499: The Four Pillars — Truth in Text

Summary

Podcast Summary: The BEMA Podcast – Episode 499: The Four Pillars — Truth in Text

Date: March 12, 2026
Host: Brent Billings
Guests: Marty Solomon & Reid Dent

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Episode Overview

This episode continues BEMA’s “Four Pillars” series, focusing on the pillar of “Text,” exploring what it means to hold the Bible as central to spiritual formation and discipleship. Reid Dent leads an in-depth and engaging conversation with co-host Brent Billings and host Marty Solomon, discussing the nature and function of the biblical text, and wrestling with questions of inspiration, truth, authority, and the role of imagination in engaging Scripture. The episode examines common assumptions about the Bible, deconstructs rigid doctrine, and encourages a more nuanced and transformative relationship with the text.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Defining the “Text” (The Pillar’s Focus)

• [00:10–01:51]
  • The show’s four pillars are being explored: text, community, discipleship, and wrestling.
  • Reid expresses discomfort with calling the Bible “the text”—he grew up simply calling it the Bible, often associated with traditional acronyms and slogans (e.g., “Basic Instructions Before Leaving Earth”).
  • “I grew up with a concept of Bible that was pretty much: here’s how you get saved and lead a godly life... Anything outside of that, I didn’t know what to do with.” — Reid Dent [02:14]

2. Deconstructing “Inspiration”

• [02:50–10:29]
  • The panel dissects the phrase “inspired word of God” and widespread assumptions about inerrancy and infallibility.
  • Common perceptions: Inspiration means being “right,” “never wrong,” with God “reaching through” human authors as “a divine glove.” — Marty Solomon & Brent Billings [03:10–03:57]
  • Reid brings up the Greek word theopneustos (“God-breathed”) from 2 Timothy 3:16, examining the nuances: is Scripture “breathed into” (like giving life to Adam) or “breathed out” (originating from God’s mouth)?
  • “Is it inspired as in they are breathed into, or are they breathed out by God?... Is it something that has the breath or wind put into it, or is it the product, almost like inspired or exhaled by God?” — Reid Dent [06:10]
  • Marty and Reid explore the ramifications of each interpretation (life-giving, generative energy vs. authority and divine source).

3. Striking a Both/And Approach

• [10:03–12:33]
  • The group agrees Scripture is both of divine source and also fundamentally human; life-giving and divinely authoritative, yet shaped in the “interplay of humanness and divine breath.”
  • “The Bible is kind of a both/and; it’s a human thing, but it’s also a divine thing.” — Reid Dent [11:46]

4. What is the Bible For? Competing Models

• [12:33–16:18]
  • Reid asks: Is the Bible for relaying historical data or expressing the meaning of profound experiences?
  • Marty critiques the “strip mining for data-points” approach—treating the Bible as a mine to extract “units of truth”—and suggests a more literary, story-driven engagement.
  • They quote Frederick Buechner: “No matter how fancy and metaphysical a doctrine sounds, it was a human experience first.” [15:24]

5. The Role of Imagination and Experience

• [16:18–21:49]
  • Marty shares from grad school: theology as the “interpretation of the divine experience,” with revelation coming through Scripture, tradition, or experience. “How can we as finite beings take any source of revelation and convey adequately an experience with the infinite divine?” [17:45]
  • Reid draws parallels: trying to capture the birth of a child through only data misses the actual meaning; the Bible similarly seeks to convey what transcends simple facts.

6. Bible as Book vs. Library: Varieties of Truth

• [21:49–24:18]
  • Reid introduces the “Bible as library” metaphor: different sections (news, poetry, satire) serve distinct purposes and kinds of truth.
  • Using 9/11 as analogy: a news report gives factual data, but poetry or satire (e.g. The Onion) may reveal deeper or different truths.
  • “How do you know which is true? We tend to only have one category: true/false.” — Reid Dent [24:41]

7. Multiple Categories of Truth

• [24:18–30:43]
  • The group explores dangers of imposing a single standard of truth (historical factuality) on texts designed to work differently—stories, poems, parables.
  • Multiple examples (stimulus checks, The Onion’s satire, Lord of the Rings and moving family moments) show how rich, transformative truth often transcends mere facts.
  • “The kind of truth that most has the ability to hit...is actually not the data-point, scientifically verifiable, spreadsheet-driven kind of truth.” — Reid Dent [29:47]

8. Stories vs. Data: The Transformative Power

• [30:43–34:37]
  • Brent and Reid reiterate personal transformation comes via narrative and imagination, not data.
  • “That’s the real truth—that’s when it all changed for me.” — Brent Billings recounting a personal moment at his son’s birth [31:45]
  • Karl Barth’s line: “It doesn’t matter whether or not the serpent spoke; all that matters is what he said.” [32:45]
  • Citing the film Wake Up, Dead Man, Father Judd’s quote:

    “I guess the question is: do these stories convince us of a lie, or do they resonate with something deep inside us that’s profoundly true, that we can’t express any other way except storytelling?” — Father Judd [34:10]

9. Nonbinary Frameworks & Layered Approach

• [35:15–39:02]
  • Reid references Meir Sternberg’s idea: biblical texts mix three sliders (history, ideology/theology, aesthetics), and different books or passages emphasize each to differing degrees.
  • “It’s not a polarized ‘either/or,’ but an interplay of history and theology and aesthetics.” — Reid [38:07]
  • The metaphor of soundboard faders becomes a memorable image for nuanced Bible reading.

10. Reid’s Personal “Eras” of Loving the Bible

• [39:09–44:48]
  • High School: Loved Paul’s imperatives for their clarity.
  • College: Found kinship with “angsty” Ecclesiastes.
  • Early 30s: Fascinated by Genesis and Revelation, growing less dogmatic and more curious.
  • Now (age 42): Loves the nuanced, complex characters (David, Moses, Rahab, Jonah), and the “fruit of Bible reading” is found in dialogue, not in perfect answers.
  • “For me, the fruit of Bible reading is really not in arriving at the ultimate interpretation, but in that interplay and dynamic conversation.” — Reid Dent [43:23]

11. Tips for Engaging with the Bible

• [45:21–52:14]

  a. Be Wary of “First Order” Language

  • Watch for “Christianese” or unexamined terms (e.g., faith, righteousness) that have become automatic or empty; cultivate curiosity and robust reflection instead.

  b. Jesus as Hermeneutic

  • When encountering difficult or confusing passages, interpret through the person and teachings of Jesus.
  • “If nothing else, I go back then to the person of Jesus...I check it against him.” — Reid [46:56]

  c. Read in Community

  • Read out loud with a trusted group (Havruta), pursue conversations where nothing is off-limits, and invite all questions.

