Dan Kimball joins the show to discuss his new book How (Not) To Read the Bible.

TRANSCRIPT 0:00 Hey everyone. Welcome to the Jessup think Podcast. I'm Taylor, the producer of the show. I'm here to let you know that these summer episodes are reruns of previous episodes from season two of the show. These were handpicked by Mark and Rex themselves. And here they are with a few thoughts.

0:16 Hey, everyone, welcome to our final rerun of the summer and we're excited to to replay our episode with author and Pastor Dan Kimball, looking at his book, how not to read the Bible.

0:30 And just to clear up some confusion. He's not talking about putting the Bible up in a closet under your pillows that would say the easy way out.

0:37 Yeah, yeah. He's looking at Hey, how do we approach the Bible and and understand the hard passages and understand what the Bible is about? And so this is, I think, such a practical lesson and such a practical book. And it's so important for the church moving forward. Right. Welcome to Jessup tank. I'm your host, Mark Moore,

1:00 and your co host, Rex gurney.

1:02 And Rex on the show today, I'm so excited because I have actually one of my personally favorite authors and pastors in the Northern California region, Dan Campbell. He's a vintage Faith Church in Santa Cruz. And he's also the author of an upcoming book called How not to read the Bible, making sense of the anti women, anti science, pro slavery, pro violence and other crazy sounding parts of Scripture. And there's a

1:29 so connection with him to be he has he's spoken a chapel here a number of times and has a long, long history with the school so has a lot of good things to say.

1:39 Yeah, it does. It's a fascinating conversation. And it's a really important conversation for right now. Because because Miss reading the Bible can actually lead people away from Jesus and, and the purpose of Scripture is to point people to Jesus. And so we hope you enjoyed this episode. There's a lot to chew on and a lot to think about.

2:07 Well, Dan, we're really excited to have you on the show. And we know that you actually have a little bit of a history with William Jessup University, or at least you've been. You've been here before and spoken at Chapel.

2:22 Yes, yeah. I've been there to chapel I met with John Jackson, I think a couple times and with Bryce Jessup several times as well. So William Jessup used to be in San Jose. And when it was there, when it was called San Jose Christian College, then it became William Jessup, our church used to get a lot of interns from William Jessup. And that was like, amazingly wonderful. And we were sad, actually, when you guys moved to Sacramento, but then glad that you could expand and have more property, and all of that, but yeah, I feel wonderfully at home at William Jessup. And it's I'm always so thankful for doing there in Sacramento and all the students that come from all over the place.

3:03 We still have a presence, I think in San Jose, but it's it's not the same sort of thing. Yeah.

3:11 Are in Aaron Rockland area.

3:14 No, yeah. And Bryce Jessup. I have an 11 page, handwritten letter from Bryce Jessup, because when I first entered into ministry, at Santa Cruz Bible Church, I was very interested in I didn't grow up a Christian. And then when I was entering into ministry, he spoke at Santa Cruz Bible. And I was wondering, like, you know, I really liked his message. And he was older at the time and wondered, you know, what sustains someone that is going into ministry, and he wrote me an 11 page, handwritten letter back, which I still have, because it sounds

3:46 like rice. It really does. Sounds like he was that kind of guy. Yeah,

3:49 yeah. Well, I've great yeah, he was such a encouraging person and loved when I was over there to be able to meet meet up with them.

3:58 Oh, that's great. That's really great. We'll have to take a peek at that 11 page letter sometime. But she has wisdom for us all. And

4:06 yeah, it was great. It really was.

4:10 And we're excited to have you on the show with this connection, but also to talk about your new book, which is coming out in December from Zondervan, how not to read the Bible. And I love this subtitle, making sense of the anti women, anti science, pro violence, pro slavery and other crazy sounding parts of Scripture. And if the if the subtitle alone doesn't make people pick up the book, I don't know what would because I think that that draws us into into an area of, I think, the Christian face that we often don't look at, and that is maybe how different aspects of the Bible are read or maybe misread or misrepresented. and how that can have an extreme effect on someone's face. And, and in the book, you kind of start out with a story of a college student who grew up in, in a Christian home, right grew up in with the Christian faith, but it was actually reading the Bible that caused them to leave.

