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Real Talk FUMC Pearland
Welcome to “Real Talk", a podcast with an increased intentionality on having honest conversations about faith, church and the real conflicts that surround the complicated realities of today. We invite those who are curious, cautious and considering faith into deeper conversations, even if we don't always agree.
Real Talk FUMC Pearland
Is the Bible true? w/ Rev. Melody Kraus
Thea is joined by fellow pastor and mentor Rev. Melody Kraus to discuss the errancy, authenticity and relevancy of the Bible as a guide to deeper understanding of both humanity and God’s reluctant pursuit of our salvation.
Episode Topics Include:
When and how was faith introduced into your life?
When did you first start to be exposed to/read the Bible?
What do you remember most about your first experiences with the Bible?
How have those changed throughout your faith?
What do you gain from reading, memorizing, and meditating over the Bible?
What parts and aspects of the Bible do you wrestle with?
Is the Bible true?
Can you be a Christian and have doubts about the Bible too?
What’s one piece of hope you would offer to anyone struggling with the Bible?
Join the Conversation:
Reach out to the guest and/or hosts by emailing:
theac@fucmpearland.org or rclemons@fumcpearland.org.
Visit www.fumcpearland.org to learn more.
Want more information about FUMC Pearland? Check us out at fumcpearland.org
Welcome to Real Talk, a podcast that is a place where we can have real conversations about faith as well as our struggles with real people. I'm your host, thea, and today I am so excited to welcome our guest, reverend Melody Krauss, whom I got to know in my very beginning of my journey at Deer Park United Methodist Church. We have remained friends and in connection and I'm so glad to welcome her today. Melody, I want you to introduce yourself, share a little bit about what you're doing these days and then a little bit of why you said yes to coming and sharing your faith today.
Speaker 2:Absolutely Well. Good morning, it's exciting to be here. My name is Melody Krauss. I'm an ordained elder in the United Methodist Church. I've been serving in our Texas annual conference for about 20 years and started off in regular, wonderful church ministry where I got to meet you at Deer Park, served in Pearland and Mont Bellevue and then in 2021, kind of did a side quest that I'm on in the moment, where I have been appointed to serve as an extension minister at the Chambers County Children's Museum, which is in Mont Bellevue. Originally it was starting off finding all the monies and the sponsors, creating the space, finding the architects and the engineers and then the contractors. We finished our build out last June, open to the public and in the first six months so by the end of 2023, we welcomed over 42,000 people into our space Just a little bit proud of that so I have to humble brag and share that.
Speaker 2:But it's a wonderful space for children zero through 12 to explore inspiration, innovation, discover who they want to be and the possibilities that are open in their life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. Well, thank you for taking some time today to be with us. And again, why did you say yes to coming on a podcast to talk about your fate?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I have a problem with saying yes and apparently no, excuse me honestly just because you asked and I value you and there seemed to be a real excitement for you and what this would look like and what this ministry would be. It was something you're familiar with, I know. But then to expand it into kind of this platform and I love First-Gen Methodist Church Paralente, so I'm always ready to be present and share what I know and what I don't know, what I'm struggling with and what I hope is true.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, thank you. Thank you again for coming today and just for continuing to be along my journey. I forgot to mention that you were one of my first pastors at Deer Park. I had the beautiful luxury of, when I started to attend Deer Park and Methodist Church, there were two women who were pastoring, and so for me at the time, as I had to start my call very early, there was no doubt. I thought, yeah, right, the church world has caught up to the rest of the world, and so didn't have a doubt at all, because of you and because of Pastor Deborah at that time. So thank you again for that. So let's jump in and just tell a little bit when was faith introduced to your life? And also, when do you remember starting to read the Bible or being exposed to it?
Speaker 2:So I was what we call a cradle Christian, went to church in my mama's womb. Back at that time we were a Presbyterian. My mom grew up Presbyterian, my dad grew up Baptist, so of course they agreed upon being Presbyterian, which is what my mom said. But then, when we moved out of state back into state, we eventually found the United Methodist Church and that has been a huge part of my faith journey. So it was introduced to that amazing brand of Christianity in my early teens and very much has stuck and works with who I am and how I understand God to be For reading scripture, the little Presbyterian church that I went to church and worshiped and had Sunday school in when I was in kindergarten, through fifth grade, we had these wonderful Sunday school teachers, mr Maybury and Dr Andrews, and they were supposed to just be our first grade teachers.
Speaker 2:Now, like side note, how they convinced two men to be Sunday school teachers for first grade more than a few years ago is kind of surprising, but they did. But they loved us so much that they aged up with us. So we had the same two retired men that were our Sunday school teachers from first through fifth grade. And if you were present every single Sunday you were gifted a Bible. Now we traveled, because this was when I lived in North Carolina.
