Voices In My Head Podcast Episode #217: Boy Oh Boycott with guest John Wilkerson

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Welcome to Voices in My Head, the official podcast of me, Rick Lee James. I'm a recording artist, a singer, songwriter, an author, a worship leader, and an ordained minister in the Church of the Nazarene. The Voices in My Head podcast is your source for discussions on music, literature, movies, pop culture, theology, and more. Now sit back, relax, and listen to the latest episode of the Voices in My Head podcast. And don't forget to let the voices in your head be heard by following me on Twitter @RickLeeJames and sharing your thoughts about today's show. All right, well, I welcome back everybody. I'm sorry for sounding a little bit disjointed here right at the beginning, but I am. I've had a tough time recording this podcast tonight. For whatever reason, we started the file and then Skype wasn't working right. We had to start and stop this conversation conversation about 3 different times. So what you're about to hear— and it is getting late in the evening, so I apologize for any unprofessionalism that, that may come out of the way this sounds, but I promise you this interview is actually worth waiting around for in spite of the technical glitches that may be there. I had a wonderful conversation with my friend John Wilkerson, and tonight we had a conversation about really what I was talking about last week here on Voices in My Head. It was sort of a springboard off of that where we talked about how Eugene Peterson had had an interview, and in that interview he was asked a question about whether or not, hypothetically, if he was still pastoring today in the denomination that he is a part of that does allow gay marriage, if he was asked to do a wedding for a Christian gay couple, if he would do that. He said yes. The internet exploded. LifeWay threatened to pull his books from the shelves, and then, and then he explained himself the next day, did sort of a retraction, and after that happened, LifeWay was good with it again. Well, John asked me a question that we're going to be dealing with on the show, but I wanted to give you the setup to that a little bit. When the interview comes in, I'll be talking just a little bit about Sho Baraka, one of my favorite rappers. He's a very good Christian artist. He raps about reality and very real things, but he had his music pulled, uh, from shelves, and it was an interesting question that John posed to me, which you're you're going to hear him pose on this show. We had recording problems, and I just wanted to let you know that in advance. There might be a part of it that sounds like it doesn't fit, like, because part of the way through the recording we had to switch from computer to Skype on a cell phone. And I think the recording is going to sound good, but it may sound like it's uneven in places. So I really apologize for that. But honestly, if you listen to the end of the conversation, right through to the end, we both felt like God really began speaking to us and maybe through us in some ways at the end of the show. And I know that I really felt an engagement with the Holy Spirit and just the things that we were talking about by the end of the conversation. I really think it's something special that God did with us on the show. And so in spite of all of our technical difficulties— so whenever you hear us come in, you're going to hear that I'm in the middle of a conversation talking about this album by Sho Baraka that was pulled from LifeWay's shelves. So if you're wondering what in the world is Rick talking about, that's what I was talking about. Going to try to piece the show together in such a way that it does not sound too disjointed from there on out, but I can't make any promises because we had a hard time. But I think you're going to be able to catch on about what we are talking about— boycotts and Eugene Peterson and Christianity and conversation, and even LifeWay a little bit because I do have some connection with them. I love the people at LifeWay. We aren't bagging on them, I promise. It's just some conversation among people who love each other. So, all right, that's it for now, and I hope you guys enjoy the rest of the show. Thank you for listening to Voices in My Head.

God bless you. With his album recently, they threatened, we are going to stop carrying Eugene Peterson's books. It's a boycott, and we're gonna get rid of them. Not worthy to have the message. I don't even know if they were gonna stop carrying all his books, but they mentioned specifically they were gonna stop carrying The Message. So "Because of Eugene Peterson, we're gonna stop carrying this paraphrase of the Bible." Because of the one word "yes" that happened. So Eugene Peterson quickly put out a retraction the next day, kind of tried to explain himself a little bit more, but at that time I don't know if the damage was done or not, but it seemed like for LifeWay that was enough, and they decided to keep his books. So that long introduction leads up to a question that you messaged to me, and if you don't mind, I'm just gonna let you talk for a minute and kind of ask me that question again so it'll all be fresh in our mind, and we'll see where this conversation takes us tonight.

Sure. So when I first read about what had happened with Eugene Peterson, I caught it about, I guess, a little bit later than most people do. I saw some people making comments about it on social media because honestly, I don't keep track of Christian news because a lot of times it's it can be pretty— well, unless it's in the Babylon Bee, then I keep track of it. But other than that, I don't keep track of Christian news because a lot of times it— so many things get blown out of proportion. And so I read the article, I read articles about the article, I read articles about the retraction, I read the retraction, and my my initial thought was, wow, the speed of social media is just ridiculous these days. And I was kind of thinking about how all these things happened and how quickly LifeWay had responded, and thinking about people that I know or have heard of that may have books or music that are sold in LifeWay bookstores. And so my first thought was, well, if they're opposed to LifeWay pulling Eugene Peterson's The Message, would they then be willing to pull their items as well? And so my question to you was, would you pull your music from LifeWay if you found— if you disagreed with something that they did?

