BibleProject - How Do You Read the Bible? – Paradigm E1

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Have you ever read the Bible and felt like you’re not “getting it” or that you’re not connecting with God? In this episode, Tim and Jon take a look at the (often unhelpful) paradigms through which we interact with Scripture. They explore how seeing the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus not only gives the Bible space to do what it was created to do, but frees us up to be transformed by the story it’s telling.View full show notes from this episode →Timestamps Part one (0:00-15:00)Part two (15:00-27:00)Part three (27:00-39:00)Part four (39:00-52:00)Part five (52:00-end)Referenced ResourcesInterested in more? Check out Tim’s library here.A Greek-English Lexicon, Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, edited by Henry Stuart JonesShow Music “Defender (Instrumental)” by TENTS“Evil Needle” by Sound EscapesShow produced by Cooper Peltz, Dan Gummel, and Zach McKinley. Show notes by Lindsey Ponder. Powered and distributed by Simplecast.

Hey, this is Cooper at Bible Project. I produce the podcast in Classroom. We've been exploring a theme called the City, and it's a pretty big theme. So we decided to do two separate Q and R episodes about it. We're currently taking questions for the second Q and R and we'd love to hear from you. Just record your question by July 21st

and send it to us at infoatbiboproject.com. Let us know your name and where you're from, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds and please transcribe your question when you email it in, try to keep your question to about 20 seconds, and please transcribe your question when you email it in. That's a huge help to our team. We're excited to hear from you. Here's the episode.

Hey, this is John at Bible Project. If you've been listening to this podcast much, you know that our mission is to explore the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus. That's a punchy little phrase we use as a shorthand for our conviction about how the Bible should be read, a unified story that leads to Jesus. But what does that actually mean? And what way is it unified?

Is it really just a story? And how is the whole thing about Jesus? And what about the Bible teaching us how to live good lives? And how about the Bible being God's word? We're beginning a brand new series unpacking our conviction about what the Bible is. We're calling it the paradigm series. What is our paradigm for how to read the Bible?

So a paradigm, it's not something so much that you think about. It's a framework for understanding reality that you take for granted and then you think within that. And so it's actually very difficult to step back from your own paradigm and tinker with it. And you have to be exposed to other views of reality. And understand them and then understand how your own differs. And then you begin to like see the fish bowl that you've been swimming in but I've never seen glass.

Today we're going to discuss three paradigms that we often bring to the Bible that while having really good intentions behind them will actually leave us flat-footed when we try to understand the Bible on its own terms. These three paradigms are the Bible as a theology dictionary, the Bible as a moral handbook, and the Bible as a devotional grabback. I call it a reference book mentality in relating to the Bible. In other words, reference books play an interesting role in a person's library. Now there's online, it's like a pides.

But when I get on Wikipedia, usually that I have a question, a need, I'm confused in some way. Now, the Bible does want us to understand God. It wants to form our moral character and it wants us to discover it in a very personal way. But, it doesn't do it as a reference book. The main thing that we want to say is, the Bible actually is capable of addressing my questions and felt needs. The way that it does it is not like a reference book.

It can actually do those things, but in ways that are gonna take some adjustment. It's gonna take a new paradigm. So infatically, what we're attempting to do is adopt a paradigm, a set of expectations and a view that is native to the biblical literature itself. The way that it was designed, the assumptions with which it was designed and created, and we're looking for a paradigm that's in tune with what the Bible was designed to do.

All that today on the podcast, thanks for joining us. Here we go. All right, you ready? I'm ready. The Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. Do you remember how that phrase came to be? That's something we say a lot. All right, you ready? I'm ready. The Bible is a unified story that leads to Jesus. Do you remember how that phrase came to be? That's something we say a lot.

Yes. We can maybe reconstruct a genealogy of the phrase in all our notes and conversations, but I don't remember now. Now that we're seven years in, to the Bible project. Yeah. It's become the tagline of Bible project. And it's also become kind of our mission

is to help people experience that. Yes, yeah, that's right. As they read the Bible. And it's easy to remember. Yeah, sticky. It actually a technical word in like marketing word. Marketing, yeah. Yeah.

It's both memorable. And it gets something across very quickly. Right, it captures you. Yeah, in a way that it's simple, but also makes you think like, oh, is that how I read the Bible? Oh, I see. It makes you assess your paradigm.