5:23 Yeah, and I mean, the quick summary of that story, which is actually becoming more and more common is that you have, he was a college student, raised in a great church. And here's what the differences, I think, even from years past, he had a super positive experience in church and great youth leader. It was a contemporary church, good bands, you know, it wasn't any type of cultural disconnect in the church itself. And it was a very loving church. And then he got to college, and he joined InterVarsity, up on campus. And while he was at InterVarsity, on campus, he they did a study of Exodus, you know, like the Goethe manuscript studies that correct? Yeah, yeah. And so he said, he was studying through the book of Exodus, and then, you know, he grew up hearing all, you know, the Moses stories, and, and all of those, but then all of a sudden, he read that, God, he started thinking about it, God, it was the Passover, you know, had the firstborn of the Egyptians killed. And he actually knows 1819 year old pasta there, and said, that's a pretty, you know, horrific thing that kind of was part of the story. But you know, they're always the bad guys. And so that killing, didn't think about it. Yeah, many started. His question was, so what he said was his whole life growing up, he heard that how evil it was for Herod to kill the two year olds and under in Bethlehem, and that was evil, you'd never killed children. Yet. All of a sudden, he started, he realized that God did that in the book of Exodus. Then he said, he kept reading. And then he said, you know, he started reading about slavery. And he read the verse about, you know, selling your daughter into slavery, and then even the word I believe it was property, as slavery. And he started saying, wait a minute, these are things that have been in the Bible. Now, as an adult, as I'm studying it differently. I'm noticing these things more. And here's where it gets northwards worse, but what he said was, he went and talked to his parents about it. And his parents said, Oh, that's in the Bible, like they know. And so he's like, Oh, my parents have never paid attention to this. Then he asked his youth leader, and he started asking others and he he said something to the sort of, well, I kept saying, well, there's many things and, and Heaven will know. So it doesn't matter for now. And he said he could not intellectually, I guess, you know, agree with that, and be satisfied with that sort of brushed off answer. And then he said, again, it's just like the story you hear over and over. So he started typing these verses in on Google. Right? Right. And what comes up is so many anti Bible, you know, websites, he said, he found one called Evil Bible comm. And you can look that up, it's still there. And then he just started saying, I didn't I shot, there's maybe a few things that I've seen, there's, you know, dozens and dozens of Bible verses and passages that I never knew before. And for him, it was over the course of months, he his faith started unraveling. His confidence in the Bible was then you know, started deteriorating. And then like, last minute, the university leaders sent me an email, Hey, will you meet with this person? And so I did. And he was a really sweet, intelligent guy. And it was kind of like the tail end of that. And he's already sort of made up his mind, and we walked through it. And that was, like, all I can say is that is the common story you're hearing over and over again, not just my 18 or 19 year olds, a lot of 30 Somethings are now deconstructing faith and thinking about things they never did before. It's always been in the Bible. But they've never stopped to like, look more closely. And that's what's going on today, I think.

9:26 Yeah. And I think what's so interesting about that story that you point out is and maybe what has been different in the last 20 years or so, is that it wasn't a story of a negative experience of church. He was in a loving community. And maybe 2030 years ago, there was more of those stories of church was really judgmental or church, you know, the church experience you culturally there was a disconnect. But it seems like even today, you know, with maybe more loving communities, more communities are open students and we're seeing the same thing and Jessup students, you know, and I have friends who graduated from Jessup and I've stayed connected with. And the more they look into scripture, which is the one thing we tell them to do, right? Like, hey, we encourage them to read their Bible. But they come with more questions. And sadly, we often don't, or maybe we're unprepared to be able to have those discussions. And, and so yeah, then they move to, to other online forums where they can hear people bring up but I think you do a good job just in that prelude of really piling it on of like, yeah, it's not just one or two verses in the Bible. It is, I mean, there's a lot we have to process and work with,

10:45 well even shows up in I actually have my little copy of The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. And it's almost like the first paragraph in that book. That, of course, was the New York Times bestseller, and I would assume, I guess, a lot of people read it, where it's basically sort of sort of right away just sort of hits everybody with this with this stuff. The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction, which of course, makes my red flags go up right away, but still, you know, jealous and proud of it a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak, and on and on, and on and on. And so this stuff's out there. And folks, folks confronted all the time. And it's good to acknowledge that and to realize that, that's not the end of the story we have, we have some things we can we can say about those misapprehensions of God's character.

