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.
Colby Martin 0:00
I have come to learn that by and large, as humans, we do not come to like a mental decision about something, which then trickles down to how we feel about it. More often than not, and almost exclusively, we end up feeling a particular way about something and then come up with a mental justification for why we feel that way. Like this is really how human cognition works-our brains are just slightly behind our hearts. If you want to use those two metaphors, which is often times why people, let's just say they are if they're in this example, someone's not affirming one of the best paths to help move a person towards an affirming theological posture towards queer people, is for them to get to know and to have it humanized for them, to have a gay person be their friend, which is why TV shows and other things like it, it opens up the heart. When the heart is opened up, because the mind can't go where the heart is unwilling too, so the heart has to go first. We have to have an openness in your heart space to at least consider it before your mind would ever allow it.
Seth Price 1:38
Well, hey, you how are you? I am Seth this the Can I Say This At Church podcast. Thank you for listening a good show for you today; actually, a fantastic show for you today. So Colby Martin joins the show. And we talk a bit about shifting from a conservative view of Christianity or a conservative belief system. of Christianity to something that's not that and you can give that a lot of different names. I think a lot of us, especially a lot of people listening to shows like this, are somewhere in the middle of that and so am I. But I have to say thank you to the newest patron Rachel. And so I know what you want to do right now you're about to try to skip over the next few seconds because you know what I'm about to say I'm going to say you know, write and review the show, and you know, do Patreon, tell your friends etc. And I know that you wanted to skip this and it's been difficult because you know, the buttons are really small on the screen, or maybe you're using it to the Apple Watch, and you just can't do it. And by the time you know you wanted to skip it, you would come back and realize you should have just, I mean rate and reviewed or told somebody about the show, or join the community there at Patreon and help the show continue to grow. You financially make this possible and so thank you to every single one of you so, so much.
So here we go, a Conversation with Colby Martin, where we hit on so many topics that I think are vitally important to the way that we do faith and community together.
Seth Price 3:33
Colby Martin, welcome to the show on a late evening for me, early evening for you because we live on a continent that also happens to be a country but I'm excited that you're here.
Colby Martin 3:43
What up, Seth? This is good. Yes, it's good. Good to see you. It's good to meet you. It's good to be on. I'm realizing now.
Seth Price 3:50
II’m realizing now, and the people that can't see the video won't know this but the book cover matches your your wall there and I'm wondering if that was unintentional. Did you choose the cover intentionally?
Colby Martin 4:00
No, no, we chose that house color intentionally.
So every time I launched a book, we just rebranded the entire house. (laughter from Seth) That way, whatever selfies taken whatever videos, just everything's on brand for like three years now and now people who aren't patron supporters who don't get the video, are gonna have to go get the video just for that moment.
Seth Price 4:25
I haven't laughed like that in a few days. So I don't know if you know this or not, you probably don't, so I work at a bank. And so my life has been overtaken with the payroll protection loans, and it has not been filled with joy. It's actually been filled with a lot of, “I'm trying the best I can here”. So I really appreciate that laugh, haven’t had one like that in a while. What do you want people to know about you when you're like, Alright, I have 90 seconds. Here's what makes me, me. And I mean, outside of the platitudes of, I'm a husband, I'm a father, I'm a human being…
Colby Martin 4:54
Oh geez, there goes my favorites!
Seth Price 4:55
Like, what are the important things for you that you're like, if you don't know anything else about me, here's what you need. To know.
Colby Martin 5:00
So for those who familiar with the enneagram, I am, strong(ly), identify type three in the enneagram. Which in a nutshell means that I fundamentally, at my core, struggle to believe that I have worth and value just for who I am. That I have along the way through combination of nature and nurture picked up messages that has instilled inside of me a belief that I am only worth that which I can produce and achieve in the world. And so my entire life has been a constant pursuit of achieving and performing and being the best at everything so that I can have worth, so that I can feel like I matter, and I belong.
So I am aware of that can became aware of that sort of phenomenon number of years ago through therapy and other things. So I'm a work in progress who's aware of now what it is that it motivates me and drives me so I can hopefully, you know, use that in good and helpful ways and not in sort of destructive, ego, drag me down ways. So yeah, so that's me, I love to perform and achieve and I love to create things and I love to be the best. And that doesn't always serve me well it oftentimes gets me in trouble. But it's also, you know, I am who I am and I like me.
I can grow large beards. Again, if you're not a patron, I do recommend you supporting Seths podcast
Seth Price 6:29
…or just buy the book. I mean, it's (pic of beard) in there.
Colby Martin 6:32
Okay, so just to go back to the earlier thing about the whole house on brand. I got those headshots taken when I had a rather large beard. And over the next several months, my sweet wife kind of got tired of the massive amounts of hair on my face, and politely dropped. not so subtle hints, that she would love if I shaved. But I'm like, babe, my book comes out and I've already got this giant beard. I've committed to this look for a season so we just have to get through the interviews and the media for this season and then I can bring the beard back to a more reasonable length.
Seth Price 7:10
Yeah, my four, almost five, year old will just grab mine and mine is by no means as prosperous as yours.
Colby Martin 7:18
Robust? Oregonian native…lumberjackian?
