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.
JR. Forasteros 0:08
Nowhere in the Christian or the Jewish scriptures is the snake in Genesis 3 identified as Satan. I was like, That can't be true, because of course, that's literally what I've heard. I heard life. Yeah, but look at this guy, this guy had the brass to put it in print. He's gonna be pretty sure of himself. So it kind of it kind of like mess me up. You know, I was like, well wait a second, doesn't it? And of course I read Genesis 3 and it sure doesn't. And so then I was like, well wait, wait, like, where did that idea come from if it's not in the texts? And and so that sent me off on this whole long trajectory of trying to figure out well, where is the story in the Bible anyway, that he rebelled against God and got kicked out of heaven and all that kind of stuff. You know and then if that's not in there, what is actually?
Seth Price 1:08
Hey there you. I'm glad you're here. This is the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I am Seth. It's almost Halloween. It is five or six days from now. And I don't know about you but I'm a little bit bummed. Not that I can't dress up as something because I never do that. Nor that my children cannot dress up as something because honestly, it's slightly annoying to have run around. I'm really sad about just the lack of community, getting out of the house, seeing and meeting neighbors, and just being goofy for an evening. That makes me kind of sad. But all is not lost. We're here together, even (if) remotely, and I've got a great conversation for you. I think it's great. But I know that I'm bias. Every week I ask and every week many of you deliver. So I wanted to say thank you to new and or edited patrons of the show. So thank you to Elizabeth Moore and to Glenn Siepert. People like you make this thing happen. And that is not an overstatement. I know that money is important. And tight. And times are crazy. And I value that. So thank you. I wanted to say that before I said anything else. And now let's make this thing happen.
So today JR. Forasteros is the guest. I was first introduced to JR. electronically, I guess on the different podcast called Imaginary Worlds. That show is about the worlds that we create and how we suspend our disbelief. And it really is an amazing podcast. It's pretty short. It's worth your while. It's not religious, but JR. was brought on not long ago as the idea and the concept of villain(ary) in the world and that type of stuff. And it made me dig down a rabbit hole of Jr. And then I realized that guy's got 97 podcasts. And that's an exaggeration, but it feels that way. And hee wrote a book called Empathy For The Devil. And I'm going to pause. I'm gonna say that again. Empathy for the Devil. The title alone just struck me. So I bought it. I read it. I sat with it. And I struggled with parts of it. And I decided to email JR. And he said, Sure, let's do the thing. So we cover a lot of ground here. We talk about Halloween, we talk about the church we talk about evangelicalism, we talk about comics, and Black Panther, and the Satan, and Delilah, and King Herod. I mean, we cover a lot of ground. And I love this conversation. I think you will too. Enough of me, let's roll the tape.
Seth Price 4:01
JR. Forasteros, welcome to the show, internationally known it is what it is. I'm glad that you made time this evening.
JR. Forasteros 4:09
Seth, thank you so much. This is really exciting.
Seth Price 4:10
And I will say I've stalked you on Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and I don't know how to use Instagram. And I've said that often. And I mean it every time like I post a picture and then I don't know what to do after that because there's very little interaction with…
JR. Forasteros 4:28
That's true. I think you got it mostly.
Seth Price 4:30
Well, I get tagged in like stories. And then eight days later, I'll see it and I'm like, I don't know what that means. Like I don't. And I just found out the other day I think my sister told me so they delete after 24 hours. I was like what's the point? Like, why would I….whatever. It's just I don't understand it. But your pun game is stronger than mine. And I feel threatened by this. I feel like yeah, I feel threatened.
JR. Forasteros 4:54
Full credit goes to my wife. She is the queen of puns and so it's purely by osmosis. That is the theology of covenant in action.
Seth Price 5:04
You're equally yoked.
JR. Forasteros 5:07
(laughs)
That’s right!
Like there, there are a few things that bring me as much joy in my life as watching my wife crack herself up with a pun, because she'll lose control and like laugh at herself laughing and it just turns into the cycle that sometimes has gone on for like, 10 minutes.
Seth Price 5:21
Has she even said it out loud. Or she just still internally monologuing this
JR. Forasteros 5:24
Oh, no, she'll say it out loud. And then like, be so pleased with herself. And then just yeah, it's, it's truly a delight. And then, of course, I started laughing at her, and then she laughs at me laughing at her laughing at herself laughing, and it just becomes this chain where she ends up gasping for breath and crying.
Seth Price 5:40
That is great.
JR. Forasteros 5:41
It's a deeply joyful experience.
Seth Price 5:42
That is a fruit of the Spirit. Because my wife, she does not share my love for puns. But my children do. And sometimes my middle child will work on them. You can tell she's been working on them at school, and sometimes they lands other times they don't land. But I appreciate the effort because it does take practice. You got to have mastery of the words you got to know how to use them. So I appreciate her effort and her honing her craft because in 20 years, yeah, 20 years, it's gonna pay off.
JR. Forasteros 6:08
She and her dad text puns back and forth. Like that's their love language, and it's wonderful.
Seth Price 6:14
(laughter)
So tell us a bit about you. Most of the show, people listening on the show may or may not know about you. And if they don't, again, hit pause, go to the show notes because I made it easy for everyone that's lazy like I am. And um, and yeah, what makes you you like, what's the what are the things?
JR. Forasteros 6:31
Quick facts. I'm a pastor in Dallas, Texas. I'm not a native Texan. But I I moved here fully intending not to drink the Kool Aid. And then I drank it. Like I keep drinking it. Texas is great. Believe all the rumors. I get it. I understand. I'm one of those terrible Texans now, and I'm unashamedly positive about it. So my church is a is a church of the Nazarene which actually probably doesn't mean anything to a lot of people. And actually, if you went to 10 other Nazarene churches and they came to mine, you'd go, “you sure, this is a Nazarene church"? But we are you know, theologically or Wesleyan holiness. My wife is a roller derby girl. So she when you know when we're not in a global pandemic, she skates for Assassination City Roller Derby, and I stepped in to fill an announcer spot. So again, when we're not in a global pandemic, about once a month, I announce roller derby on Saturday night and then preach on Sunday morning, which is very fun. I have a book called Empathy for The Devil, which I think we're going to be talking about a little bit tonight that I wrote with Intervarsity Press. And then I also host a couple of podcasts. I love horror movies. So this is like my time of the year. You know, October is great. And actually during the pandemic, I've started running Dungeons and Dragons campaigns again, so that’s how I keep myself occupied in my free time.
Seth Price 7:50
That’s a lot of free time where does that come from? Like, I'm just running one podcast sucks up all of my time.
JR. Forasteros 8:00
So fascinating podcast, we are fortunate to have an audio producer. So we record our files and send them to him. And that actually happened because a long, long time ago, he messaged us and said, “Hey, you guys have great content, and your audio makes me want to like poke my eardrums out. So if you send me your files, I will edit them for you”. And we were like, “great, because we have no idea what we're doing, obviously”. So that one actually, I mean, we are able to do so much of that because we have a good rhythm where we take some breaks. You know, we'll do about 15 or 20 episodes and then take take a couple months off and kind of plan what we're doing next. And we've started to get a lot more strategic about what we're doing and what guests we bring on and things like that. And that's helped us to kind of have a little bit more solid of a format and there are four co-hosts.
