The Weight
The Weight
"Better Ways To Read the Bible" with Zach Lambert
Show Notes:
Zach Lambert wants to give you a better way to interpret the Bible, so he wrote the book on it. In Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm Into a Tool of Healing, Zach helps us deconstruct four common lenses for reading the Bible that lead to harm and then offers four new lenses that promote healing and wholeness.
Zach is the Lead Pastor and founder of Restore Austin, a church in urban Austin, Texas. He is also the co-founder of the Post Evangelical Collective where he serves as a board member. Zach and his wife, Amy, met each other in the 6th grade, fell in love at 17, and got married at 21. They love watching live music, discovering local Mexican food places, and playing with their two boys.
Resources:
Buy Better Ways to Read the Bible on Amazon or Barnes & Noble
Learn more about Restore Austin
Follow Zach on Instagram
I'm Chris McAlilly.
Eddie Rester:And I'm Eddie Rester. Welcome to The Weight. Today our guest is Reverend Zach Lambert. Zach is the lead pastor and the founder of Restore Church, a church in Austin, Texas. He's also the founder of the Post-Evangelical Collective, currently pursuing his doctorate, where you pursued your doctorate, at Duke Divinity School. Chris, what did you take away from today?
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, the Bible is central to our faith and to church, but also, just, it's in the culture and people come at it in different directions. Zach grew up in the church and grew up in a particular way of reading the Bible, and then began to think about it differently later in life, and went through a process, he'll describe it, of perhaps deconstruction, but then found a way to reconstruct, an
Eddie Rester:Yeah. He's written an incredible book, "Better Ways understanding, a very faithful and deep understanding, of engagement with the Bible. And he talks about that journey and to Read the Bible." He gives four lenses that are not helpful some of the things he learned along the way. What was your takeaway? or can be harmful when we approach the Bible, and four lenses that he believes bring healing and hope to reading the Bible. I think for me, it's just the awareness, over and over again, that we all approach the Bible with an interpretive lens. Nobody reads the Bible just for the words on the page. We all bring something to it. We've been shaped by the preachers in our lives, by what we see and hear on social media or TV, the hymns that we sing. We all bring something to Scripture, and it's important for us to be aware of that. I think for me, that's one of the things, reading the book and talking to him, just to be aware that there are implications to the interpretive lenses we bring to Scripture.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, you may agree with what you hear as you read the book or as you listen to Zach. You may wrestle with some of the things that he says. That's great. We think that the Bible is something to be wrestled with. You may agree with us. Some weeks, you may disagree. That's awesome. We're looking for a faith that's growing and understanding as individuals and as churches. And I don't know, I just think it's through these conversations that I get a better understanding and picture of what it is that I really believe. And the thing that I'll take away from this conversation is this question of how to read the Bible towards flourishing. I had never heard it put particularly like that. I think that's great. That's something that we can do as individuals, as preachers, as faithful people in the world. What are you going to take away? What's your...
Eddie Rester:Well, I think the final takeaway, just to be aware as a preacer that I'm I'm giving people lenses at times. I think that's important for anybody who leads a Sunday School class or a small group or a church, just remember that we're also helping people develop those lenses, even if they're not thinking about them. So yeah, great episode.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah. Awareness that you are providing lenses is the first step. That's the way to way to get better at it.
Eddie Rester:Great episode. I hope you enjoy it. Share it with someone who maybe struggles with scripture or how to think about Scripture. We're always glad you're in the journey with us, thankful that you're listening, and look forward to hearing what you think about this episode.
Chris McAlilly:I just want to say, I just want to say, right off the top, I'll make a comment about Eddie being from Mississippi. I'm just a little... You know, I... You can be from Texas.
Eddie Rester:Well, I, you know, I'm a Mississippian. Will always be a Mississippian. I'm currently, you know, I don't want to say in exile. That's not the right word.
Chris McAlilly:You're a current Texan.
Eddie Rester:I'm in Texas now and talking to another a Texan.
Chris McAlilly:So if you live in Texas, you've never heard the So. podcast, just assume that other people in Texas need to hear the podcast and share it with everyone in Texas. All right.
Eddie Rester:There you go.
Chris McAlilly:Good to talk.[INTRO] Leadership today demands more than technical expertise. It requires deep wisdom to navigate the complexity of a turbulent world, courage to reimagine broken systems, and unwarranted hope to inspire durable change.
Eddie Rester:As Christ-centered leaders in churches, nonprofits, the academy, and the marketplace, we all carry the weight of cultivating communities that reflect God's kingdom in a fragmented world.
Chris McAlilly:But this weight wasn't meant to be carried alone. The Christian tradition offers us centuries of wisdom if we have the humility to listen and learn from diverse voices.
Eddie Rester:That's why The Weight exists: to create space for the conversations that challenge our assumptions, deepen our thinking, and renew our spiritual imagination.
Chris McAlilly:Faithful leadership in our time requires both conviction and curiosity, rootedness in tradition, and responsiveness to a changing world.