Seth Price 7:22
I would love for it to be but the bank, I have to keep it clean. Yeah, every it's like, it's really annoying every week and a half or so I have to take it back to a five which really just breaks my heart. But anyway,…
Colby Martin 7:34
That's why I became a pastor so that I would have the freedom to grow a large beard.
Seth Price 7:39
So my pastor is also a three. I've oftentimes heard him say that many pastors are a three. Would you agree with that? I don't know if that's true or not, but something about what did he say one time he's like, the three in me likes being up here on this stage. And if you'll let me get unhealthy, I'm gonna twist that whole narrative so I get to stay up here on this stage and make you want it. Please don't let me do that. And I'm really badly paraphrasing that…
Colby Martin 8:08
I mean, the shadow, dark, gross side of threes is that we are incredibly gifted at manipulation and deceit; that is one of our second languages. So I could absolutely buy into the premise that the pulpit is a particularly natural cesspool for all of the three’s shadows to shine really well and to perform and put on the good image and sort of twist and manipulate and yeah, it's gross. But look, every number has their gross I'm just being honest about what mine is.
Seth Price 8:46
And so the reason I think I read so much, so I am a five which oddly enough my pastor also called me he's like the reason that I know you're a five is that you had to read 97 books about all of the numbers before you decided on a five.
Colby Martin 9:02
A thorough explanation of every single number.
Seth Price 9:04
Yeah, but that's why I can't not read voraciously. So that's not why I brought you on. So you wrote a book that I think is what's called The Shift and I like that word, because it implies motion. Although when I read the word shift, what I think about is scree, like on the side of a mountain, and I could not get that image out of my mind as I thought about religion as I read your book. I don't know if that was intentional. That's probably just me with too many books in my head.
Colby Martin 9:32
I don't even know what you mean.
Seth Price 9:34
A scree is like when you're hiking down a mountain, and you come up about a bunch of loose rocks. And so you'll begin down the trail, and it just gives way and you're just you're shifting, you're going with it, but the entire side of the face is just shifting. It's like an avalanche except for it's not an avalanche. It's called a scree but it's constantly shifting. You can't walk on it and it not shift, but explain to me what you mean when you when you say the word “shift”?
Colby Martin 9:58
What I'm trying to name is the phenomenon that I have both experienced personally and then witnessed through my ministry over the last six years. The phenomenon of people either leaving or getting kicked out of and sort of being shown the door. But having some exit from what I describe as a more conservative Christian context, this could be church, this could be community, this could be family for many people. But they're moving away from that conservative Christian context and towards something you know, I use the word progressive we can unpack that in a minute but I'm just trying to name that there's a spectrum of things like belief and and praxis or behavior and actions. There's a spectrum of conservative to progressive, and when people are leaving the more conservative Christian community and moving towards something more open, inclusive, progressive (that) this is what I'm trying to name. This is what I'm trying to give language to and normalize and really with this book, help people survive the obstacles that seem to common and inherent in that journey. And so that's for me that's the shift, the moving from the conservative to the more progressive spectrum of Christianity.
Seth Price 11:08
Can you define both those because I think the word conservative gets conscripted by politics the same way that the word mask has become conscripted by politics in the world that we live in. And progressive also has its own pejorative meaning versus I think the way that you are using it; so what do you mean when you say, conservative and in this case, we'll call it Christianity or faith, which is another word we'll probably have to unpack later but and then the same thing for progressive?
Colby Martin 11:34
Yeah, so this is the problem with labels is they're helpful, right up until they're not. So I love labels, they help you give a sense of where the boundaries are, the parameters are (and) they give you some location of where you reside in relation to other people. So labels can be helpful. And then they're just always will have their limitations or they'll always be begging for us to transcend them at some point.
So I struggled with whether or not to go with, to really hunker down with, a progressive Christian thing, but I feel like at least those two words get close enough in the ballpark to sort of what it is that I how I embody and embrace my spirituality. So when I'm talking about the spectrum of conservative or progressive Christianity, what I'm trying to name is that if you go more toward the conservative, and again, this is a spectrum, these are not defined boxes and markers. If you go more toward the conservative end, you're moving towards a system of belief that sort of fundamentally buys into the fact that the truth has already been figured out. We've locked it down. It has been transcribed by the divine and codified and our job now is to just get the right beliefs and lock it down. Conserve those right beliefs and lock it down. We already have the truth revealed to us the most important thing is that you believe it, and then don't move from that.
Then as you move toward the other end of the spectrum, what I try to talk about with progressive is kind of the idea of a progressive is someone who believes that, like progress is good progress is out there. And I know there's even limitations in that, because I don't think life is about a constant chasing of the carrot, that sounds exhausting. But the point is, is that that growth and transformation and evolution, and expansion of consciousness, all of these I think, are good things and should not be feared. They're feared by conservative because again, it's over here, we just want to lock it down.
And so on the conservative to progressive spectrum, we're talking about people who are moving towards something more open, more curious, more comfortable with ambiguity, certainly more open to the idea of paradox. So that's kind of the conservative to progressive. For me in the book. I say that a progressive person, I kind of create four markers that I say progressive person has at least these four things or if you are these four things, then you at least sort of fit within what I'm labeling and progressive. I'll just hit those really quick.
