Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Jared 0:00
What I don't want is it to sound like I'm saying truth doesn't matter in the sense of facts, that facts don't matter, especially in today's you know, who would have known I would have really needed to emphasize this today, like facts are important, everyone. But what happens is when we get them out of order, so it's really for me a matter of priority. It's a matter of emphasis. And so you know, there's this chapter I talk about the difference between the treasure map and the treasure itself. And so I think what happens where, for me, the wisdom I had to learn over the years was most of my life I like to prioritize the map. I thought truth was kind of the goal. I thought that was kind of what we were shooting for. I thought that was the goal of all of this is to get to the truth, get to reality. And what I realized is, as I've grown up, I realized that that doesn't lead to what my ultimate aim is, which is a better world a better place, you know, a better, more peaceful world for my kids to grow up in legally. that's ultimately what I'm shooting for.
Seth Price 1:04
Hey everybody, how are you doing? Welcome back to the Can I Say This At Church podcast‽ I am Seth. And I am 40% God ordained 40%. And I'm really excited for that. And if you don't get that joke, it's okay. But for those of you that do, I'm really glad that you do. So Jared Byas is back on the show. We're discussing his book. So normally, we've been just discussing random topics, but this time he wrote something. What you'll find in this conversation is just Jared and I tackling a concept about love, and specifically love as it relates to how we express and hear and interpret truth. And I think that that is very, very, very, valuable for the world that we're living in right now. Because truth matters, but love matters. And I think Jared is right (that) love matters more. So here we go, 40% God ordained with Jared Byas.
Seth Price 2:20
Jared, welcome back to the show man.!I think you're the only person that's been here as many times as you've been here.
Jared 2:25
I consider that an honor. I really appreciate it.
Seth Price 2:28
Yeah, and I told you this before. A lot of the reason I still do this show is because you said yes. The very first time when I literally called you at your office.
Jared 2:37
Yep.
Seth Price 2:38
…probably inappropriately, but whatever. That's a fun story I’ll write in a book one day in a nice, sarcastic, way. So it's been last fall (that) I think we talked? We actually talked a bit about truth then.
Jared 2:50
Yeah, yeah, that's true.
Seth Price 2:52
I'm sure you've seen, so I've been transcribing the episodes. I actually haven't made it to yours yet. So I'm curious how much they'll correlate, but we'll find out as I get there is it's been a minute, but yeah, so what's been new in six, eight months, ten months since we last talked, at least in this way?
Jared 3:07
Just this, this whole book coming out. So been having a lot more conversations around that which it you know turned out to be a lot more about love, and some about truth, and I think that's important. But yeah, I've been thinking a lot more about love and how that complicates a lot of things.
Seth Price 3:24
It does complicate a lot of things. I actually quoted your book to somebody tonight, and I didn't tell them that it was yours. I think that's technically plagiarism.
Jared 3:33
Yea, I think so! (Laughs)
Seth Price 3:34
Well, to be clear, though, I quoted…
Jared 3:38
I’ll send you an invoice
Seth Price 3:39
I quoted where you quoted Leviticus, as Jesus as redoing the love God, you know, so yeah, I guess technically, I quoted the way that you quoted the Bible; so it should be free.
Jared 3:47
Okay. So maybe I plagiarized (laughter)
Seth Price 3:50
I guess it's open, it's past the copyright. So what's the deal with the book? Why does love matter more? What are you getting at and then I don't ask any of the questions that the publisher send because I just don't like those. So we'll go from there.
Jared 4:05
Fair enough. That's good because if everyone did, then I just be answering the same like nine questions.
Seth Price 4:08
How many people do?
Jared 4:10
I don't know. I don't know what the questions were.
Seth Price 4:13
Oh! I have to find them and send them to you.
Jared 4:15
Yeah, you can give me the, you know, I don't know if I'm supposed to have them.
Seth Price 4:19
(laughs) it doesn't matter. So why does love matter more?
Jared 4:24
Well, love matters more is really a nod to my upbringing, where truth was what mattered the most, like defending the truth of our beliefs. And we would say truth of the gospel that as you can tell, I'm kind of allergic to even saying that but like, the truth of our beliefs was what mattered most. And we gave a nod to love. I think we would…I mean, the more I talk about it, I assume I heard that love was really important. But it was always translated in this like, “but the most loving thing we can do is give people the hard truth that their behavior is going to lead to their downfall and they're gonna end up in hell forever”. And so that's really what the title is leaning toward is love matters more really hinges on this verse; I mean, I kind of became obsessed with this verse of Paul's “speaking the truth in love”. And just because it was used as a weapon, I don't remember a single time growing up, when that phrase wasn't used in the context of I'm gonna say something to you that's probably gonna offend you but as long as I use this verse, in that context, I get like a get out of jail free card.
