Making Sense of Strange Bible Passages

Mikel Del Rosario: 
Welcome to The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture. I'm Mikel Del Rosario, Cultural Engagement Manager here at The Hendricks Center at Dallas Theological Seminary. And our topic on The Table podcast today is "Making sense of strange Bible passages." My guest coming to us today from sunshiny California is Dan Kimball, lead teacher at Vintage Faith Church and an Associate Professor of Leadership and Theology at Western Seminary. Welcome, Dan. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
And welcome from Santa Cruz to you. And it is sunny outside, I'm looking out the window right now. So there is sunshine here. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
I do miss the golden coast, very cool. Now Dan, you help people better understand the Christian faith and that there are good reasons to believe Christian truth claims, but it was not always so. So before we get into our topic, why don't you tell us a little bit about your spiritual journey. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Yeah, I was raised in Paramus, New Jersey, which is a suburb of New York City. And I didn't have any church upbringing. And I wasn't actually an atheist, or I wouldn't say I was even agnostic. I probably would have said, oh, there's some God just culturally. I thought there was God. And then I went to Colorado State University and it was there during your college years where I read a little tiny tract that a campus club was handing out. And you never know where these things lead. I didn't ever went to the campus club. But that little tract was saying there is only one way to God, and that was through Jesus. And I can just remember that as a college student, "Do Christians really believe that?" And I had no... It had to be God, because in my mind, I was like, "God, are you there? Is this true?" Because I never assumed that there was just one religion. I thought they all were okay. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
And that got me on a quest, searching out the origins of scripture and then my friends who weren't Christians, this is actually a very important part of my story was that my friends who weren't Christians and the girl that I was dating at the time, they were concerned for me when I started reading the Bible, because they're wondering, "Are you going to be getting into a cult? What is this Christian thing? Just a dead man came back to life. How can you possibly believe that?" And at the time, all the end times, Tim LaHaye stuff was very in focus culturally. So there's an awareness of "Are you waiting for the end to come?" And that really stuck in my mind because it wasn't that they were anti-Christian. They were just concerned for me, believing something that may not be true, or even in danger of getting into a cult. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
So for me, I was very cautious about taking steps of "Is this true?" which got me into apologetic books and all different types of things. Josh McDowell, in those early years, was actually very important because I'm like, "Look at these books, I didn't know there were resources to read about this." And I eventually put my faith in Jesus in London, England, while I was in a punk rock band in a tiny little elderly church. And that's another whole story, but it was through searching out, "Could this be true?" which God used in my life to show that there was truth and God's Spirit took over basically and showed me that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Well, that's awesome. Yeah, a lot of people don't know that you were in a rockabilly punk band in London. Is that a telly behind you? 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Yeah, I'm a drummer. But this is a Telecaster. Yeah, I keep this to just plunk along with every now and then. But drums is my instrument. But I can strum some chords. So I sit here sometimes and play with that. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
That's pretty awesome. We've had John Dixon on the show as well. And he was in a band. I love having musicians, who are also into apologetics, work on the show. Because as a singer and guitar player, sometimes people will be like, "How can you be Mr. Logic and also be emotional in music?" And I said, "Well, I can respond better emotionally to something if I'm convinced that it's actually true." 
