transcript

Speaker 1:
[00:00] Let's talk about hell.

Speaker 2:
[00:00] Heaven begins in this life, hell begins in this life. People say, oh, there is no hell, I'm already experiencing hell. Well, you're experiencing a foretaste of that. He wants all to be saved, he'd love to be a universalist. But people simply say no to God, despite God's percolian efforts to bring people into a relationship with himself. If God is not wrathful, then God is not loving. When God has seen people oppressed, when people tyrannize, people are being injured and harmed for no reason at all. If God isn't angered by these things, then that's not a loving God. People who don't want God in their lives, it's sort of like turning from a smegle into a golem, where they become increasingly diminished in their own humanity. These angelic beings end up turning away from God, being in this perfect environment, being in the presence of God and so forth. Jesus said, You are my friends if you do what I command you. But we don't say to Jesus, You're my friend if you do what I command you. We have to distinguish between what is descriptive and prescriptive. The Old Testament is a very poor advertising campaign for polygamy. Wherever you see polygamy, it's a disaster.

Speaker 1:
[01:00] God could technically outlaw slavery back then. Why didn't he?

Speaker 2:
[01:04] Well, hold on a minute. It says that if you strike your servant so that he dies, he will be avenged. That word avenged has to do with death penalty, my friends.

Speaker 1:
[01:14] Hey, before you get into this one, I had so much fun with this. We have somebody in town who has written 60 books. He is a creating master's programs on religion and philosophy. He is so well-studied and we go into a lot of interesting topics. So just to let you know, there's a light parental warning on this because we talk about some of the ethical confusion around the Old Testament and some of the things that we read about God doing. Some of the things we read about God saying and what we ultimately get into is the conclusion that God is good. He's always been good and he's dealing with the fallen world and corrective along the way. So we go into some crazy stuff. We talk about polygamy. We talk about slavery. We talk about really a deep interpretation of how God viewed economic law in the Old Testament and how he deals with people in suffering and failure in the New Testament. It's a riveting conversation and my hope is that your mind will expand as you listen. It will give you the necessary ingredients for fortitude in your life. If you're going through something difficult or if you're going through something that is challenging your view of God, we wanna be corrective in that. So I hope you love it, let us know. Everyone wants to get to the high places, but if you wanna go high, you first have to go deep.

Speaker 2:
[02:28] What's up?

Speaker 1:
[02:28] Welcome back to The Deep End. What's up? How are you? What's up, man? We have Paul Copan with us today. Thank you for being here. How do you spell that last name? C-O-P-A-N. Did I get it right?

Speaker 2:
[02:37] Yeah, it's Copan, accent on the first syllable.

Speaker 1:
[02:40] I ruined the interview from the very beginning.

Speaker 2:
[02:42] Oh, no, you're good.

Speaker 1:
[02:44] Do you want us to start over or are we good?

Speaker 2:
[02:45] It's fine, just check.

Speaker 1:
[02:46] Copan.

Speaker 2:
[02:47] No, Copan.

Speaker 1:
[02:48] Copan.

Speaker 2:
[02:49] Copan.

Speaker 1:
[02:50] I messed it up again. He's never coming back.

Speaker 2:
[02:54] I'll come back anytime.

Speaker 1:
[02:55] First and final interview with The Deep End. Paul, you are a professor and pledge your family chair of philosophy and ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University.

Speaker 2:
[03:03] Right.

Speaker 1:
[03:04] You helped establish the Masters of Philosophy and Religion program at PBA, where you work with Paul Gould.

Speaker 2:
[03:08] Yes, indeed. Cultural apologetics guy.

Speaker 1:
[03:11] Amazing. You've written and edited 45 books and contributed chapters to over 60 books. That's a lot of material. So that's how old are you?

Speaker 2:
[03:23] I was born in 1962. Let people calculate.

Speaker 1:
[03:26] There you go. Okay. So I'm just working through the insecurity because I've only written three books, but I have some time. I was born in 1989. I'll catch up.

Speaker 2:
[03:34] There you go.

Speaker 1:
[03:34] Yeah. Hopefully. Awesome. You were best known for your books on Old Testament ethical challenges. I've got a couple of these right now with me is God, A Moral Monster. It's 2010.

Speaker 2:
[03:44] Yeah. Early 2011, but it did technically come out in 2010. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[03:48] Okay. Christianity Contested, Is God of Indictive Bully? Did God Really Command the Genocide? A lot of spicy topics that you've put material around. Then you have several lengthy lectures and chapters on alleged genocide and slavery in the Bible.

Speaker 2:
[04:08] Like the Christianity Contested book has a chapter, a lengthy chapter on each of those, the two leading topics on Old Testament ethical challenges. So Christianity Contested, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[04:16] Got it. My first question is, at what point in your life were you like seven years old, where you wanted to tackle genocide, ethical challenges? How did you decide this is a lane to go down?

Speaker 2:
[04:30] Well, I did grow up in a pastor's home and I did my undergrad in biblical studies. But it wasn't until, you know, so I was familiar with the biblical texts and so forth, but really hadn't looked at these things from a philosophical angle or gone kind of behind the scenes and looked at the ancient Near Eastern settings for these war texts, which really is an eye-opening exploration. But it was actually after September 11th, where the new atheist, Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, you know, writing books like, you know, The God Delusion and God Is Not Great and so forth, they were taking pot shots at the God of the Old Testament. And so I wrote an essay called Is Yahweh a Moral Monster? That was published in the journal, Philosophia Christi. And it really, a lot of people took an interest in it, and it just prompted me to say, well, maybe I could do something with this. And so I expanded that in my book, into a book, Is God a Moral Monster? And deals with warfare, women, purity laws, those seemingly strange arbitrary laws of the Old Testament. What about the punishments of the Old Testament? What about a host of other topics? And of course, I go into the warfare thing there and talk about hyperbole as part of the Ancient Near Eastern setting and so forth. So I went into that, and then that took off. And then I co-authored a book and focused on the warfare aspect, Did God Really Command Genocide? And then did a follow-up book that expanded the territory even further, Is God a Vindictive Bully? So it was kind of a gradual sort of a thing, a gradual unfolding. And so I continue to speak and write on these sorts of topics. I do other areas too, but that was, that the New Atheists actually got me going. And really they raised some important points of conversation. I think a lot of Christians just hadn't been talking about it and they were bringing it up in this trouble, a lot of Christians. And so how do we respond to them? You know, in some ways, thank you, New Atheists, for bringing this up because we do need to talk about these things and bring clarity to the issue for a lot of Christians who are really wrestling with this.

Speaker 1:
[06:31] Yeah, so it was the Atheists that put you into this.

Speaker 2:
[06:35] Yeah, the Atheists got me going.

Speaker 1:
[06:36] They got you going. So what was the, if you could take us to like the conclusions that you ended up putting together when you study the things that they were asking, such as God telling people to commit genocide, how did you end up putting those pieces together and reconcile that?

Speaker 2:
[06:55] Well, just again, through looking at the language of the Bible more closely, seeing that on the one hand, you'd have language of, you know, we left alive no survivor, man, woman, young or old.

Speaker 1:
[07:05] Or animals even.

Speaker 2:
[07:06] Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then you see lots of survivors hanging around, like in Judges Chapter 1, the book after Joshua, you know, the Israelites could not drive them out. They could not drive them out. They could not drive them out. Well, I thought they were annihilated. I thought they were gone. So the biblical text itself raises questions. And then you find out another layer that in the ancient Near East, it was full of that kind of hyperbole where you had man, woman, young and old, you know, the pharaoh, you know, no one else was around. None of his enemies survived. He alone was left and so forth. But we know from history that that wasn't the case. But at least the biblical authors mentioned that there are survivors. These ancient Near Eastern, other ancient Near Eastern texts just, you know, they make it look like there are no survivors. And so it just led to kind of a gradual unfolding, a discovery that, wow, there's a lot of nuance. There's a lot of hyperbole. There's a lot of language here that indicates that there's more going on beneath the surface than what is initially apparent.

Speaker 1:
[08:03] Do you think that God changed? Is there a different, I've heard these, there's actually a book that I started reading just to study to figure it out. And the idea is that Yahweh of the Old Testament was a different God than what Jesus was referring to as Father in the New Testament. I think the book is actually called The Yahweh Deception. And there's some prominent authors who are starting to say like it's always a different entity.

Speaker 2:
[08:29] Yeah, no, you see that the New Testament authorities, including Jesus himself, identify, and Jesus of course identifies himself as being one with the God who, for example, commanded in Matthew 15, that you have Jesus saying that capital punishment for certain offenses was in place in the Old Testament. Whatever you think about capital punishment today, Jesus is saying that this was the word of God and the commandment of God in the Old Testament. So you got to come to terms with that. Jude 5, where it's the best Greek manuscripts say that Jesus, after he delivered the Israelites from Egypt, Jesus, so a Trinitarian understanding of the Old Testament, Jesus, after he delivered the Israelites from Egypt, afterwards destroyed those who did not believe. So you got to come to terms with the integrity of the New Testament authors and how they view Jesus in the place of Yahweh acting as the triune God in the Old Testament. So Jesus is identifying himself with that. So rather than say, oh, that's just Old Testament stuff. No, Jesus is, and the New Testament authors are embedding the Jesus in this sort of a setting. Same thing with 1st Corinthians, chapter 10, where that rock was Christ. Was Christ, yeah. That they were also, the Israelites were also rebelling against Christ. There's this, so there is this kind of a picture, a Christological picture that you just can't get away from. And Paul, in my book, Is God a Vindictive Bully? I try to balance out the theme of what Paul says, behold then the kindness and severity of God. And in my book, Is God a Vindictive Bully? I'm trying to challenge those who are within the setting, within the context of a church, who want to emphasize the kindness of God, but downplay the severity. And I'm also responding to some of those new atheist types who emphasize the severity, but ignore the kindness. And so we see both of them in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, that there's a continuity between the two. Jesus himself, we read about the wrath of the lamb, that people are calling the rocks and mountains to fall upon them because of the wrath of the one who sits on the throne and the lamb. And you also have Jesus himself in red letters, by the way, in Revelation chapter 2, where he's talking about this false prophetess Jezebel, where Jesus gives her time to repent, and then she refuses. And Jesus said that he's going to strike dead her followers. Jesus, in red letters, speaking in this very strong and forceful way.

Speaker 1:
[11:10] Is that in Revelation?

Speaker 2:
[11:11] Revelation 2, yeah, 220 to 23, yep.

Speaker 1:
[11:14] Keep going, sorry.

Speaker 2:
[11:15] Yeah, so no, I mean, I just wanted to say that there is a greater emphasis on grace and love in the New Testament and blessing over cursing. But cursing does not go away in the, like some of those harsh sounding Psalms, those imprecatory Psalms, Lord smashed their teeth and so forth. Well, some of those imprecatory Psalms are actually used in the New Testament. A lot of people don't want to talk about that, but that's part of the, there is a God who is just, who will bring vengeance. And you even have in Revelation 6, these redeemed martyrs who have been slain, they're calling on God, they're waiting, how long, O Lord, until you avenge our blood that has been shed by those who dwell upon the earth? So there's this call for God to act justly. In fact, as I interact with people from other cultures, here we're a lot of times reading this with a Western lens, I've spoken to people who have been through the Rwandan genocide and other parts of Africa where Christianity is under assault, say by Muslim terrorists and so forth. They're saying these harsh sounding Psalms, those war texts, those bring actual comfort to us that there is a God who's concerned about justice, a God who is concerned about those who are oppressed, that God is not going to let injustices sleep, he's going to act and God is going to bring cosmic justice ultimately one day.

Speaker 1:
[12:38] We don't have that experience in America.

Speaker 2:
[12:40] That's right.

Speaker 1:
[12:41] We've never gone through it.

Speaker 2:
[12:42] Yeah, and so that's why you read a book like Jonathan Heights, The Coddling of the American Mind. Well, we've been so insulated, we've been so protected from a lot of these harsh realities that so many people in other parts of the world face and we just are not attuned to it. And so we just kind of want to tame God, we want to make God kind of like one who is just pure kindness and there's no wrath. But as NT Wright says, that if you, if God is not wrathful, then God is not loving. When God is seeing people oppressed, when God is seeing people tyrannized, when people are being injured and harmed for no reason at all, God is not saying, oh, boy, people will just do what they want and treating them in a grandfatherly fashion. No, if God isn't angered by these things, then that's not a loving God.

