Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Keith 0:00
But there's no life in the Bible. The Bible itself is a book that we wrote. People wrote it, right? We wrote that book and Jesus said, there's no life in the Bible. He says, you know, he told the Pharisees, you search the Scriptures because you think that in that you'll find life-in the Scriptures you'll find life. And Jesus says, I'm standing right here. those Scriptures are talking about me, you will come to me and receive life. And so that's the concerning thing for me is that, gosh, everything God has done, all of creation, all of inspiration, the Incarnation itself, Jesus’ life death and resurrection, all of it was intended to bring us, to make it possible, that we could come to a place where it's what the new covenant is all about what God says, I will be your God and you will be my people and no one will inquire of anybody, any other person, about God, but They'll all know me directly, individually.
Seth Intro 1:23
Hello there and welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast, a podcast centered around asking honest questions about God and religion and faith. And honestly what that would sound like if we voiced our true opinions and our true concerns and our true doubts and honest feelings at church. I'm so glad you're here. I have a guest that you have heard from before come back today. So I'm talking with Keith Giles. Keith, on July 4 (2018), had a new book come out entitled Jesus Unbound. And you're asking yourself…All right, well, there's nothing that “binds” Jesus right? There's nothing in this world that can hold back the Creator, part of the Trinity, the holder of the universe together.
And you would be correct except for most of the time, as Christians, specifically in America, we tend to elevate the Bible above Jesus. And so it doesn't matter if Jesus said you have heard it said, But I say to you, we still want to go with you have heard it said, be that the way that we treat people of color, slavery, how we treat each other as commodities, how we deal with people of transgendered sex, how we deal with women in ministry. There are so many things that instead of taking Jesus at his word, as the Word of God, we instead say, “Okay, well, the Bible says this”, and we make Jesus fit in that box, and that's what his book is about. It's about falling in love with Jesus using the Bible, knowing that the Bible points to Jesus, but always Jesus is the final authority and so on.
I am so excited for you to hear it. I would encourage you to get the book, you can find it everywhere on Amazon and anywhere else that they sell books. Hold on to your seats. Here we go. Keith Giles: Jesus Unbound.
Seth 3:25
Keith, thank you so much for for coming back on to the Can I Say This At Church podcast! I have very few people on the list of returning guests but you are now one of them. The other being Alexander Shaia, so large company there, but welcome back to the show. I'm happy to have you.
Keith 3:41
Man, Seth, I am so happy to talk to you. I gotta say you are and I'm not pandering here. I really, really enjoy talking with you. I've done a lot of podcasts for Jesus Untangled and I'm going to go back to a lot of them again, I hope and maybe you know, do a lot of these kind of podcast conversations, but I really enjoyed talking with you, man, because it just feels like we're just talking, you know? I mean, I don't feel like I'm, I don't know, it doesn't feel forced or fake, you know, I mean, it just feels like a genuine conversation between friends. And I really appreciate that.
Seth 4:13
I have succeeded. This will be the last episode, then I did it. I made it.
Keith 4:15
(laughter) ha!! Yeah we’re done!
Seth 4:16
Yeah, you know, that's my goal, one of them. And I heard something similar in one of my earlier ones before I knew what I was doing. And I know you also do a podcast and I would love to redo my first six or seven. And you were number five. So I would love to redo those because I feel like I'm better now. I actually plan a lot more, but I write down a lot less, if that makes sense. Just so that I'm not forcing myself into an avenue that I need to go down. Instead of letting the conversation go where it needs to, but um, I spoke with Professor Stackhouse, and we were talking about hell, up at Regent College there, John Stackhouse.
He said, “I can tell you know more than you're letting on but you're trying to ask questions the way like a Junior in college would”. I was like, yeah, that's kind of my goal is to just foster enough conversation without giving an opinion. That would be, that'd be why I have you here? So it's great.
So you have and we're recording this before it releases. But on July 4, you have a new book that is releasing Keith, entitled Jesus Unbound: Liberating the Word of God from the Bible.
And that title in and of itself is not off putting to me, but I can see how many of the circles that I'm involved with will read that and say, “No, no, you can't talk about Jesus in the Bible like that. You know, better than that. Aren't you a Christian?” And so what is kind of the thought behind this book? What went into it? Why did you write it?
Keith 5:46
That's a great question, man. Well, I wrote it because I just started noticing, very similar to Jesus Untangled, I started noticing that there are just things in general that we as Christians tend to put between ourselves and God, I think it's just a human. It's a human nature thing. You know, I mean, you can go all the way back to God wanting to have direct access to us. And then the people saying, you know, Moses, why don't you go talk to him? And then tell us what he said; or they say to the Prophet, you know, it's cool to hear the prophet and everything, but um, and God is sort of our king.