  d. Follow the “Rabbit Trails”

  • Explore recommended books and thinkers cited by those you already trust or resonate with; look for the interconnections between influential voices.

  e. Consider the Fruit

  • Reflect on whether your way of reading produces fear or love. If it consistently yields “destructive effects,” it’s time to reexamine your approach.
  • “If I have to choose between certainty and love...choose love and re-examine the certainty.” — Reid Dent [52:22]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “I think finding a way to live comfortably in the both/and-ness feels important to me.” — Reid Dent [10:03]
• “We do to the Bible what that mine has done to the landscape outside Salt Lake City.”— Marty Solomon [13:05]
• “We don’t have a conception of different categories of truth.” — Reid Dent [24:41]
• “If I have to choose between certainty and love...choose love and re-examine the certainty.” — Reid Dent [52:22]
• “That’s the real truth – that’s when it all changed for me.” — Brent Billings (on becoming a father) [31:45]
• “It’s not as simple as, well, it’s just a story or it’s a piece of historical reporting...the sliders can be pushed up and down.” — Reid Dent on Sternberg’s metaphor [38:12]
• “If Jesus is hermeneutic, then love of neighbor and enemy is the way we have to go.”— Reid Dent [53:19]

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Timestamps of Highlight Segments

• 01:38 – Calling it “the text” vs. the Bible; upbringing and initial assumptions
• 03:10 – What people mean by “inspired word of God”
• 05:46 – Greek exploration: “theopneustos” (God-breathed)
• 07:38 – Breathed into vs. breathed out models of inspiration
• 12:35 – What is the Bible for? Relaying data vs. expressing meaning
• 16:18 – Theological imagination & interpreting the divine experience
• 21:51 – “Book vs. Library” metaphor; learning about 9/11 in different genres
• 24:41 – We often only have “true/false” as our paradigm
• 29:47 – The “truth that most has the ability to hit” is rarely data-driven
• 34:10 – “Do these stories convince us of a lie, or do they resonate with something deep inside us that’s profoundly true?” — Wake Up, Dead Man
• 38:07 – Sternberg’s “soundboard” metaphor: history/theology/aesthetics
• 44:48 – Jesus as the “Word” meets us “in any expression”
• 45:21–52:14 – Reid’s practical tips for reading and interpreting the Bible
• 52:22 – Certainty vs. love: “Choose love and re-examine the certainty”

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Tone and Takeaways

The conversation is honest, thoughtful, humorous, at times self-deprecating and warm, modeling curiosity and humility. Listeners are encouraged to move beyond narrow categories and rigid doctrinal frameworks and to embrace the Bible in all its literary messiness, profound truth, and transformative power. The Bible is held as central not for infallible data, but as the living witness to God’s ongoing invitation into experience, relationship, and love.

If you want to deepen your own engagement:

• Explore the recommended reading and follow your favorite thinkers’ influences.
• Start or join a group to read and discuss aloud, letting questions and meaning surface in community.
• Assess not just how you read, but what your reading is growing in your life—pursue love over certainty.

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Transcript

[Reid Dent]

Foreign.

[Brent Billings]

This is the Baywa podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co host, Brent Billings. Today we are with Reid Dent to discuss the pillar of text.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah, we're going to keep this new session 10 series on the move. We're looking at the four pillars.

[Reid Dent]

We're going to.

[Marty Solomon]

We gotta hear my thoughts. Last week, I'll probably kick off every one of these pillars. I'll give you my thought on community next. Probably discipleship, naturally.

[Brent Billings]

So. Yes.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah. Then after that, wrestling. But I also want to hear from Reed and Nell and I don't want them to necessarily build their thoughts off of mine. So Reid hasn't heard. You haven't heard? Read what I. What I did already.

[Reid Dent]

No idea. I'm sure it was brilliant, though. But no, I haven't heard any of it.

[Marty Solomon]

Basically, their prompt is. This is one of our four key values, one of our four key pillars here at Bama. Talk to us about it. Whatever comes to your mind, whatever you see, whatever you love about this concept, whatever you struggle with, like, whatever comes to mind. So I think Elle. I think Elle's up by herself. She's just going to do. With you and Brent. You, Brent. She's just going to do a solo. Her edition of the text. She's pretty big on the Bible. I figured I would just let her roll.

[Reid Dent]

Way bigger on it than I am. Way bigger on it than I am. I just did a whole thing on VI and virtues and like, you know, basically an excuse to not have to talk about the text.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah, absolutely. So much Aquinas. I was like, I better be careful about what Reid does here, so I'll show up for this one.

[Reid Dent]

Well, first of all, here's my first response. And that's. It's weird to call it the text. That's where I'm coming from. In my personal history, we just called it the Bible.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah, sure.

[Reid Dent]

Which of course stands for basic instructions before leaving earth.

[Marty Solomon]

The bi ble. That's the book for me.

[Reid Dent]

Keep going.

[Marty Solomon]

Stand alone on the word of God. The B I, B L, E. Absolutely. I'm there with you.

[Brent Billings]

So basic. So simple and straightforward.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah.

[Reid Dent]

So instruction.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah.

[Reid Dent]

So before leaving Earth. Yeah. I mean, I grew up with a concept of Bible that was. I mean, basically kind of like that. Like that's kind of a hokey way of saying it, but sure. I think it was like, here's how you get saved and lead a godly life. And then when I would come across, you know, anything that wasn't, obviously, here's how to get saved and lead A Godly life. I was like, I don't know what to do with this. Yeah. You know, I mean, the big thing that I remember hearing about Bible growing up is that it was the inspired word of God. Ooh.

[Marty Solomon]

Yep.

[Reid Dent]

I mean, everybody's heard that, right? This was the label attached to it. Inspired word of God. And what do you think the kind of popular, I guess, conception of, like, if you ask just the average person, what does that mean that the Bible is the inspired word of God? Like, say a little bit more about that. What kinds of things do you think you would hear?

[Marty Solomon]

Oh, I think the average person, whether they like the idea, believe it or not, if they had to say what it meant, would say it means that the Bible is right. And if you press them on it, we'll use a lot of talk about history. Maybe if they're a little bit more trained or educated, they might start talking about biblical literalism and whether or not that's what inspiration means. But I think people would just mean the Bible is never wrong, which is also the idea of infallibility. But all these things kind of go together. This inerrant, infallible, inspired. It is always true, always right, never wrong.

[Brent Billings]

And I would say, like, the image along with that of God supernaturally reaching through the hands of the authors.

[Marty Solomon]

Yes.