11:38 Yeah, and I love Dan, your, your honesty, and talking about the explanations and talking about those passages you say? And kind of the prelude. If these were the only verses in the Bible, you would run the other direction as well.

11:55 Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And I think, you know, because I didn't grow up in a church. And I would, I was never an atheist, I was probably more like a Deist. I think there's God, but didn't think about it too much. So, but if I was only seeing, like, some growing up in our world today, and all I'm seeing is, you know, in the book, there's I gave a lot of those memes, I don't know, if you've looked at some, yes. All over the place, you know, and they're taking Bible verses, and putting very clever graphics on them. And their actual Bible verses this is what I think is different than the past is that they're actually using the Bible to discredit the Bible. So they're very compelling when you're looking at these verses, you know, if you have one about like, women be silent, you know, actually, you know, it's, it's a disgrace to know to speak in the church, you know, only go home and ask your husband questions there, submit. And you see those Bible verses with a graphical image of a woman with their mouth taped shut, and then, you know, it's plastered all over. And like that I didn't know that was in the Bible, you know, or the blatant slavery versus where the English word slavery is used? And I'm seeing these things, and especially when you get into young adulthood, when your question, you're going to question things anyway, it's normal. Right? Right. Yeah. But in the past, we didn't have I think, you know, these are not new verses in the Bible. But there's an acceleration of information available, you know, if I was to, I would not have seen Richard Dawkins quotes, if it was probably 2530 years ago, pre internet. And, you know, there's some books written by atheists that might be in the, in the bookstore, but I'm not seeing those where today, they're on memes, they're, they're very prominent, and I have access to that so easily. And that was not the case in the past. I think that's part of it, as well, is just the information is out there. And I don't think we were prepared in proactively teaching enough about the problematic sounding verses that are out there.

14:01 One thing I was thinking when I was dipping into the first couple chapters of your book, that it's almost like reverse proof texting, you know, we sort of young will take verses out of context in order to, you know, be an explanation for our favorite doctrine does your but this is sort of the exact opposite of that. There's lack of context on both sides.

14:25 Well, that's the title of the book, how not to read the Bible, right? It really is for Christians and non Christians, because we have been, you know, of course, you want to focus on and see like the nice happy verses on coffee mug. And those are those are important because we want to be encouraged. But, and so but we have done you know, we have, as you know, and teaching the Bible at William Jessup is that when you pull verses out, they might sound you know, all the happy ones, but are we using them correctly out of context? Are we just pulling them out and using them because They're nice. So we have been cherry picking the nice verses you could say. And the opposite is now going on. We've been they've been pulling out the evil sounding verses and the ones that portray God in a certain way or things and it's the same fault. It's not. It's reading the Bible, not the way it was meant to be read, pulling verses out of isolation, to make cases towards something. And that's what's going on, you know, again, like all over the place, so Christians have been doing it. Happy way. And now we're seeing one letter against, you know, the faith in the Bible, doing it the, the unhappy way and pulling out those verses.

15:41 Yeah. And in the first chapter, you you highlight, it was a verse that actually came to my attention maybe five or six years ago, but has quickly become maybe one of my favorite verses to bring up to students. And that is numbers 2322, in the King James Version of the Bible, because it was the Bible, of course. That's right. That's right, seven purified version. It says God brought them out of Egypt, he hath as it were the strength of a unicorn. Now, when that was first shown to me, my first thought was actually that children's ministers worldwide had missed an opportunity, a golden opportunity, like we could have unicorn day at church. I mean, there could have been, but it's what's what's interesting is, I'll bring this up and kind of sarcastically serious tone with students, like I want to share this verse. And when I read it, I can feel the tension in the room, where they're like, Well, you know, you have 1819 year old students who've grown up in the church, and they're like, the Bible talks about unicorns. So so how do we approach versus like that?