One is that the person is affirming of LGBTQ people. That has, you know, become a rather fascinating litmus test in Western Christianity over the last couple decades, where if you are basically affirming, you're okay with gay people, then you are just instantly catapulted into the progressive end of the pool. Whereas if you are not affirming, then you are probably more labeled towards the conservative side.
Number two, a progressive person has a degree of comfort and appreciation for the sciences. So here we understand that biology, sociology, we understand those things help reveal more truth and we're not afraid of what they might have to offer. Whereas more towards the conservative spectrum, yeah, we've got contention against climate change, we've got the idea that the earth is only 6000 years old, like scientific truth becomes a threat over on the other side.
Number three, like I mentioned earlier, there's a sense of which progress is good and you accept change and transformation as a part of life.
And then number four. I think as well, another marker is that you can talk about how people accept and understand the genders as it relates to the equality of men and women. So if you move more towards the conservative end of the Christian spectrum, you're gonna find yourself in places where men are better than women; men are superior to women. Even if it's 51-49% at the end of the day, they'd be like man's the head of the household. And so there's like a hierarchy there. Move towards the progressive end, and you've got much more egalitarian postures of men and women are both, God made them both in the image of God. So yeah, so that was probably longer than needed to be but there's, that's how I would define
Seth Price 15:57
I like those because it gives me room to edit if need be, but I'm not going to because I liked all of that. So I do want to come back to gender because honestly, that is the page that I have marked here to ask a question about. But I want to ask a question a bit about litmus test. So I find, and I think it might be partly because I do a podcast so openly that people will just ask questions; I don't know why, because I'm not qualified to answer any of them. But I point people in the right direction, or at least other directions and give no answers because that's not my job. Probably not yours, either. Maybe it is, but it's definitely not, not mine. I'll stick in my banking arena. And that's it. Yeah, I'm good at that.
I find that when people will be…they'll shift to use your word, but it's the correct word. They'll shift their belief from A to B and they'll become just as rigid in that other belief. But oftentimes, they have a similar lacking amount of knowledge to back up why they shifted. They know that they should be shifting or they feel like that's what the Spirit is calling into or whatever. But then I'll ask them why and there's no grounds to stand on. So I'm curious, your thoughts on that a bit of when people are shifting, you're like, Well, why do you believe that homosexuality is fine? You're like, well, I think that it's not not fine. But why do you believe that it is fine! “Well, I listened to a podcast”…or…
Colby Martin 17:14
I watched Modern Family. (Tv show)
Seth Price 17:16
Yeah, and some of that is culturally, it's becoming more acceptable, and it's on more and more, and that's but that's not really an answer. Like, that's just a thing.
Colby Martin 17:24
Yeah. Okay. Two thoughts. The first is, I love that. That's even, like you said earlier, you're an enneagram five. So for you the idea that someone would not have like an answer for what they're, like a some way to backup and articulate their conviction for you is like what was wrong with you! You're doing it wrong! But other people may not necessarily need to have such data to hold a conviction as dearly or securely. So that’s just one observation is your question makes sense knowing now that about you.
The other thing I would say is this, I have come to learn that by and large as humans, we do not come to like a mental decision about something, which then trickles down to how we feel about it. More often than not, and almost exclusively, we end up feeling a particular way about something and then come up with the mental justification for why we feel that way. Like this is really how human cognition works as our brains are just slightly behind our hearts, if you want to use those two metaphors. Which is often times why people let's just say they are if they're in this example, someone's not affirming one of the best paths to help move a person towards an affirming theological posture towards queer people, is for them to get to know and to have it humanized for them. Have a gay person their friend.
Which is why TV shows and other things like it opens up the heart and when the heart is opened up, because the mind can't go where the heart is unwilling too so the heart has to go first-we have to have an openness in your heart space to at least consider it before your mind would ever allow it. So I think what happens, I think the phenomenon that you're describing is that people's hearts have moved, which generally we we feel ways about things, and then we justify them. We're not as smart as we think we are. We don't come to issues and just be like, I shall now with an objective mind, decide what I think about this thing. It's just not how it works. So I think a lot of people end up, they end up shifting and moving in very human and normal ways. And maybe they just haven't had the time, or the space, or the motivation, or the interest really in sort of backfilling that with real solid data.
Seth Price 19:59
Can I tell you I like that answer, but that last part of that answer really breaks my heart. And I'm aware that that's just because of the way that I'm wired. Like, I have to know how things work for so here's just an example aside of everything, so I looked at the census data, I did the trends, because I'm a nerd. And I realized in the matter of like, when my son graduates high school in less than a decade, Christianity won't be the primary religion and I know very little about any of the other ones that will be. And I was like, well, this is going to be a problem so I that's all that I've been reading for the last four or five weeks is just that because I'm like, this is I don't know how to have a conversation in earnest because I'm expecting them to know about me. And that's not fair. Anyway, you would have been sued like the lack of data just bothers me. But I guess I get it. I don't actually get it…I’m lying. I don't get it. But that's okay.
So gender you you said in the book that you've gone What a decade more than a decade of not speaking about God with a gender based pronoun, correct. I felt like it was 10 years. 12 years?
Colby Martin 20:59
Yeah. I don't know if I’m at 10, oh, yeah, yeah, it was like as 2010-2011 when I, when I sort of started making the conscious decision to move away from masculine pronouns.
Seth Price 21:08
So why does that matter? Like, what does? Why?