Seth Price 5:28
Yeah, say whatever you want. Yeah, the same type of thing as “bless her heart”. And now I can say whatever I want to say.
Jared 5:34
Exactly. Yeah.
Seth Price 5:37
Because bless her heart. So a couple just quick, sarcastic things because I need to get the puns out of the way. At the beginning of chapter one, you have the sinners prayer, like you talk about the centers per book, and it might even be before chapter one, but it's trademarked? I was unaware that the sinners prayer is trademark and that's when you know that you read the book when you realize those little things there.
Jared 5:56
That’s right.
Seth Price 5:57
Is it trademarked? Is that a thing?
Jared 5:58
No! No, that's just me being sarcastic (laughter from Seth), it's like a product now.
Seth Price 6:02
Well, but then when I kept seeing trademarks and copyright, I literally kept googling things over and over and over again, like, I think there's a part we talk about the 76ers, and The Process and I was like, yeah, is this strange? I'm like, oh, that is a thing. So then yeah, it is true. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I want to talk about and I never really thought about it this way. It's literally your first chapter. And I'm going to say the word wrong its…umwelt? How do you say it say it again?
Jared 6:29
Seth Price 6:30
I was close. So it's more like a D at the end of it. Okay. What is that for those that have not had the privilege of getting a hold of the book?
Jared 6:38
Yeah. So really what it is, is it's an analogy to help us understand our limited access to truth or to reality. And it's just this idea that scientists came up with, you know, ethnologists or etholo…, I forget what it is. Now, you got me questioning it. I always want to say ethnologists. And then I know that's actually not true. And I can't get it wrong here. Because that will make me look genuinely bad.
Seth Price 7:06
I'll find it. I know it's page 26.
Jared 7:07
Yes. ethologists. Yeah. ethologists. Ethnologists is ethnicities. Ethologists is something completely different anyway. It may be even ethologists, you know, one thing. This is a side getting sidetracked here. But there's a lot of things we did. I had to do the, the audiobook version of this. And Pete and I just recorded the audiobook version of Genesis for Normal People. And I realized, like, how much I read, and how little like, I don't know how to pronounce words, because I never actually hear them used until I have to say them out loud. And I'm like, Oh, wait, I have no idea how this actually is pronounced words.
Seth Price 7:42
Words like that anyways.
Jared 7:76
Yeah, exactly. So ethologists, ethologists something like that. But basically, it's understanding that every organism experiences the world in its own way. So there are animals that hear high pitched frequencies and there are animals that hear low pitch frequencies. And so they're going to experience sounds in the world in a different way. And so if you take kind of all the things that they can experience the world, because of their high pitched ability to hear or because of, you know, they hear through echolocation or other senses, how they experience the world is called their umwelt, which, again, the German word for world is Welt, so it's kind of their world. And it's helpful to understand when we translate to us that we all have our own umwelt, we have our own experiences, we have our own senses, and they're slightly different than other people. And therefore we're going to experience the world in a different way. And that's kind of the idea of the though.
Seth Price 8:41
You piggyback that off and you go into three different types of truth and to be honest, I'm only going to remember two there's like the logic based truth which you reference the enneagram, I haven't referenced it in a while but since you said you were repping the eight are proudly supporting eight something like that. Yep. As a five logic based truth is my…it's my jam. And then wisdom based truth, which I often lack the ability to communicate very well, because I get so bogged down in the weeds, which is what I'm doing right now.
I can't remember the second, or third, whichever order is there, which if you could talk a bit about those, I think that would be great, but more-so my question that I wrote down here is when I'm confronted with conflicting versions of those truths, so I find often, when I'm reading scripture, or arguing about politics or something else, the logic of the truth makes a lot of sense. But the wisdom of that truth doesn't seem practical, or sometimes the wisdom does and the logic (doesn’t), you know what I mean?