Speaker 1:
[13:37] Did mercy change in how it's factored in post New Testament? Do we see a different side of God's character after Jesus came to the earth and resurrected than we did before? Because mercy seems to be almost like a cosmic glitch in how he distributes justice.

Speaker 2:
[13:57] Well, we see that there is a, again, as I mentioned, there is a continuity between the Old and New Testaments. There's kindness and severity in both Testaments. With the coming of Jesus, we certainly see the intensification of God's love for humanity and so forth. But it doesn't mean that wrath or judgment go away. We also see that there's a greater, indeed, a greater accountability because of the cross of Christ. And those who turn away from the Gospel, Hebrews 10, that if in the presence of two or three witnesses, someone could be put to death, he says, how much more severe will it be for those who apostatize, those who turn away from the Gospel? So there's this, if anything else, judgment, the strong language of judgment is ramped up in light of the great love that has been displayed in Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1:
[14:46] Nice. Can we talk about history for a minute?

Speaker 2:
[14:49] Sure.

Speaker 1:
[14:50] Jake, how you feel, man? I mean, I have questions, but if I can't ask them, I would love to. Oh, let's hit it, bro. Jake grounds us down. While you're talking about discipline, Old Testament, New Testament. So Old Testament, you have the proverb. I've been thinking about this a little bit. Like, I'll just kind of explain it for context and I have a question. But when you look at Old Testament, it says, he who spares the rod from his child does not love him, essentially. And then you see in, I've heard a lot of people say, like nowadays, I've heard some people say like, they think that God is no longer angry because he took all of his anger out on Jesus, essentially. So I've heard that. But then there's also some pieces in society right now, they're like gentle parenting and things like that. And so I'm just curious as we're talking about America and like this bit of coddling and like, it doesn't seem like it's necessarily a bad thing to be insulated from what I currently understand. But I'm curious on like, do you see it as like, that it's bad that we're insulated? Does it seem like we don't have enough practices to get proper perspective and hold that a lot of the time so that we can understand things like discipline correctly?

Speaker 2:
[15:58] Right. Well, even these texts from the Old Testament are applied to the New Testament and so Hebrews 12 talks about not despising or resisting the discipline of the Lord, whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. So the severity, the hardship that a lot of believers go through is a reflection of God's actual fatherly care, that we are not illegitimate children, that we are actually properly adopted children, and so God does discipline us for our own sakes. So discipline is not off the table for the people of God, and certainly not in within a family where you have, again, you take it on a case by case basis, where some children may not need any sort of a, just maybe a stern word will be enough to correct someone, but another child may require a bit more force, a bit more stringency. But again, the goal is not to, you don't do this out of anger, and it should be a last resort sort of thing too. But again, so you weigh these things, but the point is that discipline is important. Sometimes it might be more severe for one than another, but never with the point of bringing injury, but really having a corrective tone. Also doing so not in a spirit of anger or frustration, but rather in a kind of a cause and effect sort of a way where you say, you know, if you cross this line, then this is what is gonna happen. These are the consequences that come. So those are the, I think that's an important context, but yet we in our coddled American context may bristle or resist those sorts of things. But as we look at the scriptures, we see that God is actually one who does bring discipline to us. He brings corrective measures to us to cause us to encourage us to grow and to truly flourish in our understanding of the loving fatherhood of God.

Speaker 1:
[17:57] Were there any big moments that you can remember like you mentioned to Taylor's wife, Lindsay, that you guys have multiple kids, your youngest is 28? So was there any big moments for you as a dad, like being someone who deeply thinks about philosophy, then when you think about philosophy, you think about how does that affect your everyday life? Like what changes? Do you have any stories or things that come to mind when you think about how you were raising your kids in that area of discipline? Because I know this is kind of a, is this like a big thing that parents talk about too? Like I feel like I've heard a lot about this, but is it similar with your age group? Raising children? Yeah, like how you discipline kids and like just what, what kind of fruit that brings. Yeah, I think so. There's definitely a lot more parents now who are like, they don't punish, there's nothing, like their discipline is, they're in an attempt to make sure that the child learns how to like express their emotions. There's a lack of containers or discipline, but I think that that's probably a byproduct of the coddling era that you're referencing.

Speaker 2:
[18:56] Yeah. And I do touch on some of these things in my biblical ethics book, the fourth edition is coming out with IVP academic in December, and so talk about parenting and so forth, other relational issues. But when it comes to the whole matter of parenting, you do want to, like I said, take it on a case by case basis, a kind of I think corporal punishment should be a last resort. But it should be predictable, it should be something that is known in advance rather than being capricious, and that it should be done as an expression out of love to correct and to talk through these things with your child. Children aren't always able to understand things. And I just heard recently, my wife, she listened to Tim Keller sermons every day, and he's really, really wonderful. And recently listening to a sermon, well, you know, where a lot of people think that parents and children should have kind of a democratic relationship. Now, well, why do I have to do this? And of course, you want to explain the rationale to your children. But sometimes children can understand, you basically say, well, because I'm 40 years old and you're five years old, you don't get the big picture, but just trust me. And so a lot of times you're not going to be able to come to an agreement on things, but it's still important for us to make sure that our children are aware. But yeah, you want to certainly talk these things through and give them a rationale for why you're doing what you're doing, but also letting them know that you love them, that you want to listen to them, sure. But just how they're feeling isn't necessarily to override principled discipline or constraints for them. Just even when you're teaching your children about apologizing, you don't say, well, when you feel ready to apologize, then you go ahead and apologize. No, if they've done wrong, then you say, I want you to apologize right now. You, in a sense, train them to be ready to apologize that this is the right thing to do, and it's not a matter of feelings. If you've done wrong, you may not want to apologize, but you know it's the right thing to do. So you're training them in these areas that may go against their feelings, but this is part of how parenting operates, how the Lord operates with us. We don't operate according to our feelings. Our feelings are only part of who we are. And so there's also the will, there's also character, the issues that need to be brought into the picture. So merely relying on emotions, which our culture does a lot, is a truncated view of our personhood.

Speaker 1:
[21:37] Yeah, I think to tie this in an attempt to pursue equality, which is a good thing, we've pendulum swung to the elimination of hierarchy.

Speaker 2:
[21:50] Yes, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[21:51] And so one of my challenges with my kids, because my kids are young, you've made it. I wanna, I can't wait to be where you are and my kids are grown and doing the right thing and all of that. But seven and three, we have a lot of conversations around, you're just not in charge. There's nothing that you're in, like my seven year old, like sometimes I'll say, what are you in charge of? Nothing except your attitude. That's the only thing you're in charge of. And it seems, it feels probably painful for her in the moment, but it's like, we have to have a sense of hierarchy because even when we're relating with God, I'm not equal with God. And so there are going to be times where he asked me to do something and I don't understand it. And if my understanding is a prerequisite, we get into a lot of bad places.

Speaker 2:
[22:37] Yeah. So like Jesus said to his disciples, you are my friends if you do what I command you. I wouldn't say to God or to Jesus, you're my friend if you do what I command you. And so that is very much a part of how we ought to operate. And it's not as though we don't, when our kids are younger, for example, and they're maybe experiencing the turmoil of emotions, but we want to listen to them. We don't want to shut out their feelings, their perspectives. We want them to have input rather than saying, don't talk to me. They may have something legitimate to express. And so we need to find avenues through which they can be heard properly where their emotions can be expressed, maybe at the end of the day, kind of talking them through, how did you feel when that happened? Or what happened at school today? And there may be some tensions that they need to kind of talk out rather than bottling them up. So it's important to have that free conversation with them, to let them feel free to come to talk to us, rather than coming down hard on them every time they bring up something that might be maybe even a challenge to us. Maybe when you said that to me, that you really hurt my feelings, and really beyond the point of just a mere correction, but something, maybe you said something in anger, or you said something that should not have been said, allowing our children to say that, and then allowing the opportunity for us to apologize to our children. There has to be that, too. Where we don't, as Paul says, that fathers don't exasperate your children. They're human beings, and they have feelings and so forth, but we also need to be attentive to some of the concerns in their own little hearts, and making sure that the communication lines are open.

Speaker 1:
[24:18] Yeah, okay. Last thing before I want to go, I know you have somewhere you want to go, but this is the last thing. For the parents to hear that, and they're like, I actually never considered that before, what would you say that's really like in real life? What's it actually like to experience as a parent if that's a brand new concept to start integrating that, or if it sounds scary at first? Which part? The, hey, we're going to deal with this this way now, and then we're going to talk about the feelings later. For parents, I literally don't know what that's like. Jake's about to have a kid. That's why he's asking all the parenting questions.

Speaker 2:
[24:49] Yeah, yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1:
[24:50] Maybe, that's a good point.

Speaker 2:
[24:52] Well, I think that the, you know, of course, you know, it's easier to correct things earlier on than as things go along, and so you want to establish good patterns of communication, of drawing firm lines, but also, I think, giving some flexibility. You know, your kids are watching a program, you know, or a video or something, and you say, okay, it's dinner time, turn off the TV. Well, maybe give them a little bit of a warning, so as not to frustrate them, say, okay, guys, in 10 minutes, we're gonna be eating, so we're gonna, you know, you're gonna watch, I'm gonna tell you that you need to come to the table, so that you're not saying, you know, come immediately or else you're disobeying me. I think we wanna work with their own situations, their own, you know, project, what they happen to be involved in, so that we don't frustrate them needlessly. I think, you know, when it comes to the, you know, beginning with, you know, say, you know, anticipating the coming of a child, I think you wanna build just a real context of love, knowing that the children, that your children know that you love them, that you are there for them, that, you know, no matter what corrections you may give to them, that you come back to them at the end of the day and talk things through, let the evening maybe be a time where you're not just praying with them, reading a Bible story or whatever with them, but also letting that be an opportunity to really connect at an emotional level. Those evening times can be very special, very important. You know, a lot of times around the dinner table was when we'd have lots of great conversations and people could say, you know, what were your highs and lows in the day? Just letting them share about, you know, each one having a place at the table. And we've got six kids. And so just allowing them to have that kind of a say, giving each person a sense of, you know, I have a place of belonging in this family. I have a sense of identity. And you're creating a kind of family culture. And parenting involves a lot of intentionality. It is not, you don't do parenting in a slipshod, haphazard way. It takes a lot of planning. It takes a lot of preparation. It takes a lot of intentionality. So those are a few things that I would maybe leave with an up and coming father here.

Speaker 1:
[27:06] That's great. Thank you, Paul. All right, I'm gonna take us into some waves here in a sec, but I'll say one thing, cause this came to mind. So my daughter's at school right now, or no, she's at the zoo. You got to meet my son. But we got an email from her school that last week she tackled somebody cause they had something that she wanted. Then somebody was crying and she said, why are you a baby all the time and crying about everything? And then she apparently, she had a bad attitude during Bible study. And so my wife was talking to her about it. Because this is interesting because you have to respect their growing intelligence while at the same time putting parameters in place. And so my wife talked to her about it and she said, I don't remember tackling that kid. She said, my teacher is lying on me to get me in trouble. That's not a great response. And she said, well, that kid does cry out at the time and I think he needs to stop. That's not a good response. And then she said, I did have a bad attitude last week, but that was in the past and I'm moving forward. So there's some in there that's really healthy. That is in the past, let's move forward. But at the same time, teaching them how to, like something may happen and they don't necessarily understand what it means. I think this happens with God in us all the time. Where God loves to have the conversation, but there is a right and a wrong. And we are, sometimes I think we learn how God responds to us by how our children respond to you. We learn that relationship.

Speaker 2:
[28:33] Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1:
[28:34] That's gonna be fun to watch you navigate. That's certainly a lot of fun. Okay, let's dive into history.

Speaker 2:
[28:41] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[28:42] I'm ready to go.

Speaker 2:
[28:43] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[28:43] This is gonna be like some of my favorite conversations.

Speaker 2:
[28:46] I love all your history books on your bookshelves here. Just a lot of same authors that I've appreciated.