Speaker 2:My family was still in in Deer Park area that's very much was home for me and so you had to go to church when you were on vacation and bring back a bulletin. And I was that nerd kid that did it because I wanted my Bible and they presented it to us with such, such, all such reverence, and I respected them so much as these wonderful guys who knew my birthday that would come to a softball game when I played that were just part of my everyday life. If it was important to them, there had to be something important there, and so I can remember just from the beginnings of really being able to read, opening that up and knowing that this had great weight and value and needed to be important for me as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, what a what a gift that those volunteers gave you, not just in their presence for so many years, but also, like you said, holding this book with so much reverence. And it was a real prize. You know that it was. It was something to be treasured. It was funny. As you're mentioning, you started a Presbyterian church.
Speaker 1:Actually, my earliest church memories were also Presbyterian with my mother's mother. I also went to Catholic Mass with my father's mother. Did not enjoy that, was completely lost and confused, and I just remember being told no, a lot like you can't, you can't, you can't. I was like why am I here? But the Presbyterian church, there was a children's moment and I remember the pastor would you know, sit down on the steps with us and call us up to the carpet. I don't remember what he said, but I remember feeling welcomed and I do remember Sunday school. Again, I remember the carpet being colorful. Probably there was some Bible stories in there. I didn't go super a lot right Every now and then, but it's interesting that again, like it was this place where I did feel welcome and I felt like there was a place for me. There was a comfy, colorful carpet, even if it was just for a piece of that time together.
Speaker 1:But when I think about my first Bible experience is that? What comes to mind is I remember my grandfather, my mother's father died I think I was five or six and he gifted all of us grandchildren there was spending at least 10 at the time a Bible. I don't remember it being a children's Bible, which at five would have been probably most appropriate, but I think it was just an NIV and I can still see the cover there were, I guess, from the from the steam chapel of God reaching out to touch Adam, so kind of the fingers almost touching just all across that. And it set on my shelf for years and years and years. And I think my sister found it and started like highlighting it and I did not appreciate that and so I took it back from her. Now I didn't read it, but I was like you're not going to mark up my Bible even though I'm not reading it, but it's just as. Again, as I was asking you, I was like thinking, huh, that's actually my first memory and I had that Bible for a really long time.
Speaker 1:Once I did find my faith and, as I remember now, I gave it away when I visited the Ukraine to a girl because she wanted an English Bible and I said, well, here, take this one. So when I have on me in here it'll be, you know, it'll be a special treasure. So I wonder if she has that now. But as I think of all those memories from the Bible, what about the stories? What about what was in there? Do you remember kind of the ones that first stuck out to you? Maybe, if you didn't highlight them, they were highlighted in your mind and memory.
Speaker 2:So I do and I I don't know why we do this as adults, but we tend to decide that some of the biblical stories are for kids and some are for adults. And I guess side note, I do understand very much that some of the stories are very adult, right, and maybe you need to wait to a certain level of maturity before exposing those. But but we've decided some, some stories are children's stories and then we don't revisit them as adults, which is a whole nother soapbox that I'm happy to get on at another time. But what I remember are just the stories that were for me and just are bigger than life. You know Jonah and the prophet and the big fish that swallows him up, and what does that mean, and that's told to children again. You know showing my age with, like, the flannel boards and you know, here's the big fish that comes up and here's Jonah and he won't go where God wants him to go, so he's got to live in this belly for a while. Some of those Noah, noah and the Ark, all of those Moses, these are occasionally stories that we revisit as adults, but I guess, because they are so colorful and I catching, they tend to be pushed to children and can, frankly, get lost there if they're not revisited again. But I remember those stories and just kind of reveling in the storytelling that would happen.
Speaker 2:We had again wonderful adults in my little Presbyterian church growing up and Vacation Bible School was like planned all year long and it was the standard Vacation Bible School that I think many people are familiar with.
Speaker 2:You know lasted a week, was in the morning time, took up all the big gym and there would be stations and the kids would cycle through and the adults would get all gussied up in the costumes to tell the stories. And the reality is it was, you know, a bed sheet wrapped around them in a stick they pulled from the backyard but they would tell these stories and you could just be present. And again, now that I think about it, there were times that I didn't understand what was happening or the deeper storylines or metaphors that were in the biblical stories that were being shared with me. But I knew it was important to those adults, right? So it's that both and this is important to someone else, and so what does that mean for me? Someone important to someone else that I know loves me, who I know loves God, and so what does it look like for me to understand more and to be pulled into that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, as you say that this is important to someone who loves me and loves God, that's exactly what pulled me in to the preaching at Deer Park, as I felt like it was delivered both by you and Pastor Deborah, like this is something important and good, and, because of the relationship I was building with both of you as well, it felt like you're important enough to me to share this and it's kind of what I hear in these adults who poured into you and Sunday school and VBS that they were willing to share this good news that they had, even if you couldn't fully understand all of it at first.
Speaker 2:Well, and that, to me, that's the beauty of the Bible is that the same books can be revisited at age two, age 22, age 52, age 72 and beyond, and you can understand something more, not because the words have changed, but because who you are has changed, how God has moved in you, how your own life experiences have developed. Then you see something new in something that is essentially, at this point, timeless.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you have any specifics you can think of?