So if one of us isn't able to make it one week, it's not that big of a deal. You know, we can still have several people in there. Only one time have I been left by myself to interview a guest and was actually great. It was the director of the documentary Hail Satan?. I don't know if you've heard that it has a question mark at the end of it. Incredible, incredible documentary. I really think any any Christ followers should watch it. I think it's on Hulu right now streaming. It's a documentary about the Satanic Temple, which is an official satanic organization. And the documentary is sort of interrogating whether they are a religion or a political movement or if there is a meaningful difference between those two things.
Seth Price 9:26
We might come back to that because now also this that's the second time in 15 minutes that you brought up Hulu. So this podcast brought to you by Hulu.
JR. Forasteros 9:35
Ha! Big fans love to be a sponsor. (laughter)
Yeah, so honestly, that's a big part of it. Right is we we just we we try to do a lot of planning behind the scenes so that we can sit down record our show and then we have a fantastic team that does a lot of our scheduling and producing and that kind of stuff.
Seth Price 9:48
That would be amazing.
JR. Forasteros 9:52
Well if you do a worse job and you might get some help. That was our that was our ticket.
Seth Price 9:57
I am just now finally leeching control to other people to help me with the transcripts, I have no idea if you're aware or not, but I have been transcribing every amazing.
JR. Forasteros 10:06
That is amazing! See, we don't do that.
Seth Price 10:09
Well, I only did it because someone asked for it. Someone on Facebook said something about something. And that it was recommended but they struggled with hearing. And I would I consider transcribing it to which, you know, I was “absolutely like, sure”. Like, yeah. And then after I hit go, I was like, that was 88. You…you…you did 88 you just in the middle of all of them. And was really awkward. That would be like just preaching like, half of a sermon. Why Sunday, every three years. And yeah, you're done. We're not saying no more discussion. So then I realized you were an idiot. But I started. Yeah.
JR. Forasteros 10:51
That’s an amazing commitment
Seth Price 10:52
commitment. I averaged them out. I've no idea how many words it actually is. But an hour is roughly 8612 words, give or take. And at 157 episodes that have been released. It's like 1.8 million words. Luckily, though, AI is much better than it used to be. So they do some of the heavy lifting. But words like Philippians, or Beelzebub…they don't they don't show
JR. Forasteros 11:19
Is that the challenge for this episode is say as many words as possible that are hard to transcribe?
Seth Price 11:25
God I hope not.
JR. Forasteros 11:27
How does it do with things like highfalutin? (it did just fine ;) )
Seth Price 11:28
It will it will it will probably say, hi fluting. Like it's close. Yeah. But no, I spoke with a couple of like the the eastern like, talk about Eastern Church and spoke with Vince Bantu. And he was talking about all these Syriac churches, and it was, oh, my gosh. It was so it took it didn't help that it was like a two hour conversation. And it probably took five days to get that thing done. Because again, the way that I am, I'm like, you know, I'm gonna get this right. I link, so I assume everyone will be as equally like, I don't know what that word means. So I hit a link, so you can click on it and go, “Hey, hit pause”, because you're not listening anyway. So yeah, may as well have some context. Because I think that's how we should read the Bible. So maybe we should approach everything away. But it is so much freaking work. I need your guy's number is what I'm saying. And maybe he wants to do two podcasts.
JR. Forasteros 12:20
I think the silver lining of this conversation is that in the inevitable AI takeover, you're gonna have a place of honor. You will have taught them how to speak so much English.
Seth Price 12:30
No, no, just just faith. See, I'm helping the AI have have some faith…
JR. Forasteros 12:36
You're gonna be in a better place either way
Seth Price 12:42
What is some people say, you know, morality? There we go. I'm giving them it's one of those apologetic views of God. What's the moral argument for God? I forget what that's called. Anyway. Anyway, so I start this out, I asked this question of everyone from Texas, and you're not from Texas…
JR. Forasteros 13:00
So I grew up in Kansas City, Missouri.
Seth Price 13:01
Okay. And then how long have you lived in Texas?
JR. Forasteros 13:03
So right after my wife and I got married, we moved to Dayton, Ohio for five years, and we've been in Texas six.
Seth Price 13:09
Ah, okay, well, I'm still gonna ask it because you're in Texas
JR. Forasteros 13:17
Okay great.
Seth Price 13:19
It's gospel, it matters it can possibly get you banned from even having the show released. Like I can just accidentally forget to record things. So a What-a-burger or In and Out Burger.
JR. Forasteros 13:26
Yeah, so my wife will unapologetically say What-a-burger. I will definitely say it kind of depends on my mood. But usually What-a-burger. And I do know that it's correctly pronounced “water burger”.
Seth Price 13:41
Correct, even though it's not spelt that way.
JR. Forasteros 13:42
Even though it's not spelled that way. And most Texans when I point it out they go, no one calls it “waterburger we call it waterburger”
Seth Price 13:47
Yeah, it doesn't matter how it's spelled.
JR. Forasteros 13:50
Yeah, no, they that Yeah. Water burger. Yeah, it was one of the best parts of moving down here was was water burger.
Seth Price 13:56
So I want to drill there a bit? So you say you've bought into the kool aid of Texas? What does that mean? Because the climate that we live in right now of evangelicalism, the Bible Belt, like what do you hear? I hear people say that in some people, it does like trigger language. So what what do you mean by that?
JR. Forasteros 14:14
So when I say that we drank the Texas Kool Aid. I mean, we have season tickets to the State Fair. We deep fry as many things as we can. I have gotten extremely proficient at smoking brisket. I guess that's about it. I'm still a Kansas City barbecue boy at heart. But I do love Texas barbecue, and I definitely have like my favorite spots marked out. I really do think Texas is great. Like I love living here. There's so much cool stuff to do here. It is crazy to me that I'm closer to Kansas City, Missouri than I am to El Paso which is also in Texas.
Seth Price 14:54
And you’re in the same state. One time someone asked me how far away I live. I was like so you know, like when you drive to Memphis right? There's like the Mississippi…he's like, Yeah, I was like, that's not quite halfway. He's like what I was like, that's almost halfway. You got to get on the Arkansas line. And then where I'm from, that's halfway. And, the look on his face was like, those are fake numbers. It's like a cartoonish distance.
JR. Forasteros 15:15
All the time, people would be like, Hey, I'm gonna be in Houston for a couple days, do you want to hang out? And I'm like, Yeah, I am four and a half hours from Houston. And they're like, what? I thought you live in Texas. I'm like, “close” to Houston.
Seth Price 15:27
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think Midland is 10 hours from Houston.
JR. Forasteros 15:31
Yeah, it's bananas.
Seth Price 15:33
Yeah, I could be in Canada in 10 hours. I'm gonna do my best to get this episode out and in in around Halloween, but who knows what will happen, but let's make it happen. So I wanted to talk about the devil, the Satan the thing, but before I do, can you go back to whatever the heck this Hail Satan thing is because you got some you got energetic. They're like, what? I don't even. I don't. But I haven't watched it just for context.
JR. Forasteros 15:58
So do you remember the snooze story about the group? When the the Oklahoma State Government had a 10 commandments monument that they placed on their state Capitol grounds? There was a group that commissioned the Baphomet statue be put there also?
Seth Price 16:16
Yes. Did it win?
JR. Forasteros 16:18
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. That was the Satanic Temple. TST. Okay. And so this documentary is a documentary about TST. As an organization, who are they? Where did they come from? What do they want? And the director, her name is Penny Lane. Who's I mean, her films are brilliant. I, again, my interview with her is like one of my favorite things I've ever done in my life. She's, you know, born and raised atheist, like friendly atheist, you know, doesn't have anything against religious people kind of intrigued and interested by religious people, but just, you know, doesn't come from a context of faith at all. And so she, you know, probably like many of us read the news stories about these guys. And then she was like, wow, they sound hilarious sounds like these, like political jokesters that are sort of hiding behind the veil of a religious organization to make political points.