Eddie Rester:So whether you're leading a congregation, raising a family, teaching students, running a nonprofit, or bringing faith into your business, join us as we explore the depth and richness of Christ-centered leadership today. Welcome to The Weight. [END INTRO] We're here today with Zach Lambert, the pastor of Restore in Austin. Zach, it's great to be with you today.
Zach Lambert:So good to be with you. Eddie and Chris, I'm excited. Thanks for inviting me on.
Eddie Rester:Yeah, I'm a current Texan, recent Texan, but you're, you are a Texan.
Chris McAlilly:Is that what you're calling yourself now, a current Texan? a Mississippian that's living in Texas. I'm a Mississippian, okay, I just want to say current Texan. I'm not... I don't have a belt. I don't have a hat Zach is a real Texan. He's been there for over a decade. So it is, you know...
Eddie Rester:Yeah, so, Zach, tell us a little bit about you.
Zach Lambert:Yeah, yeah, I was born and raised here in Austin, where I am back again. And yeah, we started our church, Restore, about a decade ago. We'll turn 10 in February. And yeah, I've got a wife. We met in sixth grade, started dating at 17, got married at 21 and we've got two kiddos that just started school again, a fifth grader and a first grader, and so, yeah, right in the middle of young kids and growing church and all kinds of stuff. And then I just had a book come out last week. Yeah, it's a busy but fun time.
Chris McAlilly:When did you... Oh, sorry to interrupt you, Eddie, you go for it.
Eddie Rester:No, you go ahead, Chris, yeah.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah. No, I was just gonna ask, when did you discover the Bible? Like, how old were you? Were you a kid? Or was it later in life.
Zach Lambert:Yeah, I was definitely as a kid. I grew up in the Southern Baptist Church, and it was a very kind of fundamentalist version of faith that I grew up in, and it was really central, not just to my life, but to basically everyone that I knew. My parents were in vocational ministry. They ran something called Fellowship of Christian Athletes my entire life. They ran the Central Texas chapter. My grandparents were early founding members of Southern Baptist mega church here in Austin. I went to Christian School. We were at church three times a week. I mean, everything that we did was kind of in this faith circle. But what ended up happening to me was, even as a young kid, I had a lot of questions and struggles and doubts, with scripture, with faith as it was being presented, especially kind of this big, angry God in the sky who was just waiting to smite me for stepping out. And I really struggled with it. So the story I opened the book with is actually me being formally kicked out of my youth group as a sixth grader for asking too many questions and voicing doubts and causing other kids to doubt their faith, was what the youth pastor said, and so he said, "You can't come back anymore."
Eddie Rester:As an aside, recently, Chris and I knew a kid in sixth grade, in confirmation, who asked too many questions, our very first confirmation class. He's been out in Dallas. Those kids do grow up and turn out okay.
Zach Lambert:Usually, yeah.
Eddie Rester:Yeah, usually, so that's kind of your early story. You've written this book called"Better Ways to Read the Bible," is the name of the book. Was that really... You told that story. Is that the genesis of the book? What really inspired you to say, this is a book I want to write. This is a book I feel like I have something to say here.
Zach Lambert:Yeah, it was definitely not the genesis of the book. If anything, it was my kind of villain origin story in a lot of ways, where I was pretty done with faith and Scripture altogether. I put the Bible aside and did not engage with it for a very long time, but when I picked it up again, what I what ended up happening is I started reading the Gospel accounts of Jesus's life, and what I realized was that in the churches I grew up in, I knew a lot about the kind of beginning and end of Jesus's story, so like Christmas and Easter, but we talked very little about the actual life and teaching and what I would call the way of Jesus. the first time and being like, how have I never heard this preached? Mostly because it was pretty counterintuitive to what was actually being taught or prescribed as the version of Christianity. I grew up in something like turn the other cheek, or, you know, we're most like God, we're peacemaking, or the meek will inherit the earth. Stuff like that. Didn't actually support this kind of militant, masculine version of faith that I was given as a kiddo. And so I understood why we didn't talk about those things. But when I did end up reading them, I really made this decision of, well, if being a Christian is following this Jesus, this kind of radical, revolutionary, all-inclusive Jesus, then I want to do that. And if this place, this thing called scripture is where I can find out more and more about him and what it looks like to try to have a deeper relationship with this God incarnate in Christ, then I want to go deeper into it. So that really started the journey of kind of diving back into the Bible. done just a tremendous amount of, you know, over the years of reading and interpretation and seminary and all that stuff. And we really trying to do something purposefully a little bit different when we started Restore. Even the name, it was all about kind of restoring people's faith in Jesus and the church when so many of them had lost it, had church trauma, spiritual hurt, all that kind of stuff. And so we were re-engaging with even familiar stories in new ways, right? And so a lot of times I'd finish a sermon and we do a Q and A time, or I just be talking with people in the lobby, and they would say, "How did you get that interpretation?" or 'Where did you hear it?" And I didn't feel like I had a great resource to kind of hand people and say, not just how do you engage with some problem passages, but what's a more holistic framework for healthier biblical interpretation on kind of a very lay, practical level. There were, like, academic works and things like that, but didn't feel like I had that resource that I could just hand over. And so people were like, "You should write something." And so I kind of put the framework together and tested it out. I was teaching a seminary class at the time and doing some other things, tested it out in a few different spaces, and it just got a lot of like, "this is good, make it more robust, lean into it more." And so that's kind of how the book ended up developing.