Speaker 2:I feel like there are passages of scripture that I have wrestled with and didn't like from the beginning. You talked about not liking your sister writing in your Bible. I don't think I would ever overstep and write in someone else's Bible, but my Bibles are written all over Every different color of pen, every different color of highlighter. I mean, if I'm super honest, there's parts that I've essentially blacked out. I don't like that, so it just needs to go into. Time out so I can't see it right now. And doggiered pages.
Speaker 2:I know like any librarian listening is all up at arms, but it's because it's a loved document, it's used, and I want to remember how I felt, and especially with the Psalms. I think Psalms are like songs that are heart sings. Right, I mean that sounds a little nerdy and campy, but there are expressions of how a person feels and I got into this habit when I was a moody teenager of writing dates down and I was certain that when I was like 15, I would always know what that date was, because it was the end of my life, or it was like when I discovered who I was gonna marry, or whatever. In a teen world is just earth-shattering. And of course now, well beyond my teens. I have no idea what that date meant, but what I find interesting is from one of my oldest bibles that has survived, because some of them just don't One of my oldest ones, which I had as a teenager and still utilize quite often now.
Speaker 2:Sometimes there will be multiple sets of dates and the reality is I don't know that I could tell you at any of them meant, but they were important to me then and so almost like those same memories of a senior school teacher or an adult volunteer for VBS was important to them. So let me look closer, right. Well now, this was important to me. I could pretend that I remember why, but I don't. So let me look closer and see how does it resonate with me today? How is it feeding me or challenging me, or is it frankly just not grabbing me today, and that's okay, because there's always next week or next year when I'm going to need that piece for who I am and who I'm trying to be.
Speaker 1:I remember the first time I read through the Bible like, well, the first time was in disciple, but you don't actually read every single right, you do close, but not find everything.
Speaker 1:Not in disciple one, you know which. Then I was like there are places I have missed. So then I did like the next year Bible in a year and I was like, okay, this is every single word. And when I got to Psalms I was so disappointed. I was like no, I want the story, I want the drama, because what I had learned in the Old Testament stories and all of the accounts is like such drama, such real people. I mean, there's murder, there's multiple marriages, there's manipulation, like it was so human and I loved, loved seeing that and I thought I don't want to read a bunch of poems, I want the good stuff. But I was diligent and I stayed with it.
Speaker 1:And then it was, these Psalms came to life and it was as if I could hear the same characters you know whose stories I was so drawn into crying these same praises but also feeling lost, feeling without anger. It was so beautiful and I thought, whoa, I was not expecting that. I was expecting to have to force myself to get through some poetry when it really it's. The human experience, with all the emotion shared so beautifully and so authentically and vulnerably, and even sometimes in the very same Psalm, can start off full of praise and then go to anger and resentment and then out again of oh yes, god, there you are Incredibly authentic and I think that's permission giving for us right, that we don't have to be any sort of version of ourselves other than who we really are.
Speaker 2:Another thing, when you mentioned Disciple Bible, so a real blessing for me, like a deep blessing, was my time at Deer Park Unite Methodist Church, but that I stepped into a disciple group that was already formed and I still think of them as my Monday morning moms. It was a group of women, didn't have to be, but that's just how it played out and we went through every single Disciple Bible that there was. We went into the Christian believers and so there's what like six of those, I believe total, and these are year-long programs, right Cause I got to serve there for almost seven years and so it was going through those and at one point, and for the most part it was the same 20 or so of us that were together, with some additions, with some subtractions. Sometimes someone wouldn't be able to do, one session would come back the next year, things like that.
Speaker 2:But at one point with the Bible that I used then, which is another one of my standbys, I had the ladies tell me what their favorite Psalm was and I wrote their names, and so that's fun for me too, because when I look back here I see these Bibles all marked up with my own dates and my own notes. But then I know this one was Joanne's favorite or this one was Brenda's favorite, and so then I look at it with those eyes as I'm celebrating those women who poured into my life as well, right, and very much helped me be who I am. So if you don't like parts of me, you can blame them as well, but that's just something that I can carry with me as I carry in that book.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that. That's so great that it was interesting that as a teenager you wrote down dates like I'm sure I'm gonna remember, and maybe with a little time it was like, okay, I'm not gonna remember any of the whole name here, I need to know exactly.
Speaker 2:But I think especially the names of the people who helped you feel special, right, that made you feel loved and safe and whole and all of that. You remember those people yeah.
Speaker 1:Talk to me a little bit about memorizing scripture, maybe in connection to and or in contracts, and meditating like what have you like from actually knowing what the words say? How has that helped mold or transform?
Speaker 2:your faith? That is a good question. So I am not a scripture memorizer. I tease that. I'm a good united Methodist, not a good Baptist, and so I don't have my sword ready always. No, I'm not a memorizer of scripture and I think in part that's because of my own struggles with perfectionism. If I were to memorize it, then it would need to be perfectly right and I would worry about it being accurate, not necessarily what it meant for me. Now, that being said, I can find just about anything right. I remember I've read through our scripture so many times that it's in there, but not necessarily word for word, and that works for me. I certainly respect other people who do have hunks of scripture memorized, who, in a moment, can bring it forward. I think that's beautiful.