Speaker 1:
[28:51] Yes, I was telling you before, history has pulled me through some really difficult moments. Because when you hear people talk today, sometimes on social media, it's almost like they think that everything's getting worse. But when you study the Civil War, it's a lot better now than it was. We just watched this, there's a docu-series on Netflix called Death by Lightning about James Garfield. He was assassinated three months, three or four months into his presidency. And the doctors killed him. He would have recovered completely. So when you look at the medical developments and everyone's hating on the medical scene all the time, it's fascinating when you look back and you realize how far we've actually come. History helps anchor me. But for biblical history, I've seen you handle really difficult questions. So I just want to organize some thoughts in my mind to try to figure out what's going on, especially in the Old Testament. If you study God and how his command structure worked back then, I think if a human father behaved the way that God behaves in some doctrine, we will call that human father abusive and vindictive and a little bit unhinged. When you look at the Canaanite conquests and how God is basically, like you said, telling people just kill everyone and crazy stuff. On the surface, can you maybe take us through some of those stories and unpack some of what you've discovered when you've gone deeper to help us reconcile either a lack of perspective or a lack of historical interpretation and put the pieces together so that we know we're not worshiping a God who is punitive and abusive and vindictive?

Speaker 2:
[30:35] Yeah. Yeah. When you read the, say, the Canaanite wars in the Book of Joshua, there is, you have to understand that there is rhetoric, that there is kind of an idealized language and also a realistic language. For example, in Deuteronomy 7 and 9, you have what appear to be conflicting texts where in one case God says he's going to drive the Canaanites out quickly. And then two chapters later, I'm going to drive them out. Little by little. Slowly, little by little so that you're not going to be overwhelmed by the animals and so forth there. And so, well, which is it? Well, were there no survivors or were there lots of survivors? You have, on the one hand, you have the idealized language and the other hand, you have the realistic language. And unless you are aware that that is just how the Ancient Near Eastern language goes, you're going to be very confused or say the Bible's got contradictions, or you might just latch on to the one side that looks like it's utter, quote, slaughter, and miss the nuances. Another point is that the Canaanite cities, by the way, these were colonized by the Egyptians. So the Israelites are freed from Egypt. Now they're going into a place where there is, you know, these colonized citadels, which are not population centers. These are basically administrative and military centers in the Book of Joshua. So you have Rahab who's there, but it's not as though that's the dominant picture of civilians there. It's actually, these are, you know, civilians are in the Hill Country. They're removed from these strongholds, these citadel cities. So that is something to be taken into account. Furthermore, keep in mind that the Canaanites themselves were engaged in all manner of evil practices. You think of, you know, ritual prostitution, infant sacrifice, bestiality, and so forth. You know, you have all these terrible things that they're doing. And so, what does God say? He's gonna wait until the sin of the Amorites is filled up in Genesis 15. So what is God doing? He's not acting precipitously. He's waiting. You know, there's a very principled way. So it would have been wrong for the Israelites to go in early and to drive out the Canaanites. And that's the primary command, to drive them out. You know, and so, when you have the Israelites then going into the land, keep this in mind too. Who were these Israelites? Were they this military force to be reckoned with, superior militarily, numerically and so forth? No, they were not descending on these hapless Canaanites. The Canaanites were the ones who outnumbered them. They had the strong Citadel cities. They were superior militarily. So it required a lot of trust in God in order to do this. God had to do it or else the Israelites weren't going to. And so, the picture of faith or trust in these sorts of settings is often overlooked. It's like these mean, vicious Israelites, the Israelites were frightened. God tells Joshua, you know, don't fear, don't be dismayed. I'm with you. And so, this is the context in which we are approaching the Canaanite question. So, when the Israelites are fearful, when they look at these cities that they would like grasshoppers in their sight, this is a real threat. This is a real concern. So, trusting in God is definitely a requirement here. So, when you read some of these things about the idealistic and the realistic, the language of really needing to trust in God because you're outnumbered and you're militarily inferior and so forth, this puts a lot more things into perspective. And even the language of the fact that these are cities that are citadels rather than where civilians are. So, even when you use the language of man, woman, young and old, it doesn't matter that these are just administrative centers where you just got a lot of soldiers but really no civilians. A lot of people just aren't aware of that. And so it's good to bring those sorts of things into the picture. Furthermore, you've got, here's this picture of the realistic and the idealistic, where you have in, for example, Numbers chapter 20, you have mention of these two kings, Sihon and Og, who are the Israelites fight against them. And it says the Israelites fought against the king, his sons, and his army. And you read that the people in the villages were driven out. So the king, his sons, and his army. Well, then you read Deuteronomy, which really ramps up the rhetoric, Deuteronomy 2 and 3, which describes the same scenario in this idealized hyperbolic way, where it says, they destroyed man, woman, young and old. But you read the original text of when it happened, and it's basically just combatant warfare. So these are the, I could say the same thing about, say, the Amalekites and 1 Samuel 15 and so forth. That's that same sort of a thing going on. It mentions man, woman, young and old, but it's actually just combatant warfare there at this city of Amalek where there's fighting taking place. So much so that the people who are the Kenites, who are friendly with Israelites are there. And Saul sends word to them saying, we don't want to fight against you. We want, we're fighting against the Amalekites. They just raided us. Chapter 14 tells us, tells you. And so, you can leave, and so the Kenites end up leaving. Well, do you think that there are going to be women and children hanging out there? Of course not. And so, there's a whole lot of exaggerations going on. The Israelites defeat, you know, Saul says, you know, not only does Saul say, but the narrator says it's Saul, quote, utterly destroyed. However, we translate that. Some of it just means defeated rather than, you know, doesn't mean annihilate. You know, he, you know, quote, utterly destroyed the Amalekites. Well, then he, then we read a chapter in chapters 27 and 30 that David is fighting against the Amalekites. Well, I thought they were utterly destroyed. Are they utterly wiped out? Well, no, that's just how the language works. And once you see this in perspective, you recognize that there's something more going on here.

Speaker 1:
[36:52] There are clues in that that, cause some would say that, you know, Saul is ultimately dethroned because he doesn't follow the instruction to utterly destroy. It doesn't, he gets in trouble because he leaves livestock alive, right?

Speaker 2:
[37:05] Well, yeah, yeah. From that Citadel city, you know, in verse five, it says that they were fighting at the city of Amalek. And so that's where the battle took place. The Kenites were there, they left. So there could be women and children there, but it does use that language of man, woman, young and old and the animals too. So Saul did keep animals from that battle scene for himself and he didn't kill Agag. And it goes on to say in that same chapter that Saul built a memorial to himself. So here he is, it's basically an opportunity to show his status rather than making God's name great. He's trying to make his own name great. And so that's why he's keeping King Agag alive as a trophy of his victory. And God will have none of it. Saul was disobedient.

Speaker 1:
[37:46] So what's the line between something that's hyperbolic and something that is literal? Because if it's mostly hyperbole and then Saul gets in trouble because he leaves some people alive, how do we know what's literal, what God is saying legitimately to destroy everything versus just the way that they spoke?

Speaker 2:
[38:04] Right. Well, keep in mind that as you look at some other texts, like in Deuteronomy 7 and Deuteronomy 20, where it talks about that language of leave alive, nothing that breathes and so forth, there's this sweeping language that's being utilized against standard ancient Near Eastern war text stuff. But Moses is saying this in Deuteronomy. And then we get to Joshua, the next book, and in Chapter 11, for example, it says that Joshua did all that Moses commanded. Okay. Well, if he's following Deuteronomy 7 to Deuteronomy 20 and it talks about obliterating everybody, why are there so many survivors in Joshua and also in judges? So, you know, it appears that Moses also had this hyperbolic rhetoric in mind as well, that you basically, you know, and it's interesting too, that not only that, you have mentioned throughout the book of Joshua of people who are Canaanites, who are actually coming into the people of God. You have in chapter two, you have Rahab, you have in chapter eight, you have these strangers in Shechem who are listening to the reading of the law. These are Canaanites who are there, part of this covenant renewal ceremony in chapter eight. So God is not, you know, it's not as though it's an ethnic thing, rather it's an ethical and idolatrous sort of a matter, where the Canaanites are going to be a pernicious influence on the Israelites through their idolatry and so forth, then that's when there's a problem. And I like to use this example of Nazi Germany, again, not original with me, but John Walton uses this example where he talks about how when during the Nazi era, the Allies, you know, fought to when they actually were victorious, they destroyed all the symbols of Nazi ideology, they executed those in the hierarchy and so forth. But basically, once that was done, you had the German people still largely intact. And what the goal was, it was to remove the identity of Nazism from the German people. The goal was not, you know, there wasn't hostility to the Germans per se, but to this Nazi ideology. In the same way, the Lord desires that the Canaanite ideology, their idolatry and their sexual practices and so forth, that those were to be repudiated. But it wasn't as though the Canaanites themselves were the, you know, their ethnicity was a problem. And so you have a lot of Canaanites who were actually incorporated into the people of God, as you read even up into, you know, the time of David and so forth, you know, that there are Canaanites who are still around. And indeed, God's own goal, as we read in the Prophets and in the Psalms, that God desires to include those Canaanite peoples, the Jebusites and so forth, you know, as the redeemed people of God. So God has long-term vision for those Canaanite peoples, that he is not, it's not as though there's this hostility against them because they are just ethnically Canaanite, but rather he desires that all the nations of the earth be blessed through that blessing of Abraham. We will read about in Genesis chapter 12.

Speaker 1:
[41:19] This is a weird question, but I haven't studied this. What was the Israelites, they had to go up against so many different people. They had the Babylonians, they were always, they were getting turned into slaves by the Persians, Canaanites, Malakites. What do you think was their most significant people group that they had to come up against? Because I've never studied Canaan. I don't know how big of a deal the Canaanites were.

Speaker 2:
[41:41] Well, of course, the Canaanites were an extension of the Egyptians. So the Israelites were going, in a sense, from harsh servitude in Egypt to, again, a reminder of the oppressors there in their midst in the land of Canaan. And so there is that kind of an association. So as I mentioned before, try to read this from the perspective of those who have been oppressed as the Israelites in Egypt, now coming to, in a sense, a continuity of connection with the oppressive forces of Egypt in these Canaanite cities. So there is, so, you know, from a Western perspective, we can just ignore some of those things. But when you're looking at it from those who have been tyrannized and oppressed, this takes on a different meaning. But when it comes to the most severe oppressors, you do have, you know, like the Midianites and so forth, the Book of Judges who are oppressing, you have them even in the Book of Numbers, mentioning and seducing the Israelites. But you do have the two empires of the Assyrians. Of course, the Assyrians take over and obliterate the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC.

Speaker 1:
[42:51] Was Nineveh was part of the Assyrians?

Speaker 2:
[42:53] Nineveh was part of the Assyrian, you know, the capital of the Assyrian Empire. And then you have the Babylonians who come next, they're the next empire. And of course, the Israelites, you know, the Judahites, the people of the Southern Kingdom, they are eventually, despite much warning from the prophets, they are eventually brought into exile. Some people stay behind, but many go to Babylon in 586, 587 BC, in the kind of the final wave of the bringing, you know, Judahites into Babylon. So that's the kind of the decisive phase. So you have that, and then you have the Persian Empire, which is actually more friendly to the people of God, and they're allowed to go back to the land of promise and so forth.

Speaker 1:
[43:39] The Assyrians were terrifying. Have you ever studied the Assyrians?

Speaker 2:
[43:45] Oh yeah, they're brutal.

Speaker 1:
[43:45] Just like how they publicized their brutality and would just hang the heads of people in front of...

Speaker 2:
[43:53] Yeah, not to mention things like war rape, which was prohibited for the Israelites, of course. And also, if you were a, say, a young girl and you were a prisoner of war, you would either be taken as a sexual slave, perhaps, or put into a temple to the gods and serve as a temple prostitute. That was just part of the rhythm of a lot of these ancient Near Eastern cultures.

Speaker 1:
[44:23] Who was the king that promised God that if he got victory, the first thing he saw coming home?

Speaker 2:
[44:29] He was one of the judges, yeah.

Speaker 1:
[44:30] And he saw his daughter.

Speaker 2:
[44:32] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[44:33] And so, again, just a tough topic. Back to the topic of like-

Speaker 2:
[44:38] Wait, what?

Speaker 1:
[44:38] Jephthah, what was the story? He, you could probably share it with us.

Speaker 2:
[44:42] Jephthah, he makes this rash vow that if he is victorious, then the first thing that comes to him, he will sacrifice, and of course his daughter comes to greet him after he is victorious in battle. And so there's a question. Most scholars see this as a rash vow that Jephthah shouldn't have undertaken and should have rejected, but that he would offer his daughter up as a burnt offering. Other scholars, more a minority view, would say that it is basically just a sacrifice of her virginity. She's actually going into the hills with her friends and lamenting what it appears to be this fact. So there are some scholars who say that it's actually not as brutal as that. But even if you take the worst case scenario, it is illustrative of how there was no king in Israel and every man did what was right in his own eyes. And there was just a lot of bad moves, a lot of bad judgments, a lot of terrible things that went on during that period where there was no definitive rule in Israel.