Well, and I think that's a fair question. First of all, I should say I don't have my albums in LifeWay. I have a few albums in the LifeWay stores that have songs that I've written that are on them. So first of all, it's sort of again a hypothetical question because I don't really have control over those songs anyway, because LifeWay owns the publishing on those, so they kind of decide which songs they want to put in, which ones they don't. All the songs that I've had in Lifeway Stories so far are on compilation albums at this point. So it's not even like I have the Rick Lee James albums in Lifeway Stories. But it's a good question, I think. So it makes me wonder, like I'd have to think through, like what is it that they're doing that I disagree with? Are they supporting— are we going back to German times or Nazi times and the LifeWay has decided they're going to back the Nazi Party or something, you know. So I think it would have to be probably by degree. But let's say that I was an artist or an author and I felt like they had done something. Would I pull my music or my books out of that store? On the one hand— gosh, that's a, that's a big question to ask because I want to look at it maybe from both sides of things. If they definitely did something that you didn't want your music to be associated with, or just your ministry to be associated with— if for some reason— shoot, what is it? Westgate— I'm saying it wrong— Westboro Baptist Church, I think, the church that goes around and pickets all the funerals. If they for some reason decided to make one of my songs the theme, I would have to take some kind of legal action if that was going to be their song. You know, Christ is Lord, Christ before me is what they were going to be using when they were, um, standing outside of the funerals, you know, telling people that God hates them. I think that would be, you know, actionable for me to try to do something like that.

I think that you mentioned that because I don't think that you can do that unless you personally own the rights. Because, okay, um, I remember reading an article about the song that Rush Limbaugh uses, and it, it was written by someone who is fairly liberal. And when they found out that Rush Limbaugh was using their song, they tried to— they tried through the courts to get him to stop using it, but they don't own the rights. The, the record company that owns the rights to it, you know, they have a license that ASCAP license or whatever, whatever the licenses— I don't know what it is that they use for secular music, but it's similar to the ASCAP license. And anyone who pays for that license is free to use the music, right, whether you like their political views or not.

Sure.

Yeah, so I think it kind of depends on the situation and, and what say the artist has. I know that there are some situations where the artist can and some situations where they can't control that depending on what it is and how it's licensed out. So it's a It's a big question, but it leads me around to want to think about some different ways. I think if I wasn't able to pull my music or something, I think I would at least want to make a statement saying I'm not for it. I'm not behind this, and I want to disassociate myself from it as much as possible. But that leads me to think about the other side of things, and maybe this is where our conversation could take us a little bit too. What good does boycotting something do? Is there a more creative way for the church to be a part of something like this? Is there a better conversation to have, or is there even a better narrative to tell? Now, I don't know if you're familiar with the case that I just mentioned from the rap artist Sho Baraka. Have you heard him before? Okay, and you're familiar with LifeWay pulling his music? Rick Lee James.

Yes.

Because he mentioned a part of the male anatomy, and it wasn't even like a slang or an offensive term of the male anatomy. It was literally a line in a song that when I heard it, I thought, "That's brilliant." I listened to the whole album, and I'm not like a rap guy through and through, so it's not— I have a handful of rap albums that I actually listen to, and his is one of them. The Lion was literally about, you know, I used to think with my— that part of the male anatomy, you know. It was penis. We're adults here, we're listening to this. So, you know, it's not even something that should be offensive. It's just a body part. And it talks about basically in the song he's rapping about the unredeemed life before Christ had a hold of him and the way that he used to live his life. And then it talks in a new way about now that he's Following Christ. I'd have to go back and find the lyrics, but anybody who listens to that and really listens would hear like, wow, that's a powerful statement. First of all, it's a powerful confession. That's what I thought when I heard it, was there's not— there's not much Christian music that that's honest, even though it's true of everyone. When we are not redeemed by Christ, we are not controlled by Christ, and so we allow sin to reign in many ways. And just the way that he was that confessional about it, but then I thought it was even more powerful in the ways that the song brought about what Christ had done to redeem him. But there was a controversy that happened because he used the word penis, and LifeWay pulled his records from the store. The argument was, well, LifeWay carries sex books in there, and I don't mean dirty books. I mean they have things for people who are about to get married and books about Christians and sexuality and things like that. Which go into much more graphic description than what his song did, right, and are probably on some level much more inappropriate than his album was. But it's just interesting, the things that we choose to, to come out on. So they boycotted that album, and then they were getting ready to boycott Eugene Peterson. And so my, my question— and I will let you talk again, I promise— but what keeps coming back keeps coming back to my mind is, why are we so afraid to have these conversations, I guess? In the case of someone like Eugene Peterson, instead of stopping to think, like, wow, here's a guy that has been ministering in churches for, I think, like 50 years now. I mean, he's getting pretty old. And someone who is scholarly enough that he made a paraphrase of the Bible, yes, but he did it from his own translation because he is a master of Greek, he is a master of Hebrew. He is highly intelligent. He has written so many, like just stacks of theology books aimed at pastors to help them in their ministry. He's been someone that we have known for years, has been faithful in serving the Lord and in calling us back to the ancient faith again and again and again. And without even a conversation, because of this one thing, which frankly in this interview was so short, they didn't even give him a chance to explain himself. It was just— It was just like, "Well, we're not even going to have the conversation. We're going to pull everything, and we're done now," for that one move. On one level, I think that is the church, and I want to be careful in criticizing LifeWay, because I know the church does that, and I've probably done that on some extent. But the church is often not very good about having conversations that need to be had with people, and just allowing people to explain maybe their viewpoint. I wonder what you think about that. Any thoughts that have come to mind just in the midst of my rambling there about thoughts about that?