Yeah. And then I think quickly you go, oh sweet, well, it's unified, it's coherent. All the pieces should work together. It's a story, there's a lot of buzz about story. And it centered on Jesus. And then that is very beautiful. And so all together, I think it's like, okay, yeah, there's something here. And people really latched on to it.

Including us. Including us. And so what we're going to do is really unpack it and make sure that we're really clear as to what that means when you go deeper. Yeah. When we say as an organization, we want to help people experience the Bible a certain way as a unified story leads to Jesus. That also raises the question when you hear it, oh well, how have I been experiencing the Bible? Is that how I experienced the Bible? And if not, why not? And what does it involve then to engage the Bible this way?

I'm pleased with it as a tagline for what we're doing with all of our content, but it also begs a whole bunch of questions that need to be unpacked. And as time goes on, we use it more. We've realized that we need to unpack it. Right. And I've realized we've been using all this other vernacular sometimes, like it's wisdom literature, meditation literature.

And so how does that all work together? What do we mean when we use those phrases and how does that fit with this idea of its unified straight leads to Jesus? Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what we're going to do. We've worked out, at least as far as we can turn at the moment, seven different aspects

to what's involved in that short little summary. Right. We're calling it our paradigm or approach to the Bible. Right. The shorthand has been for us the paradigm. And so if our mission is is experienced the Bible through this paradigm Then what is this paradigm? Yeah, and like you said is it the paradigm? We're coming to the Bible with and then how do we adjust our paradigm? Yeah, yeah to this one? That's right

Maybe we should not take for granted that the word paradigm is like a normal word that people use Yeah, what does that mean a paradigm? Yeah, I mean, I've got a rough definition. I haven't looked up a dictionary definition for a long time. I know it's two Greek words. It's a compound word from Greek. Is it? Yeah. I'm just looking it up right now. Yeah, Para. And I think it's got pattern come from dig dig new me to show or display. Oh, I see Yeah, in Greek, there's a word paradegma Which means a pattern or model or precedent or example? parade

Beside next to Parade and Dagnene Deg Numi, I wonder. To show. Ah, okay. So it's something you put alongside another thing to illustrate or explain it or fill it out. That's a little different than how I... Yeah, because so that's the history of the word, but then the 20th century it began to be used in a more specific philosophical sense, as a logical conceptual structure,

serving as a form of thought within a given area of experience. So in the 20th century, this word was kind of co-opted. So originally, it just meant to illustrate something, bring alongside an illustration to help you understand something. Actually, here, this is in classic Greek dictionary by Liddell and Scott. It's the standard dictionary classical Greek. So you want to read the New Testament or Homer or Plato.

This is your dictionary. Potter, DeGma, Pattern or Model, originally used of an architects' model. First used in Herodotus. That's interesting. And then of examples or models, oh, Platonic ideals in platonic philosophy, there's interesting. And then of examples or models, oh, platonic ideals, in platonic philosophy, there's reality, but then there's these non-physical ideals and those are called pottedagmas.

Yeah, so that's different. You could say that's where the word began life. Yeah. But then as you just read that definition. So a paradigm, it's not something so much that you think about. It's a framework for understanding reality that you take for granted and then you think within that. And so it's actually very difficult to step back from your own paradigm and tinker with it. And you have to be exposed to other views of reality and understand them and then understand how your own differs.

And then you begin to like see the fish bowl that you've been swimming in but I've never seen the glass. That's been my way of thinking about paradigms. Yeah, so what would be a really good concrete example of, I might really bring you home. I don't know why this came to mind. I think people understand maybe, are you an optimist or are you a pessimist? Okay, sure. And this is a simplification, but like you can have a paradigm and understanding of how the world works,

which makes you anticipate problems and then get deflated by problems or just anticipate them and want to solve them per actively. And so that's kind of, would you call that a paradigm? Yeah, it's a set of expectations I bring to reality that have helped me make sense of my life experience. But then sometimes they don't make sense.

Things happen that don't fit my understanding of how the world works or relationships work. And then I'm either gonna find a way to explain it within my existing paradigm, or I'm gonna let it crack my paradigm and force me to Maybe see the world in a new way. Yeah. There's good examples in Psychology just how human psychology develops, you know about how children develop Models of human relationships

Paradimes from their family of origins and they we do all develop our own ways of dealing with grief or conflict. But then what often happens to a young person in their teens or 20s is there are circles of relationship widen. And there are ways of thinking about relationships that were formed in one type of setting, we now put them to work. In other relationships that maybe it's totally different dynamic and usually that's when people begin to discover new paradigms. They need to see a therapist.