[Brent Billings]

And animating them as they write the text down.

[Marty Solomon]

I like the idea of it reaching through. Whether it's dictation of their hearing exactly what to write down, or that image you just said of, like, God reaching through and it's actually his hand, like, using theirs like a glove to write what he wants. Absolutely. Yeah, totally. That is often the image that we have.

[Reid Dent]

Yeah. And I think, as is often the case with these kinds of things, there is something in here that feels true to me, that there is a kernel of truth, and then there is some kind of packaging that's gotten wrapped around it that feels like maybe a bridge too far. And you guys have set me up perfectly because I want to talk about this word that. So 2 Timothy 3:16. It's the other big 3:16 in the Bible.

[Marty Solomon]

Oh, yeah.

[Reid Dent]

That is, of course, all scripture is. And then how you translate this word is kind of important. All scripture is. And some translations say God breathed. That's the niv. Some translations say breathed out by God. That's the esv, which I like, but I know that you guys are not the biggest fans of. It's fine.

[Brent Billings]

Yeah. Well, can all be good.

[Reid Dent]

The NRSV says all scripture is inspired by. And then the KJV I was actually a little bit taken aback by this. But it says given by inspiration. And then it's also, I love how it's like you have this really sort of like hard to get your hard to pin down word. And then it's. And it's also useful. It's like useful in the way that a tape measure is useful or something, you know, for teaching and correction and all that. But that word I want to talk about for a second, and I'm not a Greek expert, but I did a little bit of looking about this and the word is theopneustos. All scripture is theopneustos, which means literally. So there's two parts to the word theos. You guys know what that one means?

[Marty Solomon]

God.

[Reid Dent]

That's the word God, like theo, theology, theos. And then which is the PN P, N E U S T O S like the pneuma, which is a word that you have, I'm sure heard before as well. And that word means breath.

[Marty Solomon]

This idea of breath, wind or spirit.

[Reid Dent]

Yes. Okay. And so you have half of the word is God and half of the word is to breathe. But there is a question here that is not readily obvious, which is, is it inspired as in like they are breathed into or are they breathed out by? So is it like, is it something that has the breath, the wind put into it, or is it the product? It's almost like is it, is it inspired or is it exhaled by God? Some people might think that it's a distinction without a difference. But I think it is worth thinking about because think about like if it is breathed into, if the breath is going in, then to me that conjures the image of the creation of the first man, of the creation of Adam in Genesis.

[Marty Solomon]

Sure, Right.

[Reid Dent]

Yep. And so breathed into in the same way that Adam was breathed into by God. The emphasis here would be then on the actual life giving function of the breath. And so maybe it would be translated as like all scripture is life giving. And the way that the breath of God he breathed into the man and the man became a living being.

[Marty Solomon]

Like a generative energy. I think Bibleproject talks about it.

[Reid Dent]

Do they?

[Marty Solomon]

Okay, not in the terms of inspired, but when they talk about the spirit, they talk about this. Yeah, the same idea of being breathed into. There is a generative life giving energy. A generative energy to the breath and the spirit. Yeah.

[Reid Dent]

Yes. But then there is a different sense. You can think about it as breathed out by almost like something in the sense of Isaiah 55. My word goes out from my mouth.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah.

[Reid Dent]

The emphasis here is actually on like the divine source or the origin of the breath. And so it would be like, all scripture has a divine nature.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah.

[Reid Dent]

And I'm not trying to say that, like it's definitely this one and not that one, but I do think that there maybe are some outworkings of like, what is the nature of scripture or what is it for? How does it work? Like, what are the. Some of the different outworkings. If we read it as all scripture is life giving versus all scripture has a divine nature.

[Marty Solomon]

Well, if I'm thinking about God breathing in. Into something and I'm thinking about my grad work and how sometimes I'm kind of the one getting chuckled at in a room because I'm just too fundamentalist and too rooted in my, my belief about the Word. I know what they would do with that would be like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Reid Dent]

It's.

[Marty Solomon]

It's a human text that God's kind of put, so there's enough room for them to get away from inerrancy. Or like, it's just, it's humans putting together a very human text and God's infusing it with potential and possibility. But it's not a whole inspiration. So therefore we get to pick through and find the inspiration. It doesn't have to be that, but it's how somebody could use that. On the flip side, somebody could use the exhaling. As in like almost the exact opposite of what I just described.

[Reid Dent]

Yeah.

[Marty Solomon]

Where for me, I've always, like, I just taught on this in Texas a few weeks ago. And I always call it source. I always see it as a source, but not in the sense of it just came out from God. And now I have to catch every last bit of it. But it came from. Because I always use this to talk about what you talked about one of your first episodes when like, what makes something true? Is it that it's history? What if God wanted to write a poem? And I've always said it is an inspired poem because of where it came from, its source. So it doesn't push me towards literalism at all. So it's just interesting to think about the mental exercise because I could do wide or narrow things with either expression.

[Reid Dent]

Yeah. I think finding a way to live comfortably in the both and ness feels important to me.

[Marty Solomon]

Yes.

[Reid Dent]

Because whether we're emphasizing the function of the breath or the source of it, it is God that is clear. But I guess the one thing that I have become uncomfortable with in talking about it, maybe a Little bit too extreme as the breathed out by sense.

[Marty Solomon]

Yes.

[Reid Dent]

Is like you said that like therefore it sort of like materializes ex nihilo and must be like perfect in a way that doesn't feel realistic to me.

[Marty Solomon]

Yes.

[Reid Dent]

And that if it's not somehow that like the moment it becomes quote unquot imperfect, then it just becomes jettisoned and it's like useless. We can't trust it, we can't rely on it anymore. You know, I think maybe thinking about the creation of Adam is a helpful parallel here in what does it mean for Adam to be divine, to have a divine source or a divine sort of breath animating him and what is the interplay of his own humanness. Right. Because as we've talked about before, it's not like the breath of God breathes out and then suddenly like the mist sort of dissipates and there is just a man standing there. Right. Because in the story God gets down in to the dirt and there is a fashioning from this very material, very earthy, very human thing that also has a divine breath that is bringing it to life and makes it life giving. Yeah. I remember actually seeing a thing from Tim Mackey years ago where he showed the MC Escher drawing called Drawing Hands. And it's like two hands. So it's one of those like the more you think about it, it's like an infinite loop that makes your brain hurt. But like one is drawing the other and the other is drawing the other. And so the question is like which one is like responsible or the source? And it's like well the Bible is kind of a both and it's a human thing, but it's also a divine thing. And anyway, so I just. However you want to parse that out and I think you can have fun thinking about the outworkings and implications of of these different senses in which you think about it. I do think that maybe we have gone a bridge too far by ignoring the like the life giving side of it that inhaled into human part of it and then having all of these kind of accreted expectations for what it must be because it is breathed out by God. If that makes sense.