But we'd rather have a real King like all the other nations have, you know what I mean? It's just a human (nature), they like we keep putting layers between ourselves and God. And I think God is always wanting to remove those layers and just deal with us directly. That's what the new covenant is all about. That's what Jesus says, you know, “you abide in me, I will abide in you, I will live in you, the father and I will make our home in you”. And so what I've noticed is, I think, that we've do it with politics and unfortunately, I think many times we do it with the Bible.
So I'm not I'm not against the Bible. But what I'm against is the idea of making the Bible the focus of our faith or elevating the Bible to be either equal to-or in some cases even higher than-Jesus in our lives, and that's when I think we cross a line. And then I think that's when we get just a little bit off course. But you know, using nautical terms, if you're just a couple of degrees off course, you're going to end up on another continent.
Seth 7:21
Yeah. Which if you're Columbus is good, I guess because you get to say it, it's my land. I licked it to use a propaganda like
Keith 7:29
Yeah, look at what I discovered‽
Seth 7:31
Yeah, yeah, look at this. These people are also mine that live here. They're also going to be mine. Yes, yeah. I'm glad you bring up Moses and you know, Israel demanding a king because of course they know better. My pastor actually just did a sermon on that. And we were talking about it beforehand, like just literally, you know, last Sunday, and I find it odd that I hear God screaming out through many avenues, the Bible being one of them of I just want to talk to you, and we go, yeah, I'll listen to you. But I would like to distill it through somebody that should talk to you.
We pay people to talk to you, and I've got better stuff to do today, than (to) deal with you God, I just don't. If you would just tell Moses or if you're just tell Keith, what I need to know that would be helpful for me, because I've got a lot to get to. Right. I assume you run up to that a lot. And what I know you do, because I'm friends with you on Facebook, and I see how people talk at you and with you. What is the pushback, as I'm sure you've talked about this longer than you wrote it? Because all those thoughts had to breed somewhere. So what is the pushback when you say, Well, you know, you're elevating the Bible, above God, or you're elevating this above Jesus, or you're elevating your politics or you're elevating will use Jeff Sessions, because he's an easy scapegoat. You're elevating Romans 13 over human beings. So what is the pushback when you do that?
Keith 8:57
Well, specifically, when I try to say something, which to me seems so, non like this isn't this shouldn't be controversial at all. When I say the Word of God is not a book, it's a person. Well, people, then some people go, amen. Some people like no, yeah, absolutely. They're not threatened by that at all.
But then there are some Christians who are very threatened by that. And then again, the fact that they're threatened by that statement tells me something, right? I think that that their reaction, their negative reaction to that statement, is revealing a little bit about the fact that they have put way more of their faith, too much of their faith, in a book rather than a person. Like for example, you know, I’ll just say, look, the Bible doesn't point you to the Bible. And this is what they don't get, right. They'll say, well, you wouldn't even know that if it wasn't for the Bible. Yeah. But if I'm going to follow the Bible, and you're saying that that's what you want to do, you're committed to following the Bible then. Then actually follow it because if you follow the Bible, the Bible never points you back to the Bible, the Bible always points you to Christ. The Bible tells you that, no, Jesus tells you in the Bible, that My sheep hear My voice, I speak to them and they can hear me.
Or, again, you know, you abide in me and I will abide in you. So if you're going to follow the Scriptures, don't don't stop at the Scriptures. Again, this is the problem. You know, it's one of the thoughts that I put on them, like in the back cover of my book is, what if the Bible actually keeps us from hearing the Word of God? And I think that becomes the problem. It's like, if you read something in the Bible, and about Jesus, and your reaction is to close it and say, What a great book! Then you've missed the point.
The point of the book is to say, what a great Jesus, what an amazing person that I can actually have a relationship and connection to and I can know him in a very real and intimate way, not just stuff about him. Because I think this is where the Bible is helpful. The Bible can definitely give us information about Jesus. And certainly, that's a great starting point, right? But it's intended to be a map that is sending us to a destination or in this case, to a person, to an to an experience with someone that we actually can know and experience.
And it's sort of that again, what I'm trying to say in the book is that the danger I see is that many Christians have this great, this beautiful, map that points them to this amazing person and this amazing experience. And they spend all their time staring at the map. But many people never actually get to where it's pointing.
Seth 11:46
This is something I've been wrestling with a lot lately, Keith, and I may actually ask you who I should talk to about it when we're all said and done. So I have a different Bible than my Catholic brothers and sisters.