Eddie Rester:And you talk a lot about, in those conversations you had at Restore with people who had kind of struggled struggling with faith, or walked away from faith. How many of them, their story came back to either "I didn't see people living the Bible that they were trying to teach me," or they had been taught so many harmful ways to read the Bible that they just couldn't live a faith that was there. And I appreciated that honesty, because it was also coupled with how many people have truly just walked away from the faith, how many people have quit reading the Bible. And how did you kind of pull all those threads together? How do you see all that kind of in this moment of the church? How's all that playing out?
Zach Lambert:Well, I think we're probably really similar in this, Eddie, that at the end of the day, whether we're doing a podcast or writing a book or whatever, we're local church pastors, you know, and that's what matters most to me, is being able to help people along their spiritual journey at Restore and then, you know, through online spaces and other things, but at the end of the day, that's, that's my hope, my calling. And so really, I saw it all coming together as this is just hopefully another resource to help people do that. I don't really have aspirations of, like, becoming an author, speaker, you know, circuit rider person. I really want to just be a local church pastor that also gets to give some resourcing to the broader church to help them work through this process of coming back to church, coming back to faith, re-engaging with scripture. And I mean, I'd even love to hear from you, man, as you continue to navigate, especially as you've now settled in Dallas, and you're navigating a new scene, a new place where people have, their own hang ups. I, one thing that I say a lot to our pastoral staff team is, you know, we almost never encounter somebody in neutral. We almost always encounter people at a deficit. You know, they have some kind of negative experience or exposure to church, faith, Bible, whatever. Is that your experience too, and how are y'all navigating it?
Eddie Rester:Yeah, I think so. I think we, and Chris, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this in Oxford, too. But I think where we are right now is we're getting a lot of those church hurt folks that are coming particularly to one of our services, that... Really, kind of, that's their vibe that that's... People, they go out to a lot of places around Dallas on the weekends to invite people. And so it's created this sense of "come here and just try again." Also I think that there's a story I was reading this past week, I can't remember who it was, but basically they said that it would be better for folks in some foreign country to hear Handel for the first time, rather than the people in England, because the people in England mishear him, instead of the people in Africa would hear him for their... Anyway, can't remember the real story. It was something like that. But just the sense of, I think sometimes we deal with people who have misheard the Bible for so long that that's where they start, and so they're scared sometimes to talk about Scripture. They don't want to read Scripture. I think that they pull back some, sometimes, from trying to engage. And I wonder if some of the trouble we have getting people in groups to really talk and dig into Scripture these days is because people are like, "I don't know that I want to deal with that." Chris, what do you think?
Chris McAlilly:I mean, I have a lot of thoughts. I think I probably had firmer convictions around all these things a few years ago than I do now. I think I'm more, I feel like I'm in a posture of trying to be just more, just open to the way in which people come to the church. I think, I do think you're right. I think there are a lot of people, we've talked about this on the podcast a lot, that there are people who grew up in a religious context. Maybe that religious context offered a more kind of narrow perspective or view, and maybe it lacked a kind of theological range. And then they find in a more, I don't know, in a more generous environment, that their questions are welcomed, or they can wrestle with scripture, maybe ask questions back of the text. And we've had, you know, other people come to mind, other other conversations we've had. We released a recent episode with Amy-Jill Levine, who is a Jewish New Testament scholar who, you know, looks at Jesus for everyone as really kind of asking questions of Jesus that maybe you wouldn't hear in a more, I don't know, conservative or evangelical context. And that's a lot of people in Mississippi, for instance, who come to college and maybe for the first time, they're getting a little taste of freedom, and they're kind of navigating all right, what do I actually believe? But then I think they're just so many of the people that I think of in this context, that don't ever interface with the church at all, and so I find myself thinking that we need more paths of access to the church. And I do think for us, it's the recovery community is kind of the path of access where there's an intersection between a deep desire something about the way the world is, or the way I am, or the way we are is broken. And kind of everybody would acknowledge that on some level, you know, in a family system, or in a political context. And then maybe at that place, bridges can be built to the resources, the deep, ancient, beautiful, true, good, spiritual resources the church has always offered. But within the context of this conversation about restoration and healing and wholeness, which I see as kind of the center point of what you guys are trying to do in Austin with with Restore, I wonder, you know, I would be interested in, like, super practically, not just like, what's the framework of the Bible, but how does it play out within the context of groups that you're gathering at the church? Is it something that everybody's engaged in the Bible that's a heavy focus of the church, or is it more, "Let's get you in groups where you belong." You talk about what's going on, and then you lead people in this deeper journey from the pulpit, or, you know, in your teaching, or how do you think about it? How do you integrate the Bible into the life of your community?