[Marty Solomon]

Absolutely, absolutely it does.

[Reid Dent]

Which I actually think also then relates to my next question, which is what is it for? What is the Bible for? And Marty, I know that you've actually talked about this, did you talk about this in the housemooth thing? Actually the difference between like relaying data, like there are these data information packets, like these God information packets that need to be Relayed versus, like, expressing meaning and specifically like the meaning of experiences.

[Marty Solomon]

Yep.

[Reid Dent]

Can you just say a little bit about that?

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah. I didn't probably say it as well, but I. What I said was we treat the Bible often as a. I spoke of the. When you fly into Salt Lake City, I have family members that work at the Kitticut Cowper Mine there. If you fly in from a particular direction, you can look out your plane window and you just see this. It's like a scar on the landscape of Salt. It's just this mine. And so we do the Bible, we like strip mine it for data points. Like, we just strip mine up for units of truth, truth units. And it just feels like we do to the Bible what that mind has done to the landscape outside of Salt Lake City, where, on the other hand, I talked about Tolkien and Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit and why are these stories so powerful? Should we be engaging the Bible in the same. Not to hold Tolkien of the Bible as the same thing.

[Reid Dent]

Right. Yep, yep. I know you're not saying that, but

[Marty Solomon]

engage it with the same posture and approach rather than the mind approach.

[Reid Dent]

And I think if we imagine, if we're too far on that extreme of like, it is breathed out by God, as in it is like directly from God and just like breathed and then poof, there it is. This is the word of God, you know, in that sense of like, God is controlling the authors and they're just sort of these ciphers for God then to like, well, he needs a hand and a pen and a paper, and so he'll use you and possess you to do it, you know. But if you go really extreme on that, then I think it's then the natural course to be like, yeah. And so then this is just what God wants to tell me. The information that God needs me to know about God direct from the source, you know. But if we think about it as a. That drawing hands thing, we give some credence to the fact that human people living in reality, human circumstances and real times and real places with real plights and real struggles are the ones writing this down, believing fully that they had experiences with God, the God depicted in the Bible, then it means something different for them to. To meet, for me to read it as them trying to convey an experience that they had or really the meaning of it. Right. There's a line from Frederick Buechner. Sorry, but I just can't ever get away from him all that way. He's talking about doctrines and he says, no matter how fancy and metaphysical a doctrine sounds. It was a human experience first. And he says the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, for instance, the place it began was not in the word processor of some 4th century Greek theologian, but in the experience of basically untheological people who had known Jesus of Nazareth and found something happening to their lives that had never happened before. Yeah, and this is about doctrine specifically, but I think it also is helpful for how we think about the Bible generally, because again, thinking about the ripple effects of how I expect the Bible must behave and what to do with the more difficult parts that don't seem to play as nicely together, if I think about it as data and doctrine purely versus as expressing meaning, then that just is really going to affect like what I'm trying to get at is like postures and the way that we hold this. Right.

[Marty Solomon]

Well, let me just say this, I'll interrupt you read because this, this fits like so well with right now. I'm in the middle of my grad work and I'm in the class I'm doing right now is called Imaginative theology, or should I say theological imagination is the actual title of the course. And we are engaging in this idea in ways that echo very much what you're talking about, but not what I was raised with. We're talking about what is the work of theology like theological imagination. What is the work of theology? And they talk about it starts with revelation. Now, I was raised in a Christian world where revelation is Scripture. But this class is making a distinction of the divine experience. The divine experience is a revelation. And then that revelation then comes to us through one of three sources. It either comes to us through the Scripture, through tradition, or through experience. And so what we're trying to do, and they love the word interpret, which I've grown to also kind of love, like this work of theology is interpreting the divine experience. And there's chapters ad nauseam of having to read and be quizzed on, like how can we as finite beings take either of those sources of revelation and convey adequately an experience with the infinite divine, even if it's purely inerrant and purely infallible? Our ability to understand it, communicate it and interpret it is always going to be limited by who we are versus the divine works experiencing. And that doesn't take away from its whatever. It's inspiration, it's authority, it's inerrancy. It just points to the fact of whatever we're talking about is also bigger than the thing that we're able to

[Reid Dent]

say, which doesn't just have to be about God. And I. This is what I'm always trying to direct people to, is that we have experiences in our own lives that we wouldn't necessarily label as God, but that are profound. Like the birth of a child, for example. How do you best convey an experience like the birth of your child? And for some of us, the way that we think about Bible as just transmitting data packets or God information, it would be like, as if to convey the meaning of the birth of our child, we were limited to strictly. They were born at exactly this time in this hospital, on this day. They weighed this much. Their heart rate was this. You know, the vitals, the material aspects of it. But you. I mean, all of us have children, and we all know that, like, if we were to try to convey the meaning of that experience, that would fall far short. And so how do we convey the significance of it? You have to reach for things that don't necessarily contradict facts, but they go beyond facts, right? They go deeper than facts. And so what are the kinds of experiences where God enters in, in the story of scripture that the writers are trying to convey? It's like, okay, well, if you have an experience with God at the mountain, you know, whatever that looked like, how do you convey it? Or an experience of the oppression of empire? Or we just did first and Second Samuel at ccf, and I'm going to be doing it for Bama here in a little while. But, like, how do you convey the truth about the costs of maintaining power through violence and deceit? Or how do you convey thinking about the Jonah story, like the loving mercy of God for enemies and outsiders? And these are profound experiences and deeply true, but they go well beyond the ability of just historical data points to adequately convey. And so I think. I love that you use the word imagination, because Derek and I were just talking about this the other day that, like, what exists underneath, underneath a system of theology is a deeper, broader religious imagination that is a way of holding things together and making sense of things. And that, like, a lot of us are so focused on trying to get our doctrinal bricks in a row, you know, and stacked just the right way, that we're not paying attention to that more ethereal religious imagination that is formed in us. That is actually the thing that I think we most like need to pay attention to. But I think the Bible works by appealing to that religious imagination in a variety of complex ways. And so this is where we get into the part of the conversation where we talk about what does it mean for the Bible to be to think of it as a book versus thinking about it as a library, which I think at this point is a more commonly known and trafficked metaphor thinking about it as a library. But. And this actually is something that we did talk about on that first episode that I was on years ago, but thinking about different kinds of things that you might want to learn about. And if you go to a library to try to learn about them, it really depends what section of the library you go to to try to learn about whatever the subject is, right? And so think about 9 11. And man, we're getting old because college students now, which is who we work with, they like weren't alive, they were not born when that happened, which makes me feel older.