Colby Martin 21:13
Yeah, why does that matter? The simplest way I can describe it is to say, the more that we connect with our language, and languages, you know, is one of the best tools we have for sort of understanding the world around us in our experience and how we relate, so the words we use matter. They have great power to, you know, fill in the thoughts in our mind. So the words that we use about God, the way that we talk about God, the more that we connect our idea of God with a masculine-whether it's pronouns, he, him, his, or whether it's just some sort of, we're connecting it to maleness in anyway, the more that we do that, we do not have the option to, to not be impacted by the inverse of that, which is to connect maleness and masculinity with divine.
Those two things, we can't just have one without the other. So then, if we are exclusively using male pronouns for God, (with) the whole rest of our being we're sending messages that godliness is akin to maleness and the inverse of that, therefore has to be true as well that maleness is closer to godliness, at least than female. So, in the book I have you know, the chapter on God I do I spend time saying, if the reader has an already considered, I would encourage the reader to consider stopping using male pronouns for God; or at least add in some female ones to balance it out. Because when we think that divinity is more connected to maleness, and again, nobody really says that out loud. We don't say that explicitly. But that's what's happening. That's the thing behind the thing when we talk about goddess, he and him, we are linking and connecting closer to divinity to divineness with male things, and therefore that is creating a superiority over and against female and femininity. And that's a problem, I think.
Seth Price 23:25
So, I have two thoughts, and I want to want to stay in this chapter for a minute. So the first thought that I had was, what if I stood up and I said, the Lord's Prayer, but it said, of our father who art in heaven, and I said, Our mother who are in heaven, and I literally had visions of people throwing things at me, as a pastor yourself, like, what would happen in a random church? If somebody just actually intentionally started inverting off the pronouns just as a proof of concept or a proof of point? Like, would it cause harm, would it do you think it would cause trauma like the overall the person not necessarily reading your book, like, would it be helpful like how do you begin preparing people to even have a conversation about God in that manner?
Colby Martin 24:05
Yeah, I mean, if it happens at our church, that's just the normal Sunday. But I hear what you're saying.
No, by the way to answer your question, would it cause harm and trauma?
No, it wouldn't do either one of those things. In my opinion, harm and trauma, I think are words that should be reserved for some pretty, you know, severe instances. And having somebody theological conception of the Divine rattled for a hot minute to me does not yet go into the space of harm and trauma. But it would unsettle people, absolutely, or it could unsettled people. So I would say that, that sort of movement sort of shift, like with all shifts, should be taken with intention and care and mindfulness. And the goals of…I was a pastor at a church and I myself was shifting away from thinking of God as just he and him and wanted to start helping move the community along. I would probably not just, you know, absent of any context just open up the Lord's Prayer and do that although also I do sort of like the dramatic the flare the drop in the grenade so maybe part of me would want to do that.
But no, I think Seth that those are feathers that I'm okay ruffling because I think this issue is matters enough and is important enough that yeah, I think people need to have their feathers ruffled a bit on that.
Seth Price 25:38
There's another part in here, so you're talking about just for context for you, you said you or is it that you share the the fact that you stopped referring to God as a he, as it illustrates a process of journeying towards a more progressive expressing of Christianity, and then you use an analogy, or metaphor, I always get those two confused:
it's like a series of falling dominoes and the sequence of the dominoes, which knocks down Domino which knocks down which belief in what order varies from person to person.
And I get that I understand that because for me, it's very similar. If I go back through my journals, I can see like one thing to the next to the next. But as I actually was reviewing that, that made me go back and review. There are some sections of that journal that have more gravity. That Domino was a bigger Domino. So for you personally, what are a few of those dominoes that you're like? Yeah, when this one fell, that one came to the floor and like some of them just fell, and it wasn't a big deal. But this one caved maybe the floor and maybe your family's floor in because they're parallel to you, because they live with you or whatever. Like, what are some of those dominoes that had more weight?
Colby Martin 26:46
Yeah, well, so my first book was, in part dedicated to telling the story of the domino that changed everything, which was the theological inclusion of LGBTQ people. So when I shifted on that sort of more traditional belief that had a resounding impact on me vocationally, because I got fired from my job just for having different theological point. So it really altered the course of my life. But then it also had a significant sort of slippery slope. You know, a lot of people on the conservative end of the spectrum talk about, well be careful of a slippery slope, and they're not wrong. This is the thing they're not wrong like once you start asking questions of things that have been fundamentally held, and been resistant to questions, it does open up a just sort of onslaught of questioning “this” and questioning “that” and questioning “that”.
So I think many people and this is my experience is that the LGBTQ? Once you have sort of shifted on that, then you do start asking, Well, what has the church sort of held on to for a great many number of years that I personally haven't really spent any time asking questions about? And that Domino led to, for me the domino of moving away from a complementarian view of men being better than women and moving towards a more egalitarian view of men and women. And then the other significant Domino, I would say, is one that I'm still unsure what to do with-but it's the idea of God, perhaps not “being a being”. The idea that maybe God isn't this being that is, you know, the Biblical writers talked about “up there”, you know, they were in a three tiered universe, that God is up in the sky, and we live on the earth and then down below his place of the dead. And now we have telescopes so we know that there's no God up there.