And so that was the assumption she made going into document them. And then through the course of the documentary, the question is being asked, because I should have said, TST, is officially an atheistic organization. So they don't believe in a personal Satan. When they talk about Satan and talk about calling themselves satanists. They talk about Satan as like the archetypical, punk rocker, you know, the first one who gave the finger to the man and said, you know, to heck with you, whatever. And so what's interesting about the documentary is it really messes with the question of what counts as religion and how you know, whether someone is being religious or not? And, again, I just think it's really fascinating. It's also heartbreaking, because so many of the individual members of TST that they interview throughout the documentary, are people who, at one point, were in a Christian church and who left for all of the reasons, you probably could list off the top of your head.
They were made fun of they were weird, they were excluded. They were isolated. They didn't fit in, they didn't, you know, fit in the mold or whatever. And, you know, it broke my heart a lot, because I wanted, I wanted to sit down with them and say, I love this, like, radical idea that you're committing yourself to that is like tearing down these unjust power structures. But like, actually, Jesus is that guy. Like, Jesus is the one that does that stuff. And I know, like, I know that I know why you don't think that. But it just made me sad. You know, it was just a reminder to me of the cost of a particular kind of Christianity.
And again, I mean, we went and saw a filming of it when it was here in Dallas, and the Satanic Temple chapter in Dallas was out, like supporting it, and they all had their Satanic Temple t-shirts on afterwards. And like, I walked up to a guy. I was like, “Hey, man, I really enjoyed the film. Thank you so much for coming out”. And he was like, “Oh, are you interested in the Satanic Temple?
Seth Price 19:07
Uh, actually…
JR. Forasteros 19:09
And I was like, “I mean, sort of, okay. Yeah. I'm a pastor. And I really like the idea of building like, cross, like, cross religion, relationships”. And he was like, “Oh, what's that? Oh, yeah, sorry, man. I got it go”. And like, totally just, like bailed on me. And I was like, Okay, I mean, again, I get it.
Seth Price 19:28
It's awkward for everybody. Yeah how sad is that you think you can have ecumenism with a non religious organization?
JR. Forasteros 19:37
Oh, well, I mean, again, what do you mean by non religious right?
Seth Price 19:41
You said that's how they affiliated like a non religious organization.
JR. Forasteros 19:45.
They are atheistic but they would call themselves religious. Okay. So again, that's part of what the documentary interrogates is, how can you be a religion if you don't worship someone, and then, you know, that pokes at well, we have rituals, we have community standards, right? We have in group out group stuff. We have weekly gatherings we have you know, what do you have to do to count as religious? Yeah. Right? Like is is believing in not believing still believing? Or is belief even an essential component of being religious or not?
And so again, I would hope that let's say there was a Satanic Temple chapter in my little town. And I was so I'm technically in Rowlett, which is a suburb of Dallas.
Seth Price 20:29
Dallas, has a lot of suburbs.
JR. Forasteros 20:32
So let's say that there was a Satanic Temple chapter in my community, right. And they wanted to do an after school program to encourage kids to, you know, do reading and be invested in STEM. Well, I would sure hope that the people in my congregation who are stem folks, of which there are quite a number would be happy to partner with them and say, Hey, we're all here to help these kids succeed in school. And so we can agree that that's a good, and we can work on that together. You know, one of the tenants of TST that they share in the documentary is that they're pro science. And it's like, well, I hope my church at least is pro science.
Like, we have a number of teachers and science teachers and scientists who are in our congregation. And, again, I would hope that we could say, yes, our churches also personally, yeah. And so that we can agree on that, you know, our congregation has a relationship with the mosque that's in the town next door, it's like the closest mosque to us, but there's not a mosque in our town. So there's a mosque and Sachse. And we've been cultivating a relationship with them. And yeah, again, there's tons of stuff. Yeah, that we don't agree on. But there's tons of stuff we do.
Seth Price 21:31
Yeah, absolutely.
JR. Forasteros 21:33
So it's a little awkward at first but now there's members of our congregation and members of their congregation who text each other and talk about, you know, what their kids are up to, and how schools go in and work and, you know, just takes a little bit time to build some relationships. So yeah I'd like to think our church can be friends with Satanists.
Seth Price 21:49
I'm going to go on Hulu. I'm going to search for that. And I'm fully aware that because I watch it, I love a good documentary. I've been watching one called Connected on Netflix late lately, and I watched one today. I don't know if you've watched it or not, I haven't it. I'll tell you about it afterwards. It has nothing to do with religion. But at the end of it, I was like, this episode, I have to tell everybody about it's like Episode Four. Like a random episode. Yeah. And at the end of it, I was like, I could watch that again. Like, I need to watch the just that again. I don't really care about the first three rules. Okay. And there's like seven, but that one, I was like, gonna watch for this. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, great, great ground here yet, but I'm terrified that whenever I search, Hail Satan in Hulu, and then it begins recommending shows of which my wife and I watch TV together often, it's gonna you know what I mean, it's gonna really mess. It's like when you google search something and you're like, is am I committed enough to watch it? It's going to wreck my suggested Google searches.
JR. Forasteros 22:50
I can’t tell you what it's gonna do. Because I was already watching all the horror stuff on Hulu anyways, so it pulls that stuff up anyway, so I don't know.
Seth Price 22:58
So biblically, when you say the word Satan, it's not usually used the same way that I think they're using the word Satan. And then you've written this book around Satan, or am I wrong? So what do you think most people are saying when they say Satan?
JR. Forasteros 23:15
Yeah so even TST, which officially doesn't believe that there is an entity that we could label as Satan, or the devil, or the Lucifer, or whatever, still buys into what in my book I call the Lucifer myth. Which is the story that I certainly grew up with in the church that I was raised in, which is that, at some point, before creation of the earth, or during the creation of…again it's never really clear. But sometime early, early, Satan decided that he could run heaven better than God. And so he mounted a rebellion. And it failed. And so he got kicked out of heaven. And then again, it gets a little fuzzy either to hell or down to earth, or somewhere, and then all of the angels that were kicked out with him became demons. And now, Satan runs around, you know, causing red lights to make us go late to work and causing the worship music to mess up and causing the pastor forget where he is in the sermon. And, you know, tempting us to all kinds of sin.
Seth Price 24:19
That seems awful personal for you. Is that what happened Sunday?
JR. Forasteros 24:23
No, actually, there's a really great book by a guy named Tripp York, about the devil where he goes on a quest to try to find the devil and he shares a story about that. He said that I grew up in holiness church, so I just went to a good old country church in Kentucky, and knew I’d find the devil and sure enough, halfway through the CD skipped on the special music and the pastor gets up. He's like, now Satan just showed up because he doesn't want us to worship you know, devil is here.
But I honestly remember like, probably one of the first like seeds of doubt that this really could be the real story that the Bible tells about Satan was when I was in youth group in high school. And we were like, you know, like, Good little Southern Baptists standing in a circle holding hands waiting for the next person to squeeze so it was our turn to pray. And someone prayed, Lord, we just ask that you bar Satan from this room tonight. And I remember thinking, like, I love my youth group. I love what we do here. I love our worship, I love the Biblical teaching that we get. But with all of the things going on in the world, and this was like pre 9/11, right, so this was like cake compared to what what we have now going on in the world.