Zach Lambert:Yeah, that's a great question. I think we, you know, similar to what you said about finding various avenues and on-ramps for folks, we've tried to create a multiplicity of opportunities for engagement. So we realize that a lot of it is dependent on life stage. For folks you know, if you maybe you've got a young family, both of you are working full time, young kids in activities like, you know, a full hour and a half Bible on and a week night is just not something that's going to make it onto your calendar. And so then, how are we doing? Maybe twice a month, social centric groups for folks like that. But then others, depending on life phase or desire, really do want to go deep. And so we've offered, like, summer seminary classes, which are basically just like short six week things where we go really deep into a concept. So I've done a couple around biblical interpretation. We've done bunches, all different kinds of ones. But also, I mean, we still are pretty, like, you know, this can also happen from the pulpit, and it should happen from the pulpit. And so we do not just teaching from scripture, but also, like, outlined lenses from scripture, and gone deeper into broader biblical interpretation stuff. We've got a real smart group, and they really are interested in stuff like this, but it's creative ways to find time for them to engage with it, I think is the challenge.
Eddie Rester:I preached about reading scripture, and I want to get to the lenses in just a second, but I preached about reading scripture this past Sunday. And one of the one of the things that I think Rowan Williams says is that for the vast majority of history, Scripture was always read in a group. And I think that we forget that sometimes, that the teaching, from whether it's the pulpit or in a group, is really how people have always, historically accessed the Bible. This idea that we get to sit and interpret on our own is really pretty recent if you want to talk about, maybe 1780, 1790, where Bibles got affordable to the present. It's been a short ride historically that that's happened.
Chris McAlilly:I was listening to conversation the other day talking about the decline of the novel as a social and cultural artifact and factor in American culture now compared to, you know, 25, 50 years ago. And, you know, part of it is just that people don't read. You know, people are not. We're moving in the direction, the culture is more visual, more oral. You know, podcasts are flourishing, videos are flourishing. And so people are not just sitting down and reading a text, I think. And it's hard. It's not an easy book to read. And then to your point, you know, I just think that basic point that the Bible is there and it has to be interpreted, like, that's a very basic point, but it's one that sometimes people take for granted. And I appreciate that one's lens, you know, this idea, this concept of a lens that you bring to the text, and that there could be lenses that could be more or less problematic. Maybe for a moment, just kind of give us an overview of the problematic lenses. Pick your poison. What are the poisonous ways in which people read the Bible?
Zach Lambert:Well, yeah, building off both of your points there, I will say I really started out with these two fundamental truths. So one of them is that the what is the Bible? So the Bible is not a book. The Bible is a collection of books and stories. You know, it's number of diverse authors written off over a couple thousand years across three continents, three languages, you know, at least 10 genres of literature represented there, songs. I mean, all kinds of And then Chris, to your point, fundamental truth number two is stuff, right? So it really is this broader collection. We flattened it and we bound it together as one book. But it's really not, you know. And so that's fundamental truth number one. we are all interpreting it. We are not the original audience of the text. We read the shoulder over the original audience of the text, and the truth is, even the original audience, to Eddie's point, debated in groups what these things meant. They wrestled through it. They talked through it. Somebody would get, a local church would get a letter from Paul, it would be read aloud, and they would talk about it. They would ask questions, they would wrestle. And so those are the two kind of fundamental truths that it's all built on. And then from there, my thesis really is okay. So we're all interpreting this complex collection of texts. Even just reading it is an act of interpretation. Even translating it is an act of interpretation. So we're all interpreting it. And again, my thesis is there are better ways than others to interpret it. There are better sets of criteria than others. And so what I try to do is outline these four harmful lenses that a lot of people might have been given connected So the four harmful lenses are literalism, which is, again, to biblical interpretation. How do we identify and discard those and replace them with these four healthy lenses? this kind of flattening of the text, so it's reading every scripture, every verse, as if it has to be, you know, historically, scientifically, literally true in our 21st Century, post enlightenment understanding of things like history and science. Apocalypse is the second one, which is reading everything through the lens of kind of end times, judgment, fear, eternal, conscious torment and hell, violence rather than renewal and restoration.
Eddie Rester:I love what you what you say, "It's all going to burn anyway."
Zach Lambert:That's right.
Eddie Rester:Is that view. It doesn't really matter.