Jared 9:34
Yeah, and I may, I may tweak that a little bit, because it's not just laws of logic, but that first one is really factories. And that's, you know, I make the point that really the shorthand for me is what would be true if everyone were dead. So kind of the brute facts of the world. And the so that's kind of that first one, the fact trues. And then the second one is, meaning truths. And that's that connectedness of what it means to be human. So when you connect those facts to humanity, those create meaning. And so we have these meaning truths. And then we have wisdom truth, which is how we embody all the fact truths and meaning truths in our life and live out what it is that we think is, you know, we think about “living out your truth”. That would be kind of this wisdom, truth aspect of it, which is, I would argue different because factors and meaning truths can be cognitive meaning they're in our minds, which plays really well in the West. In the West, we really like those. But this wisdom truth isn't about embodiment, it's more physical, its body, and it's living out kind of everyday ordinary life in in a way that we might consider it good. And so that's going to be a little bit different. And I the book is really trying to emphasize that love, if we understand it Biblically, is in the category of this wisdom truth.
Seth Price 10:55
Okay, so as I've read this now, so it's been about a month since I finished it and I went back through and highlighted some more things tonight, but I've been really struggling with trying to have conversations with people in such a way that I don't answer questions directly. Because you've got a great chapter in the back. I don't know what chapter number it is really, like, I'm just trying to be like Jesus, you know, just trying to, would you say 198 questions 138 questions, something like that, you know, the only answer three, and I'm not really going to talk about divorce because I'm not qualified for that. And so, I really, really, really, really, really struggle with that. I find that I struggle to say anything to anybody. I just respond with memes. So for someone like me, you're like, yeah, I'm trying to respond. I'm trying to speak truth. And I'm trying to bring wisdom and I'm trying to be loving and I can't make those three reconcile, like I just physically can't do it. How didn't how do we do this? How do I do this?
Jared 11:47
Yeah, I think it's again, for me the title is important here. Because what I don't want is it to sound like I'm saying truth doesn't matter in the sense of facts, that facts don't matter, especially in today's you know, who would have known I would have really needed to emphasize this today, like facts are important, everyone (sarcastically) but what happens is when we get them out of order. So it's really for me a matter of priority. It's a matter of emphasis.
And so you know, there's this chapter I talk about the difference between the treasure map and the treasure itself. And so I think what happens where for me, the wisdom I had to learn over the years, was most of my life. I like to prioritize the map. I thought truth was kind of the goal. I thought that was kind of the “what we were shooting for”. Like, I thought that was the goal of all of this is to get to “the truth”, get to reality. And what I realize is, as I've grown up, I realized that that doesn't lead to what my ultimate aim is, which is a better world a better place, you know, a better, more peaceful, world for my kids to grow up in. Like that's ultimately what I'm shooting for. And sitting around spouting facts or making sure everyone knows what the facts are hasn't led to that. And so it's really a reprioritizing, where we put love as the emphasis and ask the question, what does it mean for love to matter more? How would that change this interaction if I was really most interested in love?
Seth Price 13:15
Yeah, I think the chapter that you were talking about that with the treasure map when I read that, I found myself so I put the book down and I set it aside and I was like, I do this often. And you reference it made me think back to you, Aaron, and the melting down building a golden calf like, everything that I thought was the point often is not the point. And right about when I realized that the point is the point that the point seems to shift and change, like something breaks open and me and I'm like, oh, man, now that I got the point now I have to do something else. And it never really stops which is infuriating.
I want to pivot back to something you said, actually, let me ask a question, then I'll pivot back. So you talked about your love of Nicolas Cage movies. in that chapter there on the treasure map.
Jared 13:57
Spoiler Alert!
Seth Price 13:58
Yeah, yeah. So I just curious what's what's the best one and what's the worst one because that's not a question (that) I don't think anyone else is going to ask you. But now I'm just curious?
Jared 14:03
Yeah, you know, Raising Arizona…
Seth Price 14:06
Is the best or the worst?
Jared 14:08
Probably the best. Yeah. Yeah. That's like prime Nic Cage. And what would be the worst? You know what I'm gonna, you know what I'm gonna say is I think the worst is probably the I think it's called The Family Man. But I actually, secretly, like it. So that's kind of the inside scoop. (laughs from Seth) But I think objectively, it's probably probably the worst. I don't know. I haven't seen every Nic Cage movie.
Seth Price 14:32
I thought you were gonna go with the Left Behind version because…
Jared 14:35
Oh!!! You know I totally blocked that out of my mind. (laughter)
Yes, that's probably worse. Like it probably didn't even rank in my consciousness.