But with you know, with all of the sex trafficking and all of the, you know, genocides being waged all over the world, all of the war, like we think that the devil is here in this room, like trying to disrupt our, like, medium size youth group gathering? And of course, like pretty immediate is like, yeah, I think if I asked that question, everyone would say, “Well, no, obviously we don't think that”. But it really pushed me to start considering either we think that the devil is omnipresent the way God is omnipresent. And again, I think when you say that out loud, like most reasonable Christians would say, “Well, no, obviously don't believe that.” Well, then it became, okay. So what we must be doing then is using the idea of the devil as like a catch all for evil, you know, and so when we, when we asked God to bar Satan from this place, where we actually mean is, like, any sort of evil or negativity or something like that. So it just made me start wondering like, Well, okay, then then what do I know about the devil and what, you know, what do I think about the devil and I did the worst possible thing, which was go to Bible College, you know, go somewhere where they taught me how to read the Bible.
And so I remember I was actually preparing a Bible study for some friends of mine over the summer, like we weren't even in class. And just friends asked if I would lead a Bible study, and they wanted to kind of start in Genesis and see how far we got. We got to Genesis 11, by the end of the summer. But I would go in like, you know, because I was gonna, I was in college, and I worked and had nothing else to do. So I'd go into the library and spread out like 20 commentaries around me and just like bask in the nerddom.
Seth Price 27:01
Every week is you, every single week is you?
JR. Forasteros 27:02
Yeah, yeah. And again, this Bible study was probably terrible for anyone that wasn't a Bible school, Bible major in there, right? They were probably like crossing their eyes. Like, who cares about any of this, but I was loving it. And I had the JPS commentary, which is a Jewish commentary series on Genesis, and I'm in Genesis 3, right with the snake. And the guy who wrote the JPS commentary said, had this note that he said, nowhere in the Christian or the Jewish scriptures is the snake in Genesis 3 identified as Satan. I was like, That can't be true, because of course, that's literally what I've heard my entire life. Yeah, but look at this guy, this guy had the brass to put it in print. Like, he's gonna be pretty sure of himself. So it kind of like messed me up, you know, I was like, Well, wait a second, doesn't it? Of course, I read Genesis 3, and it sure doesn't. And so then I was like, “Well wait where did that idea come from? If it's not in the text”? And and so that sent me off on this whole long trajectory of trying to figure out well, where is the story in the Bible anyway, that he rebelled against God and got kicked out of heaven and all that kind of stuff.
You know, and then if that's not in there, what is actually in there? And so where I kind of end up going in my book is identifying, which again, I'm far from the first person to do anything like this. But the word Satan actually is a Hebrew title that means accuser. So a lot of scholars will talk about the Satan, the accuser, and it seems sort of like he was something like a prosecuting attorney for God, whose job it was to kind of walk the earth and record the sins of humanity and then bring them before God and, again, prosecute human sin in the divine court. And if you kind of hang out with that interpretation of the Satan character something really interesting happens when you get into the New Testament. Which is that you go to the book of Revelation, which is where the war in heaven is, with Satan being cast out and taking a third of the angels with him. But the timeline of that is not before creation, it's actually with the ascension of Jesus to the throne of heaven. And so there's something for John the Revelator, about Jesus's death, resurrection, and ascension that casts the accuser out of heaven.
And there's actually even this beautiful hymn at the end of Revelation, chapter 12, where it says,
rejoice, you heavens, for the accuser of our siblings has been thrown down
And then it says, whoa to the earth, right. So even again, it even uses that title, you know, the accuser. And so one of the things I talk about in my book is how there's this really interesting shift in title and the New Testament, because we don't see the word devil in the Old Testament, we only see the word devil in the New Testament, and that’s from a Greek word, that means a liar. Hmm. And so I talked about how there's the shift where in in the Old Testament, essentially before Jesus's death and resurrection. Satan is the accuser, is the one who accuses us rightfully before God's throne. But after the resurrection of Jesus after our sin has been atoned for, and we've been made one with God, all of those same charges now become lies.
Because now, because of the work of Christ, we are now no longer guilty before the throne of God. Christ has purchased us out of bondage and purchased our freedom and our salvation. And so, one of the things I kind of wrap around into the end of my book is that the the weapon that Satan has to wield against believers is deception. And that's, again, that's something that's all the way through the book of Revelation is that essentially, Satan is trying to convince the seven churches of the Revelation that Caesar is Lord and not Jesus and that they should give up their allegiance to the lamb and follow the beast and all this kind of stuff. So, again, that's kind of I draw a lot of a lot of it from there, you know, a lot from Paul's words that
there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
So that is the shortish version.
Seth Price 30:58
What does uh, how do I say this without being crass? I don't know how…all of that I'm totally on board with and the character of Satan that has become idolized in much of the Western church. Your pastor, I'm not I work at a bank. Is the church you feel like in a place that if we took away that MacGuffin to move across the story and the fact I use that word intentionally because I know you consume a massive amount of media. I've seen you doing it on Facebook. I don't know why. Who was picking those movies, by the way?
JR. Forasteros 31:34
So I picked like the big ones to get started. But then a lot of them are actually friends who picked them who want to see me suffer?
Seth Price 31:45
Yeah, I'm really surprised that no one is like just recommended all the Left Behind movies. But
JR. Forasteros 31:50
That was last year, actually. So I had to watch the Nic Cage Left Behind.
Seth Price 31:52
Yeah. Oh, that one is all I mean, all of them. Yeah, yeah. So is the church in a place now, or do you see it getting a place in the future, that Satan is not used as a MacGuffin to move along the narrative of fear to get people to continue to come to church? Maybe that is just my bias of my views of Satan.
JR. Forasteros 32:14
One that absolutely happens. I mean, I grew up with that. “If you die tonight, do you know where you'd be going? And the devil made me do it and all that kind of” I mean, I love horror films, right? The Exorcist which came out in 1976, like drove people to churches in mass because they were terrified of being possessed like this poor innocent little girl was possessed, right? And actually, a lot of demonic possession films are extremely conservative in their values, and in their theology, which we don't think about. But take the exorcist for example. It's the 70’s right. So this is a film based on a book that was written in the wake of the sexual revolution of the 60’s, right. And the source material is actually changed. The true story that the exorcist is based on was about a young boy who lived in St. Louis, Missouri.
The book was actually changed to be a young girl. And then that's of course, what turned into the movie. And so we have an innocent young girl who is in a broken home, right. Which again, echoes of the 60s you know, women's lib, you know, the pill giving women sexual liberation, all this kind of stuff. And the solution to these demonic possession of this girl, most of the symptoms of which actually just look like puberty and bratty teenager-dom, not demon possession, are for a literal father to come back into the broken home and restore order.
And so again, yes, it's a movie about demon possession that we were always told, if you watch it, you'll open your door for demons to come in, and blah, blah, blah. But the morality of the film is an extremely conservative reaction to the women's liberation movement and the sexual revolution of the 1960s. And again, a lot of demon possession movies follow this basically the same format.