But needing to see a therapist is somebody outside myself pointing out like, well, you assume this about people. And it's constantly causing this problem in your relationship. Why do you assume that about people? And that kind of thing. Well, oh, wow, that's how. And it's interesting that a crisis of paradigm often leads you to need a guide because it's actually really difficult, disequalibrating, and can be scary, and then emotionally taxing

often times when a very firmly believed paradigm begins to fall out underneath you. Then it's like when I what? That's right. And sometimes, yeah, it does come together in a book or a relationship or an event that just cracks your view of reality. I think there are also people and times for whom it happens slowly over time. It's certainly been my experience.

So that thing probably happens in different ways or in different people. I think another word that I also hear people use is a frame. Yeah, the metaphor of a picture frame. Yeah. Yeah. And I think paradigm is kind of really big picture, where sometimes if you're just going to a specific conversation or something that needs to be moderated, I hear people say something like, hey, let's, let's frame this up this way. In other words, like, let's set this as a boundary of like how we're talking and thinking

about this issue. Then that kind of biggest question is like, well, is there another frame that would be better? Right. Yeah, sure. And why this frame versus that frame? And framing the issue actually gives you a lot of control over then how the issue is then. Yeah, that's right.

Disgusting, discovered. Man, in fact, in parenting, this is a term amusing. I introduce the term reframe in conversations I'm now having with my nine year old son, because he and his brother are already, his brother seven, they're in these patterns. And he's already operating out of a certain paradigm of their relationship. And so, whenever I see a conflict brewing, I'll like take him aside and be like, buddy, okay, member the reframe. You're approaching your brother as if there's scarcity. You don't have everything you need.

Yeah. And he's a threat to you getting what you need. Let's reframe it. I think there's enough for both of you. It's an abundance paradigm, which is kind of what you brought that up earlier. But it's that. It's a new frame and we need to reframe. And this was college when all this woke up to me. I felt like I had been living in the matrix.

And it was also when those movies came out. That's right, late 90s. And I had a number of professors who were gifted at helping young adults expose their paradigms of reality and not to ditch them, but to begin to critique them and hopefully improve them. Yeah. So it was a habit that I learned to develop to self-critique and be suspicious of my view of reality. Yeah. So it was a habit that I learned to develop to self-critique and be suspicious of my view of reality. Yeah. Because by definition, it's something you don't know

and don't notice about your own patterns of thinking until. Very difficult to be suspicious of your view of reality. Yeah, it's totally because you have to have a view of reality like get up and operate in the morning. Yeah, it can be disabling. So when a paradigm is so robust and all-encompassing, I noticed that then we start using the word world view. Yeah, sure. That became a synonym.

Yeah, synonym of sorts. Like a really like full paradigm of how that everything gets attached to. Yeah, so your view of physics, matter, God, human relationships, meaning, Right. Purpose. Yeah, all of it. I think at some point, I stopped using the World World view because it wasn't self-explaning, and I just swapped in view of reality. Yeah.

It's a little more clunky, but I think it makes you a reality. Yeah, just your view of everything, your theory of everything. Yeah. We all have a theory of everything that we're operating out of. So that's big picture. What we are using this language to do is to say, everybody comes to the Bible with a preloaded paradigm of what it is, what it's for, how to engage it, what to do, what constitutes skilled engagement with this book.

And it's vitally important that we bring out the paradigms into the open. So we can tinker with them because there are some more helpful paradigms that are more in tune with what the Bible is and designed to do. And then there are a charitable way is to say, I think, less helpful paradigms. And we don't so much focus on those. So I think less helpful paradigms. And we don't so much focus on those. Though I think it might be helpful to just profile kind of where we've landed with how to pinpoint what are some unhelpful paradigms, and then kind of reframe to say,

we can actually do many of the same things that are unhelpful paradigms, want us to do, but in a frame that's more in tune, we'll be able to. and a frame that's more into a nice Bible. Maybe as a way to start, I could tell you like one paradigm shift that occurred to me before we worked on this project. And then I'd love for you to try to place it kind of in than our current thinking. But I grew up with the Bible, and I grew up with a paradigm that my relationship with the Bible is that I should daily spend time in it, and we call it like a quiet time, and I should be able to read a portion of it and then interpret it and then apply it to my life.