Speaker 1:
[45:50] It's tough because people will, people look at that. I've seen people talk about this where it's like, that means God is evil. How could God allow that to happen? But God doesn't typically infringe upon free will.

Speaker 2:
[46:02] Yeah, and also it's, you know, a lot we have to distinguish between what is descriptive and prescriptive. A lot of things just happen. I mean, a lot, you know, the, you know, the daughter's having incestuous relationships with him and becoming pregnant by their own father. It's not as though the Bible's saying, oh, that's okay, that's good. No, it's just simply describing that. And the same way with Jephthah, you know, Jephthah makes a rash vow, he shouldn't have done it. We recoil at that. And that's a natural reading of the text. We say, oh, that's not a good thing. And so it's not as though this is being prescribed or that he's being, you know, approved of by God in this.

Speaker 1:
[46:39] Yeah, the other story with Lot is when the angel shows up and the men want to sleep with the angel and so he offers his daughters.

Speaker 2:
[46:48] Oh yeah, the, yeah, the, you know, in the, yeah, the, in Genesis, in Judges 19, where you have the, yeah, the man who offers his wife to, so you do have, you know, again, Sodom, which is in chapter 19 of Genesis, where, yeah, you do have the offering of the daughters. You have, again, in the kind of repetitive action in chapter 19 of Judges. So you remember that, you know, Genesis 19, Judges 19, where you have a similar scenario. And again, you know, that's being, that's descriptive rather than being prescriptive. Indeed, in chapter 19 of Judges, after, in the aftermath of that, there was a condemnation of that kind of action. It's not as though, oh, there's no commentary on this. You know, this poor, this poor woman is just, you know, gang raped and nothing's done about it. No, the narrator says that this is a horrific thing and the people of Israel rise up because this is a horrific thing. So there's this recognition that something is deeply wrong here.

Speaker 1:
[47:49] I love the frame of descriptive versus prescriptive and it almost, there is a way to look at this that makes scripture more trustworthy because it's probably the only sacred text that puts the dirt in the history. It does not whitewash any of it. And so when you read some of what people would call sacred text, it's like, did nothing ever go wrong. This was just, you can tell it's almost like history belongs to the victors. The Bible doesn't do that.

Speaker 2:
[48:20] Exactly right.

Speaker 1:
[48:21] It puts all of the failings of humankind into the text. But if we read that as this is what God wanted to happen, then we can get all messed up. It looks like you wanted to say something. Yeah, I wanted to know, can we talk about God and how he tends to deal with sin in Old Testament too? Because sometimes I think maybe from a perspective it was inconsistent. I'll just start with this. Second Samuel 12, I also gave, this is Nathan rebuking David after sleeping with Bathsheba. He says, I gave you your master's house and I put your master's wives into your care and under your protection I gave you the house, royal dynasty of Israel and Judah, blah, blah, blah. What's interesting to me here is like what you say with prescriptive, this is one of, I'm sure one of the main arguments against polygamy and it's not, the Bible is not saying that polygamy is a great move just because David had wives or Solomon had multiple wives. Abraham. Yeah, Abraham. I'm just curious on how you have seen how God views sin because he still looks at David as one after his own heart, but yet David is one of the greatest polygamists known in the entire Old Testament and it's like, God doesn't strike David down for sleeping with the wives that were passed down to him basically, and he's got hundreds of wives. Not like God wipes that out. He kind of leaves that there actually. And so I'm curious if we can kind of go into that a little bit of God's character and how we view sin and what he decides to pull and what he doesn't.

Speaker 2:
[49:47] Right. Right. Yeah. And I touch on this in the Moral Monster book and also expand on this in the Vindictive Bully book. But I maintain that in Leviticus 18, 18, that polygamy is being prohibited. And that that, you know, and also we see in Deuteronomy 17 that the king is not to multiply wives, horses or wealth. And we see, for example, in First Kings one through ten, we see Solomon doing that. We also see David doing that. He's gradually accumulating wives. He's gradually accumulating wealth. He's gradually accumulating even horses. And so there is this condemnation that is at least implicit with David, that he is actually going against the mandates of Deuteronomy 17. But if we take that text in Second Samuel 12, where Nathan is confronting David, you know, that God has given all these things to David, and if he had desired, he would have given him more. Well, what about those wives, for example? Well, did God really give them? Well, what's interesting is just, you know, when there is a new king that takes over, everything is transferred from one king to another. The household, the, you know, the wives that have been there and so forth, everything, you know, ends up coming to the new king. So it's just kind of a neutral statement, as it were. But think about this. We also see that Absalom, who rises up against David, God says that he is going to give those wives that David has acquired to Absalom. And of course we know that Absalom sleeps with, you know, those women in David's palace in broad daylight in order to humiliate his own father. Well, is God, is this speaking approvingly of what God is giving to Absalom? No, it's in this much looser sort of a way, because that would mean that God is condoning adultery, that Absalom is engaging in this adulterous relationship. Not to mention that part of one of the women in Saul's household was David's own mother-in-law. So does that mean that David then had the freedom to have sexual relations with his mother-in-law? That's prohibited in Leviticus 18. So you've got these sorts of, we need to keep some of these other issues in mind as well that bring, I think, a little bit more perspective on this. Furthermore, when you look at polygamy in the Old Testament, it is a very poor advertising campaign for polygamy. Wherever you see polygamy, it's a disaster. It's terrible. Things are going wrong. From Lamech in Genesis, early chapters of Genesis to Abraham, to Jacob's own wives, there's squabbling, there's tension, there's distress, there's jealousy. So all of these things are really, look negatively on polygamy. So anyway, maybe that's enough said about those sorts of things, but I would encourage people to take a look at the Moral Monster and Vindictive Holy Books.

Speaker 1:
[53:11] Why does it say that God was going to give David's wives to Absalom? Because God didn't approve of Absalom.

Speaker 2:
[53:16] Exactly. That's part of my point. So when it says, I gave you these things, there's a certain kind of general thing. I mean, you talk about God gave him kingship, God gave him wealth, God gave him this household and so forth. So it's kind of a general description rather than, oh, but he gave those wives too. Well, I think be careful here because God himself is telling the kings in Deuteronomy 7 not to accumulate wives. So I think we need to keep some of these texts in mind and hold them in a certain abeyance as we kind of work through these texts. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[53:53] Okay. Go ahead. I just noticed it seems like there's, maybe you've codified differently, but based on what you're saying, it almost sounds like there's two kinds of punishment that God had, which was just self-inflicted, delayed punishment. And then would you feel like it's true to say like involvement punishment, where you personally directly act? Yeah. It's like, did you, have you noticed that and codified that? And like, if so, how does, how do we even see that in everyday life? And like, how do we view that in our everyday life to where we can actually see, oh, how did God like start to understand how God got there?

Speaker 2:
[54:25] Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a wide ranging question. Let me just say something first, you know, even though I do hold to the, to the fact that, or you know, and maintain the view that polygamy is prohibited in the Old Testament, especially in Leviticus 18, 18. You know, I do recognize that it's more a minority position, but I think it would be well defended. But the majority position is of evangelicals is that polygamy was something that was permitted. It wasn't God's ideal, but it was permitted in ancient Israel for whatever reason, couldn't be enforced or whatever economic sorts of considerations. But that is, I just want to put that on the table as well. But when it comes to the punishments, even with in this text of 2nd Samuel 12, when David condemns that, he's told a parable of the poor man who has this lamb, treats this lamb like a daughter, eats with them and sleeps with them and so forth. And then a rich man nearby has a visitor coming. And so he takes, instead of from his own flock, takes from this poor man and David, who is enraged, says that man ought to die. He ought to pay fourfold for what he's done. Interestingly, four of David's own family end up dying beginning with the child of, through with Bathsheba. And so that, it says David is bringing the judgment on his own household in making that kind of pronouncement. But you do see that there are punishments, and I talk about this, I go into more detail on this in the, in the Vindictive, His God of Vindictive Bully Book, where punishments are often treated in a hyperbolic way. There are a couple of, you know, two death penalty cases, one for blasphemy, one for breaking the Sabbath. But you have 16 potentially death, potential death penalty or capital punishment cases. But except for murder, all of the others can be commuted to monetary payment. So you have numbers telling us that, you know, that you, you know, you can pay for certain, you know, crimes monetarily, but for murder, the person is to be put to death. So that's why you, so even it would use language that the adulterer needs to be stoned and so forth, and you know, talk about stoning and burning and so forth. Well, in the Ancient Near East, there was a strong hyperbolic association with these things to basically warn people, these are bad things, don't do them. But if you're, for example, in the Code of Hammurabi, the Babylonian code, if you're a builder and you build a slipshod home and the building collapses, well, your own son could be put to death. Or if you botch a surgery as a surgeon, then you could be put to death. Well, who's going to go into these professions if there's that kind of stiff penalty? Basically, it's saying, don't cut corners, be an ethical practitioner in your calling. So it's a warning. And the same thing with adultery and other wrongs in Israel that could be potentially capital punishment. But when you read, for example, there's a lot of adultery in the law and in the narratives of the Old Testament. But you don't see people being stoned to death for them. In Proverbs 6 and 7, for example, adultery is dealt with in terms of inner family relationships. There's shame and humiliation, and that's the punishment. And even when it talks about cursing your father and mother being put to death. Well, even there, in Proverbs says that the one who curses his father and mother, his light is going to go out. So it's basically just that there's a negative consequence, a negative association that comes with this shame, deprivation, all sorts of negative associations with that way of life. But again, it's not as though, oh, no, take that person to court, take that person to the judge, put him to death. You just don't have that sort of thing. So I argue for a lot of hyperbole in the law of Moses itself, which was common in the other ancient Near Eastern law codes as well. So just wanted to, I don't know if that gets at maybe some of the things that you're talking about as well. I mean, there is a directness to sometimes where God judges, sometimes as a matter of sin, taking the consequences of sin, ravaging someone's life.

Speaker 1:
[59:11] I think it's the same today.

Speaker 2:
[59:12] Yeah, true.

Speaker 1:
[59:13] Yeah, it's the same today. That's why we teach our, we try to teach our kids through sometimes consequences and punishment so that they don't die.

Speaker 2:
[59:20] Yeah, right. Yeah, exactly. And maybe just to elaborate on this a little bit, in, we have those two paradigm cases where there is capital punishment for these two offenses in the law of Moses.

Speaker 1:
[59:32] Which one is the Sabbath?

Speaker 2:
[59:33] Again, the Sabbath and the blasphemy.

Speaker 1:
[59:35] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[59:36] But you have something similar. It's not as if God always does that whenever that happens. It's just to send a warning signal to a fledgling people that is being established and that these are, you know, that God is not to be tampered with. I mean, you have, you know, you have then, in the early church in Acts chapter five, you have Ananias and Sapphira who lie about how much they gave to the church. And so Peter confronts them on that, and both of them are struck dead, which sends ripples of fear throughout the early church in Jerusalem. It's not as though God always did that in response to people's lying and so forth that would take place, no doubt, and still does today, but it's not as though God is directly intervening all the time in those sorts of circumstances, but rather God is one who is sending a warning through this, in a sense, a kind of a paradigm case, just as the early church is getting going. And you, but you do have in the, in First Corinthians chapter 11, mention of those who are taking the Lord's Supper in a flippant, inappropriate way. And so that Paul says, that's why many of you are sick or have fallen asleep or have, you know, in other words, have died. So there is a consequence that comes with that. And so Paul is reminding them that there can be this cause and effect relationship between your, you know, abusing the Lord's Supper and people being sick and even dying.

Speaker 1:
[61:02] I think a lot of this comes down to cultural implications. Can we talk about some of those, like the differences between moral absolutism and like in the Moses' Laws, almost taking a people that are in one culture and trying to sort of fix them based on the culture at the time. You talk about this a little bit in your book, Biblical Ethics, how they've sort of adjusted. I guess Lewis calls this chronological snobbery. When we like look backwards at something and judge based on conditioned mindsets from today, is that a lot of, when you see the discrepancy today between the Old Testament and what we know is good and bad today, is a lot of it coming down to this recency bias that we have from cultural conditioning?