Keith 11:58
Oh yeah.
Seth 12:01
And they have a different Bible than, you know, the Ethiopian brothers and sisters, and they have a different Bible than..every denomination gets to say, no! this is the Bible. Trust me it is! I have it right today. And so when I think about canon, and then I think about the Word of God, pointing to Jesus. And I try to reconcile that with Biblical wisdom or an idolatry, holding of the Bible where the Scriptures have to be what they are, and I will make Jesus fit into that. How do I know what to trust? Like, how do I know that my Bible even matters? Maybe I'm saying it wrong if I don't, if we all have a different Bible, and many sects do, even if they don't know they do, or different translation. And I have to use that to point to Jesus at the end of the map, how do I know that my map even has the right pages?
Keith 12:53
That's a great question. And I feel like there's sort of two there's two things, two ways to respond. that what you're saying? Because on the one hand, I want to affirm, you made a great point. There's a danger for us, who as Protestants, in talking about, let's say, the canonicity of Scripture, or the heresy and infallibility of Scripture and the preservation of the Scriptures, and to say that, well, you know, the Bible that we have today, you know, God protected it, God made sure that all these books were you know, we have all these copies and translations and everything and then then it was canonized and it was brought to-translated into English and brought to you today and it's sort of this very well like holy, the Holy Spirit curated and put together your English Bible, because this is what he wanted you to know.
Well, okay, if you if you believe that, if that's your perspective on the particular English Bible that you have, but then my question would be, why didn't you go care about the Bible that he handed to the Ethiopian church? Why didn't he care about the Bible that he handed to the Eastern Orthodox Christians? Why did God not really seem to care about the Bible that he handed to the Catholics, as you just said? Like, in other words, there's more than one, correct? Bible. And by the way, if you go and study, the history of the canonization of Scripture, and I touched on this a little bit in the book is, you realize that there was always a very, that was a moving target, right? Like there are books in our Bible right now. They're in the 66 books that we currently call “the Bible”. There's some books that we call scripture that early Christians would have said, “No, that's not scripture. We're not putting that into in our Bibles”.
But there are other books that they would have said that they did say, this is Scripture, that some of the books were like, if I told you the titles, we would, we would say, what's that? I’ve never even heard of that book. And again, so this is part of the challenge. So having said all that, let's go back to your original question. How do you and I know what to trust? And what's real? And what's true?
Well, this is where I get into an answer that isn't going to make anyone very comfortable or very happy. Because unfortunately we want answers. We're not really comfortable with mystery. We want security-we want to put our security in knowledge. And and knowing that this is these words, these books, this collection, this whatever this Bible is true. And we put our hope and our faith in that. Well, I would say and what I'm feel like I'm, it's shifting for me, I used to be that way I put on feel like more and more what I'm doing is I'm realizing my, my hope and my faith and my security is in my relationship with Jesus and using discernment from the Holy Spirit.
And so for example, let's say I would pick up an Ethiopian Orthodox Bible, and turn to a couple of books that aren't in my version of the Bible. And I started reading them. I might read something and say, You know, I think God is in that. I think the spirit is speaking to me through that. I think this is inspired. So in other words, I think the idea of inspiration, I would open it up, I wouldn't say it's only these 66 books are only these 71 books are only these 88 books or however many whichever, you know, flavor of Christianity you may gravitate towards or have been raised in or whatever.
Sorry, this is a long answer to your question, but like, but here's what I've been thinking about is like, the question of inspiration, okay. When we say that the Scriptures are inspired what do we mean by that? And then and so this is what again, I used to mean one thing, I think I used to me what most people mean, when they say the Scriptures are inspired, but but I'm starting to have a different definition of inspired okay. So for example, if I'm in my car, and I'm driving down the road, and I turn on a radio, and I hear this song, right? And oh my gosh, it just speaks to me. It moves me, it communicates some profound and deep truth to me. And I were to say to you, man, Seth, I just heard the song on the radio and it was inspired.
Well, what do I mean by that? I would mean that I really believe that the creator of the universe spoke to me through this song, through these lyrics through this person's voice, through this music, and communicated an actual truth to me, that I needed to receive; that was profound and deep and real and moving, and maybe even healing and transformative. And that's what I mean, when I say that that song was inspired now, do I mean that God wrote that song? No. Do I mean that God saying that song? No. Do I mean that God recorded that song and pressed it to a CD and shipped it to source? No. Do I mean that that song is infallible or that song is inerrant Well no, that's the wrong of course not. That's not what I mean. But it doesn't. But all those things don't at all take away the fact that the creator of the universe spoke to me through something that was real and true and powerful and the God is real. The Spirit that that inspired it is real and and the message that I received from him is real.