[Marty Solomon]

We've become the old people we have.

[Reid Dent]

And this example that I always use with students is maybe in need of some refreshing because they're like 9 11. I mean, I know about it, but anyway. Or maybe it doesn't because actually maybe this is appropriate because Bible things are about things that happened long before we were here. And so maybe it is helpful. But think about if you want to learn about 9 11, right? You can go to the periodical section and you can pull out a copy of the Wall Street Journal, which I have one saved somewhere, which is the copy of the Wall Street Journal from September 12, the next day, 2001. And that newspaper has a graphic. Actually, Brent, you would be into the graphic because it's all about flight times and numbers and, you know, what do they call them? I don't know, itineraries or something.

[Brent Billings]

Yes, schedules.

[Reid Dent]

The whole thing schedules how many souls are aboard. Right. And it says that this flight number left this place at this time carrying this many people, and it impacted the tower at this time. And that is a perfectly valid kind of information that you might want to know. But if you go to the poetry section, there's a great poem by Scott Cairns that I also talked about when we talked about this last called September 11th. And it has an epigram, like a little prefacing text that's a quote from Exodus about the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire. And this poem is basically, in its poetic way, talking about how it, it's illusion, it's alluding to, but that somehow in that event of September 11, we became the cloud and we became the fire. He's trying to draw some kind of relationship between the Exodus story and this national tragedy that happened. But that is a different kind of thing. And so the question is, how do you know which one of these, how do you know which is true? Or what is the standard that you're using to measure whether it is true or not? And so if you look at the Wall Street Journal and it says, well, it was Flight 93, but it was actually Flight 87, then Wall Street Journal is unreliable. It's an error. Right. How could you apply that same thing to the. Scott Karen's poem? I mean, what would it mean for that to be an error? Not that it can't be false, but that the way of judging that is a much different kind of standard than just data. Right.

[Marty Solomon]

It feels like the wrong category to be like, yes, saying, is that true in a right or is that wrong? Is it right? Like, what do you mean, is it right? It's expressing something. It's tapping into something. You can't judge by that category. You could judge it by other categories, but not the same categories you would judge the Wall Street Journal by. And it would feel odd to judge the Wall Street Journal by the categories of poetry. Absolutely.

[Reid Dent]

But I think the hang up for us is that we only have one category and we call it true, true, false. And so every. We don't. We don't have a conception of different categories of truth.

[Marty Solomon]

Right. Because of that, what we started with the word inspired.

[Reid Dent]

Yes, exactly.

[Marty Solomon]

We're not allowed to have other categories.

[Reid Dent]

Right. And that we are afraid that if it fails in a factual category of truth, then it cannot be true in any other sense. It would. That would be a meaningless thing to say, that it could be unfactual and yet true. But I think, again, we, we understand this. Like, here's another example that I often use, which is back in 2020, when we had the pandemic, we had the stimulus checks go out, and that was a help to all of us. So thank you, America. But just before they were to be sent out, the people who were going to be getting paper checks mailed to their houses, the President delayed the sending of these checks because he wanted his own signature put on all of the checks, even though it's coming from the Treasury. He wanted it to seem like. Well, I'm not going to say what he wanted, but it was as if it would seem that the check was coming from the President himself.

[Marty Solomon]

Yes.

[Reid Dent]

And so it was delayed. And that is what it is. That is a piece of historical data. There is an article, you know, that I have saved on my computer from foxnews.com that just is saying, like, this was the amount of the checks. This is when they were supposed to go out. This is the reason for the delay. And these are facts. And you can read into those facts, right? And you can interpret those in a certain way, but it's up to you. Then, about that same time, the Onion, which is a satirical news website, they published an article. The headline was, president Seeks to Stimulate Economy by Sending Rare Autographed photo of Himself to Every American. And it was. It had these sound bites, you know, that were from the president about how people were going to love this picture and everybody wanted it and it was. Everybody was going to be able to sell them and it would. Of course, the joke is that it's not rare if it's, you know, signed or if everybody has one. It's not rare. But there is a more powerful message coming through, more pointedly said in a way that is. I mean, nothing in that article is factual. It's all. It's what we call satire. And yet if what you're wanting to do is point out a deeper truth about the hubris of somebody, right? The pride, the conceit, then you can interpret that through the facts on Fox News. But it hits a lot different when you read it in the Onion.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah, I like the phrase. It hits a lot different because you could say the thing factually, like you could write out like, this is true about, but it would not have any power behind it. There would be. No. It would not hit at all in an effective way. And one would have to ask whether or not it's true for what it's trying to accomplish at all.

[Reid Dent]

Yeah, I mean, and then just one other. I always talk about this example of watching Lord of the Rings, which you mentioned, with my kids for the first time several years ago, and we get to the end. Spoiler alert. If you haven't seen Lord of the Rings, then you should turn off now. But at the end of Return of the King, when they go to see off Bilbo and then Frodo, he's going with the elves to the Undying Lands. And Frodo is like, I'm going, too. And the other, his friends Merry and Pippin and Sam, they didn't know this. This is a surprise. But Frodo has suffered a wound from which he cannot heal in the normal area of Middle Earth, right? So he has to go with the elves and Sam and Frodo who have been through this whole ordeal together. They embrace and it is so beautiful. And my son Briggs, who is probably 10 at the time, or 11 maybe, I don't know, he goes, dad, I'm gonna cry. And I was like, okay, that's right. That's appropriate. You should cry. And he goes, no, I know what'll help. I'll do push ups. And he dropped to the ground right there as the movie was playing in the living room. And he just starts pumping out push ups. To not have to feel this emotion. Right?

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah.

[Reid Dent]

But the question and the reason I bring it up is what is it that connected with Briggs there? What did he encounter that was so powerful and so uncomfortable for him? And is it truth? And I would say thousand percent, he experienced the truth of loss of friendship, of all of the. I mean, you could say it in a lot of different ways. Is there anything in that other sense true about the Lord of the Rings? Of course not. There's no such thing as hobbits and Middle Earth and all like, that was a fiction that Tolkien made up. And if there are hardcore Tolkien fans out there who want to talk to me about sub creation or whatever, let's talk another time. But you know what I'm saying, right? It's made up.

[Marty Solomon]

Yep.

[Reid Dent]

And yet it is deeply true. And here's the thing that I want to then point out is that the kind of truth that most has the ability to hit. Right. That most has the ability to powerfully transform us at a heart level.

[Marty Solomon]

Yes.