Speaker 2:
[61:51] Right, yeah, I think there's an excellent point I would say yes, there is a lot to that. It reminds me of the chronological snobbery thing of CS. Lewis. I'm reminded of Alexander Pope's essay on man. He says, we think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. Yes. We think our fathers fools, so wise we grow. Our wiser sons, no doubt, will think us so. And there is that, it's kind of ironic too, that the Western civilization has been built on biblical principles, and yet in some ways, we're using some of those, you know, this kind of heightened moral awareness to then condemn what was going on, you know, look at what God did to that, or this or that person, or to that nation, et cetera. And a lot of times we don't recognize that there is a kind of building that is taking place. And when God is speaking to the people of Israel, giving them laws, He is doing so in a way that is, you know, in one way concessionary, that God, you know, and Jesus himself says this in Matthew 19, 8 when it comes to divorce laws, that it says Moses permitted these things because of the hardness of your hearts. So it's not as though these are the moral ideals, but God is permitting certain things within that context because of where the people are, because of their hardness of heart and so forth. So we need to think of the law of Moses in many points as not giving to us the moral ceiling but more like an ethical floor, kind of a baseline here, and regulating certain things, controlling things, keeping things from getting out of hand. But it's not as though this is the moral ideal. You may not be committing adultery, but it's not as though you're loving the Lord your heart, soul, mind, and strength either. That's just kind of a negative command to avoid those things, but that's not the epitome of virtue. That's something that's far higher and grander. But I think it's also helpful to distinguish between the vision of the Old Testament and particular laws in the Old Testament. The vision of the Old Testament looks at Genesis 1 and 2, marriage is between a man and a woman, that all human beings are made in the image of God that is a fundamental equality. Well, then you come into the messiness of a fallen world and you see class distinctions, you see discrimination against women, you see all sorts of poor alignments in society, and that God is basically stepping into a broken world, gets his hands dirty that are not what the original creation was to look like. So God is working with people, giving them laws, getting his hands dirty, and trying to move his people in a redemptive direction. So that is what we see, I think, going on here. And when you look at, and I do this in the Vindictive Bully Book in particular, I compare Israel's laws with the laws of the surrounding nations. When you compare the law codes, like the Law of Moses, and the other nations around them, Israel, its law code has a far greater moral level. For example, when it comes to treating foreigners, when it comes to helping the poor, when it comes to the matters of just, even the Sabbath legislation that's unique in the Ancient Near East, you have all sorts of things where the Israelites are distinctive in how they are to live their lives compared to the rest of the Ancient Near Eastern cultures, which had kind of cruel and punishing sorts of interest rates. There is no concern about foreigners in the land. There is a fundamental hierarchical structure in these societies, and so you had lesser punishments for those at the upper levels, and more stiff punishments for those at the lower levels, whereas the Israelites are basically operating with a strongly democratized ethic, that the king is subject to those laws as the common person is, and you don't have that rigid hierarchy in Israel that you do in these other nations.

Speaker 1:
[66:13] Well, I think we can spend some time here because we've seen this over and over. The snobbery in science would be like presentism, like a present bias, but I was reading the other day about James Madison in 1790. Benjamin Franklin is trying to get rid of slavery in the United States, and James Madison is basically like we can't right now. When we read the stories of Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, we're-

Speaker 2:
[66:44] Even Washington.

Speaker 1:
[66:45] Washington, we don't, it's almost impossible to reconcile what we know is good and bad right now with the dilemma that these guys were in in 1790 because it would pull the country apart. Virginia's already about to go do its own thing, and no one today would argue for slavery. Well, that's actually possibly false. There might be people who still, crazy people who are still into that, but most legitimate humans today, none of us would be a fan of slavery. It's horrible. We already dealt with it, we tried to get rid of it, but the issue of equality still shows up, and it's just we have a dark history with that. But then you see in Old Testament, you see the same thing where God's giving rules, or how to treat your slaves. How do we, like God could technically outlaw slavery back then, why didn't he?

Speaker 2:
[67:36] No. Well, this is a multi-layered answer, but first of all, the term slave or slavery itself is problematic in our modern translations. In older translations, it didn't use slave or slavery, like the King James Version just has it one time, and that's not even in the Hebrew text in Jeremiah, it's just inserted by the translator. But you had more things like servant or bond servant, but not slave. But now that we've been through all that we have since 1611, with colonial kind of modern day slavery, you have civil war, you have Jim Crow laws, you have the Dred Scott decision, of course, before the Civil War. And all these layers of racial prejudice, of ownership, of slaves and so forth, terrible things. And now that modern translations are using slave, slavery, as though, and what it does is it conjures up the notions of modern day slavery and biases people against what the scriptures are actually saying about the humanity of the slave. So what do we mean when we talk about, what is the evil of slavery? What is inherently wrong with it? Is it just hard work, the tedious work? Is it maybe even the government saying, you gotta help build roads or you gotta help serve in the military for two years, like in some countries here? Pardon?

Speaker 1:
[69:10] With maybe not a lot of pay.

Speaker 2:
[69:11] With not a lot of pay. Oh, this is slavery. Well, no, that's different. Where slavery is actually the ownership of another person, such that you can do whatever you want to that person. That person is at your disposal, body, as it were, you could even to the point of killing that person. You do see that going on in the antebellum south. What the scriptures are talking about. It's interesting that, and I only bring this out in my book, Christianity Contested, because I'm thinking through these issues and updating and so forth. In Christianity Contested, I have a chapter on, quote, slavery. And what I point out is that there is a prohibition in Exodus where you're not allowed to tattoo someone. Tattoos were prohibited. Well, what was the association with tattoos in the ancient Near East? Well, some people think it's idolatry, that you belong to a god or something. No, actually that's a lesser likely explanation, but a tattoo indicated one person's ownership of that tattooed person.

Speaker 1:
[70:18] Oh, wow.

Speaker 2:
[70:19] So you have really a strong argument against the ownership of another person with that prohibition of tattooing another person. But we can go into other texts as well. We see, of course, we see the biblical vision, you know, there's a fundamental equality of male and female, of all persons, you know, slave or free as it were, that they're all fundamentally equal, made in the image of God. That's the vision. So what about some of these particular laws? Well, interestingly enough, in Exodus 21, a lot of people look there. And what you have is a mention of if your servant, male or female servant, if you strike that person so that you gouge out that, you know, servant's eye or knock out his tooth. Well, what happens? Well, that servant gets to go free. That person's in debt, and that's why he goes into servitude in the first place. But if you injure that person, then that person gets to go free without any lingering debt. So there's a concern about permanent injury to these people. Well, some people say, oh, well, look, there's another text that says, if you strike the servant so that he dies, there's a punishment. But if he lives one or two days, then there will be no punishment. And for that man is his silver or that servant is his silver. Well, a lot of people say, oh, so basically you can beat him with an inch of his life. And if he walks around and then dies a couple of days later, then you're scot-free. Well, hold on a minute. It says that if you strike your servant so that he dies, he will be avenged. That word avenged has to do with death penalty, my friends. So we're not talking about ruining a piece of furniture here. We're talking about killing another human being. And there's a death penalty associated with that. So let's kind of clear the table here and say, okay, we'll acknowledge please that there is a death penalty that goes along with striking your servant so that he dies, which tells us plainly that this is a full-fledged human being, not a piece of furniture, not someone that you own, that you can do whatever you want with. And then you go on to, let's just acknowledge that. And then we go on to the latter part of the verse and talk about that. But first, you got to acknowledge that that portion of that verse needs to be taken with full clarity and understanding that this is a person who's made of the image of God, not mere property. Well, then it goes on to say, well, if he gets up and walks around after a day or two and then he dies, then the person is not going to be punished. Well, that same word is used, that person is not going to be avenged. So there's no death penalty here because the assumption is he wasn't doing this intentionally, it was an accidental death. And so it doesn't mean that there isn't going to be a penalty for that, like a monetary payment or something like that, but it is not capital punishment because it was an accidental death. So it's not taking punishment off the table because there are always punishments or kind of payments for accidental deaths and so forth. But then it goes on to say that he is his silver. Well, even that is ambiguous. Should it be he is his silver? One translation has he is his property, but it's silver. Well, or it could be translated, that is his silver. Well, what is that referring to? Well, this passage comes in the context of accidental injury, and in the preceding verses, it talks about a person who has been injured and the person who brought injury is to pay for the medical bills, his silver as it were. So if this person who has injured his servant then takes on the medical bills and tries to show goodwill, then the judge will take this into consideration that this medical payment, that is his silver, is an indication of goodwill, that this was not intentional, that it was not murderous intent from the very beginning. Even if you say, well, he is his silver, well, you could simply understand that as being, if you're injuring your servant severely so that he dies, you're only hurting your own pocketbook. You're only, you're losing money on this, that's dumb. And that's wrong, of course. But, so it could be understood in this multifaceted way. And so just to say, oh, you can do whatever you want with him. No, that's kind of a flippant dismissive, uncharitable way of looking at the text. Let's look at this again, first of all, look at that first part of the text. And then really that should clear away any sort of misunderstanding about the status of this servant. He is a full-fledged human being, and if you take his life intentionally, your life will be taken.

Speaker 1:
[75:08] So he is this, your silver could be-

Speaker 2:
[75:11] Or for the medical bills that you're paying? You're having a loss production. Or it could just be you're only losing, you're making things much worse for you because you're paying for this servant because he's indebted to you, he's indebted and he's working for you for six years and then the seventh he goes free. But why would you not want to benefit from this person's work for you, for the full amount of years rather than bringing injury to him, you're only harming yourself, but you're harming yourself as well as your servant.

Speaker 1:
[75:43] Could servant be transferable loosely, contextually to staff today? Or was it a heightened level of servitude?

Speaker 2:
[75:51] Well, I mean, I would say that the person goes into servitude because that person is impoverished. If you don't have poverty, you're not going to have servitude in Israel. And this applies also to foreigners who are in service in Israel in Leviticus 25. I spent three chapters talking about that text in the Vindictive Bully Book. And it's interesting that even those who are foreigners, who, you know, and basically I would say that this, you could talk, you could use that term employee. In fact, employer-employee relationship. And I do maintain that that is a workable because the word servant itself comes from the root word, avad, you know, evad, servant, avad, the verb means to work or to serve. So it has kind of a labor involvement here. And so you can talk about someone who is working as a contracted hire for someone for six years. It's sort of like, you know, an indentured servant who had come from the old country to the colonies and would work for seven years to pay for the passage of the ship. And then once he was done, he was able to go about freely as an ordinary citizen would and had no debt hanging over his head. And in the same way, that's how indentured servitude worked in Israel as well. You paid off your debt. You couldn't go beyond six years unless voluntarily, you said, I love my master, my employer and you dedicate yourself to being in his household for the rest of his life, the rest of your life. And this was seen as something positive. So what's interesting is that you have a couple of factors here. You have one, the possibility of just staying on as a servant, which shows you that it's not this kind of degrading sort of a thing.

Speaker 1:
[77:35] Because who would want to stay on?

Speaker 2:
[77:36] Exactly, totally. And also, foreigners who came from slave situations or servant situations outside of Israel, could, you know, the law of Moses says they could settle in any of Israel's cities. They were not to be sent back to their master, which would mean probably some sort of severe punishment, perhaps bodily mutilations and so forth. And so Israel was rather than sending them back to the source of oppression, could actually take them in and let them settle in Israel's cities. So basically, and even in 1 Samuel 25, you'd have, we have mentioned Nabel, Abigail's husband is telling David's servants that servants are kind of running free, kind of leaving probably oppressive situations within Israel itself. So whether it's domestically or foreign, one scholar says that basically through runaway, you could leave an oppressive situation, whether in Israel or outside of Israel. And you could also voluntarily stay on if you liked your situation, which fundamentally undercuts the, quote, institutionalization of slavery, because you can enter into certain things through either running, you know, a new situation by running away or by adopting this, you know, employer as someone you want to work for permanently. So, it really removes the spirit of that, you know, what we associate with modern day slavery of ownership and so forth, and oppression and tyranny and so forth. You see all of that lifted even in Leviticus 25, which is kind of the major text that people will focus on. And I spent a lot of time looking at that, where you have a, you know, foreigners who are, you know, who come into Israel that they can be, you know, you can, you know, keep these servants in your household from generation to generation. Typically, that didn't happen because they were assimilated into Israel. You'd have sometimes servants who would, you know, foreign servants who would marry Israelites and so on. But it says that if this, you know, sojourner who is, you know, this foreigner or alien who is sojourning among you, you know, these people you can have as servants, it says if he becomes a person of means or prospers, he can actually take on an Israelite servant to work for him. So it's possible that if you're in this situation as a foreigner, you can actually rise in status and improve your lot to the point that you can actually hire an Israelite to work for you. So, you know, it's kind of interesting that you can, you know, even the language of buying and selling and so forth, this is merely transactional language of, you know, we talk about teams having, you know, being traded from one team to another, teams having owners and so forth, buying this player and so forth. It is that kind of transactional language, but it's not as though this is, it's not as though this is somehow, oh, you know, Lebron James was traded, you know, from the Cleveland Cavaliers. You know, that's not a diminishing of his status. It's just using this kind of transactional language. And so those are the sorts of things that I want to talk about and try to emphasize. It doesn't mean that servitude was somehow easy. That's like the equivalent, oh, Lebron James and a servant in Israel were at the same level. No, but the point is that the transactional language is in place, but it doesn't diminish their humanity. And that's the basic point that I'm trying to make.