16:53 Well, I mean, you're you kind of already said some of the problem, what it was, but again, like in the past, you wouldn't have heard necessarily the word unicorn associated with the Bible in contemporary times. But like my barber, who is not a Christian, I'm gonna see him tomorrow. And we, we talked about Bible and theology very openly. And he's the one that raised the unicorn thing up to my attention, because I had not actually seen it before. And like there's not a unicorn in the Bible. So I look it up corn Bible on Google. And then you'll see all of these images that come up. And this what you said was right, like, you'll see the unicorn. And then the Bible verse, I think there's eight or nine of them. One of them some numbers that will say, like, use the word unicorn from in the scriptures. So I'm seeing an image or a unicorn, there and quoting a Bible verse. And then the mockery, you know, Christians believe in mythical animals like the unicorn. Yeah, at surface glance it and especially seeing eight or nine verses that's convincing, like, Oh, my goodness, I didn't know that was the Bible is there? And that's even if I know the Bible, you know, for all of those that have no Bible knowledge, that's all. And then the answer is simple as use basic Bible study methods. But look at that word, you'll find out that the word unicorn was a translation from I was the Hebrew word and R E. M, I think it's RAM and eating wild ox, I would I would get translated today. But in 1611, they didn't know what word to use. And so they use the word unicorn, because it's a verse that is talking about an animal with some sort of prominent horn. And they just put that word in there. And today, it more means more of a mythical animal. And it has it's an incorrect word to use for modern tech translation. It's not an that's an easy one to answer. But it certainly makes a good meme. It's certainly good, like, look at what the Bible says. And it's just one of many, of course,

19:00 where the where the rubber hits the road is not actually just on unicorns, but it's on all the other stuff that you'll find on the means right about slavery and women being silent in church and things like that. I think in your book, though, you suggest that actually the same process of dealing with that with dealing with a unicorn is a helpful process with dealing with some of these other things that admittedly are seem to be on the surface more troubling than that.

19:26 Yeah, I mean, it is. Yeah, and that's why I appreciate you know, William Jessup University also, you know, having like you guys that are focusing on theology and Bible you were talking to earlier like, what a great thing like having film and then looking at a theologically that's that's so important, and I think we have not done that well in a lot of churches. So therefore, that's why it's a bigger problem today. But what you said is, it's, you know, it's how it's, it's how not to read the Bible so that you're missing interpreting the verses that are causing so many of these problems, and the majority of them that you'll see on memes, you know, do not eat shrimp, you know, it's like God hates Trump. There's actually a website, God hates trump.com. See so often on signs, you know that protesting things like Christians are hypocrites, and they list a lot of Levitical laws, and they'll pull out things. Does it say not to eat shrimp in the Old Testament? Yes. Right. So, right to can we eat shrimp today? The question is, are can we you then do a study of what was the Leviticus Levitical law written to? You know, what happened in the New Testament? Was it something that continued in the New Testament after Jesus or not? You'll find out that no, that was not the case. We have all the freedom in the world to eat shrimp today. But without doing that study, you then you can just look at a Bible verse and say, we're not supposed to eat shrimp, look at these hypocritical Christians, because it is a Bible verse talking about shellfish. Slavery, same thing. I mean, they took a billboard out these were actually when I say atheist, I ate there is a wide variety of atheists, as you know, right? So I can see where those atheists let there is kind, loving, peaceful, they're not trying to prove Christians, wrong, atheists. And then there are the more vocal ones that are. So when I'm saying atheist, you know, the majority of them are not anti Christians. They're just atheists, they don't believe in God. But the ones who are the ones that are using it, you know, as a, almost as a, like an activist, almost like I'm going to show they're wrong. You know, they rented a billboard. And it shows, you know, a horrific picture of like, what American the horror and evil of when we had African slaves in America, and they put a big image, and then they'll quote, Old Testament verses and put them up or New Testament verses, and saying, Look, your God is endorsing slavery. Now you see the Bible verse, you see the image. I'm like, I don't want to have to do anything with that. But I didn't realize Christianity would endorse slavery The Bible does. And again, it's like, the imagery, the actual Bible verse, it certainly seems like, that's what's going on, at a surface level. And then you have to do the study of like, what does that mean? Was it slavery? What was you know, what was slavery? Like New Testament times? What was slavery? Like an Old Testament times? And, you know, the quick answer is just, it was an entirely entirely different form of slavery than we think of today, not race based. People actually give themselves into slavery. You know, there's, as a scholar, you know, this so, but it certainly makes a good case, to say the Bible is evil. And this God is evil, if this is what they're promoting, from these verses.