We just then changed the metaphor to out there we talk about God as being out there. But even then, I sort of reject the idea that if you just go out far enough for some point you're going to find a being. So I think for me, I've shifted away from idea of God as a being that just interacts with Earth. Why Earth? I don't know Earth randomly? Who knows when, who knows why. So that one's had some real resoundingly ramifications, you know, it's affected my prayer life. It's affected the way that I sort of think about the trajectory of the world. So I'm still sort of, you know, that one's unsettled me in the book, I give the reader some alternative ways to conceive of God outside of just a separate “being”. So some of those have been helpful for me. That’s been a big Dominoe
Seth Price 29:43
Yeah, in the book. I think you called it “an event”. God has an event.
Colby Martin 29:49
Yes. God has event.
Seth Price 29:51
Yeah, I like that.
Colby Martin 29:52
Yeah. Had you come across that before?
Seth Price 29:54
Not in that way, but I've approached that question from a different angle personally. Like what, like I just so Colby just for me like, I find hell as a metaphor, not as a literal place, because if it's not a literal place, it has to be something. And so it's got to have a literary way to be relevant. So I find Hell as like anytime that I actively choose to break Shalom, and that shalom would be when I actively choose to help create God's kingdom. And so when I read you saying event, it's me partnering in this event, or party, or creatio,n or manipulation of matter, or whatever you want to call it. The best way I've ever been able to describe God is it's a metaphor that I don't have words to explain, personally, and so I don't have a good way to explain what that is; it’s just not actually possible at all.
Seth Price 31:49
I literally laughed out on the couch when I read this party book. So in this section where you talk about weaponizing the Bible and you're right, someone that is shifting towards progressive for those that haven't read the book Again, you should read both of them actually, they're both very good. People will just quote Scripture at you, to which I usually also, to be a jerk will quote back that you search for God and scriptures, but you're missing it. I'm right here, which is a bad paraphrase of Jesus, if you keep quoting Scripture to me, but Jesus said, You're still missing the point. They don't usually get that though.
But there's a part in there where you're talking about weaponizing the Bible and the Bible says, and I would like to talk about that a bit. But then you talk about like getting an email or a Facebook page with just a random Matthew section or a random Isaiah verse. And then I'm assuming you did this intentionally; you just randomly dropped three random verses with no context there.
Colby Martin 32:42
That's right.
Seth Price 32:44
Which I then stopped and look up, which makes you a punk. I have to assume that was intentional. (laughter both) So what do you mean when you say that people weaponize the Bible?
Colby Martin 32:54
Yeah, they cherry pick, which we all do. And the quicker people can get on board with the idea that we all pick and choose, the better because we do all pick and choose and there's nothing wrong with that. But you know, in my more conservative evangelical days, there was a strict denial. I don't…we don't pick and choose, we take every word
Seth Price 33:15
As long as Paul said it
Colby Martin 33:20
That's right, we don’t take every word at face value. So let's just acknowledge that, yes, we do we prioritize some verses more than others. And we recognize that the Bible contradicts itself. And so we have to sometimes sort of make choices about what to do with that.
So when people weaponize the Bible, my experience has been, (that) they find kind of like you did with the whole, you know, quoting or borrowing Jesus, we find these verses that support our feelings; to even go back we talked about a minute ago, where a person's feelings so in this scenario, someone is maybe witnessing a friend of theirs or a family member, in their mind leave the faith. So they have the you know, the capital “Concern” for their friend that is asking questions, or having these doubts or beliefs or no longer practicing the religion that they want to practice.
And what's happening for them is that inside their beings, all of their fears and insecurities are getting triggered. They're all getting activated. Because we have been given a system that tells us that the most important thing to God, the thing that God cares about most in the whole world, is what human beings believe! The ideas that we hold between our ears, we're told, is the most important thing to God. That we have to believe the right things.
So then when people start seeing their friends or their family members or their pastors start to no longer buy into the things that we've always been told. That raises all these inner sorts of doubts and insecurities of like, wait a minute, you don't get to question that! And the fact that you're questioning that reminds me that I have questions, but I've been suppressing those for years, and I don't want to face those! So I need to sort of push you away. And so what ends up happening is in order to manage and assuage that anxiety and that fear, they end up grabbing these Bible verses and sort of launching them as grenades to try and basically get you back into the fold.
They are trying to “spank you”, you know, they're trying to use methods of discipline and rebuke, to try to get you back into the sheep pen. And it's painful, it's so painful to have these words, that for people for their for many parts of their lives they have cherished and they have given themselves to, they tried to understand they've tried to allow these these these holy, sacred inspired words to have this place of influence and leadership and priority in their life. And then suddenly, to have these words be used against them as ways to try to shame them back into old versions of belief or behavior is just some of the most painful experiences which ends up turning people away from the Bible for a really long time, if not for good. A lot of people that make the shift sort of leave the Bible behind all together, and it makes so much sense.
Seth Price 36:10
The only way that I was able to come back to the Bible, well, there were two ways. So I bought Robert Alter’s version of the Hebrew Bible, which feeds the part of my brain that needs to rip things apart. Have you ever seen his role in the Bible? No, I'll have to show you after the recording is done, because it'll break the computer, how to get it, it's like behind all the cables. So it is three volumes, it's probably eight inches wide, or eight inches…yeah…width is the word that I'm looking for, like, Genesis is, I think, 300 pages. Because he basically breaks down every verse like every way to translate it with all the context and all the hyperlinks throughout the entire Hebrew Bible, which I love.