And then walk away with having almost kind of mastered that section to the degree that now I get it and now my life is going to adjust towards what I just got. Yeah. So that was kind of like the task at hand. All in 20 minutes or less. In like 20 minutes, yes. Ideally, is there some prayer involved or you're like feeling the love of God

like warm your heart or? Well, prayer was a separate discipline. Oh, I see. I suppose. But I think ideally, you can put them together. Okay. But yeah, but then also there should be this sense of like now I've connected with God.

He spoke to me. And so my experience though was I would open the Bible, I would read something, and I would just be like, what did I just read? And I would have so many questions, and I would just kind of be flustered. And then I'd feel like a failure. And then I would not want to do it anymore. Sure. That's really demotivating. And then I would go long stretches of not doing it. And then you kind of have to pretend that you still are

because that's kind of like, where you're supposed to be doing. And it's a kind of embarrassing that you can't pull it off. And so what hack is to just find that paragraph or that verse. Yeah, sure. They really does sing to you. Yeah. And they're just keep going back to that. Yeah. And there's so many of those. Yeah. In the Bible. Some great one. And then get a collection of those and then just cycle through those. Yeah. That's kind of

one strategy. That didn't become my strategy. My strategy just became like avoid it and then be like, okay, I'm a dragon and then go for it. It didn't work. I've waited so this was like the cycle and then I'm like in Bible school This is still the cycle even in Bible school which you went to because you thought you could get handled Yeah, get some new angle on it Yeah, and it just continued to be a cycle and so I found some freedom and I felt like this was a really spiritual moment God and I where I felt God kind of telling me, like, stop treating the Bible that way. I want you to just spend time in the Bible and that success, even if you come out confused,

just be in it. And in the same way that like, when you have a good friend, you just want to spend time together. And you're not like, you know, did I like learn something and now I'm going to apply it to my life or, you know, did we like take a next step in our relationship? It's just like time is the point. And that it'll work on me without me knowing how it's working on me. That's the thing I heard God sing. It'll just work on you without you realizing it. So just, if you opened it up and you read it, then that success. And that was a paradigm shift for me. That felt really, really refreshing. Now, it didn't actually solve. I still avoided it. I still avoided it because it was still really confusing. It made me feel that's guilty. Yeah. This is interesting. This is before we started working on this project.

Before we started working on this project. I don't think I've ever quite heard you say, what you just said that way. And that's cool to know. That seems like an important step. It seems like some of what you were letting go of there was a lot of internal stuff, expectations you had of yourself. And I guess of the God that you would meet as you read the scriptures that maybe it was a little less like the, I don't know, a caricature of a frustrated teacher. What do you mean? Oh, sorry. What I mean is it sounds like you had a paradigm shift of who the God is that you're supposed

to meet as you read the scriptures and that you were losing some sort of caricature of like the gods of like a frustrated teacher waiting for you to clue in. Oh, I'm not getting it. I'm not feeling this. Yeah, I'm not performing. And so this is frustrating. And you were able to let that go and be like, now this is more like God's an artist and a storyteller. Yeah, and a mentor. And a mentor and he just wants to have to spend time with me. Yeah, God, that's a significant shift. And I don't have to be in control of how I learn this.

It'll work on me without me realizing it. Yeah, sure. Where cause I kind of like, I mean, you might know this about me. I want to be good at the thing that I'm doing. And if I'm not, it's just really frustrating, I lose and I lose interest. If I feel like I can't get good at it. But you can't lose interest in the Bible as a Christian. You're not supposed to. You're not allowed to. You're not supposed to. You're not supposed to. So that was the next step for me, which is kind of

really embracing that I've lost interest in the Bible. And becoming like a post Bible Christian. But this is kind of before that, because I couldn't lose interest, but I couldn't master it. And so I just kind of was just like, I'm just gonna believe that this, if I spend time in it, it'll work on me. So yeah, that's a great way to put it from the paradigm of a fresh-rate teacher

to just a patient mentor slash storyteller. Yeah, as I'm hearing you articulate that right now, it sounds like that was an important development that I think probably needed to happen before you approached me with the idea of making explainer videos on the Bible. In other words, had you been in the previous mode, I think our journey together.

Were there more frustrating or a lot of possible? It would have been different because you would have been in a different place. It sounds like you had become more open-handed with what the Bible was supposed to be in due in your life, which maybe kind of just made you more open to some new perspectives that you hadn't really thought about before. I'm speculating. I'm not you. It could be a case.

So there's a paradigm shift you had.'s, yes. Could be the case. So there's a paradigm shift you had. There's a paradigm shift. About the Bible. About the Bible. Yep. And you probably just didn't sit down and think, I'm going to change how I'm thinking it's something that happened to you as much as you were happening to it.