Seth Price 14:43
That’s how bad it was.
Jared 14:44
Yes, yes.
Yes.
Seth Price 14:48
It was repressed. Yes. Just say you didn't watch it and go with that.
Back at the very, very beginning…my daughter's really bothering me being there. (my daughter is in the room at recording … she’s 5)
Jared 14:54
I totally get it. I totally get it. Stresses me out (to). I like to be on this side of that, because I've been in your shoes many a time.
Seth Price 15:04
Have your kids interrupted the episodes before?
Jared 15:06
No, but even earlier today, I was a guest on a podcast and my son came in. And it's more stressful when it's someone else's podcast because I like don't want to mess up anybody else's podcast. And so I'm like muting myself and I'm like, not being completely nice. I'm like, “you cannot be in here! Go away!” And I'm like, oh, shoot, I hope my microphone is actually muted.
Seth Price 15:30
(Laughs…hardest laugh probably that day)
That's great. Okay, I would like you to break apart of it just because most of the people I talked to we pretty much always talk about the New Testament and the Old Testament is your jam, specifically Jonah. And I do like how you work Jonah into this book as well a couple times. I don't think you can not talk about Jonah. Is that is that your legitimate favorite book of the Bible?
Jared 15:50
Yeah. Oh, yeah, for sure.
Seth Price 15:52
So you, there's a part in there, where you talk about the desert, and is it alright if I quote your book to you? Sure. Yeah, yeah. So you're in there, and I believe you're talking about…yeah, you are talking about your children, you say
there's a part in there where we
and by that you mean you and your wife won't say her name just in case we don't want to,
we realized that's what true life has found between the rules of slavery and the rules of the establishment between Egypt and Jerusalem.
And then you go on to say,
we found the God of Exodus, the one who is not tame, who does not provide purpose, but presence, who doesn't promise abundance but enough and for us for us that God was where we found freedom.
And so in there, how does that relate to truth? Like the Exodus story, I guess?
Jared 16:34
Yeah, I mean, I think it's exactly what you said earlier, that every time I think I arrive at truth, it escapes me! And I think that's the nature of truth. For a human being. It's always seeking but never finding. It's always just over the horizon. It's actually a pursuit and a process and not a destination. And I think that there is oppression and there's often a pooling of power, if we will, when we stay still and think we've arrived. And, this isn't original to me this is something that I think is baked into the theology of Brueggemann, who would have this idea in I think the book is called The Common Good. But that's where I kind of picked up on this. And I don't remember exactly what he says, I've probably taken it far afield from his original intentions.
But for me, that's kind of the connection with truth is that, you know, there's this place of slavery where we use truth in that way and then there's this place where we become the oppressors and we use truth to oppress others. So we're either being oppressed by truth, or we oppress others with it. And both of those think of truth as a destination and not as this journey, or this process, that we can utilize in this higher goal of freedom, or in this higher goal of love, which I think those two are connected pretty heavily-freedom and love.
Seth Price 18:12
Can you rip apart a bit about the golden calf, Aaron, Moses up there in the mountain? Because the way that you describe it which I think I'll just go ahead and say what my reading of that is. So I'd always been “the people needed ‘a god’ we have to worship something” so in the back of my mind it was always preached to me like you're wired to worship at God, make sure it's the right one. And so when I was reading your stuff, I was like, I've never thought about it that way. And it forced me to go back and read the Bible.
Jared 18:42
Look at that!
Seth Price 18:45
So that's on you, and I should be reading it anyway. But you talk about it, you kind of book in the book on both ends of at least the front third in the back third. So yeah, can you go over that just a little bit?
Jared 18:52
I will and you can emphasize whatever points you want. I think the main thing that was the ‘aha moment’ for me in that story, was reading it closely in seminary and recognizing the nature of idolatry. And it was so profound for me it changed how I thought of idolatry. And it made it so much more sinister and so much more sneaky for me. And that is if you read closely, Aaron does not actually prop up another god. Aaron creates a calf and calls that God, YAHWEH, the God who brought you up out of Egypt. So it's not a different God. It's a tamed version of YAHWEH. It's a God now that we can control and in the background, the backdrop and context of the story, you have this incredibly dangerous God up on the mountain, such that in the context of the Aaron story everyone just assumes Moses is dead. I mean, if you hear the rumblings of the deity and the lightning and the the fear inducing presence of this God, you're not thinking this is someone we can control. We think this is someone who is out of control. In fact, this God has chosen Moses and then has killed him after calling him up the mountain, let's get something a little bit more under our control and thus we have the golden calf! But it's not a different God, it is this God who brought you out of Egypt.