23:13 Dan, you have an intriguing statement, early on, in your book effect enough that you know, I almost like want to write it and keep it on the wall of my office actually, is some something to the to the it's something like the Bible is not written to us, but for us. And I think that's, that's very, very helpful statement, because uses elaborate a little bit on on that.

23:37 Yeah. Dr. John Walton from Wheaton came up with that statement, and what and it's, again, it's, it's an incredibly important statement, because what we'll often do, is that we will open up the Bible and immediately think, like, is supplying to me, or we will read into it? I mean, that's what we naturally want to look at. How does this affect me? What is it about me? You know, and we've made the Bible often to very me centered, because we're, we want to know, you know, how does this apply to me? But we're, the Bible wasn't written to us, not one single book of the Bible. You know, it was written directly to us in the year 20. In Northern California, right, in our world here. So it was, we have to say, you know, who was the book of Romans written to write to us when the Romans, so the Roman church? So then you have to, like, what was going on, like, politically what was going on with Christians at the time what was happening in that context? So that we can see what was the Spirit of God doing through Paul, and writing this out to give to a church that was in a specific geographic location at a specific time, so that we can understand it more from then that's another one of the most number one problems in Bible interpretation. If we don't do that, of course, we then can glean them. amazing truths that apply to our lives. But if we're not foremost looking at who it was written to, and not even realize it wasn't all written to us today, we will read into our reading our modern mind view and our problems and, and come to probably some incorrect application for our lives. And that's a major thing. That's and that's why so many written, so many verses are seen as crazy because they're not applicable for us today. It wasn't written to us today.

25:31 Little Jessup shout out here actually, we in our Bible and theology minor that everybody had to take, they'll have to take an introduction to Old Testament introduction in New Testament, but everybody has to take a biblical interpretation class, you have to do that you that's just important. It doesn't just stand alone, you need to learn how to do this and do this in a in a good way.

25:53 Every Christian in the world should be forcing mark more worked up on this because like, it's so urgent today. Like, I think in the past, we could kind of get along with it like, but like we can't anymore, because this is this is why I wrote the book lives are at stake. I mean, decisions about following Jesus are at stake here, impressions of who Jesus is, which ultimately then applies to what you believe in His atoning death on the cross and resurrection, as a real thing are at stake here. Because these kind of things will then push people away from taking the rest seriously, if that's all they think it is. And of course, God's Spirit can do anything and scout spirit who moves people, you know, towards, towards him. But we as human beings then have to address the issues of our day. And that's what I believe this is a major one, these are major in our day, you know, in the creek days to creature it and they were dealing with other things. So they wrote the creatives, I think, are biggest problems today is the Bible being seen as almost an evil book. And then you see younger Christians and older abandoning faith, and I don't talking there's a edifying science, you know, like all the stuff of science, this another one, like, you hear this, the stories sound almost cliche, and but their real stories is not right, about human beings, younger people, often who are now confronted with things that they never thought of before, right, when, right in the time of our, our, you know, our faith. Our our faith was the Fowler stages of faith, if you know that book, you know, the identifies like, when you hit your late teens and your 20s, you're going to be questioning things are in black and white in March. It's a beautiful thing. And right at this time of questioning, then all of a sudden, you're hearing you know, maybe what you were taught as a kid is not that simple. You're talking to Noah and the ark, they were painted in your children's classrooms. As it's a cool thing God rescued right. But then you'll see there's a book out called awkward moments Children's Bible in the cover of it is they take Bible verses it's no as a best selling book on Amazon. It was written by a former Christian and I've talked to him before and he you know, the cover of the book is no on the flood of sorry, the floods happening but then all around the ark. And it's it's like a beautiful children's, like, looks like a children's book. And yeah, all the dead bodies floating around the water. Right? Right now they're saying, you know, look what you're promoting the story but God killed? Who knows how many people there's all their bodies floating around the water? You forget that part? Don't you Christians, you just like that. The happy part for the science? We the John Walton. You know, why? Why do we read into this is like another one that affects so many people? Why do we read Genesis to be with through our modern mindset and asking the questions that we have today that were never questions for them back then. So Genesis was not written to answer our questions, thoroughly. Chapters it was written to address like, who was written to? Yeah, the Israeli people coming out of Egypt after 400 years and in a polytheistic culture in Slate while they're in slavery in Egypt, and God wanted to them no, don't worship the sun. I created the sun. And the early chapters of Genesis were not written to us, but they're written for us to understand like, who God is, but their questions were like, which God is real, which they weren't saying like, you know, how do you work the fossil record, sir, what about right? They didn't even know like when we think of the word Earth as you know, like, they didn't they when we think of the word Earth We often will think of it, you know, the outer space, right view, right? Or when was that first photographed and like 1950s, I forget what year? Yeah, have that image until. So they don't think of things. And we can't underestimate that. And it's not meant to us. And if we start dissecting it today, and then having problems coming up, that's we're missing the entire point of it. And sadly, it's not just an argument, it's about people's lives, who will then say, I don't think I can believe this anymore. Right? I didn't buy in, and it's. And that's why I'm so intense about this, because I'm seeing people go through these deconstruction stories, and the same ones are coming up.