Speaker 1:
[81:01] There's linguistic errors.

Speaker 2:
[81:03] Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:
[81:03] So it's almost like if somebody was reading sports news 400 years from now, and there wasn't a continuity of history, they could completely misinterpret our language today as well.

Speaker 2:
[81:18] Yeah, yeah, exactly. I use the same in terms of the ancient Near Eastern language of we utterly destroyed them, left alive, nothing, breathed, no survivors and so forth. We have that kind of a version in our own modern day sports analogies where we totally annihilated that team, we totally destroyed them. Well, no one thinks that that literally happened. And that was the case in the ancient Near East as well.

Speaker 1:
[81:41] Wow, it reminds me of a internship in America. We should just change the word servant to intern. Any time we read the Old Testament. Master's Commission. You know what that is? What is it? Master's Commission. Do you know what Master's Commission is? Is this from Halo? In the Assemblies of God, you had like this Master's Commission program where you were basically an indentured servant.

Speaker 2:
[82:06] Yeah. Same thing in the army too. If you're serving in the army, you say, well, if I get married, therefore, am I relieved of my obligations? No, they continue on. You have a certain contract to fulfill and that you are the, as it were, the servant of the US government, the US army until that contract is fulfilled.

Speaker 1:
[82:24] Might be. I think the army is even more intense because aren't you, don't the contracts for the military is more ownership?

Speaker 2:
[82:33] Well, I mean, it's kind of a provisional sort of thing. You do sign on for a certain thing. I mean, you do this with any contract. You're a servant of any contract that you sign. So, this is, but it doesn't have to be seen in terms of, oh, this is like, you know, antebellum slavery or something like that.

Speaker 1:
[82:50] Have you studied any of Thomas Sowell's work on the antebellum South and?

Speaker 2:
[82:55] Oh yeah. Yeah, I'm a big fan of Thomas Sowell.

Speaker 1:
[82:58] That's a giant exploratory can of worms. When you study the culture of the South and where they came from, Scots and.

Speaker 2:
[83:06] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, it's a, I appreciate Thomas Sowell and another person I've appreciated is Nigel Bigger, who was a British moral philosopher and theologian who, you know, was at Oxford. And he, and I know him personally, and he wrote a book on colonialism, moral reckoning. And he looks at colonialism, he recognizes that there are some wrong things that are done, but largely, and this is where he talks about slavery. What does slavery mean? And he says that if we are, you know, and he talks about how slavery has been part of the human condition, you know, from the, you know, of course people tend to pick out Westerners as the ones who are the enslavers. Well, what about, you know, what about, you know, African chieftains who would actually use slaves to offer up as sacrificial victims in one account, 1400 sacrificial victims at one time, you know, the Asante people, or you had, you'd have, you know, Comanches in, or Mayans and so forth. You have a lot of non-Western Muslims who would enslave white Europeans as part of their slave trade and millions of them. And so there's actually, yeah, I mean, yeah, there's a word, slav and slave. Yeah, they're connected. And, you know, also you have the, you know, what is interesting is that slavery under Islam was even greater than modern day, you know, black, you know, black slavery from Africa. Yeah, so it's kind of interesting that, you know, millions more from Islam than were, I think it's like, you know, I think 12 million compared to 17 million under Islam, so. Wow.

Speaker 1:
[84:50] How do you spell Nigel's last name?

Speaker 2:
[84:52] B-I-G-G-A-R, Nigel Bigger. He's, you know, just an excellent treatment of, an even handed treatment of colonialism, but which brought actually great benefit to many people. It was not seen as, you know, that you, of course, you'd have people who go into, you know, places like New Zealand or Australia and so forth. They were kind of on their own, they were entrepreneurs and a lot of abuses took place through their own individual initiative, but it wasn't as though there's a sanction by the British Crown. It was much more principled and really had a desire to bring structure, infrastructure to places like India and elsewhere and help bring people up, lift them out of poverty. There's, and there's, they're often very good relations between the British who were in power, you know, in these areas and the indigenous peoples, that there was often a cooperation and working together of an affection between them. So anyway, I'd encourage people to look at, you know, there's this book, Colonialism, A Moral Reckoning by Nigel Bigger.

Speaker 1:
[85:50] I'm going to get that.

Speaker 2:
[85:50] Yeah, it's awesome.

Speaker 1:
[85:51] I'll read through that. Is there a chance? You're holding your breath. I think you'd be, one of the things that I feel like from a macro perspective that's coming up right now when it comes to even like, what is a fair wage? What is, like, it seems like to some degree the slaves still had a choice, whether or not they wanted to work or not, because- Servants. Servants.

Speaker 2:
[86:11] Yeah. Sorry. I think servant is a better translation. It's more neutral. It's not rigged in a sense. So yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 1:
[86:19] One of the things that I feel like one of the things that changed me from being around Taylor was like, you have a choice in these things in your life. I feel like it's not normal to hear that, maybe as much depending where you grew up. So it seems like what you hear, at least right now in American culture, is like a lot of, I've heard this a lot. There's a couple of lines that I wanted to pull up that were coming to mind. Some things that are going around when it comes to work now, they're comparing jobs like salaries to slave labor, being a servant back in the day. These are some of the things that are commonly being thrown around. A salary is just enough to keep you quiet. If you're paid hourly, you're owned hourly. Jobs are modern day servitude, and you're always one paycheck away from being controlled. Who said that? These are just common things are being accepted as ideologies to get behind across social media, just culture right now. I just use chat to kind of find the exact wordings that were being used. But I'm just curious at a philosophical level, because I think maybe there's this feeling of like, man, we're always controlled by the elites. We have no control. We're just victims, we're powerless. What do you say to people in terms of reminding them that like, hey, you do have a choice, like who's in control? Is God in control? Are we in control? How do we work with the power of choice while honoring those above us?

Speaker 2:
[87:44] Yeah. Well, I would say that there are not only philosophical questions here, but they're also very practical ones. And indeed there may be circumstances where, say in the Ancient Near East, where you don't have a lot of options, where yes, typically people were, went into servitude, they would quote, sell themselves, part of that transactional language, to someone who could help them with their, in this transitional time where they're trying to get back on their feet, and would provide for them food and shelter and clothing and opportunity to work. And this would eventually be sufficient to cover the debt and they would leave without any lingering debt after six years. But again, sometimes it is through the force of those circumstances that they really don't have a whole lot, they don't have a lot of options. And so there may, and so that's why the Law of Moses makes these sorts of provisions, but also tries to offer, like the Book of Ruth, there are certain provisions for the poor in the land where you, well, one, you can't stay longer than six years in this situation of indebtedness that you have to be released from it after six years to pay off your debt under contract. You have gleaning laws where you can pick fruits from trees or Ruth gleaning the barley from the harvest, the barley harvest and so forth. You have this room for the poor of the land to benefit. You also don't charge interest to the poor, unlike other Ancient Near Eastern law codes that had exorbitant interest rates. You don't charge your poor fellow Israelite these high interest rates. You basically just have that person pay you back in kind. And so there is that concern about the poor that you are to, again, the ideal is Deuteronomy 15, that there should be no poor in the land, although you will always have the poor in the land. So there is that tension, but you want to fight against it, you want to help them, you want to bring benefit and lift them up. But so there is that reality that we just need to, I think, reckon. And there may be some people who are in certain situations where they don't have a lot of options, maybe a kind of a dead end town where there's only one business that's there, and it's going to require a lot of capital to move to another location. Sometimes you take those risks and so forth, and you may have some choices. But in other places, it may be much more difficult. And so we know people in other parts of the world where they're in situations where Muslim-dominated areas where Christians are in, they are basically have no real option except to just make bricks day after day after day. It's tedious and so forth. And at least it does give them some income, but of course, on the other hand, they're often taken advantage of and so forth. I'd say more in the United States, you'll have options than you will say in some other places in the world where maybe Christians are minority and you don't have a whole lot to go on. When Muslims are dominating the economy, when they discriminate against you, you may be more qualified for a job, but yet you're bypassed in favor of a Muslim because you're a Christian. So it doesn't matter how much education you've gotten, you're discriminated against. So that's going to limit you as well. So there may be certain cultural factors as well.

Speaker 1:
[91:26] Absolutely. What would, and if you have something to add on this, Taylor, I'd love to hear your thoughts like, what is the truth and hope to those people?

Speaker 2:
[91:33] No matter what that picture. There's that other part of it. Of course, the Lord is, I think there's a mill worker in the novel, North and South, a British 19th century novel. She's working and there's a cotton mill, there's fluff in the air, cotton fluff and she breathes it into her lungs and she said that, you know, she said, if this is the only life that there is to have these millstones kind of pounding in my ears, to have the fluff constantly filling my lungs so that I never have a breath of fresh air and that I'd never be able to see my deceased mother ever again. She said, if I didn't believe that there is a God who will wipe away all tears from all of our eyes, I could go mad. And I think that there is a powerful reminder there that even in the worst of circumstances, the hope of being reunited with our loved ones who have been redeemed, the promise of grief and sorrow and tears being removed, this is huge. I mean, this is why people in the early centuries of the church, I mean, they went to the death. They endured animals in the Coliseum, tearing them apart and so forth, because they were confident that there's a God who loved them, that there's a God who guaranteed a hope beyond this life, and that the trials that we endure, Paul said in St. Corinthians 4, Paul himself talks about being shipwrecked and stoned and on the run from Jews and Gentile mobs alike, that he says, he calls them these light momentary afflictions, that they are preparing for us a great weight of glory that far exceeds them. So there's a reminder that in this life, yes, there is hardship. Jesus said, John 16, 33, in this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, I've overcome the world. And this is, I think, the reminder that we have a two-worlds model of looking at things, that there is a god who will set things right in the end, he will bring cosmic justice. And this is one of the reasons that the Christian faith has so many resources compared to the atheist when you're dealing with the problem of evil. Now, there is no cosmic justice if there is no god. People are going to get away with murder millions of times over even. And if there is no god, what is the basis for human dignity? What is the basis for even calling something evil? If there is no, I think of evil as something like counterfeit money. Counterfeit money makes no sense unless you've got real currency by which to judge this as a deviation. And in the same way, where is that basis for judging something to be evil, unless there is some sort of a standard or norm to which things should conform. Evil is a departure from the way things ought to be. And so in the Christian faith, we have a number of resources, especially a god who steps into this world who suffers with us. This is huge. And so we are to be reminded of these things as we look at even these difficult, sometimes intractable situations when it comes to people being enslaved in some of these other parts of the world where they have no options, are being oppressed as Christians and so forth, that there is still a remarkable hope that we have in the gospel, and that these are in comparison to what we'll experience. Paul calls them, and he was one who knew, that he calls them light, momentary afflictions compared to the great weight of glory. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians 2 that, that eye has not seen nor has ear heard, nor has it entered in the heart of man what God has prepared for those who love him. And these are the promises that are for us. So we look to Jesus who himself was, who endured such opposition from sinners, Hebrews 12 tells us, so that we might not grow weary and lose heart.

Speaker 1:
[95:46] I agree with all that. Do you want my thoughts or do you want to move on? That would be great. Just on people, the comments that you mentioned, is that what you want thoughts on? Thoughts on that and then also since he touched on the truth and hope, maybe like what to do or like what we can change in our everyday lives to start making changes towards more freedom. That's something you're very passionate about. I love the perspective that I'm getting from Paul on the even the way to interpret the economic law of the Old Testament, because I've never done as deep of work on the context of it. But even hearing that there was a way for foreigners to come in and work up the system, I've never thought about that before. But to me, we have two blueprints, even Francis Bacon talked about this. We have this book of scripture and the book of nature. And you're talking about two worlds. So it seems to always be this. We have two blueprints we can look at. There's our attempts to self rectify a situation, and there's like God's vision, the Old Testament vision, God's vision of reality. I think a lot of the, how to make it better, it's when you read the statement of like, if you're paid hourly, you're owned hourly. I think that's preposterous. I think that makes no sense at all. Did you ever work an hourly job?