And for me, what did what that did for me is it helped me realize, my most self delusional idols are under the guise of YAHWEH. They aren't this easy to spot, movie imitating, the bad guys are really clean and clear. It's these things that we think are good, and we convince ourselves are good. And we call these good things, we call these sinister things like by the same name, but turns out that they are golden calves.
Seth Price 20:46
Yeah, so the part of that that emphasized to me, to drill it back, so I found myself trying to draw correlations to because I will often say that people make an idol out of the Bible, which I think you would probably agree with as well.
Jared 21:00
Yeah.
Seth Price 21:01
But that seems to me to be the easy picking. So I found myself struggling to find personally, I think it's easier for me to figure out what I prop up as an idol. And it can change day to day sometimes honestly, the podcast is an idol. You know what I mean? It becomes the thing that matters, and it's important.
Jared 21:17
Yep.
Seth Price 21:18
And now that I've said that out loud, kind of ashamed to say, but I'm gonna leave it in the episode because it's honest. But as a state, as a country, as Pennsylvania, what do you think are some of those things that the church has made an idol, that maybe we should figure out how to let go of?
Jared 21:31
Yeah, I mean, I would tie it a lot to our Bibles. But within that we have certain idiosyncratic or favorite interpretations that prop us up. And so certainly, nationalism, and our adherence to the state, racism, white supremacy, patriarchy, I mean, these would all be things that we have called good-and called God and yet aren't. And you know for me, I mean truth, the idea of absolute truth is one of those idols. Again for me, the more sinister idols are all the good things that become the ultimate things.
Seth Price 22:11
Do you think there can be an absolute truth or is the absolute truth just volitious love? And I'm not sure that I'm using volitious the right way there, like the act of “constantly love”.
Jared 22:23
Mm hmm.
Yeah, I mean, depends on how nerdy we want to get. But I think the idea of absolute truth I'm okay with, but I don't know what good It does us. Because I don't think any humans have access to it. And the way I say it in the book is only God knows it's an elephant, right? So I mean, I guess if we're just for the sake of feeling warm and fuzzy, we can say there's an absolute truth, but I'm too much of a pragmatic, like, I'm kind of like, “Okay, well, we did all this work and we staked our you know, flag on that hill. There's an absolute truth. Oh, but we don't have access to it so what good does that do”? And so, yeah, I would say that doesn't it's not a question that's interesting to me anymore.
Seth Price 23:08
Hmm. Do you remember what it was that made you pivot to that? Because you write in the beginning that that's not always that's not always the way you were wired. It's not still not the way that I'm wired. Like, I still struggle with that, like, what was it for you that you're like, yeah, this is stupid. I don't even know why I'm doing this anymore. Like, do you remember that that?
Jared 23:24
That pursuit to absolute truth?
Seth Price 23:27
Yeah, you know, it'd be academically, pastorally, maritally, it doesn’t matter.
Jared 23:31
I think, I mean, to be honest, it probably was reading the work of Jacques Derrida, postmodern philosopher, who writes about the “slipperiness of texts and that there are holes in the texts”. And he says really interesting and weird things. Like it's “text all the way down”. And he says things like, “every act of justice is in itself an act of injustice”. What he means by those things is there is no perfect act of justice, every act of justice is also just a little bit injustice. And so the capital “J” justice, that thing that we're shooting for, we've actually never seen. And he would call that an impossibility but it's an impossibility that makes everything else possible. So we're shooting for that capital “J” justice that we'll never get to. But we have to hold it out because it is the thing that allows us to do those ambiguously just things and I think the same is true for truth.
Seth Price 24:35
So there's a part in there and you changed the word and I wrote it down. So you know, most people when you say this already, they'll speak “the truth in love”. So I can now say, or badger, you used Westboro Baptist as an easy, I don't know what the word is…
Jared 24:49
Target?