Seth Price 34:10
Can I be honest with you, I don't really watch any horror shows-ever, ever, although I'm familiar with a lot of the names. So I will struggle with some of the cuts. But that's fine because I'm sure I'm I know I'm a minority in that. It's not that I don't like to be scared. It's that I can't stop looking through the script. Like I don't allow myself to enjoy it. Like I don't like I genuinely, like when I'll go through like scaremares or whatever back over here. I went to Liberty so that's what we would do. We would scare people you know, at Halloween, and then with a chainsaw convinced them with the Bible and chainsaw that they need Jesus with no chains like I'm the guy walking through looking at the scaffolding and the structure like, Oh, so when we turn the corner, oh, the room's gonna tilt to the right. You got to take all the fun out of it. And I do that with movies as well.
JR. Forasteros 35:00
In almost all demon possession films the main oppressed person is a young girl, and again, that's very much on purpose. Again, it's like the DNA of the genre, right? And again, that's because we felt like we want to protect them. They're the most vulnerable. And these films, which are devil stories, right, are ultimately these very conservative statements about the power of the devil. And you know, we, if you've seen The Conjuring movies, which again, I assume you haven't, but for folks who have one of the questions that the couple asks when they come in to the house is are your kids baptized? And the dad says, No. And then the exorcist says, well, we probably need to fix that. Again, there's just like heavy conservative evangelistic moralizing that's going on in a lot of these films. We did judgment houses at the first search for as a youth pastor, which sounds very much like the scaremare, right. . And the whole thing with all of those, were here are all of the bad things that you could possibly do. And at the end of it, you go in and you see people…
Seth Price 36:05
In a big white tent.
JR. Forasteros 36:07
And then you go and get to go to heaven, which I never understood this. Because, not like hell was fun, right? Definitely. Hell looked bad. But heaven was like cotton and white sheets. And like people, like, just sort of like hanging out in robes and like, this place looks awfully terrible. Yeah, like nowhere, I'd actually, you know, but they yeah, then we do the salvation message. And so I do think that that's getting less and less. But I will also say that things tend to go in cycles, right? So I wonder if the church doesn't recover a stronger theology of who God is and God's victory over Satan at the cross. That while it may be gone for our kids generation, it maybe is going to come back around. Because people say, “Well, we just went from talking about the devil all the time to never talking about the devil, maybe what we need is some good old fashioned fire and brimstone”. And all of a sudden, the thing that we like, I think rightfully, moved away from you know, in our generation is going to be something that our kids or our grandkids want to bring back in to get that good old time religion.
Seth Price 37:13
That is a horror movie right there. I've never actually thought about that. But I'm not happy about that last sentence at all. Like, hellfire and brimstone. brought me to church, but it didn't keep you there.
JR. Forasteros 37:24
Yeah, pretty effective either way
Seth Price 37:27
So just being honest, yeah. But then after that, and then after that, though, other things kept me there. But, but yeah, um, God, that's scary. I don't like that. I don't like that at all.
JR. Forasteros 37:40
Well, that's why we need a better theology of the devil. Right?
Seth Price 37:42
What is that theology and more importantly, the part of your book that I'm uncomfortable with, the parts that I like the most, are where you give some narrative voice to some of the characters in the Bible, specifically Herodias. And I don't even know if I'm saying that, right. Because I didn't I didn't go to a fancy seminary. I like the way that you work story into there. Another one of my favorite books that I read last year is called experimental theology or no Experiments in Honestly, is what it's called. I don't know if you've read that book or not. I have not. He's telling a parable of Jesus, basically saying, you know, put your nuts on the other side, but he's doing it in a way where he's like, you know, the guys come in, they're pissed off. They're grumbling. This guy's punching that guy. This guy's arguing about how hungry he is. And he's like, you're hungry. I got five kids at home. Like he's just narrating it all the way out. Yeah. And then Jesus walks up. And he's like, sarcastically, guys, for real put on the other side. And everyone, everyone points at him. Like,
JR. Forasteros 38:35
Who's this guy‽ Yeah.
Seth Price 38:37
Yeah, yeah. But it's just all and it made me laugh out loud. Or I'm like, Yeah, I think I would be that way. Like, absolutely. This is ridiculous. Put it on the other side. What do you what do you an idiot? You think I was born yesterday? Put it on the…put it on the other side! The way I've always read that now Ever since then, is the guys in the boat? like Bill O'Reilly; Like we'll do it live? What is that? Do it live? I don't know if you've seen that or get that reference at all? Oh, I'm gonna send it to you. It is not appropriate for this show. But, but, um, but yeah. So what should a theology of the devil or Satan be-what should that be? If you could write a new text for that? And then why should I care about having empathy for any villains in the Bible?
Although I struggle with that, because I have empathy. And I've heard you or Reggie or heard someone talk about you talking about, like, I genuinely believe that Killmonger is the hero of Black Panther. Yeah. That doesn't mean that the T’Challah is not the hero, but Killmonger definitely is the hero. And I know that pisses a lot of people off and I don't turn I don't care. But why should I as a Christian want to have empathy for the villains, especially when we think about the Satan but people that do bad things, what looks to be intentionally?
JR. Forasteros 39:55
Yeah, so first up in brief theology of the devil. I think we need to acknowledge that there is a strong and active force in the world. We can label it demonic, we can label it satanic, we can label it diabolical. But it is a force that seeks to trap us in service to idols. Whether that's the idol of the self, whether that's the idol of the state, whether that's the idol of religion, I mean, there are a million different idols. But it's always seeking to deceive us, to lie to us, about who God is, and about who we are, and how we relate to each other.
And I think if the church had a stronger hermeneutic, of suspicion towards ourself, in towards our own theology, I think we would be a lot better off in the long run. So that's sort of my theology of the devil, I would like to recover if we could start labeling these, you know, if we could label nationalism as satanic; if we could label the radical individualism as satanic, if we could, you know, label these things. If we could label legalism as satanic, you know, and actually say, “No, these are tools that the Satan uses to deceive us”. Because again, that's what Revelation says his goal is, the whole the whole message of Revelation with the war in heaven, is that Satan has already lost. And so now he's just trying to take as many of us out with him as he can, right?
He is not trying to beat God, he's already lost, he is now just trying to hurt God, the only way he can, which is by hurting those that God loves. And so again, I think if we were more acutely aware of that and better at identifying the tactics that the adversary uses, it would be better for us. And it's not sorry, it's not Kansas records. I checked, they're all fine.
Seth Price 41:46
(laughter)
What if you slow the beats per minute down?
JR. Forasteros 41:49
Well, that that is true. Yeah. I didn't try that all the way. (laughter from Seth)
So as far as empathy, right, like, I think where this started for me, the the first character in the book I had the ideas for was Herod. And it was because I got to go to the Holy Land in 2011. And I actually saw all of the things that Herod built. And I actually was in awe of this guy.
And I think the thing that broke it for me was when we went to the Masada, which is this big Mesa in the middle of the desert, right next to the Dead Sea. And it was literally the place where Herod built a palace for like, if Rome turned on him, and Judea turned on him and like he literally had to go into hiding for his life. This was like his palace of last resort. And there was, again, we're on a mesa where there is like, literally no easy access, and we're in the middle of a desert and he had a swimming pool built on top of this mesa, that I'm sure they had, like some poor slaves had to like, carry and fill water with like buckets. And I was like, what a weirdo! He was like, so paranoid, but also like so self indulgent.
Seth Price 42:57
Yeah. And it is hot up there.
JR. Forasteros 42:59
Yeah, well, yeah. Right. You would understand why you'd want a swimming pool? Yeah. So it made me really like dive in and say, okay, who is this guy who was so brilliant in so many ways? I mean, the the he created a harbor at what is now Caesarea Maritima, but it was literally like a spot on the coast where there was nothing. And he used like bleeding edge engineering technology to create out of nothing, a port on the Mediterranean for Israel that rivaled Alexandria, which, which was the second biggest port in the Mediterranean next to Rome. Yeah. And I'm like, okay, like, like a crazy idiot can't do that. Right? Like this takes an incredible mind.