And then there's a version of the Bibliotheca, which basically stripped away all of the verses and all of the chapters and all the it's just basically more like a scroll-which made it more of a narrative for me and I could begin re-engaging in it. So I agree. I also pick and choose intentionally, everybody does. You're absolutely right. Everybody has a bias. Every translation has a bias. And if you don't believe me, and you're listening, go to the beginning of your Bible, and you'll see it in the copyright and then you can go to that company or translator and it will tell you what their biases is like they literally all have a narrative they're trying to spin.
What then do I do with the Bible? Furthermore, then after that, like because that that that's a shaky foundation for many people. If the dominoes were not falling prior, now they don't have anywhere to sit, just literally gravity is taking hold. So what do I do with the Bible? If I, if that's where we're at? And then furthermore, what do I do with Jesus after that?
Colby Martin 37:46
Oh, yes, I guess those are connected, aren't they?
I think for each person is going to be it's going to be different for me, when I sort of went through my shift. I went from a person who loved, memorized, studied, interpreted, like the Bible was my life for for a number of years. And again in that system, the goal is to get the right belief and to lock it down. And so really the assumption was, there's only one correct way to read the Bible. Now, of course, throughout history, there have been thousands of ways that people have read the Bible. But the illusion is that there's just one singular way. Now who got the most right and when, who knows? But the illusion is that there is one correct way to read the Bible. And there are two “i” words that come to mind its “inerrant” and it's “infallible”. Inerrant is essentially saying it has no errors in it is factually correct. Which for people who have eyes to see and ears to hear they will discover that it is not just simply is not it is full of air, is full of historical and geographical. It is full of contradictions.
It's just not inerrant and we can there's so much freedom and just laying that down and no longer having to the the mental gymnastics you'd have to go through to try and reconcile. Why did one disciple say there was two angels there but the other one said there was one? Well, maybe it's because one guy had an eye-patch on and he just couldn't see out of the left side of it. You know, we just we go through all these weird ways to try to make, just lay it all down be like, you know what, the Bible's not inerrant. Okay, that shouldn't terrify us then because what we were told then is it's either all true, or none of its true. And there was no space in between, for there to still be this rich depth of beauty and truth in the Bible.
And then infallible was another word that that more conservative Christians hold on to which is that if you interpret this correctly, and use it correctly, then it will not lead you astray. To which I say that that does not hold up to scrutiny of the 2000 years of Christianity. Because we have gone astray in some pretty horrific ways, inquisitions, slavery, segregation, like all of those had justification in the Bible. So the Bible is not infallible.
You can interpret it and find yourself on a really dark as you said earlier “hellish” path. So those are two words that I had to sort of disconnect from how I came to the Bible and realized, okay, those are actually, not only are they incorrect, but they're holding me back. But there was another “i” word, Seth, that I used to love and I still do love and I just have a little bit different meaning of it, and that's “inspired”. So I actually still do think that the Bible is an inspired library, an inspired collection, of stories and poems, and letters. And it's this hard fought wisdom and this insight into what it means to be human. This trajectory of how these this groups of people have tried to figure out who they are and who they are in relation to themselves and who they are in relation to one another. Trying to figure out what is the meaning of life, like, who is who or what is behind this whole thing?
Like we have this amazing record of these people's wrestling with this. This is hard fought wisdom, a lot of the truths that are in here have been earned over centuries of people working these things out. And I'm just not at a place where I feel comfortable dismissing all of that, putting all that away and saying, you know, because of its foibles, because of the way that it's been weaponized, and again, all of that's real, I'm not discounting all that. But to just set it all aside for me is to then to say,” Well, I don't know that if we just started from scratch in 2020, that we're going to be a whole lot better off”. Now again, I just created a false dichotomy where the Bible is the only source of wisdom or we have nothing, no, there's other sources of wisdom.
But for me, the Bible is still very much sort of divinely inspired, which for me means that it was driven by and it points to what is most true, most real, most beautiful. And I still love the Bible, I just I recognize that it's not for everyone, or that people need seasons in which they can safely detach from the Bible because it was used so maliciously against them.
Seth Price 42:23
Fair enough.
And then the other part of that question. So where do we fit Jesus into that with that interpretation of the Bible? I know what my answer is, but I'm curious for yours.
Colby Martin 42:36
I mean, were it not for the Bible, we wouldn't know about Jesus. I mean, there's like three other historical documents that kind of semi point to this guy named Jesus that lived. So obviously, if you take the Bible out of it, then you lose Jesus.
For me, though, once you can, again, back away from the idea that the Bible is inerrant, that it's infallible, you can start to look at the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and you can start to see how each of them were written. You talked about the beginning of each Bible having a bias for each gospel writer had a bias. Each gospel writer had a thing they were trying to accomplish with their gospel, which is completely legit, like that doesn't make them bad. That doesn't make the documents now somehow less good. It’s just they were trying to, Matthew is trying to, show fellow Jewish Christians that Jesus actually was sort of a manifestation of this long anticipation of becoming Messiah. John was trying to do something entirely different.