30:45 And I just know, and I'm so thankful we're doing it William Jessup because you're teaching the that age group, right, as they're hitting that age, to understand how to look at the scriptures more, so that through their lives, you know, there's going to be dozens and dozens of weird passages, they're going to find that they'll be able to not get caught off guard, not be freaked out, understandably, but then like, Oh, there's another one, there must be a way of understanding this and, and not having to say I can't believe in stuff anymore.

31:19 Yeah, I did in one of your earlier books, Dan. They love Jesus, but not the church. You use this illustration of the to, to bridge illustration, right? We have the classic bridge, you know, that Jesus, that were separated from God by sin, and Jesus is the bridge to God, right? That's kind of the classic conversion. But you highlighted in that, that there's this second chasm, which at that time, you kind of highlighted as Christianity or Christian subculture. And it seems like almost the Bible now is in that second chasm, that that that Bible that are approaching the Bible, or reading the Bible wrong, or misunderstanding the Bible, is a is a bridge people have to cross before they can even maybe get to that place to even think about those deeper theological things about like, who Jesus is, and and what he's done for us. Yeah, absolutely.

32:15 You know, because I, you know, the story that we started out with, I think, was a good example, where maybe in the past are still valid, not just the past, but like, no, the big ones were, well, you know, I found out that all these Christmas Christians were judgmental, you know, or that irrelevant, music or that kind of thing. And that became a barrier to, to overcome before you then move into a place of, of maybe being open to have some I'm speaking about the gospel to you, where today, I mean, it's accelerated with the internet and the awareness of things. Right. Right. Is that now is that's why like, Christians in the Bible is becoming seen as more of an evil book, like, and I'm not hyper exaggerating this, right? If you knew me over my 30 years of ministry, I'm not like an alarmist, like, or before it's, but when you start seeing it, like here, then you hear another story, and then hear another story and another story and then hearing some, you know, even well known Christians that are no deconstructing faith, and then they'll say, Well, I can't believe in this. So I moved to more of a progressive form of Christianity, which to me, I don't know You know, I couldn't be a progressive Christian because then they interpret the Bible entirely differently and then I would make a move me into a whole different realm of being agnostic and to be yeah person but in other words, that's the default you know. And that's why it's happening so much in is why I think we have to be diligent in this all the more

33:48 so what can we do um, I guess briefly in the local church, you know, besides like handout copies of your book to start, that's a start that's a good thing where