Well, I have a lot of thoughts about it, actually. Number one being is, when is LifeWay going to pull the Bible from their bookshelves since they don't like, uh, you know, things that are controversial, right? Because the Bible is very controversial. There's, uh, descriptions of male and female anatomy in there in one book in particular. Maybe, maybe they can just have an edited version of the Bible that takes all that stuff out, right? Uh, and you know, it just— I don't think that the banning of things like that has ever really helped, especially—

Are you still there, John?

I am still here. Am I losing you, Rick?

Uh, I'm losing you. I've lost you for a minute, but you're back now. Start maybe 30 seconds ago and say again what you just did. Sorry about that.

I think I was talking about the banning of the Bible and when is LifeWay going to ban the Bible because of some of the content, the objectionable content that's in there. And, and I think often what happens with these controversial subjects is, like you said, people don't have a conversation, really find out what, what is at the crux of a statement that was made. We haven't been given the recordings, if there are any, of the conversation that the interviewer had with Eugene Peterson. You know, I would imagine he slapped down some kind of recorder to record everything, and perhaps they did talk about it for a while. Perhaps it wasn't just a throwaway question and he said yes, and maybe there's more to it than that. So So I think that's one thing that we need to, to think about when we're making these decisions. And, and unfortunately for LifeWay to so quickly jump to that conclusion of we're going to pull his books or we're going to pull someone's music or whatever the case is. So I was thinking, is LifeWay going to pull the Bible from the shelves because there's certainly objectionable content in the Bible. There's descriptions of rape and incest and male and female anatomy. And I was wondering, you know, why, why don't they pull the Bible then? And of course, you know, usually the argument is, well, that's the word of God, uh, and But apparently when it's the word of God, we can have those conversations. But when it's someone who's saying it who's a Christian, we can't have those conversations and really think about what the person is saying. And the other thing that bothered me about it was how quickly they jumped to it, because we did not have any context for that question or his answer. In that interview. And more than likely, the person who was doing the interview has a digital recording, because typically when people do recordings, they put down a digital recorder, they do their interview, and then they take notes off of that to write their article. So we don't know if there was a further conversation that went on there or not, and we don't know what the context— the full context of the question and the answer answer is. We just have the article that was put together. And when, when you read the article and you see how it, it's almost of this, as if that was just dropped in there in the middle of it to see if anyone would notice it, I guess.

Yeah, yeah, it really did feel like it just was kind of awkward to the, the old, the whole, uh, the whole thing. Yeah, it was kind of strange.

And it's unfortunate it because, you know, in the church, we're the ones who should be having those difficult conversations. Because if you think about it, as, as Christians, we are really the best informed to have the conversation because we can look at what science and culture says and we can look at what God says and we can reconcile the two. Whereas someone who's coming from it from a naturalistic point of view, they— and don't recognize the authority of the word of God or recognize the sovereignty of God in a situation, they're, they're only coming at it from one, from one direction, from one perspective. Whereas we, we have the benefit of coming and looking at it from two perspectives and reconciling the two, or rather reconciling the naturalistic view with the Word of God. So I think that in the church, it's, it's really important for us to slow down and understand the context of things. For example, How about when, when these Pharisees brought this woman in front of Jesus and said, hey, she was just caught in the act of adultery and the law says that she's supposed to be stoned. Uh, Jesus didn't, you know, start picking up stones and say, I'll go first. That's right. He slowed down. He started writing in the dirt and he, he was very contemplative before he gave his response, and he considered all aspects of the situation and realized that, hey, there's more than one point of view here when it comes to this situation that's going on. It's highly possible that one of the people that brought the woman there was the person that she was caught with, you know.

Who knows? Yeah, exactly.