[Reid Dent]

Is actually not the data point, scientifically verifiable, spreadsheet driven kind of truth. And so the rub for us is that we have been conditioned by. I mean, not just by certain doctrines about inerrancy, but before that. Right. By living in a post enlightenment world, by living in an age of science, we have been conditioned to see the truth as the verifiable facts only. But it's cutting against our ability to actually be transformed by the text because we think, oh, well, if it's quote unquote, just a story, then we diminish it. Right. But yeah, I would just say the truth needs forms that are artistic. It needs the onion. It needs the poem by Scott Cairns. It needs the Lord of the Rings for expression and for connection, for transformation.

[Brent Billings]

I'll offer a personal example for you, Reid, please.

[Reid Dent]

Yes.

[Brent Billings]

In the lead up to the birth of my first son, I had all of these things that I was wanting to record and capture by this moment. I brought my camera in, I had my apple watch set up on a watch face that had seconds, and I had it ready. So I have a screenshot of the exact second that Darius was born. Because that is the kind of nerd that I am. I want to know, you know, with the greatest precision, all of these data points. But then, like, after those initial moments, then they take him over to this warming table and they're getting all the other measurements that they need to have. And I'm like, oh, I feel like he shouldn't be alone over there. So I go over to the table and I crouch down and we made eye contact. And that's the moment where I actually think I became a father. And that's not factually true, really, in any way at all, but that's the real truth. That's when it all changed for me.

[Reid Dent]

That's so good. I mean, what can you verify in a moment of eye contact? Right? Yeah. What kind of fact? There is none.

[Marty Solomon]

And yet I think every person hearing this, whether they've been a parent or not, connects with the. With the truth of what we're talking about. Right. Which is why you're tapping into something that's such a frustration to me. That question you always have to answer is, so wait, are you saying that this, that this happened or is it just a story? And you're like, wait, just a story? Like, because that it actually happened feels so anemic to me because the story is something that we all just inherently understood. What Brent was communicating, like, oh, the power in that. And somehow, like, it's so hard for us to translate that to the world of the text and the scripture.

[Reid Dent]

There's a famous little micro story about Karl Barth, which I probably also told before, about how he had spoken about the book of Genesis and somebody asked him, did the serpent actually speak? And his response was, madam, it doesn't matter whether or not the serpent spoke. All that matters is what he said. Have you seen Wake Up, Dead man yet? The latest Knives out movie?

[Brent Billings]

You know it?

[Reid Dent]

You guys, this movie is a phenomenal movie.

[Brent Billings]

I couldn't believe it. Full endorsement. As it's playing out on the screen, I was like, how did this get made? This is so incredible.

[Reid Dent]

It's phenomenally good. And there's a scene where there's Father Judd, who's the young priest new to this congregation, and he is trying to embody gentleness and mercy and compassion. The monsignor, who's already there, is like a hard nosed, you know, fierce, fight the world outside kind of guy. And there's a scene where Benoit Blanc, the detective who is the man of logic and the man of being able to connect every piece of evidence to come to, quote, unquote, the truth. He first arrives into the movie. He walks into the church, into this sanctuary, It's a Catholic sanctuary, and there's stained glass and everything. And Father Judd, the younger priest, is in there by himself, and they get to talking about things and just Benoit Blanc's background. And he's basically saying that religion is not for him and that it's just a bunch of stories and that kind of thing. And Father Judd says this. I love this line. I'm going to read it. I wrote it down. Father Judd says, it is storytelling. You're right. He concedes the point. And then he says, I guess the question is, do these stories convince us of a lie, or do they resonate with something deep inside us that's profoundly true, that we can't express any other way except storytelling? And so, yeah, just for everybody's consideration and hopefully for your. A little bit of maybe we can release the pressure on this valve of, like, must be factually true. And this way of, like, looking down on stories, I would just say, what other way would you adequately convey the meaning of looking into your son's eyes for the first time? Or, Marty, when you guys beat us in the AFC Championship game, there's something that happens there, even for something as trivial as sports. Right. But if you wanted to convey what that meant, you would have to go beyond just the fact that, like, Mahomes melted down and Burrow played great and you guys kicked the winning field goal in overtime. Right. You have to reach for something beyond that. And this is something. Again, there are a million experiences. And I think the beautiful thing is that those are not somehow separate experiences from the experience of God, but that God is in and among and working through all of these things. And I would just encourage people to then ask for themselves, you know, what kind of a thing is it? What were the authors trying to do? And what kind of creative freedom do I have to engage with the text and ask questions and go down rabbit trails and wonder about connections and wonder about meanings when I'm not so obsessed with how can I prove that this is like a beat for beat, factual, historical reporting of everything that ever happened. One other little thing that I'll throw out there before we get into Reid's Bible favorites and Reid's tips for reading the Bible. There's a guy named Meyer Sternberg, contemporary of Robert Alter, also wrote about the Bible as Hebrew literature. He's got a great book called the Poetics of Biblical Narrative. And he kind of points out that it's probably not simple. Like, it's not as simple as, well, it's just a story or it's a piece of historical reporting. It's not an either or. But he talks about these three different sort of, I guess, qualities. I think about them as like, on a soundboard, the sliders, you know, that you can push up and down. I think about them as three faders that, depending on what part of the Bible you're in, can be pushed up and down to different degrees. And the first one is history, as in, like, the question of what happened, the events. Right. That's the thing where most of us normally are spending all of our time thinking is like that. But history is only one of the three faders, because another one is that the Bible authors are concerned about is ideology, is what he calls it, or theology, as in, like, what is the meaning? What is the conviction about what this experience means? And then the third one is the aesthetics, as in, like, the style, the presentation, how best to communicate it. And so there might be some parts of the Bible where the history is turned way up and the aesthetics are turned way down, but that doesn't mean it's absolutely at zero. Right. And there might be other parts where, like, the theology is turned way up, but the history is turned down and the aesthetics are somewhere in the middle or whatever. And so, again, it's not a simple task, and I know it's difficult, but it's not a simple task in trying to read and interpret the Bible, of just being like, well, is this fact or fiction? But what is the interplay going on? Which, again, this is a little bit more of, like, a scholarly idea. But I do think it's helpful just to have a framework of, like, oh, I can think about not a polarized either or, but an interplay of history and theology and esthetics.

[Marty Solomon]

I have never heard that metaphor from you before, and that is so helpful. I'm going to carry that with me for a long time.

[Brent Billings]

That's very good when you carry it, though, Marty. Just note that on a soundboard, zero is actually quite turned up.

[Marty Solomon]

Yes, absolutely.

[Reid Dent]

Okay. Negative 24 or whatever it is.