Yeah. And it was a moment of actual freedom. Sometimes we talk about how paradigm shifts could be scary. But paradigm shifts can all of a sudden just be like, whoa, okay, I feel a burden released. That's true. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, especially if your paradigm was creating more and more critical tension, then it was helping you understand and live in a healthy way. So yeah, what we want to do then is articulate together what we have discovered about the next stage of a paradigm shift, both for you. And it's been one that I've been undergoing since I really first encountered that's probably a year or two into following Jesus and trying to read the Bible.

And I didn't have the guilt thing, I just had the bewilderment of like, I don't understand this. Yeah. It's hard actually to import, to reflect now, you know, back on what you first thought because when your thought develops on something, it's hard to really remember. But I remember being really compelled by Jesus, really stirred by the parts of the Bible that are like the heart warmers and the one liners and the you know the good stuff. But there's so much bewilderment about how all the rest of it, the laws and the ancient regulations and sacrifices and sex scandals and all of that, divine violence, how it all fit

together. So it was mostly bewilderment and curiosity that drove me. But then I met within the first couple of years, I encountered some paradigms that would just all of a sudden, like the light bulbs were coming on so regularly that I just couldn't stop paying to go to school. Yeah. And I didn't for over a decade. But that was my long paradigm development. And then in this project, you've been going along that with me. So, we're going to attempt to articulate where we're at now and what we've discovered. And we've had some tension with saying, is this our paradigm, the bioprojector?

Sometimes we call our paradigm because we're using it. Yeah, because it's been our experience. Yeah, but it's not ours. It's not ours. So, emphatically, what we're attempting to do is adopt a paradigm, a set of expectations and a view that is native to the biblical literature itself. The way the Bible thinks of itself. The way that it was designed. The assumptions with which it was designed and created. And we're looking for a paradigm that's in tune with what the

Bible was designed to do. We've used a lot of illustrations over the years of like, if you think a cookbook is a grocery list, you can make the cookbook work for you. Yeah, actually that's a great grocery list, I suppose, because you can get groceries, that will cook some meals. Yeah, that's right. There's a list of food. There's a list of food in there. The beginning of every recipe, so it can be a guide. But it probably won't help you at the grocery store do a number of other things. You probably need more than just what's on that recipe. So it's not a very good grocery list because the grocery list should do a bunch of other things.

Like a grocery list should get you groceries for the whole week, not just for one meal. Totally. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, if you go to the grocery store and only get the recipe stuff You won't get a bunch of other things that you need. Yeah, so it can't give you everything That you need to accomplish a certain purpose But then also you miss apply or miss use what the cookbook is for because it's meant to do a bunch of other things Then just give you a grocery list. So that's something that's just kind of a silly example But it gets the point across.

The way that you view what a book is for, what a book does. We'll shape it in how you approach it and where you get out of it. That's right. So what is liable to happen is that you'll both miss what that text was trying to communicate with its own agenda and on its own terms. And that's sad. Yeah.

But then also, I'm likely to misuse it, as I make it do things that it wasn't really designed to do, and it's like a double, double whammy. So you could think of other other examples, but I like the cookbook recipe. So that's basically it. What are ways paradigms that we come to the Bible with? And when I say we, what I mean is in different parts of the Christian tradition, Orthodox and Protestant and Catholic, and then within each of those

there's sub-traditions. But there are some common patterns underneath those that at least I've observed. And so I think it might help real quickly to just kind of name those, not to do a big critique job, but just to name them, because I think we will, and I hope those of you listening will recognize your own experience with the Bible in some of these.

And then what we want to do is move forward to say what are some of the expectations and a paradigm to come to the Bible with that's native according to its design that will really illuminate and unpack. And it's the paradigm that we're operating out of is we create all the videos and classes and online content and so on through the BioProject. 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc

1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc 1 tbc Yeah, so there's three paradigms and you've talked about this before.

We haven't never talked about it here, but maybe like an interview on other podcasts and such. Three kind of less helpful paradigms. And what I find interesting about these three and we'll go through them is I think all three of these played into why I always was stuck with the Bible. And kind of phase one stuck where then my kind of big aha was like, okay, I don't it's not about master rates about letting it master me. But then stage two stuck, which was like, I don't know if that's even working.

