepts, not, not opposed to each other. Yeah.
- [40:05]
D
I'd love to know if you think that that kind of wrestling that's required, is that more fruitful for, for the growth of your soul than having answer like it feels like this is the obstacle. Like why? Why? I just want to know the simple right answer. Is there something about all of this tension and the needing to dig deeper that is the point, is it not the problem?
- [40:28]
C
That's, that's Pete ends. Right. That's sin of certainty stuff like. Yeah, you can give yourself easy answers and feel certain about all this stuff. Like I feel, I feel pretty strongly about Jesus and his teachings and, and where they're leading me, but I have no certainty about how I would react in a situation that would severely challenge those convictions. I, I can practice and that's what peacemaking is about. Active peacemaking is about practicing what you, you know, what you believe to the point where hopefully someday if you are confronted with some horrific challenge that you would react according to your convictions. But there's nothing easy about that. At all. Yeah. At all.
- [41:11]
D
So what's like, what's best case scenario in a, on a Sunday when we as a community are, are doing this together, we're, we're holding these stories and figuring out what they mean. What's like best case scenario in a, in a Sunday school class, how could you invite the whole class into this
- [41:29]
B
cruciform lens and in a Sunday school comment, you can't. Well, let's start with Gerard. You know, just like, give me 12 minutes or whatever, you know, I would
- [41:38]
C
just invite people to prioritize Christ.
- [41:42]
D
Okay? That's the simple.
- [41:43]
C
That's just the go to, like prioritize Jesus. If you prioritize Jesus and ask yourself, what does Jesus want me to do? How does Jesus want me to live? Does that also apply to this? It opens the door to be able, not necessarily to take always a critical approach. Like, let me, let me paint two pictures from Scripture that I think are important. First, Nephi, chapter four, the Slaying of Laban. And the justification for that is that the Spirit tells Nephi it is better that one man should perish than a nation dwindle in unbelief. And the connection there is that they'll dwindle in unbelief if they don't have these physical scriptures. Okay, well, that same justification is used by Caiaphas. Slightly different construction. First, Nephi, chapter 4, 13. Behold, the Lord slayeth the wicked to bring forth his righteous purposes. It is better that one man should perish than that a nation should dwindle and perish in unbelief. So remember those words, you know, perish. And better that one man, right, John 11:49. And one of them named Caiaphas, being the high priest that same year, said unto them, ye know nothing at all. Nor consider that it is expedient for us that one man should die for the people, that the whole nation perish not. Sounds pretty similar, right, to what that justification was for Nephi. And in effect, it is the same. The effect was the same. Kill Laban, kill Jesus. Now, I'm not trying to equate Laban and Jesus and say, oh, they're the same, but they are scapegoats. They're scapegoats. This one person that dies is going to save the nation. For Caiaphas, it's saving Israel. For Nephi, it's saving his family from dwindling in unbelief. That's kind of a shocking equivalence to make, right? Because we have this natural affinity for saying that prophets, we just defer to that. And you should defer. But if you're ever going to pick out instances where maybe things didn't go the way they should have or could have, maybe that's one. Now, I don't hold it against Nephi. He's an Old Testament archaic religious person, not even a prophet at this point. He's a person who has that worldview, that understanding of the violent sacred, that violence for sacred purposes is okay, it's authorized. It's God ordained. And making the shift from that to what we have in Jesus is a whole arc of history. It takes a while. That's progressive revelation. And. And that's the one thing that I love about our church in terms of our theology and our teachings, this idea about progressive revelation, that they build on each other, that they learn from each other, and that over time, we come closer and closer to the perfect man, to Jesus. And so I don't hold it against Nephi at all. He's operating under his best understanding and in the context of what he grew up in. And it made sense. And God works with us imperfectly, works with imperfect people perfectly, and okay. And then the second instance, of course, the big one in the Book of Mormon is third Nephi, chapters seven through 13. How do you reconcile that kind of violence? You know, Jesus is claiming this first person, his voice is saying, I did this. I caused this to happen. I sunk this city into the ocean. I caused this one to be destroyed by earthquakes. This one I killed by fire and so forth. And 16 cities, I think it is wholesale destruction, gone. And then there's this period of silence. First of all, I mean, that voice is coming out of the darkness. So are we sure that we can trust it? Well, Mormon says so, yes, because in the opening of chapter nine, it says, or eight, we can trust this guy. We know, the guy who gave us this record, and he's done many miracles in God's name, and he's totally trustworthy. Must be speaking about Nephi, son of Nephi. Okay, well, if we take his word for it, he may have heard that. But then my analytical mind's going, are they writing this down on plates as Jesus is speaking from the darkness, in darkness? Is he etching this like on a plate while Jesus is speaking in real time in the darkness? Or is this a recapitulation? Is this a reconstruction of events years later, a month later, whatever? What is this again? We just have to look at context and just think through it a little bit and say, how does that contrast to this other figure that is introduced by the voice of God, the Father, that says, this is my beloved Son, hear ye him. Jesus appears, and instead of destroying by fire and quaking, he causes