34:04 this is gonna sound like so like easy because in a way, it is easy. It just means in today's world we have to go down to elementary age and we have to start even at that age start teaching the Bible storyline more not just the you know the nice story of David like because you like David and he any sin with Bathsheba right then like, okay, good King and all that heart after God thing even look at his life and he killed 200 Philistines and cut off their four skins and presented them to like, like brace things and, and the, you know, and he had what was it eight wives and 10 concubines like wasn't just one and they and you we have to teach earlier on the storyline. I think I the best thing I would recommend to youth leaders is grab these memes off the internet. Put them up on the screen. And then say like, how do you answer this? Because sounds are shocking, you know? And then you'll be, I don't know, like, and what a great, great energy kind of, like you said during the class to, to be, then how do I solve this, because when you're pushing those problems out, then they'll see that there's answers and you're teaching them how to study the Bible correctly, then when they do get confronted by them later, it won't be such a shock, it's not going to be like I didn't know that was in there. I just think we know gotta like, pull the covers up more in the Bible and pull out not just the nice stories, but the bad stories and bad sounding stories. Yeah. And address those. And that's what I'd highly recommend children's leaders at the right time, especially youth leaders, college leaders, to be making sure this is in their diet of teaching through the through the calendar years, they plan out what they're teaching about.

35:52 I couldn't agree with that answer more.

35:54 Yeah. And one of the things that I really appreciated about the tone in your book as well, Dan, is that you as you're highlighting this right, and, and even noting, like it is a simple solution, but we also know that it's not simple. And, and and recognizing that these passages are difficult, and they and they need to be struggled with, you know, and I think maybe within the church, too, we've we've defaulted. And you highlight this in the book, we've defaulted to kind of simplistic answers to these tough questions. And that doesn't, that doesn't suffice anyone's real desire to understand why these are in the Bible, and how it fits. And so I think it is really important for us to, like you said, to start tackling it so much younger, where we often try to maybe shield them from it. But approach it and and really work with people and let them know that we also recognize that these are difficult passages that we have to work with that we can't there's there. There aren't just simple answers. But there are answers right there. There is explanations, and we can talk about him.

37:07 Yeah, I mean, I would I would not, I would not be a Christian and still take the Bible seriously, if I started finding, I couldn't believe in this anymore. You know, I would, I would say there are answers, but what you said, there are some things This isn't like an apology saying like, Oh, just, you know, we'll just kind of talk and all the difficult things. Right, some of them are gonna be very, very difficult. God still ordered killing of people, right? There's no, you know, erasing that, right. But when we do look at it, why he did it, his patients and waiting for them, you know, always saying like, please turn, you know, and then looking at, you know, in the Old Testament, some of the practices that you'll see, you know, of, like, you know, when they were sacrificing babies and hot, horrible, horrible things, like, you start seeing that there is reasons going on, for these things, but it still is a very difficult thing to say, God used violence, and that is, but it's not random. You know, as may have, like, he just you know, he's so bloodthirsty is just killing people left and right, that type of a thing, right? You know, the movie. If you go on Google, and you type in scary, Mary, I might have to remember I did a leader thing there. I'm pretty sure I showed this video. They're only a minute long. And they take Mary Poppins to the movie. And they just pull out tiny little sections of when Mary's like looking out the window. And those all of the the, the maids or whatever, like they are, they're the ones that are wanting to do her job all get blown away. Yeah, thing. And then, you know, there she's staring at the kids and they get sucked up in the chimney. And so they they piece out the actual little parts of the movie, piece it together. And at the end, the children, you see them running, running away. They're like Hydra children, scary Mary. So if you only see those things, of course, you're gonna look at Mary Mary Poppins is a horror film, you know, this woman's evil and all she's doing, but we know the whole story. So therefore, those things are happening. It's in the framework of the whole story. And that's like the scriptures when God did use violence and it did happen. We then see the framework of the whole story of what was going on. And then we see his consistent compassion, love, patience in all of these things. And a lot of the violence he didn't order humans beings beings did it on their own. So there's, there's graphic stories of violence that God was not the one that said do it. It was just human beings, killing each other and things so right. That's, that's so important. Again, it's piecing out little clips, and you can turn Mary Poppins into a horror film. And that's what's going on with the Bible, pulling out little pieces, turning it into evil book, don't trust what's going on, there can't be real God wouldn't be that the guy that we believe in His love, He wouldn't do this. And then you start worshipping or believing in a false god, then that's what's false Jesus, all of this.