 
Dan Kimball: 
No. Right. No, I've gotten to meet John, and it was such fun to hear his musical background and he's such a genius thinker and culturally so aware. That's what I love about him: immersed in culture, very culturally aware, yet super sharp theologically and apologetics not as a weapon, but as a means to discuss Jesus with people and truth in a way that he relates to them there in Australia. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Definitely. Now, you wrote a book called "How (Not) To Read the Bible." And the subtitle is "Making Sense of Anti-women, Anti-science, Pro-violence, Pro-slavery, and Other Crazy Sounding Parts of Scripture." I have to tell you, it was a very good read. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Really condensed down some of these complicated Bible background questions, and helping people navigate through tough questions about these confusing texts that are sometimes used to discredit the Bible. What inspired you to put a book like that together? 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Yeah, it was being... I mean, there's something I almost couldn't help but do, even because of just ministry, in Santa Cruz here. And I've been constantly in the mix of younger people's lives and thinking for years and years, I was on staff at Santa Cruz Bible Church for 13 years. And then we planted the church that I'm in now out of that, but I've always been involved with college ministry and Santa Cruz is a very progressive thinking, and politically everything, place. So you're forced more if you're a believer here to really think through what you believe. And what I've noticed over the years, increasingly so, is that we have Christians less and less---even growing up in good churches knowing scripture. The statistics show it and we just see that there's... We're more of, afterwards, illiterate is the right word, but biblically illiterate or less-knowledged people, even if you grew up in churches. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Therefore, with that climate, what's happening now with online access of information, and when I say atheist, anytime I mention atheists, as we're talking, I'm talking about one or 2%, or whatever it is, of the activist atheists. Most atheists that I know are just wonderful folks that leave people alone and Christians alone. And then there are the activists that want to disprove the faith. So when I'm saying atheists, I'm not talking about the folks that are not actively trying to disprove Christianity. But the ones that are, have taken to online and using it, as Christians do as well, to promote their message. And one of their main messages has been towards Christians, and a lot of Christians that don't know their Bibles. And what I mean by that, is they're creatively, wonderfully creatively, putting together memes, putting together a verse from 1 Corinthians about women being silent in the church, they're not allowed... It's disgraceful for them to speak. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Putting the actual Bible verse with a graphical image of a woman with her mouth taped shut, with a Bible verse underneath it, and putting it up online, is very, very unsettling to anybody that sees it. But if you're a Christian and you're not familiar with that specific text, it can feel like, "I didn't realize that was in the Bible." You'll see it with verses about slavery, like "Slaves, obey your masters," and seeing these put up on memes, some of the atheist groups have rented billboards actually, and put up. Again, I'm crediting them for their creativity, but putting up graphics with Bible verses underneath it, and then challenges: "Read your Bibles. This is in your Bibles." A lot of the violent passages. And the reason I wrote this book was, I'm starting to see and hear, as not just locally, but all over, Christians who are starting to have their faith undermined, right? 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Generally, in the young adult years, and your '20s, maybe into your '30s, maybe starting, "Is my faith my own?" All the deconstruction stuff that's going on now, and using the Bible to discredit their faith. And that was the response that I end up writing this out of, I have to, because these are good questions, but there are responses. And so it was basically out of need. And this is a very serious thing that's happening all over the place. And you're just hearing it in stories over and over and over again. And it's that combo, I don't know the Bible very well. And I'm now seeing verses being brought up, generally out of context, graphically put together with memes and other creative forms, and it's catching Christians off guard and causing them to doubt discredit their faith, right at times, and they're wondering about their faith, and all the deconstruction stuff going on. So that's why I wrote this because it's unsettling seeing how many people are seeing the Bible as evil versus good today. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
That's right. More than just the Bible being irrelevant as it used to be put forth, now people are putting forth this idea that the Bible is actually an evil book and an immoral book. And so we'll get into some of the specifics that you'd mentioned in terms of women, and slavery, and some issues surrounding those texts, but generally speaking, how would you advise Christians to begin to respond or even make sense of these strange sounding Bible verses that come up in conversation? 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Yeah, well, for one, I would... I mean, the Bible is a wonderfully amazingly, 100%. My premise is always it's 100% inspired, every word in the original documents, so for those that will hold that, and then say, then there's got to be reasons for these verses being in there and to not panic. There are wonderful scholars out there that can help us, and I would really plead church leaders and parents to be teaching about these things earlier on. So if some, just... I might raise this up throughout, I just can't stress enough to both parents and church leaders, that we have to be teaching basic Bible study methods earlier on, and just address some of these really tough issues like slavery, pro-violence sounding verses, anti-women sounding verses, because they're starting to hear them. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
So let's not let them get caught off guard. Let's teach about these earlier on. They've always been in the Bible. So this isn't something all of a sudden new that's being brought up. But that's what I would advise. But we're at blame if you think about this. We have for a long time in I'll say America, the global Church is diverse all over the place, but say generally in America, in the evangelical world, we've had it somewhat easy and it's been easy to be a Christian, overall. And we've focused so much on the nice verses, always the positive things, which you want to be doing, and coffee mugs with nice verses on it, and memorizing just the nice verses. Of course, we want that. But we've been often even pulling out verses without explaining their context and using Bible verses like that. And what's happening now is the not-so-nice sounding Bible verses are being brought to attention. And so, that's what's going on. And again, they've always been in the Bible, but we need to prepare people to understand how to respond to them. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
I like how you spend a lot of time in the book, setting the reader up to think more like the original audience, or at least as best they can. We call that "transcending your horizon" in scholarly speak. But as far as you can, just recognize the Bible was written in a whole different time and place, and we need to think a little less like modern people, when we try to understand what the Bible is trying to say and trying to teach.  