And so it made me really start pressing into who this guy is how he felt. And again, I'm trying to understand that horrific story at the beginning of Matthew, where he orders the deaths of the infants in Bethlehem. And, you know, as I worked through the material for Herod, I began to understand him in a way that at no point led me to want to excuse what he did. But it put me in a place where suddenly he went from being this like, cartoonish, mustache twirling, like genocidal monster, to a person that I wasn't sure if I was in his position if I would have had the guts to make a different choice. And that was a really scary place to find myself.
Seth Price 45:04
What do you mean his position? And I want to give that some context. So the way I always and I haven't done a lot of work on Herod at all, the way I've always looked at it is, I am afraid I'm gonna lose power. Rome's either gonna kill me or they're gonna kick me out and I don't want to lose power. So I need to protect the base. And maybe I'm way off there.
JR. Forasteros 45:24
No, no, I mean, I think that's largely it, right. But, so first of all, here's the question that here's what confounded me. How, just off the top of your head. Like how many kids were killed in Bethlehem? Because it was it was all of the boys two years old and under. So like in your head? What is that number?
Seth Price 45:40
No, I don't even…a lot.
JR. Forasteros 45:43
Yeah, like thousands, something like that?
Seth Price 45:46
I mean, what, what, what, 40,000 people there? I don't know, 6-7000. Okay, I'm just guessing I totally guessing.
JR. Forasteros 45:51
I know me too. Right. But it feels like in our in our spirits I think it feels like a lot, right, like thousands of kids. So I did some real deep digging on this when I was working on material for this book. Because I wanted to know like, well, realistically, with all the demographic information we know and everything. Like how many boys two years older under would have been living in Bethlehem around the time Jesus was born. Seven.
Seth Price 46:20
(sighs)…
Okay, okay.
JR. Forasteros 46:21
Now again, is seven babies being murdered perfect…?
Seth Price 46:23
Absolutely not acceptable.
JR. Forasteros 46:25
Unacceptable, right? It's still a monstrous act if it's 7 or 70 or 7000. But the calculus does change. Because the way I read Herod is, you know, the Magi are almost certainly would have been astrologers from the Persian Empire, they were Zoroastrian priests. And so the Parthians were sort of like the big arch nemesis to Rome, in, you know, in the East, right? They've gone to war with Rome a few different times over the last couple hundred years. Actually, when the Maccabean dynasty fell, when the Hasmoneans were kicked out, it was actually because Parthia and Rome were fighting a proxy war. And that's how Mark Antony inherit originally became friends. Because Rome backed Herod and Herod's father against the usurpers who were being backed by Parthia. And so it was kind of like what we did with Vietnam, you know, between US and China.
And so, Herod sees a diplomatic envoy from Parthia show up at his door, saying, “Hey, we're here to pay homage to the new king.” And, you know, one of the things we know for sure about Herod is that he was really paranoid. And so for him, he was sure that Rome was going to hear about this. Now whether they did or not, we don't know. But Herod was sure they would.
And so he tries to trick them, right? He tries to say, “Well, hey, once you find him, come back and tell me so I can go worship him too”. You know, so he's trying to keep trying to find this new king and lock it down and let Rome know for sure that he's theirs, but they slip away. And so Herod now has to act decisively. If he doesn't, yes, he will lose power, right. Rome will remove him for being disloyal, or Parthia will come in and you know, back this, whoever this new Messiah is that he keeps hearing about.
But I think the calculus in his head could easily be explained away 7 kids now, or 700, when we're caught in a war between Rome and Parthia. You know, the good of the many outweigh the good, a few kind of calculus. And again, it's still monstrous. Yeah, but in my book, in the in the nonfiction section of the Herod chapter, I tied it into drone warfare, and talk about way many more civilians, and specifically kids have died because of American drones, ever since the Obama administration. And most of us don't even know, let alone care, because it makes us feel safe. So we gladly trade, nameless foreign lives for a sense of security, and we don't even think twice about it. So yeah, we're so quick to rush to vilify Herod.
Seth Price 48:58
So that info on Herod is that taught in seminaries? Like, does the average pastor know that it's such a small number?
JR. Forasteros 49:06
Um, no, I had to go digging for it.
Seth Price 49:09
I feel like that should be like required, because it will, because it's such a small number that you're not going to forget it like, like it's because it's so disjarring from what you would expect. I also think in hindsight, like my view of population is skewed differently than the ancient near east just because civilizations are bigger now. So my context is different, which is all the more important to read the Bible through the lens of context. I've never even heard the name Parthia-never even heard the name. I'm not even sure I'm saying that right.
JR. Forasteros 49:44
Yeah, you are. In Revelation the first horsemen of the apocalypse, the mounted bowmen is actually a Parthian Calvary men. They cavalry, much like Rome had their phalanx; the Parthians had their mounted bow Bowman Cavalry who were terrorizing everyone.
Seth Price 49:59
So everytime I do a podcast I have so much more work to do it's not even funny.
JR. Forasteros 50:05
Well again I learned all this because I was doing like the deep dive research you what you've mentioned that already a chapter earlier my wall look like a serial killers den like it was like all these trying to chart out or genealogy and which Herod she married and which one was her dad and her uncle and all you know I have that up right now.
Seth Price 50:19
Hold on, let me find it. Yeah, there. Where's that? Yeah, yeah, you're like,
here's some of the highlights of the Herodias family history that pertain especially to her. Imagine how much fun their family reunions would be her odious, great aunt Salmoe manipulated her grandfather, Herod, you know, into killing Herodias’ grandmother,
and you just keep on going and going and going for quite a while; it's quite a while, right.
JR. Forasteros 50:44
(laughs)
Yea, it puts Game of Thrones to shame right!
Seth Price 50:47
Yeah, maybe that's what George got it from. I want to use a hashtag that people would relate to today. So in context of Biblical villainry, the Herod story seems to repeat itself over and over when you view it from their lens. So what is a good practice for people reading the Bible that when they come up against a villain, that they can kind of put themselves in a mindset of reading it that way?
Because I think most people in America read the Bible as if we're Israel, or the you know, like, we're the chosen people, when arguably, we should be Persia, or Babylon or Rome. But even that's not quite right with the way that you're approaching villainry in the Bible. What's a good way to maybe approach the text as you're reading it that to get yourself in a good mindset to kind of go Okay, well, what's actually happening here?
JR. Forasteros 51:34
Yeah, so one, I think we need to take a deep breath and say, understanding does not imply agreement. Right. Again, I can understand Herod and still say he made a sinful choice. Right? What he did was wrong.
Seth Price 51:49
So did Obama.
JR. Forasteros 51:50
Yeah, right. I understand it better. Yeah. But it was still it was still sin. Um, so I think a lot of people are nervous to even try to practice empathy towards the villains, because they're afraid that what we're going to do is start condoning sin. Right. So no, no no. It's still bad. We just this spiritual fruit comes, because it's a practice in humility, right?
If I look down my nose at the villains and I'm assuming I'm better than them, and I'm assuming I'm not like them. But if, but what I can do instead, and this is, as I was writing the fiction, especially what kept ringing in my head was, no one is the villain of their own story. Right?