40:25 Yeah, and and I think with and maybe a good place to kind of wrap up our conversation is you, you give kind of four and Rex mentioned one of them, you have kind of four ways of approaching the Bible, right? Or reminder that the Bible is a library, and not a book. And I find that having to Ryan, remind students who've grown up in the church of that all the time that this is a library. And oftentimes people are like, I'm going to read the Bible. So they start on what they think is page one, right? And Genesis one and that's, you know, with it being a library, it is all these different books. The Bible was written for us, but not to us. Never read a Bible verse, which is Adam, is that a nod to Wayne's World? The never read AB Bible verse like, I don't even know

41:19 what that statement, never read a Bible verse, you know, just like saying, don't pull, just don't read the verse always go back. The whole part of it. Yeah,

41:27 yeah, I think that's it's brilliant. It's really helpful. And then the last point, is the idea that all of the Bible points to Jesus. And and one thing that I tried to help our theology students realize, and this really gets fleshed out, I think, best by Bart, is that Jesus is the revelation of God. If you have a question about who the God of Christianity is, Jesus is the revelation of God, Ryan. So the God we serve, is revealed to us by Jesus written in Scripture, right, proclaimed by the church. And so I think it's so important. Yeah, all of this to to, like you said, read the whole story. And know that this whole story flows through this lens of Jesus, that gives us a drastically different picture of God. And if you just pull one or two verses out,

42:23 right, and you hear people minutes, like church history, we're talking about the importance of young people knowing church history, Marcion, new said, Old Testament God, I can't believe in that Old Testament God, because he's evil. But Jesus knew the Old Testament. That was his. You never see him dismissing it, he used it, he loved it, he was quoting it. Jesus knew all of the wacky stories in the Old Testament, saying, guys, this was that that part's not true. You know, he emphasized, you know, all of the Scripture is from God. So it's like, the bow, and that's why I wrote this, you know, the first section is what you said, the first part is just a basic how to read the Bible, taking the storyline, and those four things you say, and then we get smack into the verses about Levitical laws and, you know, tattoos, and should you wear it, you know, it can eat shrimp, and all of these things that are being pulled out today and mocked, you know, like, look at these bizarre things, and then the anti women versus which there's plenty of them and anti science verses and all the violent verses, and then the hard truth that when Jesus said, there's only one way to God, and is that in a, you know, is that a arrogant, horrible thing to say, and so we go into those specific verses, and I hope by the end of it, people not just know those verses, because there's 500 more, but just like, Ah, now I can have confidence and I do even parents and grandparents will pay attention to this to say, this is something to you know, pay attention to, that your kids are probably becoming more and more aware of. So be ready for questions. Don't be like that one parent who said that's in there, you know, like, Yeah, cuz that's, that's important.

44:12 Alright, so thank you so much for being on the show. And your book, again, is how not to read the Bible, and is available now published through Zondervan. So we really encourage everyone to check it out. We know, I know. I'm going to be utilizing it here at Jessup to kind of help our students walk through these tough passages. So thanks again, Dan, for your work and being on the show.

44:34 Yeah, you bet. I mean, we're putting up some videos and other stuff on Dan kimball.com. Zondervan is making these so it'd be like extra helps for people to so I and thank you so much for being faithful to the Lord faithful to the Scriptures that William Jessup through all these years, you know, you're not wavering and just, you know, being caught off by culture and shifting things. Thank you for your faithfulness to raise Using up leaders of all vocations to while art William Jessup yet thank you for doing that and for sticking with the truth.

45:08 Thank you for listening to Jessup. Think Be sure to follow us on Twitter at Jessup think we would love to hear your thoughts on the episode and engage with any questions you have. Our aim is to provide a framework for further reflection and deeper exploration of these important topics. You can also help the show by leaving a review on iTunes these reviews help the podcast reach new listeners. Until next time, I'm Mark Moore and this is Jessup think

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