Speaker 2:My form of meditation tends to be more to read a passage and then just to sit and be present, and I love to do that when I can be outside. I just feel like I think better outside. If I can be by a body of water oh gosh, double extra stars. That doesn't happen as much, but is wonderful when it can. And so just to allow that passage to be present for me in my new gig in Extension Ministry with the Children's Museum.
Speaker 2:I'm not preaching every Sunday I actually like worship with people on Sundays but when I was for 18 years, when most of that or a good portion of that I was preaching every single Sunday, we would know the passage of scripture that was coming for that week. Normally we were series preachers and so we would even know kind of the overall arc. Right, this next four weeks we're focusing on this. Here's how we're kind of navigating that. But I would always open that passage and just sit and be present with it for the first day.
Speaker 2:Then I would start to look for any questions what questions do I have about this? What questions should I have about this? What does it mean for me? And then just really to allow that space for the Holy Spirit, for God to be present, to speak through it, to show me what I need to see, ideally to smack me upside the head if need be, so that I see what I need to see. And so for me, I just try to make as much space as possible, and that also for a type A kind of person like myself, is very difficult, because it's a lot easier to just tell God what this is going to say and hello Scripture. This is what you're saying to us today and this is what you'll be preaching this week, but it's a vulnerable space. To open it up for God to move in that.
Speaker 1:I think that's really key and usually for me as well, in sermon preparation is let's start with what does the text say?
Speaker 2:Always.
Speaker 1:Right, not. What do I want to say Right, and how will the text support?
Speaker 2:that and that's why so I have not always been, or much less often been, a lectionary preacher, but you know our lectionary, which is those assigned texts for every week of the year over a three year swing. I think there's great value there, because you're not what my one of my seminary professors called Cherry Pickham. Oh, I want to talk about love, so let me grab this or this and making it fit versus you know, here is a passage that these wonderful church figures, years and years ago, decided would work in this flow. There's some flaws there. It misses some stuff we need to be hitting. I have my love hate relationship with lectionary, but it does guide you through something where it's not you selecting and there's some great beauty in that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I find I've actually mostly been a series preacher and even if I did use election area, I made a series out of it. You know, because that's how my brain works, I like to have a nice chunk, but I think they're just to try and take that discipline Right. Okay, this is the text I chose maybe six to 10 weeks ago because I thought it would fit the series. But what does it say to me today? Now, in this context, and let the current events, the current realities bubble up like look for those connections. And when you mentioned that you're not a memorizer of scripture, that you don't memorize, but you remember. And that's exactly actually the verbiage that I use for preaching I don't preach with notes and people like oh wow, how do you memorize that? I said well, I don't memorize it because again.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would try to be perfect and deliver a speech that was well planned, and that's really not my goal, but I strive to remember what I want to say and I also have given myself the freedom to say if I forgot, well, I'll see you next week Exactly. Try to tell you then. Or maybe it wasn't so important right now. Right, and I'll be okay with that too. But in remembering scripture, it's interesting how so much for me I have remembered right and can even remember word for word from the translation that I studied that scripture the most out of, and how much they have come to me in these times of need or desperation or even celebration, how they can just, in my experience, they're in me, they're a part of me, they are weaving my decision making and things like that. Because I've remembered them, because I've studied them, because I've taken them in to me right and did more than read the read the black and white on the page and comprehend its meaning and then move on right, really tried to do, I guess, that meditating and application and seeing those connections. Actually, a colleague suggested a couple of years ago and I now remember the number, I think it's 131. Every time I try to look for it, I get, I get on the wrong one.
Speaker 1:But this beautiful one about how there's nowhere I can go, high or low, that God is not with me.
Speaker 1:And even in that same Psalm again that beauty of the wrestling, because it's like that last stanza the person who recommended it to me goes like and then there's this bipolar moment where you don't really understand. I said no because the Psalmist turned to and you're enemies, anybody, I'm against them, I, you know, get them away from me, don't let them be around me. And then again, cleanse my heart. Here I am again. I've just, you know, been baffled by your beauty and love and grace for me, god. And then how quickly I will turn on others. Save me again from myself, right, you know not these people and how much those words have just stuck with me and helped me, and then so many others, to just really form my faith and understanding about who God really is and my real human experience, which again I find in the words of this sacred text, over and over and over. I think it is a very true revelation of humanity and God's constant, relentless pursuit of redemption.
Speaker 2:Often when you have probably heard me do this often when I start in preaching, I will hold up my Bible or the digital tablet that is serving as my Bible for that moment and say you know, this book, the Bible, is the greatest love story ever written, because it is a story of a just, absurd and relentless God who was willing to continue to love people, even though for thousands of years, generations upon generation, just in that book, not to say all the ones that have happened since then where we try to be unlovable and we've never succeeded yet.