Seth 18:20
Yeah, that makes sense to make a dumb a dumb analogy of that. What if it was a song that was a psalm put to music would it then be an inspired song? And that's an entirely horrible play on words. I attempted some kind of comedy based on it.
Keith 18:35
Well, yeah, I mean, but here, here's the thing. I mean, like well, of course, you know that we have Christian music and and people have put the songs the spin the Scripture and even just other other scriptures to music. And yeah, that's, that's great. But you know what, what I've been amazed is what I've heard, I mean, I could give specific examples of exactly those kinds of songs that I've heard that spoke to me that way. But when I go and trace it down, I would say well, you know, the girl that wrote that song, she's not even a Christian; she doesn't believe in God. And I would say, so what?
Like that, to me, has nothing to do with it. Like I. And now we're getting into sort of like the creative process. But I think as someone who does write music and write lyrics, and who has an artistic-creative side, I think even if you don't have a conscious, intentional faith, in, in God or in Jesus I think by engaging in the creative process, what you're trying to do with the gift you've been given by God, by the way, whether you know it or not, is to connect spiritually to God. You're trying to communicate beauty and truth. And I think you can be successful doing that. And you can end up communicating profound, deep spiritual, even, yes, Jesus oriented truths even if you didn't intend to, even if that wasn't even in your mind.
Seth 19:56
People do it all the time. And and if you don't think you do, just think back…if you go back over the last few months, and even in my mind or in the circles that you're in, people will say, oh, Keith, did you see that sunset over the ocean last night? It just spoke to me it was breathtaking. And I can't believe that the Creator, it doesn't even matter if they're Christian, they will say something like that, or did you hear that one song from let's just say Kendrick Lamar. It doesn't matter what it is.
And so I find it odd that people will hear something glorious to use the best word I can think of in something that isn't Biblical air quotes ”biblical”. But we're not allowed to do that when we actually think about God and and as I've done this podcast, if anything I realized in in what started it was when I spoke with Elizabeth Johnson, and we're talking about Darwin, and creationism, and evolution. And what she calls the “entangled bank”, which is a play on words from from from Darwin, they quote Scripture that I don't have like the book of Maccabees or the or other books, every time the Scripture that they're quoting is, is an emotional scripture. It's evoking something in me, that's primal almost that is an essence of my being.
And as a Protestant, I feel like the Bible that we have self-assigned ourselves to read is is is literal to a fault. And so it makes it where things have to be binary. And nobody wants to get out of that second…like it can't be always a one or a zero. That doesn't mean sometimes it can't be a one, or it can't be a zero. Yeah, but quantum physics would say that sometimes it's also one and zero. And I'm not a scientist, so I'm not going to go further than that. That's all that I understand about that. But I just, it amazes me how we're finding that that part of our being be present and hear something until we sit down to read Scripture, assuming we do, right as opposed to just letting Moses, or my preacher, tell me what to think about Scripture.
Keith 21:52
So right yep, that's exactly right. Yeah. And you and again, you know, I think again, part of the the…so you asked me about the pushback and the reaction, right? So a lot of times when I talk about when I talk this way to people, some people go, amen. That's beautiful. I agree. And some people get freaked out and threatened and they upset.
And so they'll say things like, “well that how do you know anything”? You know what I mean? So now, now now it's Olly Olly oxen free. And I don't know what to believe. And how do I know if I can't trust this? And what do I do? Yeah, look, we're all we're called to use discernment. Even reading the Bible, like, I mean, whatever I'm doing, I should be using some level of discernment.
If the Spirit of God is really alive in me, then I should be able to trust that, you know, he can give me direction of wisdom and lead me to all truth, which is exactly what Jesus said. The Spirit would do. But here's the other thing you know, it sort of like, Look, if you stay where you are, and you kind of just only hold tightly to this book to the Bible, and no this is it. I don't want anything else. I don't want the Spirit to lead me I don't want other I don't want God to speak to me through anything, any other, you know, realms or people or art or, or anything else, it's just only these 66 books and that's it. Understand that doing that will not protect you from getting it wrong. Like Christians, have been getting it wrong by clinging tightly to the Bible. This is why we have I don't know how many you know, what is it 20-30,000 denominations. They're all basing their belief on that same book. know, we all they'll all stand up and say no, we only believe every word in this book. And yet there's thousands of different you know, denominations based on only following and believing that book.