I don't even know if I need this book. But I think behind both of those was because I was being driven in some sense by one of these paradigms, and I was hitting dead ends because this was the paradigm. Yeah. There's three ways these unhelpful paradigms manifest themselves. I have found language that I'm happy with that gets underneath all of them. Like Like what are all of them having common? So the language I've

put to it is I call it a reference book mentality in relating to the Bible. In other words, reference books play interesting role in a person's library. Now there's you know online encyclopedias. So those kind of function in that way. But you know when I get on Wikipedia or when I turn to handful of dictionaries en psychopedias, so those kind of function in that way. But when I get on Wikipedia, or when I turn to handful of dictionaries and psychopedias, it's usually that I have a question, a need, I'm confused in some way. I'm bringing my question to- Totally. The resource.

That's it. And so I don't read it from front to back. Right. It's not how you treat a reference book. A mature relationship with a reference book means knowing where to find the answer or the part that will address the need, question, confusion. And I think that reference book approach gets expressed in a number of different ways. Three different ways that we've kind of named.

And here's the trick is that it's not bad to come to the Bible with felt needs and questions. It's not like it makes sense that you would want to treat the Bible like reference. Totally. Yes, that's right. I think the main thing that we want to say is the Bible actually is capable of addressing my questions and felt needs, but the way that it does it is not like a reference book. It can actually do those things, but in ways that are going to take some adjustment. So, for example, one approach of this is being introduced to the Bible as a theology dictionary, a theology reference book. So who and what are human beings? Who are what is God? What's good? What's bad? What's the problem in the world and with people?

Yeah, is there a solution? What has God been doing? Yeah? How many angels are there? But also yeah, how old is the world? By what processes physical processes to the world as I we know it come into being yeah How does God make decisions about things? Yeah, how does God operate? How do I make sense of suffering or evil? Who is Jesus? Was he who he really says he was?

And that kind of thing. Yeah, how should we do church? How should we do church? How should we structure our church? How should I talk with my friend who's dealing with this issue and their life and so on? And so my first year, a Bible college, I went through a couple of systematic theology classes

and that was basically the approach. It was like God. Yes. It was a whole topic, just God. And it was like a systematic explanation from this tradition's point of view, but it was always based in the Bible, but it was by turning to pages in the Bible

and reading one sentence, or reading a paragraph. A lot of my classes were like, because you had anthropology, so theology, yeah, that all of the Christology is just like all like, what's the nature of angels, what's the nature of Jesus, what's the nature of humans? So the intuition underneath that approach makes all the sense in the world. The biblical text is designed to shape my view of reality and of what's true about God and the world. I should be able to have an ology about something.

Yeah, the Bible is the kind of text that is designed to generate worlds and shape our imaginations in our view of everything. So the question is, what modes of engaging the Bible are gonna accomplish that task best? And so one paradigm shift we wanna invite people to is that a referenced book skill set will not allow the Bible to do what it's designed to do.

It's trying to accomplish those things, shape our view of everything, but not in the manner that a reference book does. It's doing it through a different means that we'll talk about. So that's one shift. Can I ask though? Yeah. Let's not throw shade, but like you can get really far treating the Bible as a reference book. I mean, I was taught in school to do that, and there was a textbook that did it. It's still really popular. And what's the place for that? Of course. Yeah, it's a whole discipline. In our tradition, it's still really popular. And what's the place for that? Of course, yeah, it's a whole discipline.

In our tradition, it has the word systematic theology attached. I think here's the trick though. I think it's like knowing what game you're playing. Basketball or tennis. Okay. And so if you're going to take what's designed as a basketball and try and do something else with it, it's just good to recognize, okay,

this is the moment at which we're doing something different. We're gonna take this basketball and derive principles from it and apply it to a different game with a different set of rules. Let's not pretend that we're gonna play tennis with a basketball. Let's just recognize, now we've created something new.

We've created a new ball. And we are the ones who are creating it. If you're a soccer. What? Soccer? Yeah. No. It's tennis soccer with tennis and soccer together.

Which is big. Which is which? Are you kicking a tennis ball side ball? Are you playing tennis with a soccer side ball? You're playing tennis with a soccer side ball and they actually have. Oh, what? Well, so you have a ball that's a little bigger

than a soccer ball, but it's yellow and fuzzy, like a tennis ball. What? And you're kicking it back and forth over the net. And you're kicking it back and forth over the net. It's actually fun. It's actually pretty fun. It's fun.