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
You mentioned a couple of really big, important ones at the outset. But let's start out with some quick ones. And for those of you who are interested in the women and slavery issue, we're going to get to that toward the end. So stay with us for the duration of the show. Let's start with some quick ones. This one's just... I don't want to say it's funny, necessarily, some of the memes aren't meant to be funny. But does God hate shrimp? What a weird question to ask. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Some people say that Christians cherry pick from the Bible, because we're going to champion things like natural marriage between a man and a woman. And yet the very same people who do that, will also have no problem eating shrimp, even though it says in Leviticus 11:9 that you can only eat animals that live in the water if they have fins and scales. And this actually came up in the San Francisco area when I was a youth pastor. So how do we help people think through this first of all, and then how do we help young people respond to this? 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Yeah, well, what you're seeing again, we talked about this. It's not just an academic discussion. It's seeped into pop culture, like say the shrimp one. So many people see this, there is a website, I haven't checked the past couple weeks, but there was a website, godhatesshrimp.com. And there's memes with shrimp, with crosses through them, like you shouldn't eat them, God hates shrimp, basing it out of the verse in Leviticus chapter 11. So, it certainly reads interestingly, and you'll see it quoted all the time. And the basis of all Bible study methods, not just for shrimp verses or anything is, "Okay. It does say that, pretty much, don't eat shrimp." And then you have to be saying, where is, and this is, at least in the book, the whole front part was some basic Bible study methods crammed in quickly, because one of the biggest ones was the timeline of the Bible. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
When was something written to? Who was it written to first? And if I had one thing I wish Christians would do, was really understand the timeline of the Bible. Because when you do, not with all the dates even, but just at least the progression because then, "Oh, this is from Leviticus. So who was it written to? It was written to the people of Israel after they were coming out of the Exodus, after 400 years in slavery in Egypt. And God was giving them some instruction while they were living surrounded by other people groups, not to pattern themselves after worship practices and keeping them holy and distinct." And then you see all these very oddly written rules about certain things or guidance.  
 
Dan Kimball: 
And one of them is about shrimp. And anyone that quotes that today, and say, "Why are you Christians being a hypocrite?" They don't realize that's not applicable to us today. It was for the people of Israel at that time, when you look through the rest of the Bible story, in the New Testament, you don't see the food items being relevant for what it means to follow Jesus today in the New Covenant. It did matter back then. That's why when you study the New Testament, you then see, murder doesn't stop, say do not murder. And in most, the sexual ethics that were in the Old Testament, they still carried through the New Testament. You have to see which ones carry through, and which ones didn't. And the food ones, like shrimp, didn't carry through.  