Speaker 2:And so I just love that broad view and also that the Bible isn't afraid that the early fathers who canonized those books and you know, gathered them together and said this right, they weren't afraid of showing humanity at its worst. Or I guess maybe there could have been things even worse that didn't make it in, but we got some muck in there that still made the cut. And so when you can see just the people, I mean just being terrible, being all self-centered, focused on this, or only wanting what they want, or being completely afraid or worried about what's next, some of that to an overabundance, and other times just healthy fear and anxiety in the midst of cruddy life. I am thankful that we weren't afraid to include that, that the messy reality of what it means to be human and how often we all stumble and fall still made the cut so that because if it didn't, I wouldn't be able to find myself in there, and I can find myself in there.
Speaker 1:So speak, a little bit more to that. The difficult parts, you know, the parts that you wrestle with, and if you don't, you know, have it memorized, that's fine. But those kind of, maybe, some of those elements specifically that you you've wrestled with or even, like you mentioned earlier, have put in time out because you're not ready to deal with, I have.
Speaker 2:So I struggled a lot when I was in. I think I would offer that high school was something that still rears up as big though part of what it means to go to seminary and to be intentional about studying scripture for three plus years, how my kind of seminary experience went. There was my first three years and then seminary two point when I went back for my MDF, mts, masters of Theological Studies and then Masters of Divinity, and so there was kind of two versions. And when I look at those and then these high school times, trying to understand how God could do the things that the Bible says God could do, and so that was my high school years, and I remember sitting with our youth director at the time my senior pastor, who was still in wonderful ministry in the Texas annual conference and saying if God is gonna send a plague that kills the firstborn son of every Egyptian as some sort of a bargaining tool, now I agree, these Israelites need to be able to go do their own things. Laveries, bad, I got that. They need to be set free. Somebody should listen to Moses. But we're willing to have this collateral damage of these innocent firstborn sons specifically, and God is orchestrating this. I don't think I want that God, no, thank you.
Speaker 2:And sat in front of two men, lauren Jones, who was still in ministry outside of the United Methodist Church, dr Tom Pace, who was very much still in ministry within the United Methodist Church, at St Luke's, and that both of them were brave and willing enough to just not say anything, which now, being the adult right, I wasn't then, and now, sadly, I am the adult. Most of the time we wanna give an answer, we wanna either make it right or give the correct answer, and they didn't, and they just said yeah, yeah, and then to continue to wrestle with that. Well, what does it mean to love God anyway, when God can do this? And so part of that then became my own understanding of scripture. In Christianity we don't believe that there was some sort of golden pin that like flew down from the heavens and pinned this scripture. We understand that human hands created it, that well before there was a written language or even the ability to write, these were oral traditions, they were passed down and they were written here, and I know I'm not the only one who has a great story that has grown much larger in my telling that the fish that was this big, becomes this big when I come back and tell it or I guess my girl version would be the shoes that were $5 off or suddenly free, and they gave me money in a latte when I left the store, right, and so to understand that scripture, is this all inspiring fully God, text and tool and beloved passages that was completely written by human hands and told by my version of it and what I thought happened and that then, even when we read it, we bring our own baggage to it. That that helped me kind of.
Speaker 2:I'm a very visual thinker and so in my mind it's these loose fingers.
Speaker 2:I hold loosely to the profound truths of God's unconditional love for humanity.
Speaker 2:That's seen in every bit of that scripture and frankly, like I said before, absurd patience, because I'd have given up on us like way a long time ago, but God keeps holding and then just to kind of allow some of the bits that were probably more human than God to fall through.
Speaker 2:And so that also stretches into the parts that are used to further agendas today, right when we see passages, scriptures, utilized to diminish women or used to diminish groups of people that I feel like those words may have been well and true in those moments, and there's a lot of stuff that was well and true when I was a child in the 80s and 90s that, frankly, we would panic about now, and so we tend to forget that that while the truths of God are timeless, they are bound in stories that happened in a very specific timeframe in a very specific part of the world, and so we just have to hold with those loose fingers to not let any bit of God go, but to allow some of the specificities of how many cubits something should be right To let that stay, that's okay. But the God part, it needs to carry right along with us where we are today.
Speaker 1:One of the ways I've wrestled with maybe even the same exact story, especially in the in the in Exodus, with God hardening Pharaoh's heart yeah, Like what Right? What? Not my God? And there's several other scriptures that I have to wrestle with and have this kind of same holding with is that what we have is a human telling of a God experience, and I think kind of with all the perfection and failure of the humans who told this story, who then wrote this story down, then edited the story and then collected the story, and how often we, you know, I think there's so much that we forget that we are made in God's image and instead try to make God in ours, oh, 100%, and give God all of our human pieces right. Yes, in the story of Jesus, this is fully man and fully God. Yet God is God Right.