Seth Price 24:51
I was gonna say piñata but target's fine. Because it is an easy one and honestly, I've used them in conversation as well. Like, I think I took it from Barbara Brown Taylor, like you know “you don't compare our best to their worst” like if you want to compare Westboro Baptist to ISIS, maybe, you know but you don't compare the Pope to Westboro Baptists—that's a bad I'm screwing that whole analogy up—but you know you're with me. So but there's a part of their you say that the difference is that you want to speak the truth; where is it at God I lost it. Yeah. So speaking it by being in love. So how do you speak the truth by being in love? Like practically what does that sound like? Specifically in a very local, communal, body, maybe even like a family. Because I don't think with our closest family members, we usually speak that way. We speak most often in the most cutting way without any caveat of speak the truth in love we just cut people.
Jared 25:40
Yeah, I mean, again, this is a reorientation for me of how we approach our life. And so it's, you know, I have a chapter in the book that's all about practical tips. But one of the more profound tips for me, or the practices that I've had, is reorienting every interaction around what do I want to get out of this? Why am I having this conversation? And being extremely intentional for why I'm having the conversation. And for me, the reasons why I don't want to have a conversation anymore, are so that I can convince someone that I'm right; so I can convince someone to change their mind; so that I can feel good about my own moral or intellectual superiority. Like these were very personal, and very vulnerable things that I had to recognize were the goals of almost all of my conversations that had to do with politics or religion.
And so for love to matter more is to reorient and to say, these are such important matters. And I can't love this person well without knowing who they fully are. And so I want to go in being curious, and interested, in who you are. And for that, I need to know your opinion on these matters. And that's what I'm trying to do. I'm trying to get to know you and to connect with you, not to convince you or to convince me.
Seth Price 26:58
Yeah. So you take, you use the model of Jesus quoting, is it Hosea…in Matthew, about fulfilling the law and the prophets? And so, I find often when I try to preach love, and I just lean on Jesus, people are like, “Yeah, but that's not what the Old Testament says; it's not what it means". You're making it say something it doesn't say because they don't want it to be that way. Or they think I'm trying to be “too liberal” with something or to ‘whatever’ with something. How do we as Christians today, communally or individually reinterpret scripture through a lens of love in the environment that we're all in now where our community is actually limited? Like it's hard to go be with other Christians in a safe way.
So I'm certain that that's not in the practical part, because I don't remember it being there. But what would you like if someone called you to like Jared, I read the book. I like this. I do have some thoughts about what Paul says here or it’s in Timothy or this is here, this is in Jude or I read this in Ezekiel and I’m really struggling? How do you, would you, work that out like, in trying to reimagine or reinterpret Scripture?
Jared 28:06
I mean, there's two practical things. And I try to be as practical as I can.
One is, we recognize we all pick and choose parts of the Bible to apply more often than other parts. And so it's very easy to just pick the parts that lead us to love better. And we can still wrestle with the harder parts. But it's interesting to me, I guess, for me, I've come to understand the scriptures because they're so diverse and ambiguous in themselves as sort of a Rorschach test. And so it says a lot to me which verses you're going to bring up and emphasize and which ones you're going to not talk about or not emphasize? Because the reality is there's a lot of verses that are in tension with each other.
Seth Price 29:00
Mmmhh.
Jared 29:01
So those people who say yeah but that's not what the Old Testament says, I would say, you're right! There are parts of the Old Testament that don't say that there are parts of the Old Testament that rejoice and ask God to, you know, smash infant heads against rocks. So what are we going to do with that? Like, you know, so I think that's the first thing.
And then two, there are really creative ways to reinterpret texts that are anchored in the historical context of the Bible. And, you know, it takes a lot of work to be able to reinterpret creatively, while not losing that rootedness within our tradition. We don't get to just make it mean what we want it to me that there are many things that can mean as our world and the biblical world collide, but we need to really be experts in our world and experts in the biblical world to do that surgery well.
Seth Price 29:46
you talk a lot about wisdom. And if I can remember Pete's book, right, I felt like one of those quotes is from Pete's book, but maybe it's not. I could just be misremembering, I read too many books. There's a good amount of sage advice, wisdom, there that comes from a turtle or a tortoise, I think, yeah. So I'm curious in the grand scheme of things how much of your wisdom comes from external Biblical sources? And then of that percentage how much of that is children movies?