So what you see is that, all four of these authors are trying to do different things. And so that means they tell the story, sometimes different. They move pieces around, because they're doing different things with it. Suddenly, you have this playfulness, I have found with the Gospels this playfulness, where it's not that I'm reading this fly on the wall account of a man named Jesus. It's not that I'm reading this hundred percent historically accurate document. What I'm reading is the way that this individual and his relatively short life, but his profound life and his profound teaching and his way that he sort of connected with other humans, it had a massive…it made a big difference in people's lives. So much so that there's all sort of movement grows around his teachings and around his way of life. And people tried to come up with accounts to try to encapsulate that.
So I come to it and I'm like, what were they sort of so driven by, and so fascinated with, and how did it make a difference in their life? Is there anything how it was the parallel in my life? So? Yeah, the connection between Bible and Jesus is necessary because we need it to sort of understand the picture of Jesus. But my hope is that we can have a larger, more playful picture of Jesus and not lock ourselves into this expectation that everything that is said in the gospels was actually said by Jesus.
No, it really, it really wasn't! And that's okay. That's okay. Like the Gospel of John, good chance that most of the things that Jesus didn't actually say. But the person who wrote the gospel was trying to communicate particular things that were true for them about Jesus. And that just doesn't threaten me anymore. It used to be really threatening and now it's not,
Seth Price 45:28
it doesn't threaten me either. I'm gonna tell you about a different book when we're done with all this, I think you'll enjoy it. If you like big books
Colby Martin 45:39
and I cannot lie Can I Say This At Church?
Seth Price 45:48
Absolutely, we you did already.
So take that last 15 minutes where we talk about inerrancy. I mean, there's a lot in there. There's a part I forget where it is an Exodus. I remember reading it a few weeks ago. It talks about don't do this on the Sabbath. But the Sabbath doesn't come for like two chapters later. And I'm like, well, that's, that's cool. Like I could picture myself going in again, in a literal interpretation. Like you said, don't do it on the “when”? What is that? I won't do it. Tell me what it is so that I know what to not do. It just doesn't make any sense.
So at the end of all of this COVID-19 thing, and we're allowed to sit down with our family and our close friends or even people in our church and like, “hey, Colby, what have you been learning what you've been praying about? What is God showing you tell me about what's happened since I haven't seen you in four months”? And you go over what you just went over the last 10-15 minutes or so they read your book, and they're like, I'm waiting to see you. “We kind of need to talk”.
I struggle personally with having this type of conversation with my family because they're just not comfortable with it. And it's not healthy at all. How do I do that? Like, how would you advise people and there's a lot of those people that this podcast is not in a vacuum like it. There are many like this. How does that happen as both a pastor and then as someone that I'm sure has had these conversations with people pulling you aside like I don't know what to do. I can't talk to mom anymore. I can't talk to dad anymore.
Colby Martin 47:17
I'll say a couple things.
One is that you are not responsible for anyone's journey other than your own, you;re really not. And I know that in the more conservative evangelical world, there was earnest expectation that we would convince people of particular theological points, you know, so that we would save them from some sort of eternal damnation. And so really a big part of the emphasis in conservative Christianity is apologetics, which is like how to convince people of the right answers.
And so what ended up happening is we carried in with us all this anxiety about what our friends and family belief; and Seth they can feel that. Like I don't know if you if you can relate to this experience, but I can remember now looking back at the times in my life when I was the most like what I call over saved, just incredibly eager and earnest to spend every conversation about Jesus trying to save everybody. I carried with me this like, shaming sense of disappointment towards people who didn't believe what I believe, not intentionally, not explicitly, but people feel that. If you think another person is going to burn forever, because they don't have the right beliefs they're going to feel that energy from you.
Okay. My point is just to say that, once we shift away from that sort of mentality, really, it's important that we let go of any sort of obligation we might feel to try and control, or steer, someone else's spiritual journey. I start there because part of me wants to say, in your scenario, when someone starts asking questions, let's say you're listening to this, and you've shifted on some beliefs, and you've maybe sprinkled breadcrumbs here and there enough to where your friends and family are starting to pick up on the fact that you maybe you're no longer part of the community that they used to be a part of; my pastoral advice to those people, is, like I said, in the beginning, let go of any sense that it's your obligation to move them along.
To the extent that I have shifted in my theology, I've shifted in my religious world, I think has very little to do with me. I think when you start to look at the things that actually happened in my life alot of those just felt like these moments of grace that I can't take a whole lot of credit for. Which is my way of reminding myself that “Oh, yeah, if I can entrust my own journey to God, then I need to practice entrusting other people's journey to God.
Entrusting that wherever they are at first of all makes a whole lot of sense because of how they were probably raised and the systems they were in and their life experience makes a whole lot of sense. And I really just need to trust God in their journey. Any sort of time people want to get into arguments with me or try and debate with me, I just have very little energy for that. I will try to get out of that as quickly as possible by just saying, you know, I just think we believe differently, and that's okay. I just, that's just not how I see it. And that's okay.
And if people really want to keep pushing, and really want to debate you on it, all I would say is the extent that you can have a non anxious presence that lets them know that you know, that it's okay. Like, oh, yeah, I can see why you think that that makes sense?