your frame to quake and he pierces your heart with a burning flame. And he speaks to you in a transformative way instead of a destructive way, and teaches the Sermon on the Mount about loving your enemies. I think that contrast is so important to see. And listening to that disambiguating Voice of the Father that says, here's the archaic sacred. Here's an example. And it's in a very compressed window of Scripture, which I think is actually a genius little tool for teaching. It's a pedagogical text in that sense. It's going, here's this, and here's the contrast. Make up your mind. Participate in this process of disambiguating Scripture and understanding it through the cruciform lens of Jesus. Jesus, hours before this, this accusatory speech he gives in darkness is forgiving his enemies, for they know not what they do. The people who crucified him, and yet he's killing 16 cities worth of people. If we're to believe exactly how this plays out in the Scripture or. And I'll just dot that for people and just think through it a little bit. Think through the possibilities of what could be going on. Sit in that silence that followed the darkness for however long it was, where there was no voice from God coming. I think it was almost a year in the chronological telling of the Book of Mormon. Sit in that silence for a little while with the Nephites and just think through that. And then gather at the temple and listen to the words of Jesus. The sermon at the temple that mirror the Sermon on the Mount, and it just tells a different story, a different version. It's the hopeful, transformative, loving Jesus. Any embodied Jesus. This is kind of an interesting thing, too. You've got a disembodied Jesus. All you hear is a voice out of darkness. Here you've got an embodied Jesus, and he's so insistent that this, this is Jesus, and I want you to know this is me. That 2500 of you come and thrust your hands into my side and feel the Prince of the Nails in my hands. No, you could have just looked at your brother going to do that. But I want you to do it. I want you to feel it yourself. I want you to know that this is me and that these teachings that I'm about to deliver you, they come from me. That's just a different feel to me than a voice in darkness. So I just invite people to not necessarily be critical of the prophets and critical of the text and everything, but just read it and then prioritize the teachings of Christ that you know to be true. Yeah, just do some work.
- [49:44]
D
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it feels like it's actually a way to value the text, more like to trust it as a living book and instead of seeing this as a barrier, like, believe it so much that like, there's more. There's more there that you're being invited into. I think it was Mike Petro, like, last year, talked. Taught us this about origin, that and the idea of Scandala. And that, like, the text is meant to. To scandalize you. Like, there. There is supposed to be obstacles that you bump into that will prevent you from staying on the surface, and that every time you hit one of those obstacles, it's an invitation to figure out what else is there. And. And I love that. That, like, these are not problems. This is the point. Like, this is the. This is the doorway into deeper wrestling that will help you find something truer.
- [50:30]
C
So the scandalon is a stumbling block. Gerard talks about scandalon all the time. And Jesus Christ should scandalize the heck out of you. He certainly did. The people that he taught in the meridian of time, he scandalized the powerful. He scandalized the priesthood class, the ruling class, the Romans. He even scandalized his own disciples when he said, you know, eat my flesh. And they're like, how can we eat your flesh? This is a scandal. He scandalized everybody. And he should scandalize you. He should. He should make it very difficult because this process of discipleship is not. It's not simple. It's not easy. It's so difficult. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [51:10]
D
Thank you so much. Maybe leave us with. With your six kids in mind. What do you tell them when they're reading scripture? Like, if there's one thing.
- [51:18]
C
I mean, you're making a big assumption right there. No, but I love talking to my kids. Like, one of the most satisfying things is when your kid comes to you with a question about scriptures or church, religion, anything like that, Jesus, God, any of it. I just love it. And I always. Just. The first thing I'll always tell them is there are no bad questions. There's no bad thoughts about this. I love that you're thinking about it. I love that you're involved in the process of thinking through these things. You just don't accept the easy answers because there aren't any. Just keep asking and we'll talk through whatever individual thing it is that they're dealing with. But I just. I love so much when they have questions like, yay.
- [52:01]
D
That you're doing this, that just. You're here for the process. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's great for all of us, I think, actually, to keep in mind. Thank you so much, Riley. This is just awesome. So much to think about. Yeah, we really appreciate it.
- [52:12]
C
Thanks for having me.
- [52:14]
A
All right. Thanks so much for listening. If conversations like this are resonating with you. We would to love, love to invite you to explore more of the work that we're doing at Faith Matters. One podcast that you might especially enjoy is called Proclaim Peace. It's a joint project from Faith Matters and Mormon Women for Ethical Government. Hosted by Jennifer Thomas and Patrick Mason, Proclaim Peace explores what it might look like to read Scripture through a lens of peace and how those teachings can shape the way that we live, engage in conflict, and show up in the world. So if this episode sparks something for you, we invite you to subscribe. You can listen to to Proclaim Peace. Wherever you listen to podcasts, we think that you'll really appreciate the thoughtful conversations happening there. Thanks again for listening.