Uh, so, so rather than Jesus just quickly jumping to a conclusion based on the initial bit of information that was given to him, he waited. He thoughtfully considered the situation. I'm sure he prayed about it, and, and then he responded. He didn't react, he responded. And when I see things like what LifeWay has done and what, what other organized Christian organizations have done as well, it looks more like a reaction rather than a response, right? And, and I understand that there are some situations where there needs to just be a reaction. For example, if someone comes and accuses someone of abusing children in the, in, in the church, there does need to be an initial reaction for the safety of the children concerned. It does not need to be a public reaction, but there does need to be some kind of reaction until you get time to gather all the information. But that's an extreme example, right? That's a really extreme example. I think most of the time there does not need to be, well, we need to do something about this right now, and we need to make a statement. And, and I think that was kind of part of it too, because LifeWay knows where their bread is buttered. Yeah. And they know that it is with very conservative evangelical Christians, uh, that are buying most of their products and keeping their stores open. And so if they start seeing a reaction from that particular section of Christianity, they're going to have to do something about it, because otherwise it's going to be them boycotting LifeWay, saying, I can't believe you're still carrying this guy's books, uh, he says he would marry gay people, etc., etc., etc. And so So there's kind of the business aspect of it that, that they're looking at, but I think when you put business over, uh, consideration for others, we have a problem, especially if you're a— if you consider yourself a Christian business.

Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a difficult thing, uh, to think about for sure. And I think you're right. We as humans maybe are much better at being reactive than we are at taking time to make a good response. Let's face it, we see it all the time right now in the political climate that we're in. We're just, you know, constantly reacting. We're not thinking and taking time to make a good response very often. Some people are, and I think a lot of us try to do that.. But that leads me to something that's even bigger and maybe just as hypocritical in some ways, because I don't know that there's any connection with LifeWay. I'm sure it is because it's a Southern Baptist thing. But it was what, just a couple weeks ago, on the 2nd of July I think it was, on that Sunday, You know, that church, I think it was First Baptist in Dallas, not to point fingers, but I'll just point the fingers there. They had President Trump come and preach a sermon, you know, somebody who I don't think he even— I mean, he might say he's a Christian, but he doesn't— there are no fruits of it, let's put it that way.

Yeah.

And he's somebody that just a few years ago— and we've always had problems with this, has always been a problem for me anytime that politics gets brought in to churches because I think the church should be the prophetic voice to the nation and that there should be some room kept for the good of the nation and for the good of the church. I think we ought to keep those things at bay in different ways, but that's a different conversation too. But the interesting thing was, you know, they brought him in, a man that we know is a womanizer, a man that we know is incredibly immoral with his choices. He's very greedy. He's been shown again and again to be you know, with all the lawsuits that he has lost of stealing people's money. We know he's just a corrupt person, you know, and someone that we would say, you know, if that had been a Democrat, they would have gone, "There's no way we'll let him speak in our church." But because, for no other reason than he's the right wing and Republican, there wasn't any like outcry from like LifeWay or whoever to say We're gonna stop carrying this pastor or whoever, you know, that allowed this to happen where on a Sunday I don't think they mentioned Jesus once in their worship service, but they sang a lot of praises to America. And so to me that's idol worship, and that's a much more heinous sin, and it was blatant, you know. And so I wonder, like, you know, if you're gonna decry one statement that's hidden without having a conversation, shouldn't we also be free to have have some conversations about some things that are clearly wrong from a biblical standard. But for some reason we have this blindness about things we choose to see. And again, sometimes it is money and people that we know would buy our products. And that's the other part of it too, is because the last time I checked, the Bible doesn't have an extremely high view of money either. Right.

Right.

So there's just this whole big hornet's nest of things that you get. Now I should explain a little bit too, just to listeners, because I talk about Lifeway Worship a lot, which I love. Lifeway is a bit— it's so big. It really is the Southern Baptist Church, and I'm not Southern Baptist, but they've been very good to me, and they've been very welcoming to me. The people that I know from Lifeway, I love. Dearly. I don't know anybody really on the retail side of things, but I'm sure they're good people like people that I know in LifeWay Worship. What my experience has been, and I've had people tell me that work in the organization, it is such a vast company that it's literally like the person that— there's an old story about, I think it's like 5 blind men that are told to touch an elephant at different parts of the elephant and describe what the elephant is. And they're all describing something completely different because they're all in different parts of the elephant describing it. And so it's such a huge corporation, which, which is also something that until probably this century we've never had in Christianity. You know, we've never had like, like, you know, multi-million dollar companies that were Christian before that I'm aware of. We might not have even had that in world history, come to think of it. Just, I think so.

Yeah, not until the— I don't think until the 20th century that happened. Yeah, yeah.

And so it's, it's, it's sort of like too— and I wanted to get behind this— I mean, it's, it's, it's a, it's a hard call to make. But from the artist side of things, when, you know, when you asked me the question originally, if, if Lifeway did something like incredibly heinous, would I have my music pulled off the shelves, you know, if, if that was within my power to do that? I'd also want to make sure that I wasn't taking a stand Like, like I have heard people do in churches. I've worked in churches long enough that when the church makes a decision a person doesn't like, I've heard people say to pastors— and I have been that pastor sometimes— that someone has come to and said, "Well, if this doesn't change, I'm gonna stop giving my money and I'm gonna go somewhere else," you know. And almost always when someone says that to me, I just want to say, "Well, 'Well, all right, have a good day, and I wish you the best,' you know. Yeah, because, because that attitude is not— I, I don't believe a Christlike attitude. That, that just reeks of selfishness to me.