And then finally, I think one of the roles that best things we can do is just be be like midwives for each other, where we're just standing alongside one another, holding each other's hands being safe, non-judgmental, loving presences. So that the people in your life they, they know you're not judging them they know you don't think lesser than, you know, they're not looking at them with any sort of condescending like, “well, I've shifted and evolved, why won't you”? No! You're just this loving, non anxious presence, which signals to them that if and when they are ready to finally start asking some questions they've been really afraid to ask for a long time. May you present yourself in such a way that they know you are a safe person to start to explore with. That's really, I think the best thing I can I can encourage people to try to be.
Seth Price 51:30
I'll also say that's extremely hard for someone with my personality, to not spew out like, but that's not what it says in the Greek or whatever. So two questions, one should be fairly quick and then the other who knows. So it's a play on the very beginning of the book, in the non existent, Biblical, manhood that should exist you equate to it at the beginning of your book that there's some magic mixture of King David and Braveheart. And I just really want to know because I'm trying to raise a godly man above me while he sleeps.
Colby Martin 52:00
Oh Lord.
Seth Price 52:03
What is the correct ratio here? Just you know if I'm trying to make that mixture…?
Colby Martin 52:08
I would recommend probably 60% David 40%.
Seth Price 52:16
(In laughter) Sounds good to me,
Colby Martin 52:17
I think David has enough depth of dimension to his character, the tenderness for Jonathan, the loyalty to Saul the capacity to access deep emotional well being and security with the Psalms that he wrote. He just showed a lot of tenderness. So I think that is more important…
Seth Price 52:38
60/40
Colby Martin 52:39
Yeah, raising raising boys in this culture right now, (you should) put more of your emphasis emphasis I think in the tenderness and the depth of emotional well being. Because the other part that they're just sort of promote...I'm gonna get myself in hot water here. I hate this question! What did you do to me ?!
Seth Price 53:00
You had to go into it…it could have been quick. You could have left it at 60/40, I don't want you to be in hot water.
Colby Martin 53:03
I can't leave anything quick. My life motto is why use 10 words when 50 will do!
Seth Price 53:08
Well, when you said David, I thought to myself, but that's just 40% of that massive stare that says bring your horses, I brought my spears, because that's all I see a Braveheart is just Mel Gibson pacing in blue paint.
Colby Martin 53:21
Still one of my favorite movies.
Seth Price 53:23
Yep. So final question I've been asking everyone. So when someone asked you if I asked you if anybody asked you, hey, when you say God, and you're trying to give words to something that really is very hard, like what are you actually trying to say? Like if you were to try to wrap words around God's not even the accurate word what is that for you?
Colby Martin 53:42
For me, it is the acknowledgement that there is more going on than what we can see and touch and smell and feel. To me to talk about God is to name that there is something behind there's something within, there’s something underneath it all. And we are more than just atoms and molecules and pizza and paychecks-that there actually is something else behind it and through it all. But to then go one click further, it's also to acknowledge that, as far as I choose to believe it and in many ways, it is a choice as I choose to believe it. That something else I believe is benevolent. I don't think it's indifferent. I don't think it's just a Star Wars Force. I don't think it's malevolent, I think the thing that is behind the thing, the thing that is under at all, as Paul says, the thing in which we live and move and have our being, I believe is benevolent.
Marcus Borg says that
the Whole is good.
And that's what I mean when I when I one of the things I mean when I talk about God is that there is more going on and it is good and it is the closest we can get to what that Looks like I think is love. I love that St. John gave us the simple phrase that God is love. Because I can sometimes get a great grasp on what love is. And my favorite piece of advice that people is simply, always trust love, because love never fails. Love never fails! And therefore I think you can trust that if you are seeking after love, embodying love practicing love and all of its dimensions, you are getting closer and closer and closer to God with every breath.
Seth Price 55:33
Plug the places Colby where do people go? Because I had 80 more questions I could ask you but I won't. So we should in this where would you want people to go to buy the book, find your things.
Colby Martin 55:45
Probably the best place is I have a website ColbyMartinonline.com kind of functions as my hub for books that I've written articles that I've written sermons that I give videos. I just had a TED Talk come out last week that I'm really proud of; it's all about sin. (I) stood on a TED stage and gave a talk about sin.
Anyway, ColbyMartinonline.com and then I'd love to have people follow me instagram twitter @ColbyMartin. Thanks again for coming on. Thanks to your family as well as your dog for sharing you. Yeah, I know. It's a commitment on both ends. I appreciate that.
Colby Martin 56:20
Thank you Seth
Seth Price 56:36
I really enjoyed having this conversation and Colby was playful. We laughed a lot. The meat of this, I think is needed. And it was helpful as I really listened back to it. I found myself nodding my head quite a bit. And yeah, if you got anything out of it, let me know. Let me know on Twitter, Facebook email. However you want to let me know you could send it to me on instagram but to be honest though I’m confused with Instagram, and I may not ever see it. You also have probably noticed that there's a little bit different music in this episode that is from Heath McNease. He's one of the first artists that ever let me use music on any episode of any show that I did, including a podcast that I used to be a part of an edit before this one. And he's just so generous. His music is beautiful and it's moving, and you should listen to it, go and subscribe to his stuff, or go down into the show notes and click on the link for the Spotify playlist for this show. And you'll see his music listed in there as well as all the music from the past shows all weaved into a master playlist. I hope you're having a fantastic week. And I pray blessings on you and we'll talk soon.