Speaker 1:God is not bound by our human tendencies and our human behaviors and our human needs, and that, actually, how different God is from humanity we can't even understand, because we're so human and our human experience, our human words, our human realities, all we have it's, it's not, it's, it's the best that we have and so we do the best that we can with it. But also, again being able to recognize especially these Old Testament texts. These are thousands upon thousands, upon thousands of years old. That, so far back that I mean we have, we have scraps of maybe the first, if that like it's. So we are continuing to just do our best, right, and I would agree that this book of humanity and God's amazing love for us, that it's all intertwined completely and I don't wanna take out one piece of the humanity because I'm sure to remove a little bit of the God, and so I need them both right along there. You know, and that's how I would actually answer this idea is the book true?
Speaker 1:Yes, this is the truth of God's people, of people, the truth of the links we will go through right, the rules we will try to create, the way we will make others in our image and disconnect and divide and say you are better and you are less, and this is what has to happen.
Speaker 1:This is what we have to believe in order to move forward in this reality that we're in and that the love and redemption and wholeness and better opportunity that God offers us is there too, you know, if you're willing to look for it, if you're willing to see it, if you can even, you know, and I have to argue for myself if I can look past, sure, the humanity that angers me, that hurts me, that makes me wonder if I can keep digging, keep pursuing and trust that I will find God in there. Right, Because just as I have to believe there is God in me, even on my worst, absolute awful day and all the sin that overtakes me, I have to believe it. And these two right, they there has to be. And so where I just gotta dig deeper, I just gotta dig deeper.
Speaker 1:you know, for me and seminary some that really, really helped, because there's some words attributed to Paul that are pretty pointed, blacked out in mine, yeah, pretty clear that the calling that I have answered and what I do most Sundays is not appropriate and not of God.
Speaker 1:And when I again did some study and some and some learning about this realization that at the time that those words may have been written again, we don't have the stamps like we have today that women had had been transformed by this resurrected Messiah, this Lord that offered a whole new life where they were not no longer stuck by their circumstances around, as they were no longer forced to be who other people decided they had to be, that they walked away from everything. They walked away from their homes, from their fathers, from their husbands, from their children, who nobody else had the ability to feed. And so there might have been one person's idea or many who said we gotta retain some order.
Speaker 1:We've gotta put these people back into the position that only they can do, because, also, these are people who have continued to believe that their greatest offering to the world is more children, it's more believers, and a woman is vital to that equation. And so, when I was able to kind of learn that I can hold some of that reality next to these words that were written right, and then for me I can also say and today, in 2024, that's not the case for me, right, right.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's one of the things I love about being a United Methodist is that we understand that there are so many different ways that God can reveal God's self, that it's not relegated to one moment or one worshiping community or one book, that God is absolutely free to step in and show off at any point. And so we hold scripture as central, obviously, but there's also this understanding that God reveals God's self to the practices of the church through our own life experiences, these other things that happen. And so I have been over the years more than once, as I'm sure you have been as well, have had people engage me. I was gonna say confront, that's probably more accurate, but I'll choose to use the word engage and say show me in the Bible how you can be doing what you're doing. And I'm like completely uninterested in that, because if I can both prove something and refute something with the same book, what's the purpose of doing that? I can show you how women were integral to every part of Jesus' ministry, how the first people that spoke the resurrection words were women, and that Jesus, the Christ, revealed himself first to these women, who then went on to carry and to minister, that Jesus in no way diminished who they were, and more so, on that left hand side we can find all kinds of examples of women who were propping some of those men up as they go. Is it their yes? Are there other words that are less encouraging? Yes, but what I know is the God that revealed Godself to me and called me into ministry.
Speaker 2:And there's this silly meme that's making its way around like social media again, that I actually came across the first time years ago. That is incredibly comforting to me and it says make no doubt that God absolutely figured in your stupidity when God called you to ministry. And I'm like cool, cool, okay, so it's all God's fault. But really, who am I to say no to a God who called me in a way that if I could have ignored, I would have Cause it would have been a heck of a lot easier to navigate life. Maybe not rewarding, maybe not fulfilling, I don't know cause I did say yes and have continued to say yes.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that argument to me. I'm not interested in taking it to scripture. I'm happy to sit with you and look at scripture and to celebrate God together, but to refute one piece with another, I just don't see that as valuable, and that happens in all different kinds of topics and subjects as we try to understand. And to me that's the beauty again of those, you know, great, great, great grandfathers of our faith who back in the fourth century were like, hmm, this book is really important and this book is important. And you know, there had to been somebody sitting there that's like, oh, wait a minute, this one says this and this one says the opposite. But they were okay with moving forward because it's still captured the breath of how God's people can love God and be quite different one to the next.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, I think there's even some who would maybe say you don't need to read the Old Testament at all If you believe in Jesus, just stick with the new. And I think I mean there's some really, really, really good stuff in the New Testament. You know, I mean the gospels tend to be my favorite and where I preach from most often. But those Old Testament texts give you so much richness, right. Right, it gets to a much history. It's like when you you know if you can watch the last 10 minutes of the movie and see that they got together and I know. But I need the whole thing, I need to know where they meet and what was the conflict and how did they overcome it. Like I need all of that and it's so much, just so much a richer understanding when you're able to take it into the tube.