If we believe these people in the Bible are real people who behaved in these ways, then they behaved in ways that made sense to them. They did things that they thought were in their best interest. Now, we don't always do the best thing. Sometimes we just do the thing that seems best at the moment, right? But you know, someone like Herod, yeah when he ordered the deaths of the infants why did that seem like his best thing? When Judas betrayed Jesus why did that seem like his best move to him? When Cain killed Abel why did he think that was the best option he had in the moment? When Delilah betrayed Samson, just kind of go through all the ones that did in the book, right?
Beginning in that space helps us begin to connect to that person. Who were they? What were their needs and concerns? What were they afraid of? What did they hope for? And then again, how did they get into this place? Because some of them made a bad choice in the moment, but others had made a number of bad choices that got them in. So I think like Cain, right, I think Cain, in the moment made a bad choice. Not to say that Cain was perfect before that. Like I'm just saying, like in that I don't think that like he went around, like, dreaming about murdering his brother for years before he finally did it, right. But someone like Herod, of course, he'd made a lifetime of decisions that got to that point, Jessica was the same way, right? A lifetime of decisions that got her to the place where she felt like, the things that she did were the best options that she had.
Seth Price 54:06
Is there a Biblical case for saying #Herod was right, or #whatever was right, like, is there? Is there a villain in the Bible that you're like, you know…?
JR. Forasteros 54:14
Delilah for sure. In fact, I'm a little…like most people who finished the Delilah chapter are like, oh, Samson is the villain. And I'm glad he's dead. And I'm like….O_o
The image that I always use when I preach or teach the book of Judges is it's a big downward spiral, right? It starts really, really good. And then each judge is a little bit worse than the one before them, until Samson is literally the bottom of the barrel. And Samson is the only judge who has superpowers. And he's also the only one who literally never does anything unless it's in his own best interests. He could not care less about YAHWEH. He could not care less about Israel. He only cares about Samson or what Samson wants. And so what I find a lot of people do in which it was gratifying. I'm like, what people would read my Delilah chapter and they would say, I was sure that you had made up about 90% of that chapter. And I went back and I read the Samson story. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, it's all in there. Like he is the worst” as like, yeah, like, but again, Judges thinks he's the worst, right? It's not like judges is trying to paint this like rosy matte like David right? Where they're like, Oh, yeah, yes, he was a mercenary. And yes, he was a terrible father. And yes, he raped Bathsheba. But but he's a great guy. You know, it's like not like that it was Samson. Like judges presents him as the villain of the story. Yeah, right. And so yeah, I think Delilah is definitely the one I'm like…
Seth Price 55:37
What I hear in that is you as the pastor saying, “Wait, so you read what I wrote. And then you went to read the Bible. And now you're talking about it? We did it!”
JR. Forasteros 55:44
That's a win! We did it. Yeah. When people said, “it made me go back and read my Bible. I'm like, (pantomimes crying) That’s just a beautiful thing!
Seth Price 55:50
I don't remember this being in your book. But since I've read your book, I've wrestled with this. And I don't know who's the villain in the story. I'm curious, your take on it. And maybe it's in the book and I bypassed it because I read for sure, quickly, and I'm consuming three or four books at a time every week. Is Jacob or Esau, the villain in the Bible where he's, you know, trading his birthright? I can't, honestly, am having trouble figuring out who the villain is in there. Because the overarching narrative needs to be something different. You know what I mean? But, who is the villain there?
JR. Forasteros 56:26
I'm an older brother. And I'm hairy. So I'm definitely gonna side with my boy, Esau. Like, as someone who has a younger brother, we fought all the time, you know, I honestly don't know that there necessarily would have had to have been a villain, right? That very much could have been a family squabble that had worked itself out. Which, you know, spoiler for much later in Book of Genesis. They do work it out! Like actually think the moment when Jacob finally, he's like, he's burned, every bridge is ever crossed. And he has to like come crawling on his hands and knees back to Esau begging for forgiveness. And like he literally separates his family and sends them to different directions, because he's like, well, at least if he kills me and tracks my family down, like some people will survive! That's where Jacob headspace is when he goes back to Esau. And Esau like, swoops him up and kisses him and welcomes him back. I would love to have the Saga of Esau and see like, where he did all of that hard work to get to where he forgave Jacob by the time we get to meet Esau again.
Seth Price 57:27
That's the book you write. There the Saga of Esau. That's the narrative you write.
JR. Forasteros 57:34
Yeah, he's like the Sasquatch man out in the wilderness. Like just being all mad and sad. And yeah. So yeah, I think Jacob very much is the villain for most of the story. I mean, his name literally means “trickster” right. And he is constantly conning everyone he meets constantly deceiving, and the only time that that really becomes heroic is when he meets Laban, who's an even bigger con man, right? And then it's like, who's gonna finally get the best up on the other one. And Jacob only wins because his wife is just as wiley as he is.
And so, yeah, I think that until Jacob really wrestles with the angel, or whatever it was, you know, by the riverbed, and ends up with the limp and all of that, and gets his name change to Israel-even after that, he's still a little shifty. But yeah, I mean, I think until that point, it's hard for me to root for him. Yeah. And the stories and a lot of the stories. Yeah, yeah, Esau was a dummy. But gosh, like, I'm glad I'm not penalized forever for a lot of the choices I made early in my life, you know.
Seth Price 58:41
Two final questions. One is one is really relative, and one is not at all. So for someone like myself, that maybe doesn't have Hulu, or maybe they do and you're like, you know, you're a Christian, you're stuck in quarantine, because you don't want to get COVID from Milky Ways at your neighbors that didn't wash their hands. All those are conjecture, and I'm sure that sentence itself makes people triggered in one way or another. And I'm sorry, but that's the world that we live in. Because I have three children that we don't have Halloween costumes yet for. And what I'm gonna do is just go the day after Halloween and buy it on clearance and give it to them. Do you charge a fatherhood tax in your house?
JR. Forasteros 59:24
No!
Seth Price 59:25
So I work at a bank. So storage is not free. There is a penalty of one piece of candy per child, per day, for the storage in my house of said candy, and I definitely mean it. And I get my pick of the litter. And what you'll find is my children hide their best candy; which is fine. I don't care. Yeah, teaching them economics. You know, just got to start gotta start small.
JR. Forasteros 59:49
Offshore accounts right. That's where they start.
Seth Price 59:51
Yeah, in their bedroom. Sure.
So what do they watch? They're at home with their family. They want to get scared. What do they watch? Because you consume so much media like, what do they do? What would you watch?
JR. Forasteros 1:00:05
You said with their family? Right?
Seth Price 1:00:07
I mean family is a relative term.
JR. Forasteros 1:00:10
Let's see what are some of the great recent horror films? I mean, Hereditary was very scary. And it is literally about family trauma. So that that one's horrifying. And great. Goodnight Mommy. The poster that had behind me is also great; it's Austrian. So you do have to deal with subtitles but it is messed up in a great way, I think really good. Let's see. Oh, you know, there's an Australian horror film called The Babadook. That's a few years old. You can probably find it on most I think it's even on like Netflix and stuff.
Seth Price 1:00:43
Definitely Hulu brought to you by Hulu.