Zach Lambert:Yeah, yeah. And you know that obviously has massive implications for things like creation care and stuff. You know what? I heard that all the time growing up. Well, why do we need to recycle? It's all going to burn anyway. You know, who cares? Right? That's the second one. The third one is moralism, which, again, is this kind of flattening of the text into just a right or wrong list, just a rule book. And this is often used to control behavior and applied very selectively. And then the final one is hierarchy, which really is leveraging scripture to prop up these power structures that elevate some and diminish others, usually based on things like gender, race, socioeconomic status, sexual orientation, things like that. Saying, "God desires for these people to be in charge, to flourish and for these people to be subjugated or subservient." So my hope is that people would through, and I give examples of stories, but also examples of texts, how they were weaponized, all throughout those first four chapters. And then I get into the healthier lenses. And let me say one more thing before the healthier lenses part, related to local church stuff that at Restore, we talk a lot about how we do both deconstruction and reconstruction. You know, how we do both triage and transformation? So people sometimes come in and they need to deconstruct some things, right? Like Eddie, you were talking about this earlier, they come in with, like, all they know are really harmful ways, and so they've just put it aside. So they need to have these harmful things deconstructed. They need triage, immediate attention. But then the hope is that they get to a place where then they can rebuild and start, you know, doing something better, experiencing that transformation.
Eddie Rester:One of the women, and this would go under the literalism lens, had been taught her entire life that wives should be subject to their husbands, and so she endured unbelievable abuse. A husband who continued to cheat on her, yet everybody in her circle was telling her, well, you've got to forgive him, you've got to be subject to him. And so even the very act of standing up for herself and saying, "Do I have to do that?" was years of getting to that point. And beyond that, she really had to spend a lot of time taking all of that apart because it infected. The wound was very deep. And I think what I appreciate in these lenses that you lay out is you really get to the depth of the infection, of what harm they cause. Even when people don't set out to use them with harm. They set out to use them because they won't want to follow Jesus.
Zach Lambert:That's exactly right. That's exactly right. I do think there is a group of deeply nefarious people who have purposefully grabbed the Bible, Christianity, you know, but I think the vast majority of folks who would maybe ascribe to these harmful lenses are doing so because that's what they've been taught being faithful looks like. That's what you've been taught being a Christian looks like. And so, yeah, how do we have a lot of grace for those kinds of folks, while also
Eddie Rester:Right. Yeah, you know, I think about the trying to demonstrate a better way with better outcomes? hierarchy lens, how that continues to play out, particularly online.
Zach Lambert:Oh, gosh.
Eddie Rester:When people are responding to something and they veer right into something that's anti-semitic or something racist or something and they don't understand, or maybe they just have never been challenged enough to think you're reading the scripture which you're quoting here. It's actually leading you to say, well, this type of person is closer, starts out closer to God than this type of person. And talk a little bit about that lens, maybe particularly. How do we we begin to break that apart?
Zach Lambert:Yeah, well, there's a number of different examples that I use in the book. One that I don't actually use, but I think is a helpful one that's pretty old, is the curse of Ham, which you might be familiar with, you probably are familiar with. You know, it's basically this, this wild story in the Old Testament, where Noah gets really drunk and falls asleep naked, and his so Ham finds him first, and he's like,"Oh my gosh, Dad's naked." He goes and gets his brothers. He's like, "Dad got drunk and fell asleep naked." His brothers come in, and they go in, like, back first, so they don't see him naked, and they put the blanket over him, or whatever.
Eddie Rester:It's not a passage that Chris is going to preach on.
Zach Lambert:You should think about, though.
Chris McAlilly:I look forward to hearing that one from you, Eddie.
Eddie Rester:Yeah, I'll let you know. Yeah.
Zach Lambert:So, then, you know, Noah wakes up, and he's really mad at Ham, supposedly, because he saw him naked, even though it's like you're reading it, it's like 100% Noah's fault. And he curses Ham, and he says,"You're going to be basically subject to your brothers. You're going to your people are going to be enslaved to your brothers for generations and generations." And so people have said, well, you know, during the American chattel slave movement, they said, well, actually, the descendants of Ham are Africans, and so us enslaving them is fine, because God cursed them way back when. And like now we listen to an interpretation like that, and we're like, "That's nuts," like, there's no way that's true. But for a really long time, in fact, over 50% of the written defenses of chattel slavery in America were written by pastors in the south talking about things like the curse of Ham or, you know, grabbing a couple of words from Ephesians 5, "slaves obey your masters," then saying, "This is God ordained." Now, again, we've been able to get to a point in society where we say that is a terrible interpretation. But we've done that with other things too, Eddie, to your point, right, the subjugation of women. We've said you have to be subject to your husbands, or you can't lead in church or whatever it is, all because this is God's ordained structure. But we always have to ask, who does this benefit? Who does this interpretation benefit? Does it benefit the abusive husband or the vulnerable wife? Does it benefit the enslaver or the enslaved? And if it's not, if it's benefiting a very small group of powerful people who are wielding that power in terrible ways, then I would say that interpretation is very problematic.