Yeah. Talker. So this might be about analogy. All I'm trying to say is, systematic theology is in a creative, constructive attempt to take the core convictions that arise out of the biblical story, and then to build a new perspective to address things that the Bible didn't explicitly address, or that the texts of the Bible weren't designed to address those things in a comprehensive way. Yeah, or could it also be just cataloging

the things the Bible is addressing, but in a new way? Yeah, sure, but I think the point to call out and that wasn't made clear to me when I sat my first disanect theology classes is that we're remaking the Bible. We're taking the Bible and we're rearranging it to address a set of topics and in a way that's with not the agenda of the biblical authors. And so, what we need to be a super self-aware that the parts of the Bible we're selecting

to speak to, this or that question we're felt need, are actually a faithful connection that we're making. Because it's very easy to take parts of the Bible that we're not designed to address X, Y, Z, and then make them address X, Y, Z, and so doing Reliable to either misuse certain texts Or to not actually hear other parts of the Bible that really are trying to do that, but because of my own Social location or tradition. I haven't been trained to hear those parts of the Bible I just hear the ones that my tradition has taught me to pay attention to. And so it's just a tenuous enterprise,

but it's important, because I think the biblical story is the kind of story that's meant to help God's people move out into creation and have wisdom to address all kinds of things that the biblical authors never imagined and never thought to speak to. Not display hairs, but I think that the idea here then is, it's not that systematic theology is a problem.

It's that the impulse, if you're doing systematic theology, is to come to the Bible's reference book. And then when you do that, when that's your frame, or paradigm with the Bible is, then you start finding things and doing things that the Bible's not doing, and start doing things that the Bible is not doing and start missing things that the Bible is trying to do. But you just don't see it because you're using the wrong frame.

But then there's an argument you made that if you're using a good frame, good paradigm for what the Bible is, and then you want to as an exercise, go away and then try to systematize all the things that you think the Bible has been communicating to you. It's some sort of construct that's easier to like wrap your mind around or... It's really, it's a translation. It's translating the language and ideas of the biblical story into a new type of language of the systematic logical list or something like that. Right.

And that's not a bad thing. Christian's have been doing it for millennia. Yes. But it's just important to point out that some things are lost in that translation effort. And that it's a translation exercise. Okay. And so it's by nature going to be a statement of systematic theology on x, y, or z is going to be in need of lots of revision and cross-cultural input, because it will always be limited. So the problem isn't doing systematic theology. The problem is treating the Bible as a theological dictionary.

That's right. For me, what redeemed my understanding of what systematic theology is and what it can do was in seminary, and it was really just sitting in classes with Professor Gary Bersieres, who's been a mentor to me. He's on our board of the Bio Project. And what he would always first do is pose a question, whatever the classic questions are, who is God, what's the nature of evil. And really the class would just be a sustained reflection and reading and interpretation of key biblical passages as a whole. And so it was a way of merging what we come to call biblical theology, but to understand we understand the prologue to John, the first paragraph of John as a whole. Here's what it's doing. Now let's draw

from that. Right. Now what can I say? Implications about God. A summary about the nature of Jesus and his deity and his humanity and so on. And actually I think that's what the best of systematic theologians have been doing throughout all their history. But there's this byproduct that comes, Lynne, that's how I'm introduced to read the Bible. Then I come to the Bible as a Bible dictionary. It's a reference book. That's right. And I'm trying to find the verse that becomes the proof of text for this or that.

Yeah, it's more just saying, let's understand what each project is designed to do, and then make sure that we don't overlook a culturally literary, sensitive, biblical theology approach. Let's let that, let's let what the Bible is drive the car. Yeah. And then, let our attempts to systematize it, make sure that they are always playing what you call it second fiddle or something. Which doesn't mean they're less important. It just means we need to not let the...

More of a harmony. Yeah, more harmony. And again, there's nothing controversial in what we're talking about. The Sysmax Theologians that I love to read have helped me understand this. Got it. So, and about part of it, we don't do systematic theology. That's something I've heard you say number one. Yeah, it's a different approach. The closest that we get is like in a word study video, where we'll look at one word, all of its uses, build up a portrait of the words meaning, but usually we fit it into the story of the Bible.