JR. Forasteros 1:00:48
Yeah, I mean, the Babadook is great, because it's actually about a single mother who has a child who's probably somewhere on the spectrum. And he is being slash, maybe she is being tormented by the Spirit. And it's one of those movies where you want to ask the question, is it real or is it in her head? And that's like, the wrong question to be asking, you know, like, just let it Let it be, you know, let it be what it is. I'm trying to think if there's anything if you want something that's more fun, I'll tell you what, there is a movie on Netflix called Tucker and Dale vs. Evil. And it is the classic, the college kids go into the woods and get terrorized by murderous hillbillies. Except the whole thing is from the hillbillies perspective, and they're just the nicest good old boys named Tucker and Dale, and they're just keeping these horrible misunderstandings and accidents. And it, it is hilarious. Like, I promise you will laugh and laugh and then be horrified by yourself for laughing. But it also actually is a really good film about the assumptions we make about other people. And how we stereotype…
Seth Price 1:01:50
It is Deliverance from the viewpoint of guys, I was just trying to see if you were fine! (in the voice of the character)
JR. Forasteros 1:01:56
Like what if these were all horrible misunderstandings? Yeah.
Seth Price 1:02:01
(laughter)
That's funny. All right. So final question, which is slightly more serious, but you can take it wherever you want. So when someone comes to you, and they're like, I don't understand what God is, and you're trying to wrap words around, whatever that is. What is that?
JR. Forasteros 1:02:14
That's a great question. You know, I usually try to start from a place wherever they are, right? So if they have some kind of religious background. I like to do the Aquinas thing of God is not right. So God is not a hateful rule, following judge. God is not a cruel taskmaster who doesn't want you to have fun. God is not the righteous person who can't wait to smite you and send you to hell. I tend to start with the idea that God is an all loving creator, who is the source of life and good. And so especially if I'm early in a faith conversation with someone, I try not to even tie it super super specifically to Christianity yet.
Like, for instance, I have a good friend whose whole family is Hindu. And she came to Christ, I think in high school or right after high school. And she and I were talking one time about how anxious she feels about talking about religion with her family. And I said, “Well, why?” And she's like, “well, because they're Hindu. And I'm Christian,” as well, sure. But like, why is that make you so anxious? Right? And she said, Well, I just, I just hate having to tell them, they're wrong about everything. And I was like, well, are they wrong about everything?
And, you know, we kind of played with that for a while. And I said, you know, if you have someone who's an earnest Hindu, then there are things that they believe about Jesus, that are true. And there are things they believe about God that are good and true and praiseworthy. And you can actually affirm those things and meet them in those spaces and understand that God is present with them in those spaces. A good friend of mine, who's a Fascinating co-host, Matt Mikalatos he actually has a book on evangelism. One of my favorite stories about evangelism he ever tells is that he was doing us with Campus Crusade for Christ, which is now called CREW. And they were sharing they would they would do this thing where they walk up people and just say, Hey, would you like to have a spiritual conversation? And then if they say, yes, they want to talk about they just, you know, then they again, they just try to be present with that person and be a spiritual companion to them.
So he walked up to this kid on a college campus one time and said, “Hey, would you be interested having a spiritual conversation”? Guy lit up like a Christmas tree, right. He's like, “Yes, I would love to. That's like, Oh, great. said Okay, good. What do you want to talk about? He goes, Well, here's something you need to know about me. I'm the most Buddhist person you'll ever meet”. Of course, Matt's like, Oh, no. He's like, I'm so Buddhist. My Buddhist family always tells me to chill out with all the Buddhists and stuff. That's like, Okay, great. So like, What? What do you want to talk about? Because, well, here's my question, said Buddha was very clear that he's not God and that we should not worship him as a God, but all of my Buddhist family worships him like God, and it makes me so mad.
Because Buddha specifically said I'm not God, don't worship me. Like, I just wish that if there was someone who was God, they would say, Hey, guys, I'm God, and you should worship me. And Matt goes, can I introduce you to someone? Kid goes, Yeah, absolutely. So he, he gives him some passages from the Gospels to read. And the kid reads them. And Matt goes, What do you think about that, and the kid goes, I guess I'm a Christian now, I love Jesus, and I want to worship Him.
And so Matt makes the point, like it was this kid's faithful Buddhism that was the Spirit's way of preparing his heart to receive the gospel seed. And it was, it was his very devotion to Buddhism that would have caused a lot of people to write him off as a lost cause. That actually made him the perfect fertile soil to receive the gospel. And so for me, when I approach someone who wants to know who God is, who has the spiritual questions, that's what I'm always trying to do is if they're asking me this question, or if this is a conversation we're entering into, that means that the Spirit is already present in their life somewhere and already at work in their life somewhere. And the ground has been tilled, such that they're coming to me and asking this question. Especially as I'm a pastor, right? Like, no one comes to me and just asked me unless they want to get into it, because I like to get into it.
And so yeah, I don't have like a go to answer for that. I'm always trying to look and ask like, how is God already present? How is God already at work? And then I want to point those things out to them, and then invite them to take another step closer to Jesus.
Seth Price 1:06:27
You're in 27 corners of the internet. Where do you want people to go?
JR. Forasteros 1:06:32
So @jrforastero, says, everything that I have. So that's the easiest places to find me.
Yeah, so Twitter, Facebook, all of that. My, my main, my main podcast that's active right now is the Fascinating Podcast. So if you want to hear more of that, that's what I do. And if you do like horror movies, while this is going up at Halloween, you'll probably just have missed it. But on my Instagram and Facebook stories right now, I'm doing monster movie madness. So I'm pairing up classic monster movies and inviting my people to vote for them.
Seth Price 1:07:03
Do Facebook stories also go away after a day?
JR. Forasteros 1:07:06
Yes, because Facebook bought Instagram. And so they port over from Instagram. So it's the same exact thing. But it's great for voting because then people only have 24 hours to vote. Once they do that they're gone. And then I get to like, move on in the poll. So it's good for certain things.
Seth Price 1:07:22
So for me, the way I use social media, I don't get notifications at all. So if I'm there, I want to be there. And I'm only there for like 20 minutes, and then I'm gone. Because I can't stop arguing with people.
JR. Forasteros 1:07:36
You're not their target demographic.
Seth Price 1:07:38
I guess that's fair. I'm fine with that. I don't feel obligated to use every feature. I don't watch every show on Netflix.
JR. Forasteros 1:07:42
But we do on Hulu, every show! We watch every show. #broughttoyoubyHulu
Seth Price 1:07:46
That's the title of the episode brought to you by Hulu #Delilahwasright. So thank you for your evening. I really appreciate it.
JR. Forasteros 1:07:59
This has been so much fun, Seth. Thank you so much.
Seth Price 1:08:15
I want to again, thank JR. for his time, and encourage you to have a great and fantastic week and beginning of fall with your family. Again, thank you to the patrons of the show. If you haven't rated and reviewed the show, do that as well, because it costs no money. And you can do it I think on every platform. It helps other people find the show when they are looking for podcasts. So consider doing that.
A huge thank you to one of what's become my new favorite addictions when it comes to music to the band OLY for their permission to use their music in this episode, that song Vapor. By the time you hear this about two and a half, three weeks now it has been on repeat a couple times a day for me and about halfway through. I don't know why like my heart's sore is with the music and maybe it's the horns, maybe it's the lyrics maybe it's all of that. Who knows. Maybe it's seratonin and too much caffeine, but it doesn't matter.
You can find their music in the link in the show notes or on Spotify for the playlist that is for the music from the show, but consider supporting them. Especially now (that) concerts are a thing that are hard to come by everything is crazy and consider supporting the musicians that that lender music to the show.
You are beloved and blessed. Born beautiful, not broken.
I'll talk with you next week.