And it's—

and if it was over an issue that was like, you know, something that was really like biblical, it's usually over something dumb like music style or something. It's never over something truly like, you know, if this church "stop neglecting the poor, I'm going to have to go somewhere else," or, "If the church doesn't spend its money in more biblical ways, then I'm going to feel that I have to do somewhere else." There's almost never a reason that I hear in those instances. I also, as the artist, I would want to make sure I wasn't coming from the standpoint of one of those people. I'd want to make clear what the issue was before I said, "Well, I'm not going to let you sell my stuff anymore." Right.

I think the other important thing to remember is that we all have blind spots when it comes to our faith, right? There's certain areas where if something happens, it— and I hate using this word— it triggers us, and, and we totally forget, oh, I'm, I'm supposed to respond Christ-like. Like when this happens. And, and so we all have blind spots and we all have weaknesses. And I think it's, it's, you know, they're, they're blind spots for a reason, because we can't see them. But when someone points it out, it's important for us to, to carefully consider what they're saying. And I would hope that Lifeway is looking at the response and the reaction that they have gotten when this has happened the last two times, and they are reconsidering how they do this. You know, they're a business, and they don't have to carry anyone's books that they don't want to. They don't have to carry anyone's music that they don't want to, but they could just stop carrying it without making a big statement, a big public statement about it, uh, and they could just choose not to carry the product and be done with it. But instead, they feel like they have to make a public statement about it. I don't know why that is, but, but maybe the better thing would have been to say, okay, well, we're not going to order any more of Eugene Peterson's books. And if he retracts that statement or backtracks on it or explains it further, then, then we'll make a decision at that time whether or not we want to carry his material. So I don't— it's a complex situation, and our responses have to be very nuanced and specific to the particular situation.— and, and I don't think this is a conversation to be had now, but maybe down, down the future— is, so what about his response? What about the pastor who says yes to that? And, and, and how do we, how do we deal with that? Uh, so if, if, if a, if a pastor says, I'm not going to marry a gay couple because they're sin, and God— that is not God's perfect plan for relationships, the marriage relationship, then will that pastor also marry a couple where one or both of them have been divorced? Because that's also not God's perfect plan for marriage, right? So what— where do we draw the line when it comes to that? And, and, and why is that why is that line arbitrarily drawn there? And it is, it is, it's a complex situation, and I don't, I don't feel qualified to answer that question. I know what I think, but I don't know that I necessarily feel qualified to answer questions like that.

Hmm. Yeah, it's, it's a tricky thing, and I think I think it's hard when we start sort of picking and choosing which things from the Bible we're going to say is biblical.

Right.

Because one thing that I think is really hard about the Bible, and the Bible is difficult because the Bible is often having arguments with itself.

Yes.

And I don't think people realize that oftentimes, especially if they want to take the point of view that the Bible's just infallible and there's nothing in it that could ever be debated. It's just hard to go from that standpoint when there are passages of Scripture that are debating with each other. I mean, even from Genesis 1 to Genesis 2 there is a discrepancy in the story. I mean, it changes already from the order of things and how it went. And one thing that I know from from not just my own study of theology, but I've become pretty good friends with our local Jewish rabbi down the street here. And one thing that, you know, he helps me understand Hebrew scriptures in a much more beautiful and clear way, and just helping me see that so often that is what the Bible is there for. It is to be discussed and debated and questioned and wrestled with, and it's sort of like the idea of of the story of Israel, Jacob, wrestling with God and having his hip dislocated by God in this all-night wrestling match and being given a new name. One thing that my rabbi friend helps me understand is it is in that struggle with the word that we become new people and that we are taken to places that we swore we would never go. We're often taken to new viewpoints we didn't think that we would have. So much of what the Scripture is, is that conversation and that rub and that struggle going on. I think that's the beauty partially of the way that the Bible is designed. And I, you know, I always have trouble when we come to discussions like that because when people come with their argument already decided and their answer already decided, it's impossible to even have a conversation or hear the other side's point of view about things. Sure. And like you said, I would love to sit and I know just from reading Eugene Peterson's books over the years, I've probably read 15 or 20 of them, and he is such a well-reasoned person. I would love to sit and hear his reasons, like, "Why did you answer that way, and what was your thought behind it?" And I'd love to hear your take, because there are a lot of denominations that believe differently on this matter, and so it would be interesting to just have those conversations. It's hard to do. One of my favorite theologians, William Willimon, in the beginning of one of his books, it just starts out by saying, "Church is hard." There's no more appropriate and shorter statement how to say it, that this is hard. It's hard to live in this dynamic, and yet we have to live together, and we have to live with people that we have disagreements with. There's issues that I think are maybe even more clear that should be super clear to believers, and they're just not because of what I want to call pop Christianity, or different things even in the national media at times has led us to think that some of these sins are greater or lesser than others. In some ways. And so when you get into a conversation like about homosexuality and things like that, immediately the other side comes back with, "Well then, why do you wear a garment of two different cloths?" or "Why do you eat pigs?" or, you know, "Why do you touch a football? You should be executed." And, you know, if we're going to be biblical about it, then biblical marriage would mean it's an arranged marriage and we're going to have several spouses and we're going to, you know—

Sure, sure.