Chris McAlilly:I do think the notion of just paying attention to power, power dynamics, I think, is a helpful, helpful reminder, when you're thinking about the Bible, the text of the Bible, and then how it's interpreted. I wonder if we might move over, if you guys are good with it, to some of the more helpful lenses that you lift up. And so one of them, the Jesus lens, just, you know, my understanding of that is just simply,a lot of people, if you're picking up the Bible for the first time, we... My son got a fifth grade Bible in church on Sunday. And we're trying to teach kids the Bible, but immediately you're like, all right, this is a book. It's like Harry Potter. You start at the beginning, and you read it to the end, and everything kind of is equal, you know? I mean, you pick something up, and it all seems like if this is God's word, and so now I have to think of it all, even the weird parts, as the Word of the Lord for me today, and so, you know, maybe a better way to do it is to say it's all equal. It's equally authoritative for the church. But maybe it all points in a direction, and that is, you know, for the church, that's Jesus. How did... Just talk about... I think that there is a version of deconstruction that would completely deconstruct even that dimension of biblical interpretation. Why not go all the way and throw Jesus out, too? I mean, why is Jesus any more important than any other character? How do you think about that?
Zach Lambert:Yeah, well, I mean, if there's a personal side where I've just had enough distinct encounters with the person of Jesus and the Holy Spirit that I can't throw it all away. But I also think that because I have also seen how not just healthy engagement with Jesus in the church, but healthy biblical interpretations leads to things like freedom and flourishing and help, that's why I think I stay committed. I also think that, just at a real base level, if we are Christians, we're going to own that. That phrase means "little Christ." Was first applied to followers of Jesus pejoratively, after his death and resurrection. Like,"Oh, look at those little Christs. They act just like that guy that the Romans executed. Can you believe it?" You know,"Their rabbi is dead and they're still following him." And the early church basically was like, "You know what? we're going to own that. We are little Christ. That's exactly what." So that's our legacy. And so if we believe that Jesus is, as Paul says, that the fullness of the Divine in bodily form and the person that we are dedicating our lives to as little Christs, then our biblical interpretation should very simply be centered on Jesus. Especially because the biblical authors are not univocal in how they describe things. They're not monolithic in how they understand things. And really, my hope is that most of this stuff is not that controversial, honestly, like the stuff in here is not super groundbreaking. I'm trying to kind of put it all together in a way that is easily accessible. But okay, so let me give you an example. The Old Testament biblical authors, the Jewish scribes and prophets and all that stuff, they have this ongoing conversation in the Jewish Scriptures about what's most important, is it mercy, or is it sacrifice? Right? So some very much believe the sacrificial system is God ordained, is God's ordained way of relating to God and receiving forgiveness and all of that stuff. And then some said, well, actually, that's not as important as mercy. Mercy from God, mercy to others, right? And you have maybe Malachi, who would be on that train that said, you know, God's saying,"Shut the temple doors, stop worshiping. I don't even care anymore, because you're not doing the things I asked you to do, mercy, justice," whatever. This is an ongoing dialog between the Old Testament authors. Then Jesus arrives on the scene. Jesus gets asked about this, and he says, "Go learn what it means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice." He settles it, you know, like this is happening a number of different times, where there was discussions about the place of violence in resistance of empire. There was all these discussions, right? Then you have Jesus say to "Peter, put away your sword. You live by the sword. You die by the sword," right? And so I think, like, Christians should be committed to non violent resistance, because that's the way of Jesus, rather than maybe, like, okay, you know Elijah defeats the prophets of Baal and, you know, the fire comes down. You know that that story, right? And then he gets a little carried away, and he's like, let's execute all 800 prophets of Baal here, right? So we have these two pictures. Okay, we're both kind of fighting against these, more like oppressive empire, religion, whatever. Well, when that happens, do we do that violently or non violently? Well, I think that we have to choose Jesus in those interpretations.
Chris McAlilly:So do you think...
Eddie Rester:One of the things you say...
Chris McAlilly:Oh, no, sorry to interrupt.
Eddie Rester:I was just going to read Zach's book back to him.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, you should do that.
Eddie Rester:It says "Euro Christians spend so much time arguing about what is biblical and unbiblical, when really we should be distinguishing between what is Christ like and what is un-Christ like. Loving your neighbor..." You quote John, Jordan Harrell, "Genocide is biblical. Loving your enemy is biblical. Only one is Christ like. Slavery is biblical. Chain breaking is biblical, but only one is Christ like." And so and that goes on a little bit. I think that's kind of the heart of what you're trying to express is that when we have a choice to make, we choose the way of Jesus.
Zach Lambert:That's right. That's right because the Bible is... There's a lot in there.
Eddie Rester:Yeah.
Zach Lambert:You have something like the Canaanite genocide that is still right now, being used to justify violence against entire people groups. And we have to be able to say just because that's in Scripture does not mean it's prescribed by God. Those are not the same thing.
Chris McAlilly:come from. You come from the Southern Baptist tradition. You come from a more fundamentalist, kind of evangelical background, you know. I wonder... And then, you know, I think one of the things that I hear, if people are critiquing this journey, kind of a journey away from the evangelical church into a more kind of moderate, progressive direction, is like, what are the boundaries? Where do you, you know what I mean? So I wonder, like, if you would talk about that related to Jesus, because it seems like you have strong convictions that Jesus is somebody we should follow. Do you think of Jesus as a good moral teacher? Do you think of Jesus as the Son of God? Kind of how do you navigate these more kind of theological questions that maybe come from the other end of concern?