 
Dan Kimball: 
So when people mock Christians, using this verse, I understand it, but then they are picking and choosing and cherry picking in their own way, not looking at where it fits in the hall. So of course Christians can eat shrimp today, if they so choose. It's not going against the scriptures whatsoever if you actually look at the Bible storyline there. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
That's true. Yeah. I like to call that the Acts 10 diet whenever we have all our shrimp and lobster, shellfish, extravaganza. And interestingly, in the history of the church, fasting, often that's what they would eat, is actually shrimp in place of meat. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Here's another fun one that you have in the book: playing football on Saturday. My son actually saw this, my son's a high school senior, and he actually brought this to my attention. So I'm glad that you've had it in the book. Leviticus 11:8, it says, on the meme with a guy playing football, actually, verse seven mentions pigs, and then it's verse eight that says "You shall not touch their carcasses, they are unclean to you." What on earth does that have to do with football? 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Yeah, well, I think what's maybe even ironic about this one is that, you'll see a lot of football players, there's memes of football players with this verse written below them. Like look, you're touching the pig skin, playing football, and you shouldn't do that. If you're a Christian, you're violating the scriptures. And the irony of this also is that it made the show West Wing. If you type on Google West Wing and Bible, you will see that this very example made it to a... I'm sorry, the Golden Globe Award winning, I'm forgetting the name of the award, the TV show. It was a very prominently watched TV show a decade or so ago. And this made it through all of the script writers, the actors, no one caught this, that it's such a false premise to even start with. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
But basically, the answer is there is a verse, again written just like I talked about with shrimp, to the people of Israel at that time period, saying "Don't touch the skin of a dead pig" for a bunch of different reasons that had to do with whether it was worship practices, there's all different thoughts about it. But you go to the New Testament and you can eat pig, touch the pig, that command does not carry through into the New Testament very clearly. But here's the odd part about that. The joke of this whole thing is that very prominent people in the national television show, say you shouldn't then touch pig skin because it's saying footballs are pig skin, but the word pig skin was simply a nickname for footballs. If you go back to Europe, like medieval Europe, they were taking deer skin and a pig bladder, blowing up the pig bladder because it functioned like a little inner tube, wrap it in deer skin, and it got the nickname "pig skin." 
 
Dan Kimball: 
When we then started the American version of football, the nickname "pigskin" carried on but footballs are not made of pig skin, it's either cowhide or they are synthetic materials that make a football. So it's not even a valid thing to criticize about, yet it makes T-shirts, television shows, and memes. And we're in a world today, again, that's just, for Christians are guilty of this too, are not thinking. We're surface, just see surface things, assume things, and not going down into, "Let's see if this is accurate. What are the facts behind this?" So anybody can play football. And it's just so ironic that I keep saying the TV show, but it just shows I'm going to use the word respectfully but madness of these criticisms that have no validity. And because footballs aren't even made of actual pig skin. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Right. So do you think these memes are all negative or do you think there's actually a positive role that they can play? 
 
Dan Kimball: 
I love them. I mean, all right. I said this, I love them because it's challenging Christians to look at what we believe. I think we should be open to challenges unless we're in a cult. Cults don't want you to think. Christians should be open to every kind of challenge, every criticism of the Bible. Always be wondering, "How do I know I got it right? Or is it just a particular school that I went to? Or a particular author that I read who is teaching a certain way?" I want to be open to all types of viewpoints, and always to never be afraid to test the scriptures to see if what they said was true. The Bereans tested Paul, and it was commended as a good attribute. So saying that, I think it's actually healthy. And it's a good thing. And I welcome the memes. And you can use them as teaching tools. We do this in our church. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
In fact, in our church, we played that West Wing video, on a Sunday, the whole thing, it's like three or four minutes long. And he lists a whole bunch of these Bible verses and he quotes. In the clip from the West Wing, the Christian is stumped. Can't answer. Just sits there like the dummy and like "Look, I know the Bible better than your Christians. Look at all these Bible verses that indicate God is for slavery, killing people and all this stuff." And so I played that clip. And then I said, "What do we do with this?" And I said, "Come back next week, and we'll walk through it." And then we played the video again. And then we stopped and walked through every one of his criticisms using Bible verses to show how to respond to them. Youth group leaders, young adult group leaders or in churches: use memes. Put them up on the screens and say, how do you answer this? And have the uncomfortable feeling like "I don't know how to answer this? and I can then show there are responses. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
I know for some that might be listening to this just on the audio, there's a book out, it's called Awkward Moments, I'm showing it on the screen on the video. "Awkward Moments Children's Bible." And you can see, the cover is Noah's Ark with all the happy animals, but then on the water, and this is shown... Looks like a children's color, I mean children's book, it's done very well, but then there's all the dead bodies floating on the water. And this book just takes Bible verses, and then we'll put children's graphics to them. And it's trying to show... I don't even want to show you. Some of them are very, I mean, I can just show you, I'll show this one. There's the Bible verse about women being quiet, and you can see that women with their mouths, like a dog basically. Saying, "Look your Bible is saying to muzzle them pretty much." 