So that in itself is not going to save you or protect you from quote unquote getting it wrong. Our our capacity to get it wrong. Is is an infinite. We're going to get we can get it wrong, no matter what we're doing. I would say that the biggest danger isn't necessarily getting it wrong. It's missing Jesus. And that's what I'm trying to say in my book, Jesus Unbound is that we can we can stop at the Bible and not move on to a person, that the Bible though Jesus says, you know, again, this is sort of like a controversial thing to say it shouldn't be because Jesus said it.
But there's no life in the Bible. The Bible itself is a book that we wrote. People wrote it, right? We wrote that book and Jesus said, there's no life in the Bible. He says, you know, he told the Pharisees, you search the Scriptures because you think that in that you'll find life-in the Scriptures you'll find life. And Jesus says, I'm standing right here. those Scriptures are talking about me, you will come to me and receive life. And so that's the concerning thing for me is that, gosh, everything God has done, all of creation, all of inspiration, the Incarnation itself, Jesus’ life death and resurrection, all of it was intended to bring us, to make it possible, that we could come to a place where…it's what the new covenant is all about what God says, I will be your God and you will be my people and no one will inquire of anybody, any other person, about God, but they'll all know me directly, individually.
This whole thing of like, there are no mediators between us and God anymore. It's just Jesus, we go straight to Jesus, right? It's this direct connection to God. And again, sometimes we can, we can put the book in there and say, and let the book be the mediator. And we have a relationship with the book, and not a relationship with a person you know, I do this thing in the book where I go through this thing of like, you know, the Word of God loves you. But the Bible doesn't. It's not capable of loving you, right?
Seth 25:53
I was about to ask you about that where you you basically, in the book, make the case. Everywhere that you see Word of God, you know, like in Romans 10:17 You know where it says,
then Faith comes by hearing and hearing and hearing by the Word of God.
And it's in Hebrews. It's in jJohn. It's everywhere. But when you see the word, it says the word of God, you can just say, Jesus, it's, it's okay. It's what that means. You go into a bit more detail than that, and using Greek and words that I don't understand, but that's fine.
Keith 26:25
Right. Well, and yeah, and this is again, the thing where what I'm trying to do in the book is to lead people just a little bit farther. The book is awesome, I love the Bible. I'm so glad we have a Bible. I really do love the Bible. I read it, I study it. You know, I say that if you came to my house to take my Bible away, you'd have to cut off my hands to get it away from me. I love Love, love, love, love the Bible. I just love Jesus so much more. Because he's an actual person, right?
It's like when I was in college, my friend Carlos introduced me to Wendy, my wife. And I am so grateful for Carlos for doing that. And I love him. He's a great guy, man every time I get back and go back to El Paso, Texas, I look forward to hanging out with Carlos. But I didn't marry Carlos. And I don't appreciate that Carlos introduced me too Wendy but I love Wendy in a way that doesn't even come close to the way I love Carlos.
And I feel like that that's, you know, the Bible is our Carlos. The Bible is wonderful. He introduced us to this amazing person named Jesus. Who we now have a beautiful relationship with and we will forever be thankful for the Bible for for doing that. But it can't just stop at the Bible. It's got to become a real relationship.
Seth 27:40
Does Carlos know that you're talking about him this way?
Keith 27:43
I don't even know. I don't. I don't know if he's aware of that or not. He's not he's not on Facebook. He's not online. Next time I see him I'll have to let him know.
Seth 27:54
That's funny. Well, yeah, I have to I have to picture what his face will be. I don't know Carlos, but I can…if that was me…you're doing, say that again, you're doing what with me? I'm the Bible somehow?
Music 28:06
Seth 28:50
So this is an avenue that I try to navigate. If both sides are a rut so I can get stuck in the rut of overcompensating to Jesus and I don't know then if I'm just thinking out loud, I don't know how to get good doctrine or good dogma, which is where I think the Bible can be extremely useful. Versus say someone extremely, extremely beyond us, let's just say Oral Roberts because I can't come up with a better name now. And so how do I navigate the center or how does someone listening navigate the center of learning to elevate Jesus above the Bible, which I think is a big thing to learn, especially in our country? That's you gotta go counterculture. You have to go counter political. And you honestly usually have to go counter family, at least from my generation, because that's not the way that the previous generation was raised, which isn't their fault either; and we have to admit that. How do I do the middle without pulling the parachute put the ripcord on on both sides because what I don't want to have happen is, is people do something and they do it unprepared or uneducated(ly) and It causes harm to the church. And so how do I navigate that? Specifically with doctrine? You know, with if I say that and they say, Well, I believe in Jesus, well, Great, well, what do you believe about homosexuality? Or I believe that Jesus is “this”? Well, that's awesome. But if you throw out the Bible, how do we know what to do with this? Or that or the other? There's so many things that people use the Bible for sometimes well, and sometimes poorly. So how do I do that, well?