So just, there has to be a conversation had somewhere, you know. Right. We don't marry in the same way now that we did in biblical times. And a matter of fact, there's a much closer parallel to marriage in biblical times if you go like over to Africa, to some places that I've been, where they still are getting married in the same ways and still are having multiple wives, and many of them are are Bible-believing people, you know, right? And, and so even that becomes something that's a whole new conversation.

So, well, and part of the, part of the thing that we have to deal with as Christians is, first of all, I mean, I've been a Christian for almost 30 years, so my, some of my thoughts and my views about why what's in the Bible has changed over those 30 years.

Sure.

And, and you're in a sad state, I believe, if your views have not changed in 10 or 15 years about what's in the Bible, because God progressively revealed himself to his people starting in Genesis all the way up until the last book in the Bible was written. He— there, you know, we have progressive revelation. And that's one of the things that the people who make these arguments don't understand about. Well, then why are you wearing mixed clothing? And it's, you know, well, hello, it's called progressive revelation. You know, why do we believe things scientifically differently now than we did before? Well, because we have progressive revelation about what— about things scientifically. Uh, so, so So there's that. And I think as Christians, our understanding of who God is should be changing over time. And, and I'm going to make a bold statement here, and, and I don't think that comes from reading the Bible. I think it comes from being in a relationship with God and knowing who he is and spending time with him and praying and worshiping and listening I think American Christians put way too much emphasis on studying the Bible, and so people get stuck in what's written on the pages and getting to know what's written on the pages instead of actually getting to know the God who had those words written down. And, and listen, I'm all for Bible study. I do it. I lead a Bible study every Tuesday, okay? So, so I'm, I'm all for it, and, and I, I like studying the Bible. But, but if all I'm doing is studying the Bible and not really getting to know who God is through prayer and through worship and through meditating on his word, if all I'm doing is looking up words in Hebrew and Greek and looking up 17 different translations and making sure I have 85 scriptures memorized every day and etc., etc., etc. I don't think that's a relationship with God. I think it's— I think a relationship can be, can be born out of that, absolutely. But I think we need to actually just spend more time with God and getting to know who he is, who he is If I want to get to know Rick Lee James, I don't just read what you write on the page. I don't just listen to your music. Those are some ways that I can get to know who you are and know about you. But the best way for me to, to, to strengthen a relationship is to have a conversation with you. And in a month from now, I'm going to see you in person and actually see you and, and, and build on that even more.. And that's how I get to know who Rick Lee James is. It's not by just reading what he's written. If people only knew you based on the words you'd written on a page and made judgments about you and made statements about who you were strictly based on what you'd— what you've written, you're gonna say to yourself, well, you don't really know me. Then, because I've only revealed a portion of myself in what I've written. But if you really get to know me personally, I'll be able to reveal more about myself and my character and my nature to you.

Yeah, that's a very good point. And I think also along with that is where I, I think, like anything else, the Bible is a tool to help us know God, but the Bible is not God. We actually, as Christians, submit to the Living Word of Jesus us, and that actually guides us in how we look at the written word. And sometimes I think we approach Scripture on our terms instead of approaching Scripture on its terms too, and we're not very good about— and maybe this is the church's failing, and as our conversation starts winding down here a little bit, I think that we maybe have not in our— at least in the Protestant denomination, I think maybe maybe some of the more mainstream churches, Catholic and Orthodox, might do a better job at this. But there's a lot to be said for studying the people who gave us the Bible too. Church history and the creeds and the founding fathers of the church to see what they were talking about because we didn't— so many of us think that the Bible just popped out of heaven and there it is and we have it. And there was it was actually a lot of, let's say, fellowship and conversation and a lot of slow obedience by God's people to even form the Bible that we have. You know, and they had to decide what gets in, what gets out, what should we have, what shouldn't we have, and how do we together interpret this? And I think that even just knowing that that can be helpful in how we approach Scripture in the first place. And then approaching Scripture not— it's so hard to remove ourselves from the context that we live in, but it's impossible to read the Bible from the perspective of those who have because the Bible is written from the perspective of the have-nots. And so when we hear so many passages about God's wrath coming down on those who oppress 'oppressed,' you know, and 'those who are wicked,' it's, it's more than likely talking about us, you know. Like, we're, we're the ones that should go, 'Oh, I need to duck,' because where I have been stationed in life in this nation and where I'm at, um, just among people, I feel like so often, um, we should be more like Isaiah, where Isaiah in chapter 6, when he says, you know, 'Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean And so unless we even approach Scripture on its terms, it's going to be a distortion of it, which is why sometimes I think the way we approach Scripture, we want to do it almost like as a checklist, like, "I've got to get through the whole Bible this year, and so I'm going to read this much every day." I've got no problem with that, but I think as I've matured in my faith, what helps us to have the Word really speak to us to us is almost like a lectio type reading where we'll stop and take even a small passage and read it and then read it again and see what God is speaking to us from that and then read it one more time and see again, "What is the Lord speaking to us as we hear that?" It's a much more relational way of approaching Scripture, I think, and I just think there's something to be said for that too. Because we do believe that the word is living and that Jesus speaks to us through the word of God, written and otherwise. Um, but there's something special about approaching it on its terms and not on ours, right?