 
Dan Kimball: 
And on the back of this book, it talks about "How many Christians think of the Bible, most are raised in the faith chosen by their family. Young kids learn a few Bible verses taken out of context and accept them without question. After decades of repetition and tradition, it's understandable that we might put our beliefs on autopilot and just nod as a pastor repeats the verses and ideas that are already familiar and comfortable to us. It's no wonder that recent studies show an increasingly lack of Biblical knowledge among Christians." And then they give some stats about how poorly Christians know the Bible. And then he says, "Our goal is to get people to really just read the Bible and think for themselves." So they're just trying to show Bible verses. Again, this is for children's artwork to say, "Christians, do you even know what's in your Bible?" So I think it's a great teaching moment and wake up moment for the church. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Well, let's go ahead and go there because the woman thing has come up a couple of times. So there is that popular meme with the woman's mouth taped shut. And even in this children's book that you showed us. 1 Corinthians 14:34 is quoted on the graphic "Women should keep silent in the churches for they are not permitted to speak." Now, this was also painted on the back of someone's truck in a picture that went viral. How do we go ahead and think through something like that? How do you help your church work through that? 
 
Dan Kimball: 
All right, well, I would just walking through the process. I just say, okay, that is an actual Bible verse. It says, "Women be silent. Go home and ask your husbands the questions. It's a disgrace."The NIV I think uses the word, NIV translation, disgrace. So "It is a disgrace...It is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church." Okay, that's a Bible verse. So of course, I read that verse, I'm going to put some graphics up, like I just showed, and "How do you explain that?" So again, what the basic Bible study methods teach? All right. Who is this written to? It was written to the church in Corinth, a city in Greece. In modern day times? No, it was written to a group, probably a church that Paul founded around AD 51. Sometime around then, you can go back, he wrote this probably on AD 55. We're not sure exactly the dates, but somewhere in that time period. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
So what was going on? New churches, new beliefs. Pagan, other beliefs coming in. There's some different thoughts about what this could be by great scholars that I might have: it could be this, it could be this. But here's the blunt response, Paul couldn't have meant women don't be silent and talk at all. Because three chapters earlier in the same letter, he's indicating for women to pray and prophecy in the church. He can't be talking about the way it's not taken as a mockery, and saying that. And there's all types of customs of learning that was going on back then. And it's too long to get into all now. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
But I'll just say you can't just take it at the surface value, because three chapters earlier, and when you read other letters of Paul, women, obviously we're speaking in church meetings, so he could not have meant, be silent, don't ask anything. There's more going on there. But again, it certainly makes a great meme and a great graphic and can mock Christians real easy by looking at those verses, pulling out of the context, pulling out of any of the study, without any explanation, apart from a graphic with a woman with her mouth taped shut. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Well, it's often the case that it's easy to ask the hard question, or it's easier to ask the hard question than it is to find the hard answer and listen to the hard answer. Doing the good work of Bible backgrounds research and seeing what was going on in the churches in the time. And praying, arguably, is praying out loud. The prayer that Jesus gave his disciples, The Lord's Prayer, is something that was done out loud. So certainly people weren't just praying silently as well. And elsewhere in the New Testament, you could see where in 1 Timothy, it talks about disturbances in the church. And it would be understandable if, in certain cases, there were women who were causing a disturbance that they would be asked to listen quietly and not cause a disturbance. So even if we can't nail down exactly what the situation was, what you're saying is there are plausible situations where it doesn't sound like it's being made to sound in the meme. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's the same thing with most of these verses is that, again, we have been guilty as Christians of doing the same thing with the nice happy verses. We didn't teach the basic Bible principles of why these verses may communicate what they do. So in many ways, we're reaping a lack of teaching Biblical hermeneutical principles to people, even with the happy verses, and now these verses are being written. But most of them, like you said, and I wrote pages on this very topic, so I just gave a quick answer. And there's great scholars who talk all about this. So it's not just what it seems. But again, most people just respond to the images and then like, "Oh, look at what it says," and don't think about it more. So just like the claim, like the guy that you mentioned that made national news. He put that verse on the back of his pickup truck. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
And then it says, "Read your Bibles," and he's an atheist. He's interviewed in the news clip. And he's an atheist saying "Christians read your Bibles. Because if you do, you'll see these verses that are anti-women, pro-violence, pro-slavery. If you read these verses, you'll become atheists." There's themes, of you hear the mantra of this, "The fastest way to become an atheist is to read the Bible because if you read the Bible, you'll see all the stuff that you haven't really read before, and you will become an atheist." And that's the consistent thing. But I get, I can feel my whole body reacting to this now, because my concern is, there's so many younger people, right when you go through the different stages of learning and growth development and faith development: it's good to question things. You're going to question things. I questioned things when I was in college. And I still question things. We should always be asking questions. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
But right at the time, when a lot of young adults are starting to question, "Do I make my faith my own? Or is it just my parents? "And I can tell you this? I've heard so many times, "I asked my parents these questions, and they couldn't answer it at all." Now, and here's the other thing, we have taught in our churches, maybe I'm speaking more to church leaders here. But we have focused so much in our churches on the music, which again, is important and video venues and good parking lots and all of these things which are important. But when I'm talking to so many of these peoples that leave the faith, and I've done a lot of interviews with deconstruction folks and listened to many of the stories, most of them came from very alive, vibrant churches with good music and relevant preaching. It isn't that we have that backwards, but we're not teaching some of the basic Bible study methods at an earlier age. Get into apologetics at an earlier age. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
I think it's madness when people say, "We don't need apologetics." I'm like, I think we need apologetics and theology all the more. And the good news is I think people are interested in it. And we're talking about this before we started recording. I talk in our church, regularly, I'm talking to non-Christians who are intrigued when you get into, "What was going on in the city of Corinth?" And you put a map up of Corinth on the screen. And you start talking about "Who founded the church" And what were the other faiths that were going on in a Greco-Roman culture? And what are the possibilities of what meetings were like and learning postures in these house church meetings that were going on?" Non-Christians are so intrigued by this. And I've seen, I've heard stories, multiple stories of people coming to faith when you're getting into this stuff, not just... 