Zach Lambert:Yeah, I'm pretty, pretty old school, creedal Orthodox, honestly. So I'm committed to the full divinity of Christ and the full humanity of Christ, the death, burial and bodily resurrection of Christ. I think Jesus was God incarnate, and that if you read the Jesus lens chapter of the book that's going to come through. I mean, that really is the central point. I think that Jesus also was an amazing moral teacher and also an amazing moral exemplar. I think from a theological perspective around like atonement theories, I've moved away completely from something like penal substitutionary atonement and more towards something like mostly Christus Victor, like Jesus kind of demonstrating God's power over sin and death and evil, but also something called recapitulation theory and atonement, which is basically this idea that not only is Jesus the fullness of God in human form, Jesus is the kind of true human, like what we were always supposed to be, what we were always designed to be. And so that recapitulation is Jesus demonstrating what it means to be fully human. And so that's a lot of what I mean by the way of Jesus is following not just God in a body, but also like the true human who shows us what we're supposed to be doing.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, that's fantastic. So this idea of recapitulation, it emerges in the early church. I think of it as like, connected to Irenaeus, and Irenaeus is one of the early church fathers. And this sense that we are, our humanity is kind of gathered up in Jesus, and Jesus is the new human being. And because Jesus has kind of lived our life fully and better than we could do it, it kind of creates these new possibilities for humanity.
Zach Lambert:Exactly.
Chris McAlilly:And Lord knows, we need examples of, you know, fresh and new ways of being human that would be more life giving than just death dealing. And I think that's where there's real energy in life, I think, to preaching in this kind of an environment, and really, like, if you're kind of, you know, exploring faith, it's a good time to jump in, because the world is a dumpster fire. And I do think that there's... I guess, if you retain, if you kind of move away from this more kind of fundamentalist, evangelical reading of Scripture, but retain a sense of God's power at work in Jesus to make us new humanity. That's a really vibrant way to engage. And I think specifically for people who are in despair, I just see, I think that's maybe coming back to that original question that we're thinking about, like, what is it? What do I see going on in Oxford right now? I see a lot of people in despair. I see people that are hopeless. I see people who are struggling for a handhold, and I think it's the power, a power that is greater than our own, this higher power, that could free us, deliver us from, you know, bondage to shame or guilt or depression or despair or addiction or whatever those things are that are really holding you down, like that's the power of this. And, you know, I that's what I sense in kind of the vision of Restore as a church. It's not just a way to read the Bible. It's a way to be community around this reading of the Bible and this Lord that can free you and lead you into a life of healing and freedom and flourishing. I hope, yeah, I mean, I wonder, is that, like... I think maybe move into that flourishing lens, if you don't mind, like, based on this kind of reading of Scripture, kind of rooted in Jesus, what does it mean to read the the Bible with this lens towards personal and collective flourishing?
Zach Lambert:Yeah. Yeah, I'll group these last two together. I have one of context which is pretty self explanatory, just historic, cultural genre, that kind of stuff. But flourishing and fruitfulness really come from the teachings of Jesus. So flourishing, you have Jesus weaving this thread throughout his times of teaching, starting in Luke 4, where he gives his first sermon in his hometown synagogue, and he says, "I've come to bring good news to the poor, freedom to the captives, set the oppressed free," you know, "declare the year of the Lord's favor, the year of Jubilee." And he's like, not just for some people, but for all people. And they get really And then you go all the way, fast forward to Matthew 25 and upset, and they try to kill him, you know. And he runs away. But that's the initial thing, right? he's saying, basically, the way you help the least of these flourish is the most important thing. And that's how you actually treat me. You know, the hungry, the thirsty, all that. But then the center point for me is John 10 and 10, the famous text, right, where Jesus gives a one sentence mission statement,"I have come that they might have life and life to the full." I think you can say, he said,"I've come that people might flourish. That's the most important thing to me." And so if that's the reason Jesus came, the most important thing is that we flourish, then our Bible interpretation should be leading to flourishing. And...
Chris McAlilly:Yeah. Amen.
Zach Lambert:We should be looking for places where flourishing is not happening, and trying to bridge the gap between where people are and where God wants them to be. So like, whether you're talking about recovery ministry, that I know you do, Chris, from what you've said, and I know Eddie, y'all do that at Lovers Lane like crazy, one of the preeminent places in America that does that. Like...
Eddie Rester:Zach preached a sermon about the founding pastor of Lovers Lane and his work with the recovery community. So, yeah. That's an aside.