Keith 30:27
It's a good question, but I don't wrestle with that, personally, so much the way I used to. Because I think, again, this is just my perspective where I'm at right now. Like, there are things I believe now I didn't believe five years ago, there's things I believe now I didn't leave 10 years ago, I always say we're all in process with with our doctrines and our beliefs, right. But the thing that that remains constant is my connection and my relationship with Jesus; and if anything, hopefully not static and constant but actually increasing, right. I'm drawing nearer nearer nearer and more and more in love with and more in connection with Jesus.
I'm hearing his voice more. I'm learning to discern his voice more. I'm learning more how to walk in the Spirit, be led by the Spirit more this is what discipleship is all about. See, for me, that's what we should major on. Not my doctrines. Not the doctrines don't matter. But I feel like that. I don't honestly, this is maybe some weird, I don't even think God really cares like this. At the end of the day is God concerned about my doctrines?
Like, do I have the top 10 doctrines that I believe Do I have them? You know, have I penciled those incorrectly in the Scantron or not? Because again, I hope he doesn't…because like I said, 10 years ago, I would have filled out that Scantron really differently than I fill it out now. And I think he loved me the same when I was quote unquote, wrong as he was but now that I'm, I think I'm right, but again, I was right before. So I'm hoping I'm going to always continue to to grow and learn and think and rethink and consider and reconsider. What do I believe about this doctrine? What do I think about this idea?
Hopefully that's always informed by my connection to Jesus and my relationship with Jesus. But again, I think I would rather focus on my relationship with Jesus. I would be more concerned with Aam I hearing his voice or not; am I walking with Jesus or not? Are the teachings of Jesus about like, say, loving your enemy, caring for and loving your neighbor caring for the poor, blessing those who curse you like? Are those things informing my ongoing daily life? And if so, you can believe whatever you want about, you know, pre-mid or post or dunk or sprinkle or whatever you're not I mean.
Some things are more important than others, maybe, because it may affect the way you treat other people like I'm the LGBTQ issue, for example, your view on that might make you feel like you need to treat people who are gay a certain way versus if you had a different view, you might see that treating them a different way. But overall, I don't think that those doctrines are as important as I think we've tried to make them. I think we've made the Gospel about information. And I always say this, but I don't. I used to think that but I think now the Gospel is about transformation. It's not the information I have about God. It's the transformation I'm experiencing by being in connection with Jesus on an ongoing basis.
Seth 33:38
And you touch on that a bit in one of the chapters of your book, and I can't remember which chapter it is, but I remember what it's titled, because it still sits with me, I think about it on occasion. And I think the title of chapter is When Being Biblically Right is Completely Wrong. And yeah, you quote a pastor that I can't remember, but I know it's like Dick Van Dyke, but it's not Dick Van Dyke…
Keith 34:01
Seth 34:02
Henry Van Dyke there it is. It's just Dick Van Dyke the one Van Dyke that I know. So, what do you mean by that? Like, what do you mean that I can be Biblically right and completely wrong? Because that's, that's a juxtaposition those words shouldn't be able to fit together.
Keith 34:18
Right? Well, in the chapter that you're referring to. I talked about how one of the things I talked about in that chapter is how the Christian Church in the, you know, pre-Civil War, there were Christians who used the Scripture to completely justify owning people as slaves. Biblically, in other words, if you're only going by what the Bible says Biblically, they were right. They could point to scriptures Old and New Testament that affirmed that, you know, it was basically the only the only the only advice that was given was treat them well. But But you could keep owning them. You could you could keep having slaves. Like slavery itself wasn't called sin or condemned as evil.
And so that's just one example of where the church was “Biblically right” for Christians that and at the time, I mean, if you go and look at it, it's, it's kind of shocking to see people like Henry Van Dyke; who, by the way, I've read other quotes by that guy that I loved, I think, Wow, what a beautiful, deep spiritual moving statement. But then you read his other statements, where he's basically calling out abolitionists, and calling them heretics, and saying that any Christian that that goes against what is written in the Word of God, to argue that we shouldn't own slaves is arguing with God.
And that their problem isn't with me, it's with God it's with the creator of the universe, you know, how dare you question you know, got your way on this issue or Paul the Apostle, right. So that's an example where, and that's just one example where I think we can be Biblical, but not be Christ like and this is what something I'm always trying to bring up as well, like, I don't want a biblical world, I don't want to live in a world that's Biblical. And again, I think a lot of people that are biblical people that really clean to their Bible, I hear them say that all the time. Right? We need to get back to the Bible. We need, what's going to make America great. What's going to make America a godly nation again, well, everyone needs to get back and read the Bible. And when you teach the Bible in school, we need a more Biblical world.