Speaker 1:And even on that note I would argue there are also, I find, some pastors or denominations even, that seem to really preach Old Testament a lot and I got wondering about that. I was like that's interesting, why would they choose to kind of stay in that, in that realm, when you have this amazing piece? And what I realized is like, oh well, if you preach the gospel, your life will be changed. You'll have to let go of some of those that rigid, the rigidness of the Old Testament, the harsh rules and the harsh punishment that those books tend to reveal, that God sends down because of human failures. And you'd have to accept this again resurrection, redemption, love and new life that Jesus truly gives.
Speaker 1:And there's again where I feel like, well, we've just got to have both, because I'll tell you there are probably way too many days that this is the God I want of the Old. Come on, god, give them what they deserve, right, or give me what I deserve. Look at all I've done for you, look at all I've given you, look at my sacrifices. And yet I know that it's the God of the New Testament, of this fully human, fully divine Lord, that would come and offer everything and pure vulnerability so that I, me, thea could live new and without. Yeah, I need the whole story. I need the whole story.
Speaker 2:Well and again we've both shared that we weren't have not been like missionary preachers, not with any robust fashion. The lectionary takes an Old Testament. It takes a wisdom passage, it takes a Psalm, it takes gospel, it takes something else from the New Testament and it puts them all together and if you're really high church in it, you're doing all of those passages of scripture on that Sunday or at that worship service most often on Sundays, but it could be at any time because you are giving that breath of here is God in all of these different understandings of how God is moving for these people. And then to take that into where we are in that moment, in that chair, in that pew, watching online in that recorded fashion, to see God present with us as well.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and what a, I think, a beautiful design that the lectionary again is trying to offer of like take it all in.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but see when I preach lectionary, we would look at those texts and I would know, okay, I'm preaching this Sunday and we were lectionary for a season at Deer Park and I'd be like, oh, no, not that one. Oh no, no, no, not that one. Okay, maybe, okay, this one will work right. So in some ways did my own cherry picking of that right, because I was like, oh, thank goodness that there's like five, because I don't want to do several of these and that's not the design it really is, to have that full breath. And there's ways to work it in right Call and response or prayers or things like that, or just simply an Old Testament reading and a New Testament reading, and some of our churches really do that more. I guess we would say traditional way of doing things, but I think of it as just more maybe historic or, you know, full way of offering that without needing to explain it Right, the scripture is going to be spoken and then you get to sit with that and I get to sit with that.
Speaker 2:But, it may not be expounded upon in the message that's the sermon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, as you bring that up, I'm just reminding you. You visit us and give us a message during what we believe series and in that, week after week, I got to say we don't have to agree. The only thing we actually have to agree on is that we don't have to agree and that you get to take this text and really I'd love for you to figure it out. What does it mean to you? What is the truth that you see in it? What makes you wrestle? You know, because if anybody, like you said, can take from the very beginning to the very end and say 100%, all of it's, you know, I would just say I believe it is true. I just can't take that.
Speaker 1:Every single word is directional, Right, there's so much in there that we've all agreed shouldn't happen. Right, Shouldn't be okay, and the old and the new right. And so I don't know how we could dare say you know every single word we have to take and do, and it's like, well, there's some really wild stuff in there. Like, tell me that you, how do we, how do you reconcile that? You know, but being able to say you need to take it, being able to say you need to do that work, and I'm actually not going to do it for you because there's a richness in there for you. I want you to do it because the moment you, all you know, get mad at me or just or move town, you might completely forgot what I said about it, Right? What do you think it means? And you're the one who has to live with it. Work it out so. So I feel like we just have to ask the question. And how do you answer? Is the Bible true? And can you be a Christian and have doubts about what the Bible says?
Speaker 2:I mean, obviously I'm going to start with the last one first, because a hundred percent you can have doubts. In fact, if you don't have doubts, I don't think you're human and you're certainly not interesting. I mean, doubts are what make us interesting, it's what we're figuring out, it's our growing edges and I love that. Years ago somebody taught me and it's one of those like pastor words, right, that will, you'll hear our kind say a lot, I wonder, and that's kind of the free pass of like this is what I'm thinking right now. But I really might think something different down the road and in my ministry in my lifetime I can see where I a hundred percent believe certain things to be true and then understood it in a different way.
Speaker 2:I was a very black and white thinker for a good portion of my life. It was my younger years, but it was easier for me. This is better, it's good, and then I found that gray didn't have to be scary, but it could be beautiful and but it's, it's uncertain and I like my you know world in its little category and I like it to stay there because of a sense of control. It all goes back to type A control, right, if I can categorize it, if I can organize it, if I can put you in your box, then I can better understand and have this false sense of control. So you know, in a broad sense, 100% we can have doubts. I think God wants us to have doubts and understands that we do, because if we don't have doubts it means we're done, and I can guarantee you not a single one of us is done and most likely we'll never be, though I hold that I am going on to Christian perfection and maybe one day that can be true, but there's going to be a lot of doubt along that path. And then, yes, the Bible is 100% true. It is everything that this group of people who were living life and loving God felt and believe and wrote down. Does that mean that all of it is prescriptive of who I am today? No, and again, like what you said, I think we can agree on that.