Zach Lambert:Y'all are doing some... That's the work of flourishing, right? And our biblical interpretation should be leading us to be involved in recovery ministries, to be involved in the work of liberation. And then the fruitfulness one is deeply connected. Whereas Jesus said,"You'll know my followers by their fruit." You want to know know them by their fruit, and that the fruit of the Holy who is truly trying to follow me? Are they producing love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, Spirit leads to this. And so there must not be any leading of gentleness and self control, with love being the primary measure. And so it's not just that our beliefs and behaviors should be leading to more of those things. It's that our very Bible interpretation should be leading to more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, et cetera, in us and in the world. the Holy Spirit in this biblical interpretation, because it's not leading to any of the things that the Spirit should produce.
Eddie Rester:And I think in this moment in church history, we have to do some deep soul searching, because couple years ago, research came out that for the first time since they've been keeping the stat, less than 50% of Americans claim to be church members anywhere. The numbers of people that are falling off have fallen off. I think it's a moment where we say, okay, maybe some of the ways that we have been reading scripture living out as church, I mean, there are a lot of things that cascade from the way we read scripture, but maybe it's time for us to really sit back and think what is not bearing fruit for us as the body of Christ, not as the institutional church, but as the people? What is not drawing people to Christ? I think that's one of the things that's at stake in how we read the Bible.
Zach Lambert:Absolutely.
Eddie Rester:What, Chris, Zach, I'd love to hear. What are some other things just real quick that are at stake in the way we read Scripture?
Chris McAlilly:I think it's life and death, man. I think it's. I really do. I'm not just like this. I think it's life and death. I think people are... You're on a trajectory. I appreciate, yeah, "I come that you might have life." I think the alternative is that people choose death for themselves, for others. It really is, like, a lot's at stake. Because you can create in your own heart, in your own mind, in your own imagination, in your own will, a desire that you and others might have life, that they, you know that... And we're going to fail. I mean, we fail again and again and again again, but I think, you know, as an orientation, it's pretty good one for a community of faith, for a pastor trying to preach a sermon, you know, for anybody, for a fifth or sixth grader trying to read the Bible for the first time. Like, you know, is this life giving to me, to us, or is it not? It's probably a pretty good question. And I appreciate just being reminded of that. What would you say, Zach?
Zach Lambert:No, I mean, that point is incredibly well made. I think we can't forget that Jesus' one sentence mission statement is juxtaposed to the work of the thief. The enemy comes to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus said, "I'm come that they may have life and life abundantly." When you ask that question, Eddie, I thought about some of the modern ways, the current ways we're seeing scripture weaponized. This obviously didn't make it into the book because it hadn't happened when I was writing it. But it was just a few weeks ago that the Department of Homeland Security released a video with Isaiah over the top of it, saying, "Here I am, send me," and it's B-roll of ICE agents doing violence to immigrants. And I think about like, if there was a video picture of the weaponization of Scripture and the steal, kill, and destroy, like, that's it. And so this is not an ancient problem. It's not even just a church problem. This is a world problem. And so what I've been telling people related to the book is, even if you are not someone who is currently engaged in church, or would call yourself a Christian, this stuff affects you, because people at the highest levels of our society are weaponizing scripture in order to do things like hierarchy and control and justify violence and all of that kind of stuff. I mean, I have this whole part in the book about Revelation and how if we are teaching that Jesus is ultimately going to come back and basically just murder everyone who doesn't agree with him, then it makes it a lot easier for us to do violence to our enemies in God's name right now, because if that's what Jesus is ultimately going to do, then we might as well start.
Chris McAlilly:Yeah, it reminds me of a conversation we have with this guy Michael Wear a while back, who writes on the spirit of our politics. And he essentially says, when it comes to politics, you know, there are two prominent approaches to Christianity. One is that it's either useless or something to be used to serve political ends. I think that that just happens again and again. And then his call, which I find to be very similar to yours, is simply that we put our politics under the gospel, and allow the gospel to kind of be the filter. You know, what you're calling a Jesus centered lens, to be the filter through which we interpret, analyze, and navigate questions of politics or ethics. Your book is awesome. I wonder, the name of
Eddie Rester:And I would add to that the full Jesus. Because too many Christians in leadership... I fought a battle one time, a pitched battle, somebody who only wanted to sing hymns about the book, Eddie, you have it right in front of you. the blood of Jesus. I was like, there's a whole lot more to Jesus than from one day. There's a whole lot more to Jesus than that there. There's a whole wealth of who Jesus was and how Jesus lived and what Jesus had to say to us. And so I think, Yeah, It's,"Better Ways to Read the Bible." for me, what's at stake is, can we release Jesus to be Jesus when we read Scripture and teach people?
Chris McAlilly:"Better
Eddie Rester:but thank you. Thank you for spending some time with us today.
Zach Lambert:Thanks so much for having me, guys. This was a great conversation.
Eddie Rester:[OUTRO] Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed the podcast, the best way to help us is to like, subscribe, or leave a review.
Chris McAlilly:If you would like to support this work financially, or if you have an idea for a future guest, you can go to theweightpodcast.com. [END OUTRO]