And I'm like, "No man if you have a biblical world, a biblical world Can is justified, the Bible justifies things like genocide, patriarchy, slavery, you know, all kinds of polygamy, like all kinds of things. I can biblically justify all sorts of evils. If I'm using the Bible, and people have and they still do. But again, what I'm trying to argue for is for us to get to a Christ like, focus, and this is laser focused on what I'm about. It isn't being biblically focused it's being Christ centered in the way that we read the Bible, and in the way that we think about everything, that it starts with Jesus, and it moves outward from there.
Seth 37:09
Need to be respectful of your time. And so I want to wrap this up, but I have well, I have a couple more questions and I don't Sure. I think I'm just going to ask them one that I'm most want to know that the most about.
So if I'm sitting at home, and hopefully at the end of hearing this, I go out and I buy your book, and I recommend full disclosure, I was able to read it before it's released. I genuinely enjoyed it. And the reason is, sometimes you read a book making the claims that you're (making) and it's all emotion. But Keith, you've interwoven Scripture in a way that it's funny to write a book about on binding Jesus from the Bible, and to bolster it with the Bible. That is not lost on me but it also works because again, the Bible points to Jesus and and as I saw you say on Facebook about Brad Jersak, you know, you Jesus, the Lord. God is was alive. And when he became you know a man he grew a beard. Which when I read that I laughed so hard.
So I hear all this, I listened to you, I read words like yours. And then I go over to my bookshelf, I pull up my Bible, in my and I begin to doubt so I opened it up and went, alright, so I'm going to read this and I'm hearing what he said in the back, I'm reading some of what he said, and others, like you have said what do I do? For the next three to four months what do I do? Because I'm going to still go to church, I'm gonna still have to answer questions that my kids asked me. I'm gonna have to talk and argue with people on Facebook, because that's the cross that we all apparently bear, you know?
So what do I do? I opened it up and I just randomly pick and I'm in the book of Ruth or whatever, what do I do? Where do I go? What avenues Can I take to to begin to…to begin to…I don't know the best way to say it. You know what I'm trying to say? I think you do. I hope you do. Because I can't quite voice it.
Keith 39:01
Well, I think I do so if I don't, if I don't address it, please let let's let's let's keep wrestling on it. My response to that would be get to know Jesus as intimately as you can. Like that whole concept of abiding in Christ. It begins there. It starts with knowing him and knowing him more and more and more. Like when Paul says that when we read the Old Covenant Scriptures, to this day avail covers our eyes, and only one thing removes that veil. It's only in Christ as the veil removed. So that's the solution. We have to first really really know Jesus not just information about Jesus, not just “Oh, he was, you know, his mother was Mary his father was Joseph, he was born of a virgin. He you know, he's born in a manger in Bethlehem” and it's not information about him. That's one thing I talked about in the book, right. I talked about that word.
When Jesus says eternal life is to know God and his son whom He sent, the word know is Ginosko in the Greek. It's not the word for information, it's not the word for knowing stuff. So Jesus is not saying eternal life is knowing stuff about God or knowing stuff knowing information about Jesus. The word going to school that used in the Greek is the same word that you would use when you if you were wanting to say that a man had an intimate relationship with his wife.
And so it's an intimacy that conceives new life within you. A new life is born within you. It's again transformation. So it begins with knowing Jesus and knowing him more and more and more and more. It's daily, daily, daily, turning to Jesus, you know, talking to Jesus, being connected to Jesus like being a Jesus focused person, as much as you can possibly be in your mind and your heart and your soul, in your mind in your life to be fully immersed in Christ. That's your only hope. Because until you are fully immersed in Christ, that veil isn't going to be removed, you're going to turn to the book of Ruth, and you're going to read it the way you would read it if Jesus never come.
That's the problem. That's where we get into trouble, I believe is when we think about God, and we read the Old Testament Scriptures the same way we would if Jesus had never showed up. Like Jesus has to make a difference. Jesus has to transform the way we think; we have to look at it through the lens of Christ. And if we don't, we're really going to be off track. So that that would be my advice.
Seth 41:37
Well, I like that and to take that further and, and this is why I like not not writing down every question I plan on asking, which that one wasn't. It's just something that's birthed from from today, if I'm beginning to develop a deeper relationship with Christ in a way that is intimate, logically in my mind, and this is probably the banker part of my brain activating, that's going to birth something and so in a regular relationship that is a child; and I don't know if that would be religion or whatever it is, but it's going to birth something.