Speaker 2:
[97:10] I mean, yeah, I've had plenty of jobs. You get paid hourly and so forth. And well, I mean, these are things you agree to, for one thing.

Speaker 1:
[97:18] It's better than starving to have.

Speaker 2:
[97:19] And I think that if you look at people in grinding poverty and I think true slavery, say Christians in a Muslim setting where they have, I mean, they're taken advantage of, they're abused and so forth. I think to put it in that sort of category, I think it just loses all perspective. It's just not properly understood. I think get out a little bit more and look at where, what a lot of people throughout the world have to deal with because we are so, we have such great benefits, such privileges here in the West that, again, the impact of the Christian faith has brought to us that other parts of the world, they just have not had that kind of permeating influence within their culture. Of course, we're losing a lot of those influences. The impact of the Gospel in Western society, we're living off of the fumes of it now, but again, that's a huge, I think an important factor to seeing where we've come. I mean, even Tom Holland in his book, Dominion talks about the Me Too movement. The Me Too movement, that is the outgrowth of the Christian influence, that women have rights, that they ought not to be abused. If they were in the Greco-Roman world, pfft, Me Too movement? Forget it. I was gonna ask you about that. And so it was actually the, it was through, Tom Holland says it was actually through the cross of Jesus Christ that people see God coming to the world not to punish human beings, but to take the punishment for human beings that revolutionized the world and that changed the Greco-Roman world into a Christian world, because Tom Holland said that the Greco-Roman world was brutal. The people who are weak, who are poor, who are disabled, they were disregarded, they were left out to die and so forth. But Jesus brought this understanding of the value of each person that Christ comes to die for, his own enemies even, that this revolutionized the world and yet even the MeToo movement is a reflection of the strong influence of the Gospel in Western civilization. So anyway, those are some, I think, helpful perspectives to keep in mind.

Speaker 1:
[99:33] The manmade counterfeit is trying to repeal difficult circumstances and God's system seems to be to protect you through difficult circumstances. So a lot of our like labor exploitation philosophy today comes from like Karl Marx, some of the Canadian macroeconomics. That's what runs the world right now and it doesn't work and it will never work. It's gonna backfire and Karl Marx was broke his whole life. So why are we listening to people who don't have any fruit at all? So I don't know how to handle those questions because they seem really juvenile to me.

Speaker 2:
[100:07] And I think that even when you think about the dominance of the Roman Empire in the first century, Jesus is still having a remarkable influence, mentoring, discipling these who would succeed him in having a ministry to the ends of the earth. You also have a, you know, the, you know, you have the opportunity that Christians in their own sphere of influence through, you know, Paul talked about the importance of prayer, praying for your, you know, those who in authority over you that we might live, you know, kind of, you know, peaceful, you know, godly lives in, you know, in this sort of a, you know, in an ordered society. You know, you think about prayer, how, you know, and even being able to influence within your own, you know, within your own home, within your own community and so forth, that the church is often overlooked as a change agent of the world. I think of how, you know, there's a Canadian broadcasting corporation journalist, you know, by the name of Brian Stewart, who had been, you know, quote, non-religious. He just didn't care about God and so forth, but he, as he went throughout the world, covering these stories in Ethiopia and kind of the worst hell holes of the world, he said that he saw Christians who were at the forefront battling against, you know, these forces of evil, bringing relief to people who are injured in earthquakes and so forth, these ravaged areas. And he said, whenever I go, whenever I want to explore these, you know, hell holes of the world, I follow the Christians as they're going there. And he said it was through their influence that they, you know, that he became a believer. He became a follower of Jesus Christ because he saw Christians doing such remarkable work when, you know, even before the camera lights got there and after the camera lights had gone, that Christians were in the thick of it and doing the work of God. And so that was what impressed him. I think of another person by the name of Rodney Stark, a noted sociologist, he had been at Baylor University. And in 2006, he's written about the impact of the Christian faith in history and the influence of science and other areas of life that the Christian faith has really had a pervasive influence in Western civilization. In 2006, I had read that he called himself an agnostic. And then I wrote to him in 2011, and I said, you mentioned that you were an agnostic. Where do things stand now in your relationship with the Christian faith? He said, well, he said, I basically wrote myself into the Christian faith. He said he had seen the impact of the Christian faith in history, and he was just persuaded of its truth because it worked. He just saw the impact of the gospel through people who are motivated spiritually and morally, that they made such a dramatic difference that he ended up becoming a believer himself. So anyway, that was a remarkable discovery. I'm often quoting Rodney Stark from that personal email that he sent to me because this was something that had been driven home to him. So even in those small circles of influence, Christians early on had very little power in the Roman Empire, but yet came to have a remarkable influence overall. So again, we may become discouraged, but I think what we do is we attempt to be a faithful presence wherever we are. That however dark things seem, that we at least let our light shine brightly so that people might see our good works and glorify our Father who's in heaven.

Speaker 1:
[103:51] How do you juxtapose the difference in the societal impact of Christianity versus like Hinduism or Buddhism? Have you studied any of those or do you have a comparison?

Speaker 2:
[104:03] Yeah, I mean, I think of the, I'll take Hinduism for example, you have the caste system that is built into, baked into Hinduism itself so that you will have discrimination built into the religion itself. So for example, people who are Dalits, the lowest of the low in, they have no caste at all, there's no, that they, for them to go into a Hindu temple, no, it's forbidden, they can't go in there. They've got to be, you've got to, the Brahmins are the ones who are in control. They're the ones who are being served by those who are the lower castes. You know, a friend of mine, Tom Wolf, he was telling me he lived in Delhi for 11 years and he talked about a certain group of people, a caste as it were, really lower than that, where he talked about how these, the castes, the Brahmins, the high caste expect these people to be silent, you know, and invisible all day long. They can only come out at night. If you come out of your hovel to do something, then the Brahmins will feel justified to just tear down your house and you're homeless. So there's this, they've got to stay cooped up inside all day and think of all that that entails. They can only come out in the darkness. I think of a, you know, my friend Tom told me about a friend of his who grew up in Hinduism. He was, again, one of these, had no caste. He was a Dalit, and he would sweep excrement off of the streets of one of India's cities. So that was his job. His father did, his grandfather did it. This is just what they were locked into. That's the caste system that's baked into Hinduism. And this, but at one point, this Dalit heard the message of Jesus. He heard that there's a God who made all human beings in his image. There's no caste system with God. He also heard that Jesus came into this world to set prisoners free, to bring release, to help people connect to the one true God and to become children of this one true God. And this message so revolutionized him that it totally changed his life. He ended up getting an education, ended up going to Oxford University and getting his doctorate there. And he, as kind of in a nutshell, he would tell his testimony this way. He would say, because of Hinduism, I used to sweep sheet. But because of Jesus, I went to Oxford University. So that was the kind of a synthesis of his own life and how Christ had come to and had changed his life, had revolutionized it. So again, we can talk about other religions too. I mean, I went to a mosque for a couple of years, not very familiar with Islam, and talked a lot of theology and so forth. And I've certainly seen, of course, we've become more exposed to Islam in more recent days. But again, there are, we can say similar things about women having, it's part of the system. I mean, you look at Muhammad's example and how he treated women. Compare Jesus, how he treated women, compare Muhammad with Muhammad and how he treated women night and day. Totally, totally different. Jesus is exemplary in his treatment of women, his regard for women, his not using women. You also have the example of, in the Quran, you have how women are seen as lesser than men. Their testimony is half of that of a man in a court of law. Women are seen, Muhammad viewed women as weak and less intelligent than men. There are all sorts of negative things that are associated with Muhammad, and traditions that are associated with Muhammad as well in what are called the hadiths. You look at the life of Muhammad, you look at the life of Jesus, you see a remarkable contrast between the two. A lot of people say, when sometimes you are talking about Islam, they will say, oh, that's not true Islam. Well, just look at the founders. Look at Muhammad and look at Jesus, compare them and you'll see what a difference that makes.

Speaker 1:
[108:19] So could the same thing be true if somebody looks at the Bible just with a contemporaneous viewpoint of how Old Testament treats women? Could there be a misunderstanding of the text? Because I would say that the way how we've talked about slavery, the same thing you could probably put on a masterclass of how women actually did have rights in the Old Testament, we don't see all of that. Do you think people are doing the same thing to Christians?

Speaker 2:
[108:45] I do think that that is the case. Again, I'll refer you to my book, sorry about that. The book is God of Indictive Bullying, which I kind of expand on this. And I follow Carol Myers, who taught at Duke University. She had been the president of the Society of Biblical Literature. So a distinguished scholar wrote an excellent commentary on the book of Exodus, for example. But she talks about, a lot of times people kind of superimpose the language of patriarchy on the scriptures. And there are modern day Christians who will utilize that language. She said, patriarchy is kind of a modern term, often with Marxist connotations, and is slapped on to any sort of arrangement where maybe you have certain aspects of quote, male dominance, and oh, that's a patriarchal society and so forth. Well, you know, she said, there's a lot of loose use of this. In fact, in my book, He's Got a Royal Monster, I had to shift from this a little bit, because I use the term patriarchy, and so I backed off from that in my Vindictive Bully book, because Carol Meyers talks about the, how she talks about heteroarchy, that you have women and men who have different areas of expertise or professionalism, and that there is a certain harmony that exists there, and that women are authorities in some areas, men are authorities in others, and that there is, you know, you have women who are leaders, women who are women of, you know, they're women of influence in the Old Testament, and so I list those in the book. So, you know, you have Deborah, who's a judge, who is someone who is taking on hard cases. She's the one who shows greater courage and fortitude, say in, you know, than Barak, the military general who leads the Israelites into battle, but she's the one who gives him the courage. She's the one who is wise. She's a judge in Israel, so a leader. So you have, you know, an array of these women in the Old Testament, you know, like the Proverbs, 31 woman. Well, you look at her and she's involved in commerce. She's involved in real estate. You know, she assesses the field and she buys it. She's not only caring for her household, but she's also someone who is very entrepreneurial and doing a lot of things kind of in parallel to her husband at the gates. So just do a study of that is, I think, very significant. And you see that there are these areas of professionalism that they have. So rather than patriarchy, talking about heterarchy, there are different areas of professionalism and strength and authority, shared by men and women. And so I would encourage people to take a look at that if they want to.

Speaker 1:
[111:22] Yeah. At some point, I'd love to have a conversation with you to learn the difference between Islam and Muslim. Because there seems to be a connotation with Islam that is more systemic, governmental. Most like how you have Christian nationalism and then you have the true gospel. They're not exactly the same things, but they're lumped together. Have you noticed a discrepancy there?

Speaker 2:
[111:46] Yeah, I mean, I think there's so many caricatures of what is so called Christian nationalism. I think at least 11 different definitions of that.

Speaker 1:
[111:57] Like denominations?

Speaker 2:
[111:58] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[111:58] Okay, let's talk about hell.

Speaker 2:
[112:00] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[112:01] Let's end on this juicy topic.

Speaker 2:
[112:03] Okay.

Speaker 1:
[112:04] Universalism has become quite popular.

Speaker 2:
[112:06] Right.

Speaker 1:
[112:06] The idea that everyone at some point is going to I guess get to heaven or escape hell, but the hell is an idea, or hell on earth.

Speaker 2:
[112:18] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[112:18] I think you had an interview with a McClimand or a guy named Michael.

Speaker 2:
[112:23] Yeah, Michael McClimand who wrote a book on, you know, against universalism, The Devil's Redemption. Yeah, Christianity Today. Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[112:28] How have we gotten to this point with the idea that because we find it intolerable, God must not honor the system. And what is hell? And is it something that is truly free will? If God sort of knows, this kind of pushes us into the Calvinist theology. What do we do with this idea of hell? Because it seems like a big obstacle to people coming into the faith. They can't believe that God would do that to someone.

Speaker 2:
[113:01] Yeah. Yeah. Well, a couple of things. And by the way, for those who are interested, there is a Chris Date, who is an annihilationist, by the way. He and I are co-editing a book on hell with IVP academic coming out in December. It's called Concerning Hell. And it looks at hell, you know, again, two different angles. One is the traditional eternal conscious punishment view. And the other is the annihilationist or conditionalist perspective, conditional immortality.