Speaker 2:An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. I mean that was actually meant to calm people down. If they plucked out your eye, that's the only thing you can do back. Don't kill them, please. But we don't fully understand that. We use it in a different way now. Rule of thumb. That means you can't beat your wife with anything bigger than a stick. That's the size of your thumb. That's not how we use it nowadays.
Speaker 2:Maybe we should check some of our little metaphors, because they come from terrible places. But was it true? Yes, is it true? Yes, is every bit of it how I'm going to live my life today? No, and I think you would be hard pressed to find the person who does right. In no way does that minimize the beauty the beauty for the Mr Murphy's, the beauty for my VBS volunteers, the beauty for my Monday morning moms for them to have had this their whole lives and to still turn to it, and then for me as well, and ideally for my children, and then for my children's children. And all the way down the road that they would find this book that, with faults and flaws, and and all the way down the road that they would find this book that, with faults and flaws and flaws and flaws and frustrations, holds this massive love story of a God who was and is and always will be, and more so, loves you. That is the truthiest truth that I could ever imagine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is exactly how I would answer as well. The Bible is yes, it is true. And again, I think it's a true story of humanity and God's relentless pursuit to offer love and redemption that we could have never dreamed on our own is a full of facts. I don't know, I wasn't there and I definitely can't take that.
Speaker 1:Every word is directional Right and I don't know if it was ever intended to be. I believe some of the truth is there to show us. This is how awful we can be. This is how real our lives can be. This is our need for a savior. This is how deep that is, and I would say, too, that I think it's so rich and diverse. It's so that we can find ourselves Right, right, I haven't found anybody named Thea in the Bible. There's some words that are close, but I find myself over and over again, and sometimes surprisingly, in the characters I hate and don't want to see myself in upon another reading or a deeper reflection, like, oh, that's what I'm doing, right, and yet there it is. It's in there too, so that all of me is included as well. And again, this idea no matter where I go, what I do, god is after me because of love. And what's one piece of hope or advice you'd offered us, anyone struggling with the Bible today? Just one kind of final thought.
Speaker 2:I think the hope is Jesus Christ. The hope is that the Bible is this massive, relentless story of a God who chases us from beginning to end, who, when we couldn't get it right on our own, was willing to kind of come down there and clear it up, right? I mean, that's who Jesus is, and was God being present so that we could not forget how loved we are and how important we are loved to death and back again. And so if you're struggling with a passage of Scripture, that's okay. If you have doubts about all of that, that's okay.
Speaker 2:I would challenge someone who finds themselves in the midst of that to to not take an easy path and and stop the reading and stop the pushing and stop the struggle, because we grow in the midst of our struggle. There has to be discomfort for us to grow. You have to tear muscles for them to get larger. That's just how the world works, and so I do wonder that there's a way to navigate through.
Speaker 2:When, when the Scripture itself is not speaking to me, is there a person whose feet I can sit at, just like I did with those Sunday School teachers or those you know mentors over the years? Are there hymns and songs, because some of our best songs are plucked straight out from Scripture. I love it when my kids will be in worship and now I actually get to sit next to them and they'll hear a pastor read you know a passage of Scripture, and they'll go, hey, don't, don't we sing that. I'm like yeah, yeah, like most of those hymns are simply passages of Scripture set to music. And so if, if you've hit a wall where you can't read it yourself, then allow that story to be told through trusted people that you know love you and love God. Yeah, and then maybe also through the beautiful songs that tell of God's love and faithfulness throughout the ages yeah. And then bring yourself back, because all the best stuff happens in the midst of that struggle and God is just trying to show how much you were loved.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would say my suggestion to you is to find either community or one other person to be in communion. As you read these words, I think you know reading on your own. I think it's very important. You know I try to study my Bible most mornings and you know having that alone time. But I think we also need people alongside us to say, huh, let me push you on that. Or I see it this way, you know, because we can, we can read those words and make them say whatever we want them to say, in support or in opposition of what we think. And so I always encourage. I think it's great.
Speaker 1:You know there's a lot of people today who have decided they need no, no church, and maybe they don't, but because they read their Bible on their own and they pray, and I think that's great. And usually my next question is and where is the community that can, that can affirm and maybe push you a little deeper to you know, push beyond your your first understanding, your first kind of assumptions and and revelations and who can you share? And also just simply to hear what another person who read the same exact text in the same exact version, right, what their experience might have been. So thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for this honest conversation and thank you for tuning in. I hope that you continue to check us out like, follow, subscribe, all that fun stuff. It really does matter. Thanks for being a part of Real Talk today. We'll see you next time.