I, I remember years ago someone talking about starting a, a Bible reading regimen, and he invited people to come along with him, and it It at first seemed like the, the easiest, easiest thing you could do. He posted one, at the most two verses a day online, and that was what he encouraged you to read. Read this one verse and think about it. Think about it for 15 minutes, 20 minutes. Think about it throughout the day and just contemplate what that means. To you, what that means to your life. And I think if we slow down a little bit more, we can really— it— what do we say to— what say to our kids at the dinner table when they're eating so, so fast? Slow down so you can taste it, right?

Yeah, right.

We're trying to get through the Bible in a year. There's no time to taste and see that the Lord is good when you do that. Or, or I've seen people like read the New Testament in 90 days, and that's a great— I mean, I think that's super, you know, great. You read the, you read the New Testament in, in 90 days, and, and I'm sure God can reveal something to you out of that. But how about taking 90 days to read the book of John and really just slow down and just focus in on that book? Um, I've been doing a Bible study in Acts for almost a year now, and we've just been going through it, sometimes half a chapter a week. And it's just been such a blessing to sit around the table with, uh, with people and hear what they have— hear what they think about the passage. Not just what I think or what God revealed to me, but what God has revealed to them about it. And just slowing down and hearing what other people have to see, have to say, what they see in scripture, how it impacts them. And you know, you mentioned, you mentioned Isaiah's words, 'Woe is me, for I'm a man of unclean lips.' That, that's one of those, uh, that's one of those prophetic things that people don't want to claim for themselves, right? They want to claim all the other stuff, all the good stuff, but not the bad stuff. You know, if you, if you're going to appropriate great, uh, prophecy that was designated for Israel, then you need to appropriate it all, not just the portions that you like. Sure, uh, it is, it is a, uh, um, it's, it's, it's tough. It really is tough. And, and I, I know that when I was first a Christian, I had certain thoughts about about who God was and how God should respond to certain things, because hey, this is how he responded here in the, in the Bible. Why isn't he responding this way now? But, uh, just as, as I've grown up and as I've gotten to know more Christians and gotten to know God better, it's so much more complex than just the words that are written in our Bible. It's— and there's so— there's— you can go so much deeper with God than just the words that are written on those pages. And it takes getting to know other people. It takes understanding who the people are speaking the words and who the words are being spoken to. It takes doing all of that to really even get a tenth of the way to the heart of God. You know, it just— if we can even get a tenth of the way to knowing God that, that well on this side of heaven, you know. Um, it is just— it is— it's not something that, that we can do easily. And, and I think when, you know, kind of just to bring it back around to this, to this original opening question, when we see someone make a particular statement that we don't disagree with or we think is controversial We need to take the time and really contemplate what they said. Why did they say it? Who were they saying it to? And consider whether or not maybe our point of view is wrong.