Speaker 1:
[113:31] What is annihilationism?

Speaker 2:
[113:32] Okay. Annihilationism is, maintains that the final punishment, God's judgment, you know, hell, is ultimately a punishment of personal extinction or obliteration by God. That is the, you cease to exist. And so, and I would maintain that the conditionalist does, you know, they do marshal a strong case. So I'm not saying that it's just, oh, there's no good reason for holding a language of perishing, of death, of consuming fire and so forth. You know, these are images that are, I think, very, I think potent and ought to be taken seriously. I still do think that eternal conscious punishment is the appropriate view to take, but I think, you know, a good case can be made for the conditionalist or annihilationist viewpoint. So that is the final outcome of all who have resisted God, whether it be human beings or angelic beings, they ultimately cease to exist. So the language of the lake of fire is basically a picture of being thrown into a place that extinguishes you. So there is that particular view. Anyway, in this book, we have people looking at this issue from philosophy, systematic theology, practical theology or pastoral theology, historical theology and biblical studies. So we have both sides debating each other. And then the co-editor and I, Chris Date, we write our differing, kind of our own portions of the conclusion and kind of wrapping things up. So there is that book coming out concerning hell and I encourage you to take a look at that. So, now get me back on track here. I'll mention that so.

Speaker 1:
[115:25] So yeah, I know that I can't wait for that book. CS. Lewis talks about this as like a choice. It's the great divorce is his thesis on this.

Speaker 2:
[115:34] Yeah.

Speaker 1:
[115:35] So.

Speaker 2:
[115:36] And I do think that there is something, CS. Lewis is onto something about people cordoning God off from their lives, which begins in this life by the way. Heaven begins in this life, hell begins in this life.

Speaker 1:
[115:48] Teach us that.

Speaker 2:
[115:49] Yeah, yeah. So, you know, some people say, oh, there is no hell, I'm already experiencing hell. Well, you're experiencing a foretaste of that, just like, you know, that song, Blessed Assurance, oh, what if we have blessed assurance, Jesus is mine? Oh, what a foretaste of glory divine. So there is the way that we gauge our lives on earth, we set our moral compass and our spiritual compass either toward God or away from God. And in the end, we get what we want. If you don't want a relationship with God, then that is what you end up with. If you embrace God in this life, then that is what continues on in the next life, in fuller color and joy and happiness. So I do maintain that human beings have the freedom to say no to God, that God, you know, Stephen says before he's about to be stoned, he says, you are always resisting the Holy Spirit, that human beings can, you know, in Isaiah chapter five, there's this parable of the vineyard where God plants this vineyard, a choice vine expects it to produce good fruit and it only produced worthless grapes. And God says, what more was I to do for my vineyard than had been done in it? So it's like a picture of exasperation. I'd done everything I could, but his people resisted, his people rebelled and so forth. So God is clearly not engineering this kind of rebellion. He's doing what he can, provides what he can, and human beings, his people are often rebelling. And so God sometimes brings judgment, temporal judgment. But of course, there is the final judgment as well. You can see as Louis said, in the end, there are two kinds of people, those who say to God, thy will be done and those to whom God says, thy will be done. And I think that that's really what is at the heart of hell. It's not a matter of good people versus bad people so much as those who are proud and refuse to humble themselves and those who are willing to humble themselves before God. Those are really the two categories here. And basically, people would rather be, you know, those who are condemned, they would rather resist God the rest of their lives as opposed, you know, in perpetuity and continue to rebel against him rather than be aligned with him. And so I use this, you know, Dallas Willard uses this example. He talks about how the flames of heaven burn hotter than the flames of hell. Of course, he's speaking figuratively that hell is not a place of high thermal output. If you take, you know, the flame and the darkness, both images of hell, literally they would cancel each other out. So these are metaphors and not to diminish them. It's a very serious thing, but I think it does. You know, and of course, the demonic beings themselves, they don't have bodies. So, you know, fire wouldn't work on them anyway. But, you know, but Dallas Willard says, the flames of heaven burn hotter than the flames of hell. In other words, if you want to be with God, you've got to repent, you've got to humble yourself. Otherwise, you're going to be very uncomfortable in the presence of God. You're not going to want to be near God. You're going to want to remove yourself from him. And so, you know, there is the question of universalism. I know you wanted to touch on that too. And maybe just saying, there are texts that do indicate that, you know, it seems like, is there going to be some sort of universal reconciliation? You know, that, you know, God is going to reconcile all things together in Christ, Colossians 1, or that Christ is going to be all in all, 1 Corinthians 15. You know, what's going on here? Is everything going to be kind of wrapped up and everybody's going to be saved? Well, I think that one, this doesn't take seriously the free will of human beings, that human beings can resist John Milton's Satan in Paradise Law says, better to rule in hell.

Speaker 1:
[120:00] Then to serve in heaven. Better to rule in hell than to serve in heaven. There's a desire to avoid the presence of God, to be one's own master, and that is really the heart of the problem. But there are those texts that seem to indicate, well, is there gonna be some sort of a general reconciliation? Well, one, in Colossians 1, Paul says that you too have been reconciled. After all, it's cosmic reconciliation. You too have been reconciled, but it goes on to say, if you continue. So there's this conditionality associated with this reconciliation, not to mention that Jesus talks about this unpardonable sin, which cannot be forgiven in this life or in the life to come. There are a number of those sorts of texts that are, I think, very clear. It's interesting, one Universalist, Robin Perry, he maintains that Jesus taught, Jesus, you know, he taught that there are two ultimate destinies, that he was not a Universalist, but the Apostle Paul was. I'd say, well, this is a kind of a hard jump to make. I don't see how this can be justified. And you certainly see the Old Testament, you know, that there are two pathways, that there are two outcomes, you know, Psalm 1, you know, the Lord knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the ungodly will perish. That there is, so you have this sort of a two, two directions that Jesus talked about, the broad road that leads to destruction, the narrow road that leads to life, and fewer of those who find it and so on. So anyway, I would say that even in the Book of Revelation, you have mention of Satan, who with his cohort, it says in Revelation 20, 10, that they will, they will be thrown in the lake of fire and that they will be tormented day and night forever. And so that doesn't sound like universalism, that the devil is not going to be redeemed, that he's not going to be reconciled. And so anyway, I think it's important too to understand that when we look at the notion of eternal conscious punishment, that God is not going to be either too severe or too lenient, that God's punishment will be just, and we need to keep in mind too, that people who are in, you know, separated from God, as it were, who don't want God in their lives, they continue to rebel. They continue to reject God. They continue to sin and be self-absorbed and so on. And it's sort of like a, you know, turning from a smegle into a golem, where they become increasingly diminished in their own humanity, the longer they resist God. And they become kind of like in the great divorce, they become more like a grumble than a grumbler. They become more like this fixed state of resistors, you know, that they become, that their personhood is diminished in this final state.

Speaker 2:
[123:02] What's your take on Calvinism?

Speaker 1:
[123:07] I wouldn't call myself a Calvinist. I do appreciate a lot of what John Calvin has said, but when it comes to these issues of salvation, I don't think that grace is irresistible. That's one of the five pedals of the tulip, irresistible grace. And, but because it does seem that grace can be resisted, that, you know, we've mentioned Isaiah 5, Stephen saying that, you know, you're always resisting the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit could be grieved. The Holy Spirit could be quenched. We see that God himself is not willing that any should perish. He wants all to be saved. He'd love to be a universalist. But people simply say no to God, despite God's Herculean efforts to bring people into a relationship with himself. And so, you know, even in Isaiah, in Psalm 81, 10, God says to the Israelites whom he brought out of Egypt, open your mouth wide and I will fill it. But yet he says, my people refuse to listen to my voice. And so God basically gave them over to their desires. That's what it means to harden someone's heart. You give them over to their desires. You let them go. You remove your influences of grace and you say, okay, have it your way. And so that's so I, you know, in fact, in my book is God of Vindic de Bulde, I talk about, you know, what does it mean for God to harden Pharaoh's heart, for example? What does it mean to be a vessel of destruction? In Romans chapter 9, these people are, you know, these are vessels prepared for destruction. Well, the same language is used in 2nd Timothy chapter 2, where these vessels in a household, it says some are for noble use, some for ignoble use, ignoble use, think like chamber pots or something like that. But Paul says, if a person turns away from these things, he will become a vessel of honor fit for the master's use. So you don't have to remain a vessel of destruction. You don't have to remain a vessel of dishonor. You can become a vessel of honor by putting your trust in Christ, by submitting yourself to God. So it's not as though it's a fixed state, you're doomed to be a vessel of destruction. No, you're a vessel of destruction only if you remain in that state of mind, if you refuse to repent. But you can become a vessel of honor fit for the master's use.

Speaker 2:
[125:28] Which is the basis of the hope of the gospel, is it not?

Speaker 1:
[125:32] Absolutely. Yeah.

Speaker 2:
[125:33] So strict predestination does not seem to pass through how Jesus taught.

Speaker 1:
[125:39] Yeah, in this particularistic sort of a way, of course, every Christian ought to believe in predestination, but we can talk about the predestined outcome for those who refuse to repent is that they're vessels of destruction. Those who do repent, their predestined outcome is ultimately glorification.

Speaker 2:
[126:00] Yeah, I don't know if we'll ever be able to...

Speaker 1:
[126:02] It's a general thing rather than a particular thing.

Speaker 2:
[126:04] You would know this better than me, but I don't know if we'll ever fully wrap our minds around it because God being all-powerful and omniscient and omnipresent doesn't always seem to get his way because of free will.

Speaker 1:
[126:18] Yeah, I mean, I think that that's... You know, think about how... You know, how did angelic beings fall in the first place? Perfect environment. They were... You know, forget Adam and Eve in the garden. How did these angelic beings end up turning away from God, being in this perfect environment, being in the presence of God and so forth? Well, again, turning the attention away from God and turning toward themselves. And I think that's what's behind the scene there.

Speaker 2:
[126:44] Last question. And then we gotta get you to the airport.

Speaker 1:
[126:47] Okay.

Speaker 2:
[126:48] What's your favorite thing to work on these days? I know you're about to launch the book on hell, but...

Speaker 1:
[126:54] Favorite thing to work on.

Speaker 2:
[126:55] Yeah. What do you...

Speaker 1:
[126:56] What am I probably involved in?

Speaker 2:
[126:58] You're well-studied. You've had a great career. You've written 8,000 books. What's your favorite thing to do?

Speaker 1:
[127:06] My favorite thing to do? Well, I mean, I do love, I do love writing and editing. And my colleague, Paul Gould, and I at Palm Beach Atlantic University, by the way, feel free to come and join us at Palm Beach Atlantic University. We have a master's in philosophy of religion. You can do a hybrid program if you're from a distance, or come join us in person and join our community at Palm Beach Atlantic University. But also we have an undergrad in apologetics as well. So we're in West Palm Beach, South Florida, and so would love to have you. But, you know, so I love teaching. That's something that I really enjoy doing. But my colleague, Paul Gould and I, we are involved in a project on beauty as an argument for God's existence. So we've enlisted a whole host of world-class philosophers and other scholars who are arguing for why God makes the best sense of this real objective beauty that we see around us. I mean, I'm looking out the window here through the screen and seeing just such a beautiful surrounding, and beauty is something that we can't escape. It is something that we need. It is something that we have to have in our lives, and we see a world that is super abundant in beauty, and how did it come to be that way? Well, it makes sense if God, this imaginative, creative, intelligent being is behind it. So that's a project that we're working on and very excited about. It's coming out with Wiley Publishers probably in the next year and a half or so. And then, but in terms of things that I love to do, I mean, I love to be with my wife. We love to travel together. We've got six kids. We love our family. But my wife and I do a lot of traveling together. Typically when I'm traveling, my wife comes with me and we just enjoy ministering together. We love to be with people in other parts of the country, other parts of the world, and share in that common blessing of fellowship in Christ and trying to encourage and also being encouraged as well. I enjoy the outdoors, enjoy birding, twitching, as they say in Britain. I love following birds and taking pictures of them. But yeah, my wife and I love the outdoors, love national parks. We love to travel, we love museums and art and so forth. So we're glad that our travels take us to unique places in the world that we can do that.

Speaker 2:
[129:20] That's awesome. Well, thank you for stewarding our intellects well, and for pushing us closer to God. It's been awesome.

Speaker 1:
[129:26] Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure to be here. Thanks so much, guys.

Speaker 2:
[129:29] Cool. See you guys next week.