Jared 30:17
It is a high percentage of children's movies to be honest! (laughs from both) Yeah, absolutely for sure! But I mean, I think that's a really good question, because maybe I'm outing myself maybe I'm saying too much but the Biblical text is old. It's disconnected from our world. It is I don't live 2000 years ago, I don't live you know, 2500 years ago, 3000 years ago in the case of the Hebrew Bible. So for it to mean something to me, there has to be these tentacles, these connections, this broader (and) imaginative world. And that's what the world of fiction the world of Buddhist thinkers like Pema Chödrön and these, like other folks that I read regularly, they give voice to what I think are pretty Biblical principles. But they have the luxury of living in the last few hundred years in a way that connects more with me. And so I think of it as all these other writers are scaffolds that keeps me connected to the Biblical text in the same way that St. Augustine, St. Ignatius, St. Teresa of Ávila, Richard Rohr, all these other writers are building on the shoulders of Biblical trues and Biblical principles. And it's up to me now to collide those into my own life.
Seth Price 31:40
Trying to remember the name of that turtle Ogee? What's his name?
Jared 31:45
Oogway!
Seth Price 31:36
That's it. Yeah, that is not one of my favorite movies. Mostly because I can't stand Jack Black's voice.
Jared 31:52
Oh my gosh!
Seth Price 31:53
It's his voice. The character’s hilarious. It's the voice. I have actually turned on the Spanish version with English subtitles and I've enjoyed that a lot.
Jared 32:03
How did your kids like that?
Seth Price 32:05
They didn't watch it with me-it's a good movie
Jared 32:05
So, you watched the Spanish version of Kung Fu Panda by yourself is that what you're saying?
Seth Price 32:11
Yeah, with English subtitles because it is a good one.
Jared 32:13
I'm learning a lot about you just
Seth Price 32:14
I just don't like Jack. But I actually have subtitles on almost every show that I watch.
Jared 32:20
I would if I could get away with it. My family is annoyed by it.
Seth Price 32:23
I don't know why it for some reason I retain what I'm watching better.
Okay, so I want to ask another practical question. So I get your book. I've been listening to the Bible for Normal People. I've been you heard it here and you're like, I do need to do this. And I like there's a part we talked about, you know, I'd like to interject a “perhaps”, which I have used quite often. It really helps at the bank. Honestly, it's helped a lot, especially in like coaching with my team, when they want to push back and I'm like, perhaps we should try this tell me how it goes. And I find that it ends a conversation really well.
They're like, “yeah, I could try that”. So I'm on a plane, I'm on a bus, I'm at church and and I'm sitting next to somebody that I just cannot reconcile things with. I don't like their politics. I don't like the way that they worship, I think that they're wrong. I don't even know why we go to the same church or why we go to the same school.
And that could be about anything. It could be about mass, it could be about anything now. And you want to try to begin practicing love. What's the first thing for someone that is just stepping out of a rigid version of speaking truth and love to going the other way? Like, what's the first sentence, or maybe the first way, to approach that for someone that's tentatively stepping their toes in the water?
Jared 33:37
Yeah, I think for me, curiosity is always my first step. Because I found that curiosity and judgment make poor roommates. So when I'm curious I tend not to be judgmental. Whenever I'm interested I tend not to be blaming and so having a genuine interest in human beings is a really good first step.
So, rather than coming to conclusions, asking questions-not even to the person, but to ourselves. I wonder why they hold that belief. I wonder what their parents belief? I wonder what church they go to? How does this belief system they have work out with their kids? How does it impact their parenting? Like, I can come up with probably 50 questions in the span of a few minutes that I'm genuinely curious about, regardless of what your ideology or political or religious beliefs are. And I just have an insatiable curiosity to understand and I'm distracted by my curiosity long enough to let the emotions pass. And then I don't feel the need to kind of poke at someone or drive the point home. And the second thing I would say that's been haunting me and I use that verb on purpose. Is this verse that Jesus uses in the Sermon on the Mount. And we usually focus on the Beatitudes, but there's this passage that has been rough for me. And it's Jesus saying,
be perfect like, God is perfect.
And what does that mean? In this context Jesus says,
God's sends rain on the just and the unjust, brings sunshine on the righteous and the unrighteous.
And we should be like that, too. And that's been a very haunting verse for me because I asked myself, if someone had a video camera and they were recording me during my days, would I be like God? Meaning you wouldn't know the difference between the people I disagree with or that rubbed me the wrong way or that annoy the crap out of me and you wouldn't know those people from the people. I love to spend time with the love people, like connect with the people that are like that. God is indiscriminant in how God behaves toward people. And that's tough. Because we can talk about like love your enemies. I think that's great. But we can easily flip that into saying, Yeah, I love my enemies. And the most loving thing I can do is tell them that they're full of crap! Because if I don't tell them that they're gonna go to hell, right so we can switch that. But in this passage in Matthew, it's very clear that God is indiscriminate in God's behavior toward and giving good gifts to the good and the bad. And can I replicate that behavior in my life? That's been a really practical thing for me as well.