Yeah, no, I, I agree with you. And I, I keep going back to the image, and, um, I know it's getting late in our time together, so this might be sort of a closing thought for tonight, but I love what you what you just said about slowing down at a mealtime and telling people to stop, you're gonna choke on your food. And one thing that I know for sure, I do a lot of traveling, so there are those times when I'm on the road and mealtime is often for me behind the steering wheel and, you know, I'm in a rush to get to the next venue or where I need to go, sometimes there's several hours in between and I don't have time to stop. And so I literally feel like I'm almost just choking down food just for a little sustenance to move on, but I'm not really enjoying it or even thinking about what I'm putting in my mouth at the time because I'm, I'm focused on other things. And I, I feel like we're not just in our profession approach to the Bible, but I feel like we're that way with everything right now. And maybe our iPhone culture has caused us to be even more this way in some ways, but we're so busy multitasking all the time, and we're so busy, um, you know, we've got this Facebook page up, we've got music going in the background, we've got a podcast playing, we're, we're at work, we're at school, we're at We are at one event to the next. There's sporting events, there's shopping. Even when you're shopping or at the sporting events, there's all kinds of noise going on constantly, right? And it's, it's really hard. Even if you're just sitting down to watch a TV show, it's really— we're almost far removed from that time where we can even focus on that TV show for the entirety of the episode because there's 6 other things going on. And if you add kids to that, there's even more more distracted, right? So we're just very distracted. And yet what you said, I love that about the meal. There is something about a mealtime at a good restaurant and where we've taken time to turn off our phones. And this weekend I'm looking forward to— I'm taking my wife away for a couple days after church on Sunday. We're leaving and we're just gonna do a little getaway to celebrate both of birthday's about 3 weeks early. And one thing that I'm so looking forward to is just to be able to have the time, just, just me and her. Hopefully we're gonna go to a couple good restaurants, and it'll probably be a place where they're gonna bring out that good bread. And I don't know where we'll go exactly, but in my mind, you know, or even like a Mexican restaurant or something, and just sit down and enjoy the chips and the salsa and enjoy the conversation and be present for it and not have to worry about all these other things that would take away our attention. I think if we were much more intentional about that in our approach to knowing God— I just can't stress enough how much I love what you just said about that, that if we were able to stop for the meal and thinking about the Lord's table, especially as we come to so often, week after week, in our worship. If we could even slow down in our worship in that way, it doesn't all have to be fog machines and lights and all those other things. There can be a real communal conversation with the Holy Spirit, meeting him at his table and envisioning Jesus as the host at this meal that wants to call us together to know each other well and to love each other well and to stop and. And that may be one of the most countercultural things we do on Sunday morning if we can actually make our houses of worship in that hour that we come together. And I know that puts a lot of weight upon that one hour, but if we can make our houses of worship a place that does that in our fellowship with each other and with God, I think it's one of the most rebellious acts to what's going on in the world that we can do. It's maybe one of the greatest acts of protest to all the world that is just speeding around us and all the tweets that are flying out and all the things like that. So I think that might be a pretty good place for us to kind of close our conversation tonight, is to just allow ourselves to slow down a little bit. And it's a bit ironic because even in the midst of trying to record this conversation, we've had glitches in calls and the mics weren't working Right, right. Even our conversation tonight has been distracted by several other things, um, but I— maybe even that had its purpose tonight to help us to slow down and, and think and talk. And I can tell you what you said about slowing down at the meal, I'm going to be dwelling on that for a while. And so I so appreciate what you said.

Well, I think it applies to me as well. I know that I don't always slow down for things, whatever it is, whether it's spending time with my kids, spending time with my wife, or just stopping and pulling off to the side of the road and, hey, look, that's a nice-looking lake. I think I'll look at that lake for 10 minutes on my way home or on my way to work or wherever I'm going and just slow down because we— I think we're moving too fast. I think we're moving way too fast, and that is absolutely countercultural. And that doesn't mean we need to throw out our technology or anything like that, but we just need to acknowledge, hey, this stuff is changing, is fundamentally changing the way we interact with one another and the way that we, the way that we just do life, period. And it, and, and if we want to be countercultural to that, the thing for us to do is to slow down.

Yeah, for sure. And it makes me think of something funny, you know. God has a sense of humor when we do slow down to listen, because it's almost— it's almost never what we expect it's going to be, you know. Sometimes, sometimes you stop to look at that deer in your yard, you know. Yep, and you go, oh hey, come here kids, come look at this. Come call your wife, come look at this beautiful majestic deer that's walking on our property right now. And just as the moment everyone comes and begins to absorb the beauty of this animal, the deer takes a dump in your yard, you know. And you kind of go, well, what are you saying now, God? All that is to say, it's, it's a humorous story, but it's also, I think, sometimes the unexpected way that the story will turn out when it comes to listening to God. Yeah, we often expect it's going to be like, oh, this perfect, all things tied together. And so often we're going to come away from our time with God and our, our time with scripture, and we'll be scratching our heads thinking, what the heck just happened? You know, as I stopped and slowed down. But that's part of the relationship too.— and part of the journey of just coming without the preconceived notions and allowing God to completely change the outcome of what you were expecting and allowing him to do his work in you when you come to him. And so much of it is approaching the Lord, just fully giving ourselves. Well, John, I hope that story didn't ruin the track we were on, but I think it served a good purpose. I don't Purpose think so. for where we were going. Thank you so much for, you know, having this conversation with me. I know it was very unscripted tonight, and we didn't know exactly where it was going to go. And hopefully the editing will turn out well in a way that this flows cohesively tonight. But I've, I've sensed that the conversation has been good, good for my heart and for my soul. And I appreciate you taking time to have it with me tonight.

Absolutely, and I appreciate the time for you doing the same thing. And I think that, you know, I think God spoke to me tonight.

Yep, I agree. I think the same thing happened. So, well, John and God, thank you for being the voices in my head this week.

Thank you for joining me here this week on the Voices in My Head podcast. I hope you'll visit me on my website at Rick Lee James rickleejames.com. Follow me on Twitter @RickLeeJames. Like my artist page on Facebook at facebook.com/rickleejames. And keep up to date on what I'm writing at my author page on amazon.com. Make sure to follow my calendar on the website, and if you would like to have me come to your town to do a concert, a speaking engagement, or a book event, you can book me through my website by clicking on the link for Pare Booking Agency.

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