 
Dan Kimball: 
And that's why I really believe, I'm so optimistic about all of this. But we need to take this seriously because it's causing people to abandon faith when they're not getting the answers, or they're already using it like they use it as an excuse to abandon faith. But we got to proactively be teaching this earlier on. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Yeah, helping people to see Bible backgrounds and see the whole context of the entire Bible, of the whole library of scripture and how this particular concern fits in, is giving people the other part of the story. The rest of the story that they're not getting just from the meme. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
The rise of The Bible Project, the video up in Portland, with Tim and John up there. It's so fascinating because they're not like felt need or how to have happy marriage or just different things that are important teachings. They are getting into the storyline of the Bible, the context, the culture, the breakdown of how a book is written or a letter is written. And it's fascinating to see the amazing response both by Christian and non-Christian to Bible project videos. That's why I have a lot of hope, that if we start teaching theology and scripture, I think that is a major... The new outreach is theology in many ways. So that's again, the optimistic part of things is that. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Yeah. Teaching the theology of the human person and just how God sees men and women together, you just really see the other side of the story because I think the concern about women be silent is does the Bible demean women, when in fact, Christianity actually elevates the position of women from where they were in the various cultures that we see in scripture. Just looking at the meme, you won't get how Priscilla taught Apollos who was already debating people on Jesus being the Messiah in the synagogue. You won't get how Mary has held up as the model disciple in many ways, of how women were the first witnesses of the resurrection. So they're not going to get that, just getting the soundbite or the meme. And so really showing the whole context of biblical teaching- 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Paul entrusted the book of Romans to Phoebe. There's like- 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
That's right. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
I mean, I heard N.T. Wright, make a case saying, "Could Phoebe possibly have been the first expositor of the letter to the Roman Church? Because if the letter carrier was the one that was then explaining what the writer meant, then Phoebe, a female may have been the first expositor of the book of Romans to a church." And that's why again, you look at the whole trajectory of the whole scripture. Even in the Old Testament, where that was definitely female oppressive, and there was polygamy and so much horrendous stuff with women. But then you'll see like, glimpses of Miriam and Deborah and different people, Halda, and prophets that were women that were brought up in a very patriarchal culture, yes, but God isn't the one who said, just demean all the women. So again, that's the same thing without getting into slavery because each of these talks we could spend an hour on. But slavery, God did not... He did not invent the slavery or command the slavery. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
And New Testament slavery and Old Testament slavery are entirely different things, you have to study them differently, those two verses, because there's entirely different cultures that Old Testament slavery existed in New Testament slavery. And the other big thing is we can't read our own American lens of the evils of the slavery that took place since the Civil War is all about... That was kidnapping, slavery from Africa, bringing people here against their wills, and it was evil, evil, evil, evil. That's condemned in the scriptures. That type of slavery. So we can't be reading in our modern day thinking into even you're looking into cultural practices of the time. So we have to go back and be better students of the Bible. And that's where so much of the misunderstanding takes place. Absolutely, for sure. But the Bible does have very, very difficult things in it. I don't know if you want to get into violence. But that, to me is the toughest one, but it's not the violent, crazy God that people portray him as. But the Bible does have violence in it for sure. The cross was violent. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Yeah, well, with the time we have left, I'm not sure we can go there right now. But he does tackle that in the book for those who are listening. You can check out the book, "How (Not) to Read the Bible" to get more ways to interact with these challenges that are leveled against Christianity. With the few minutes that we have left, I want to ask you this question, because another part of your book talked about the exclusivity of Christianity. And a couple of years ago, we did a podcast with the Barna research people, and they found that nearly half of millennial practicing Christians, 47% according to their studies, say it is wrong to evangelize. And beneath this, it seems to me as being uncomfortable with the objective, the exclusive, claims of Christianity. So as someone who's working in the church and speaking to young people, how can we help people work through this aversion they have of making objective statements about spiritual things? 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Well, again, I said, knowing the storyline of the Bible, that in the beginning, when you know the whole storyline, God created. One God. Karen Armstrong, in her book in "A History of God" even wrote, that say, it's like a non-Christian book that looks about the history of God developing in the world, and she'll even say they're primitive forms of monotheism that they have records of in the beginning. So if you did look at if there is one story, and God started it in the beginning, and then you'll see the development of the promise made to Abraham and on and on through Israel, then Jesus was born through him. It's one true story that's out there. And as the human beings spread across the planet, they started other world faiths, but it doesn't mean that they were then. There's one true faith from the beginning. And so we have to, again, teach on this. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
So Jesus's statement about being the way, the truth, and the life or all of the other ones: there's one mediator between man and God, the man Jesus Christ. All of these verses aren't just wicked-sounding, little exclusive verses. They come from that story that began back in Genesis. So again, it comes on the way of pastors, teachers, parents: make sure that you are teaching these things earlier on.  