[Brent Billings]

Yeah, yeah,

[Marty Solomon]

you would.

[Brent Billings]

I wasn't going to say anything, but then Marty's like, I'm going to carry this. I was like, I got to stop this before it gets out of control.

[Reid Dent]

I'll send it to you. Marty, that book, there's an amazing chapter.

[Marty Solomon]

Okay. I love that. I'm sure you'll read it out loud to me at some point when we're together.

[Reid Dent]

Ooh. Oh, well, it wouldn't be good next weekend, but when you come here in March.

[Marty Solomon]

Okay. You got it.

[Reid Dent]

Okay.

[Marty Solomon]

All right.

[Reid Dent]

All right. What do you guys want to talk about? Do you want me to talk about what I love about the Bible?

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah, give us some of your favorites. I mean, the notes here are tantalizing. I want to hear this.

[Reid Dent]

Okay. All right. So I was thinking about this when I was making notes yesterday, and I realized that I have had different eras of my life with the Bible where I have really loved and connected with different things. And so for me, like, in high school, high school, Reed loved Paul. High school read, especially loved the epistles of Paul in the imperative parts, where he's like, be like this and do this and walk in this way, and these are the fruits. Right. I love that. And of course, I mean, it's like, I'm a teenager. I'm trying to figure out, like, what do I do with my life, not in a career sense, but, like, tomorrow when I'm hanging out with my friends, you know, what do I do? And so I loved Paul. It was very. It felt very cut and dry to me. And I also had a way of reading the Bible, and I know that this is familiar to lots of people where it was like, sometimes when you're reading, you feel like you're lost at sea. When you're getting through a bunch of, like, verses that's like, I don't know what this means. I don't know what this means. I don't know what this means. And you're, like, looking for any piece of dry ground, and then you come to the. And so, wow, I'm really blanking on what an island would be. But a verse that's like, slam dunk makes sense. You were dead in your trespasses, but you're alive in Christ. And I'm like, okay, yes. And then he'd start talking about meat sacrificed to idols and whatever, and I'm like, just get through it. Just get through it. So if anybody's out there reading like that, you're not alone. Then I got to college, and college read, started to think about things, you know, and, like, a little bit angsty. I was out on my own, and I'm like, oh, yeah. But, like, is it really like that? And so Ecclesiastes was like, my jam in college.

[Marty Solomon]

Nice.

[Reid Dent]

Seriously. And, like, I love to wear it with a chip on my shoulder. Where, like, when people who were, like, my age that I am now in the middle age, you know, and adults and stuff, and they'd be making their statements about, you know, God and God is good, and I'd Be like, yeah, but, like, is he really?

[Marty Solomon]

Because, like, Vanity of Vanities, man.

[Reid Dent]

Yeah. Yeah. And that was a. That was a fun time in Reid's life. That was when all the movies I liked to watch were what Leanne called bummers. I just. All the. All the ones about the tragic downfall of people, which is actually. I still love this a lot.

[Brent Billings]

Yeah.

[Marty Solomon]

Yeah.

[Reid Dent]

And then, like, in my early 30s, this is about the time that you and I met Marty. I was getting really into, like, Genesis and Revelation. Those were, like, particularly hot button books where a lot of stuff was out about them. And it was like, oh, there's a whole trove of resources that allow me to deal with these in different ways than what I had normally thought, you know? And I think that was where I really started to open up as, like, just a better reader of the Bible. Yep. And I became less afraid about, oh, man, here's this big question. And I learned how to. How to be okay with normally. It's like, well, if this one thing isn't the way I thought it was, then nothing is right. What else isn't going to be like that? And questions and confusions became these sort of, like. It was like a big red flag, you know, it was something scary. And then when I was in my 30s and starting to read these other things, I think it became more of an invitation. Like, the questions became more of an invitation and a curiosity. And I was like, okay, I feel assured that the steadfast love of God endures forever. I know at least that. And so from there, we can work and we can ask questions. And now, I think at 42, which is what I am, I have really come to, like, really love the complex literary characters of the Bible. Characters that have a lot of dimension and nuance and layer where, like, the significance or the meaning of the story comes out in those conversations where it's like, and so why would David do this? And why would he do it that way? And we can see it this way, and we can see it that way. And really feeling like the fruit of Bible reading for me lately is really not in, like, arriving at the ultimate interpretation on, like, a character, but in that interplay and in that dynamic conversation that comes just as we're talking about it, you know? And then you get to the end of the night and you're like, I don't really feel like I'm any closer to a final word on this person or that person than I was before. But we had a really good conversation, you know? And so guys like David Guys like Moses, Brent, you and I and Elle just talked about Rahab the other day in an episode that I don't know if it's out or will come out,

[Brent Billings]

but it'll be long after this.

[Reid Dent]

Long after this. Okay. Anyway, but you know, or thinking about Peter, thinking about Jonah, like all of these characters who feel really human to me, like Buechner once said that the Bible is a book about the way things are. And what he was talking about was like, they just portray people as we know people to be, which is, you know, this, this whole mess of good and bad. And then I think the last thing I would say about these eras of Bible reading for Reid, if people are listening, they're like, well, you didn't say anything about Jesus. I would say that like Jesus has always been the one. The thing like weaving in and out of these different eras. And that's like the question that I always come back to is, okay, so what does this mean about who I think Jesus is and what it means to be a follower? A disciple of Jesus is largely informed. But I mean that's like, that's the underlying ground that all of these different eras are like taking place in which

[Marty Solomon]

if we say Jesus is the Word, I mean, it would make a whole lot of sense that that Christ ends up finding you and any expression of what the Word is conveying to us. I would. That's a beautiful truth.

[Reid Dent]

Yeah. And you know, when I think about even my sillier ways of reading the Bible when I was younger and maybe when I'm 80, I'll look back and think my 40 year old self was pretty silly too, by the way. But I do think that like God was faithful and Jesus is like even willing to condescend to my silly interpretations and still find a way to like keep pulling me along, like keep dragging me along, keep growing the fruit of the Spirit. Even when my Bible interpretations have been, you know, even if like I would look at my 17 year old self and be like, you dummy, like, that's not how that works. Right. Okay, I'm gonna give some tips for

[Marty Solomon]

reading the Bible, make it applicable, baby.