Seth Price 36:34
I'm not successful with that.
Jared 36:36
Yeah, me neither.
Seth Price 36:38
At all, maybe 1% of the time, accidentally, not intentionally.
Jared 36:48
Nice. Yeah.
Seth Price 36:47
I want to ask you one final question. And you can answer it however you like. And I intentionally didn't tell you what the question is. So when you try to explain…so say my daughter who I don't, she's probably asleep by now. So say she walks up and she's like, Jared, my dad's full of crap. He talks a lot about God. But I don't know what God is. Like, how would you try to wrap words around explaining for you what God is? And it doesn't really matter that she's five. So I just used that as an easy way to segue into the question, What words would you try to wrap around that?
Jared 37:19
I don’t, really, sincerely don't mean this to be a cop out. I think it does matter that she's five. And because my first question would always be to try to understand what they first think. What would you, just to be very honest, and this may not make for a good podcast interview here. But if someone came up to me and said, “Well, how would you define God”? I would say, “you know, I'm not, I don't know, how would you define God?” And something that they say, is going to lead me to another question, and that's gonna lead me to another question. And at some point when they feel like they've gotten to a good place, I'm gonna let it go and I'm gonna say “Yeah, sounds good to me”.
Seth Price 38:04
(Laughs)
That's a fair answer. And honestly, you are practicing the way, there's a part in here, because I'm trying to be like God (referring to the way Jesus ask more questions and doesn’t answer) So I'm just going to intentionally try and I forget where it is. I know where it is on the page, top third line…
Jared 38:17
And maybe answer the question in the way that you originally intended it. I think it's fair for me because it goes back to exactly what you said at the beginning. As soon as I figure out what God is like, God maneuvers God's self out from under my thumb. So what does God like? I don't know! I mean, who knows! I thought I knew what God was like when I was 10 and 7 and 20 and 30 and God just keeps being different, so who knows?
Seth Price 38:45
Yeah, yeah. I once had a guest asked me he's like, “Well, let me ask you!” and the best I could come up with is that Gods just a metaphor that I don't have words for yet. Maybe one day, just not today.
I want to thank you for your time tonight Jared. I think one of these is about to do one of these in the day, it would be great for all of us. But where do people go? The books everywhere that find books are sold, probably try to order from a local bookseller. That way everybody can make some money. But where would you want people to go to engage with you engage with the book, pick up what you're putting down all things?
Jared 39:16
Yeah, well, in terms of the book, one thing I've been mentioning to people is we have a really cool free gift for anybody who pre-orders it. I don't know when this will be coming out. But for lovemattersmorebook.com. And it's a three part series on how to talk to people you disagree with. So it's actually about an hour's worth of content. It's three videos each for about 15 minutes, where I talk about some of the principles, some of the practical tips, and we'll just go through kind of three parts of how to reorient these tough relationships and it gets really practical. So I would encourage anyone to preorder the book and go to lovemattersmorebook.com and grab that. You can also go there for a free chapter of the book if you aren't sure yet if you want to preorder the book, and then of course, check us out on TheBiblefornormal people.com.
Seth Price 40:03
Perfect. Thank you again for tonight. Jared, I always enjoy talking with you. It's a blast.
Jared 40:07
Yeah, yeah, absolutely!
Seth Price 40:20
Before you leave, here's what I'm gonna need you to do. Hit pause, go down to the show notes and join people like Amy Fisher, who's the newest patron of the show. patrons literally make this go. If you can't do that, if there is no way that you're able to financially support the show, consider rating and reviewing it. There's been a few lately that have been hilarious. One made me Google that abbreviation for ASMR because I didn't know what that was. If you need a safe place to land to question to have conversations about really anything at all considered joining you can find a Safe group that is by invite only though you can request to be invited, I called Can I Say This At Church, Honest Discussions, what you won't find there is a lot of advertisements for random things, just genuine open conversation. And I hope to see you there. so thankful for each and every single one of you. I'll talk to you next week. Be blessed