 
Dan Kimball: 
I have an assumption today. We have a seven day a week coffeehouse in our church that is open to the university, University of California Santa Cruz, and it's been out of meeting for over a year. So we're goint to be reseeing students coming back. And then we bring on...they join church staff, so they have to be Christian to be joining the church staff that serve in the coffee house. But I can say that we have an internship. We have seven new interns coming in, in two weeks or something like that. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
And we ask questions. I survey people a lot. We always ask questions to them coming in. My assumption now is, if you're under 25, you don't believe Jesus was the only way, you are pro choice, and you are theologically affirming. So that's my assumption now. Even if you grew up in... I'm making a church up, Dallas Bible Church, or something, that even if you grew up in that church, when you're asked those direct questions, probably half of you at least, that's what you believe. That's just normative today. And that's what's alarming. That is why we have to be going back and teaching these things earlier on, because the cultural winds are so strong. And that's how we deal with this stuff. So again, I address some of the symptoms that are underneath but again, the good news is, once we do teach, it then makes the other things make sense. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
But it really is the responsibility of the churches and parents to be teaching these things. So that's my pleading with everybody, is that we got to take this seriously, because it's undermining people's faith, or it's seeing, and this is another topic, so many Christians raised in churches, are then saying, well, the progressive way, is the way, and there's no tension. Personally, I couldn't be a progressive Christian to be an agnostic, because it doesn't take the scriptures as all inspired and anything can then go. But that's what's happening, because then it's easy to be a Christian. And the difficult things--like you said, the exclusivity of Jesus as the one way of salvation through him andd he's the savior, that sounds horrible, or that sounds self righteous or arrogant. But if it's true, it's unloving not to say it. And that's what we have to say. it's unloving not to then tell people if he truly is the way, and that's why I do what I do. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
I'm an introvert. I don't like getting in front of people. But when I realized that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life, and started understanding through apologetics, and thanks to Josh McDowell, and others, about these bases of, boy, I can't help but want other people to know this. And that's what I dedicate my life to. Because there's so much confusion out there today. And it's really sad. We can't just take this as a side issue. Because if we lose trust in the scriptures, everything disappears. Because then it's just a Jesus we can make up, which is happening, or a salvation that we make up. And it's just... And without the truth, the scriptures, we're going to be making up all kinds of different Christianities that may be very different from the whole of the Bible. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Yeah, well, thank you, Dan. Our time is up. And it went so fast. But thank you so much for being on the show with us today. 
 
Dan Kimball: 
Well, thank you. I mean out of The Table. I mean, watched you when you're on video, when you're doing it back in person and things. And Darrell Bock, I remember I met him out in San Francisco very briefly. And I felt like I was with a rock star. I'm looking at him, and it's like, I got all nervous, actually when I met him, because I so look up to scholars, I've been to Dallas Seminary several times, went to The Leadership Week there when Howard Hendricks was still around, and so I just, Bill Hendricks, I just can't thank you for being faithful and all the training that you're doing there. So I'm just honored to be serving with you. 
 
Mikel Del Rosario: 
Well, thank you so much. I think we've walked away from this conversation, at least with the idea that we can see, most of these memes are distortions of what the Bible actually teaches. But we need to get the whole story in order to understand the text. And we need to learn how to read the Bible, and how to not read the Bible. So please check out Dan's book. Again. it's called "How (Not) to Read the Bible" by Dan Kimball. You can check that out. We'll drop a link in the description of the show. I'm Mikel Del Rosario. We hope that you will join us once again next time on The Table where we discuss issues of God and culture.