[Reid Dent]

I'm going to give you the application, but I'm also going to like begin by doing a little bit of self deprecation and saying, I don't know that my tips are necessarily worth like their weight in gold. I am just a guy reading the Bible and reading other things and thinking about things. And this is just a collection of. Here's some stuff for you to consider if you want to that comes from, you know, whatever, 30 years of dealing with the Bible at this point. So the first thing is, so my wife is a professional counselor, and there is a phenomenon in the world of psychology called first order language. And my tip is, by the way, just to be aware of the use of first order language and what first order language is, it's vocabulary, things that we say that are obviously true to us, quote, unquote, obviously true to a certain group of people. And so they go unquestioned and they eventually become meaningless. And this is like, basically another way of talking about this is Christianese, where we have words we throw around or that we read in the Bible. Like, for example, I don't know, faith or righteousness. And we've heard them so often, like, we learn them early, they're repeated constantly. They're also kind of emotionally loaded. And we do not examine what we assume about them. And that eventually that word righteousness just becomes like an empty sort of vessel. Like it's a word we know, but we're not really being curious about what it means. And so be aware of the first order language that you are bringing to the text and that you are reading out of the text. And instead the antidote is what is called second order language, which is a matter of real reflection and curiosity and examination. And so it's just another way of saying, as you read what you have read before, by grace you have been saved, for example, be willing to be curious and examine. Okay, so what do I mean by that? And why do I mean that? And is there a different thing? I mean, that's like a lot of what this podcast is, is trying to reexamine our assumptions. So that's one thing. Okay, so the second thing is something that I remember first picking up from Greg Boyd, and he talks about Jesus as hermeneutic, which means that, like, when I come across something in the Bible that is really difficult, really confusing, maybe at like a theological level, maybe at a moral level, all of these gray things. If nothing else, I go back then to the person of Jesus and, you know, we talked about what it means for Jesus to fulfill Torah, right? Like, to interpret it correctly to be the actual embodiment of what it really intends to say, then, okay, I check it against him, and that's. That's sort of what I'm going back to. So what would Jesus, what do I think Jesus would say about this passage? Do I think Jesus would interpret this or encourage his disciples, like, to live out this passage? And it's a work of Imagination. But that's like, the reliable thing for me is like, okay, I'm going to go with Jesus on this and try to interpret things in light of him. Another thing is that when I read, I want to read in conversation with other people this idea of like the Havre. And so find some friends who maybe are like minded or maybe not, but who share, well, one friendship with you and who have an interest in the text and then just. I know it's Reed saying this again, but, like, read it aloud together. And people who like, we can go anywhere with this. We can go down any beaten path. We can ask any question. Nothing is off limits to be able to discuss. Because like I was saying before, for me, so much of the life is in that conversation more than it is in, like, okay, so what's the final distillation that we're taking out of the conversation that we just had? And along those lines of following rabbit trails. I would also say if you find somebody that you resonate with, like a thinker or a writer or an artist, that you resonate with their way of interpreting the text and engaging with the text, then I would say follow the rabbit trail of the thinkers and writers, writers and artists that they like, and there's a web that starts to spin out and you, like, have more and more, like, rich resources that are helping you along and like, fleshing out more fully your interpretation, your way of engaging with it.

[Marty Solomon]

I would say that that is more true than I ever realized. I have a buddy named Peter. I hope to have him on the podcast someday. He's from Cambridge, he's from Princeton. One of the things I love about him is he. It's like playing that whole Seven Degrees of Kevin Bacon game. He can always, like, trace back. Oh, you love this person. Oh, that comes from here. And that comes from here, which has its common point back here. And that other thing that you have, which is totally unconnected, as far as you can tell, it traces back to the same point. And it's not really the tree that I'm getting at, but the people that impact us, that we resonate with, we have a resonance for a reason, because there's a particular grounding way of viewing. And so tracing that back and finding those people that are all intersected like that is really helpful.

[Reid Dent]

Yeah. So this is where footnotes and endnotes and bibliographies, suggested readings are really important.

[Marty Solomon]

Yep.

[Reid Dent]

And so, yeah, like, if you are somebody who don't take the strong way, if you like me, then it's no secret that I'm always talking about Beechner. You really need to go read Beechner. And then whoever he's reading and talking about, you need to read them.

[Marty Solomon]

Yep.

[Reid Dent]

So there's that. And again, that's not to also suggest that you should only ever read people that you agree with. That's not what I'm trying to say. But yeah, follow the rabbit trails of the people you like. And then the last thing I would say is not so much a tip for reading, but a tip for thinking about, like, reflecting on your reading. And that is to say, like, consider the fruit that your reading bears. The way that you read the text, the way that you interpret the text, the way that you hold the text, does that produce a fruit of that looks more like fear or that looks more like love. And if your way of reading and interpreting and holding scripture consistently has yielded destructive effects like on your relationships or on your psyche or on your faithfulness to the way of Jesus, then I would encourage you to question the soundness of that way of reading and interpreting and holding the text. Because some of us like our, you know, our worlds, our family worlds, our friendship worlds, like our going to hell in a handbasket. And it's kind of like that's not. I know this is a challenging thing to say and to hear. That's not like a distortion of our theology. That is actually the natural outworking of that theology or that way of reading, because that way of reading is unsound. And we need to. We need to reexamine or to say

[Marty Solomon]

it in Father Judd's words. Do these stories convince us of a lie or do they resonate with something deep inside us that's profoundly true?

[Reid Dent]

Yeah. And if it is fear, it's a lie. This is plainly stated in the text. And if I have to choose between certainty and love, because sometimes I have to choose between those things when it comes to a particular biblical passage. And I have had a certain kind of certainty about how it should be read or what it means. But if that way of reading, if that certainty, so called quote unquote, comes at odds with then what it means to love another person, then I would say choose love and re examine the certainty. And I get that there's so many complicating questions to think about with that. But just if I had to state it plainly, I would say there are times when we have to choose between certainty about what the Bible means and loving our neighbor is loving our enemies. And that like, if Jesus is hermeneutic, then love of neighbor and enemy is like the way that we have to go.

[Marty Solomon]

Well said.

[Brent Billings]

Okay, well, we have a lot of things that people can follow up on, particularly considering your idea of rabbit trails. Like, encourage people in this season, in the slower season of Bama episodes, like, take the time to explore those rabbit trails. I love that idea. So you. You can do that. We'll have lots of links in the show notes in your podcast app [e-mail] We Got Movies to watch. We got books to read. We got art to look at. Like, there's lots of ways that you can engage these things, so check that out. Use the contact page there to get in touch with us if you have any feedback, anything you want to share, Take up Reid's idea of getting into a Havre, having a conversation with others, start a group, join a group, whatever you can find groups on the website. But that does it for this week. So thank you for joining us on the BMW podcast. We'll talk to you again soon.

[Reid Dent]

Oh, okay. Well, good luck. I trust you guys. Nickelback is always a good choice.