And I would encourage those that do that hard work don't be afraid of what it births, it's fine, but it's probably uncomfortable and it will like children absolutely change your life but I think that's what Christ is it's going to change everything's going to change. I said this the other day on the internet and got some pushback as well. The gospel is great news as you don't expect your status quo yesterday to be your status quo today like it's gonna change. It's really good news as long as you're fine with detaching from whatever version of you was there yesterday.
Keith 42:52
That's exactly right. Yep, we need we definitely need a more dangerous idea of what it looks like to follow Jesus because it's all is going to be about. I hope I told you this before I brought this up before but there's this thing I came across years ago, that was like, there was sort of like a mantra or saying that the early Christians had which was conversatio morum. And what it means is it has two meanings. It either means death to the status quo, which sounds like a great tattoo. Death to the status quo. But the other the other way to translate it is constant conversion. And so it's the death to my status quo, and it's a constant death to my status quo. It's not salvation in their in their minds and the early church and their minds salvation was not a one time event. When I was nine years old. I walked down front and I bent the knee and I said the prayer and I got dumped. That's how we tend to think of it but the way early Christians started with conversion was a it was an ongoing experience. I was always walking the aisle. I'm constantly bending the knee. I'm constantly saying, Lord Jesus, I give you my life. every moment of every day, I'm constantly Can in conversion. And that means my status quo is always dying. Yeah. And I think if we can wrap our brains around that, that is more about what Jesus is calling us into.
Seth 44:12
Say that word again.
Keith 44:15
Conversatio morum
Seth 44:18
I'm going to get that tattooed right? I'm not not going to do that, but maybe maybe one of those fake beach tattoos that last for a week. So the book is released July 4, by the time you listen to this July 4 is already probably happen due to the release episode of the shows there on Fridays, and July 4 is a Wednesday this year. So that is available where Keith? I know Amazon, absolutely. Where else? How can they get ahold of it? And how can they begin to as they wrestle with the topics in here? How can they speak with you converse about this? What's that community look like?
Keith 44:52
Well, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. The books available on Amazon July 4, also in Barnes and Noble and Kobo and it's on right now. It's on print and will have an audio book coming out soon. If they want to know more they can follow my blog which just my name KeithGiles.com on Patheos. I also have a website setup for the book specifically, that's Jesus-unbound.com, which has a little video and some information about the book and more information about that, if you're curious about that. But yeah, and then like you said, I do a podcast with some friends of mine, which may or may not be in their speed. It's not for everybody, but it's called the Heretic Happy Hour podcast. Some people love it. Some people hate it. You'll know right away if it's for you or not.
Seth 45:32
If there's anything I've learned about podcast, it's that each of them are different in their own way and they're always intimate and like any other relationship you either you're either in or you're not and for people listening now I'm so glad that you're here. And I'm encourage you to stay here. But if it's at a point that you can't, then that's fine. It's okay. I saw some Kaitlin Curtice said the other day, who's someone that I spoke with what she say “brothers and sisters as we're dealing with, you know, this issue immigration issue at the border and detaining children you're not called to watch every video and continue to be broken, like, take a break, breathe for a moment, you're going to need that energy and that fuel later. So, just detach like, it's okay. You need to settle down.” So yeah, but podcasts are no different. Your podcast is called Happy heretics. Happy out, Harry. Oh, gosh, happy.
Keith 46:25
The Heretic Happy Gour.
Seth 46:27
There it is. I was singing the song in my head.
Keith 46:29
I love the song.
Seth 46:31
So we'll get all of the links to that will be in the show notes for those listening. Keith thank you so much for coming on. Thank you for just for that. And thank you as well for the friendship that we've developed over this past year. I’ve been encouraged by.
Keith 46:45
Thank you, Seth. I really appreciate it that, God bless.
Seth Outro 47:09
I cannot encourage you enough to go and get this book. If we can move past, as a country and as a Church, the thought that somehow Jesus is bound into the covers and only in the pages in between of the Bible that we have and for some reason, there is no new word to hear from the Holy Spirit. There's no new way or no new lens to see and hear God through Scripture and not through Scripture. We take away something beautiful away from God, at least I think we do.
So please go and get Keith book, support what he's doing, I would encourage you as well to listen to his podcast that he does have some fellow friends of his the conversations there are different than what you hear here, but also very worthwhile.
Special thanks to this Silver Pages, which is a duo of Philip Zach and Paul Zach. Their music is what you've heard featured in today's episode. You can find more information about them at thesilverpagesmusic.com.
We'll talk to you next week.