So anyhow. So the way that it's written here is that there's a good intuition behind seeing the Bible as a... Theology dictionary. Theology dictionary. And that is, the intuition is that the Bible should shape my view of reality, and what's true about the world God myself and others and when we say should What we're saying is that's what these texts have always done and we're designed to do yes But how does it do it? It doesn't do it as a reference book where you find the Bible answers Yeah, it does it as does it through the medium of narrative and

Poetry and first century letters. Yeah, and and then we we'll get to this, but it becomes meditation literature. Yeah. And we'll get to this. That's right. The second one, maybe take less time, because it's just instead of coming with theological questions, it's coming with moral or ethical questions. So another predominant reference book approach to the Bible is treating it as a moral handbook or rule book. And you had a lot of traction or

experience of this. Yeah, and you're growing up. Totally. But it's tricky because if you're paying attention just a little bit, you realize there's no consistency in kind of how that's done. Oh, from tradition tradition. Even within the tradition. Oh, even within tradition. Even within the tradition. Oh, even within Christian traditions. Yeah, I know, within my tradition. Just like cool, we're really set on this rule here because Paul said this in this letter.

But he also says this over here. Yeah, sure, yeah, sure. And we actually don't think about that. And then the liticus says this over here. And that's, well, and that's yeah. Totally. And so. So yeah, you're's yeah. Right. Uh-huh, totally. And so.

So yeah, you're saying there's these unspoken assumptions that work where in each Christian tradition had differs from each other. These are the parts of the Bible that we take as face value as moral guidelines. But then there is other parts of the Bible, and we have a special approach to that. Right. We have a way to explain why that's different than the part we appeal to. And then what's tricky is outsiders to that tradition, whether they're other Christians or people who just who don't follow Jesus or didn't grow up around the Christian tradition, it's confusing. And in Christianized

cultures, historically Christianized cultures, it's very confusing to people who aren't followers of Jesus to say the times that Christians in public appeal to this book, it's usually when moral issues are at stake. A Christian will say, I have this moral conviction because it says this in the Bible. And so people don't follow Jesus. That trains them too. That the Bible is a moral rule book. That's primarily what it's designed to do.

And then people don't follow Jesus will read the Bible. Those often started at the beginning, and then they'll get to the like the law codes in the Old Testament, and they're like, well, tell me this is from your moral handbook, you know, about stoning somebody who breaks a Sabbath, or whatever. So even inside and outside the tradition,

it feels inconsistent. People can sense that pretty easily. Right. That's one liability of the moral handbook approach. Well, in my tradition, it was with the old testament laws, there was kind of this understanding of like, you're not doing those things.

Although, even there it was inconsistent, because everyone's small, it's like, but that one there. Yeah, you're cool. I mean, like the Ten Commandments, except for the Sabbath. Right. That's right. But there were certain ones in there that were really important to point out,

but then obviously other ones you're just like, of course not. But then where I got a little bit more strict was New Testament letters. Like if it's in the New Testament letter, that's a rule. But then even there, you would find opportunities to kind of... That's right. ...fudge it a little bit. That's right. And we explored that in our series on how to read the New Testament letters at length. Yeah. Yeah, in the same letter, you'll find Greek one another in the church with a holy kiss.

Mm-hmm. Drink a little wine. Don't just drink only water. And also a point, deacons and elders, and elders and you know like all these instructions and yeah which ones are binding from the rule book and so on. And there's a really strong impulse to want to have the Bible help us decide what's good and bad. That's right.

Because we don't want to go off the rails and there's this concern of like if you don't treat the Bible as a rule book, or if you can't at least find enough rules in the Bible that keep us in the rails, then it's all going to just fall apart. Yeah, we've been problematizing this approach. So let's name what is also a right intuition underneath this, that the Bible, the texts that are in the Bible, were designed to give instruction and guidance to God's people about what is right and what is just and what is good and beautiful. So that God's people can live in a certain way in the world. It's a vision of what it means to be a human. Be righteous.

Yeah. So use a Biblical word. Yeah. To do right by God and other people. So the Bible is a set of texts that are designed to shape people who know how to discern what's good and bad. And without a doubt, that's what they're designed to do. And they explicitly talk about that. What we're talking about is how you engage the Bible to help it do that in the life of a person or a community. And we're saying as a reference book, what do I do in this situation? Turn to this page, turn to this sentence. That's not an approach that engages the Bible the way it's designed to do that. That's what we're both saying and not saying. And this one's really scary because the fear is that if you approach the Bible in a different way, then we're all going to come to our own conclusions as to what is actually right and wrong.

Sure, yeah. And then what does it even mean that the Bible is authority? then we're all gonna come to our own conclusions as to what is actually right and wrong. Sure, yeah. And then what does it even mean that the Bible is authority? Maybe I can make it say whatever I want and create whatever rules I want out of it. Yes, and that has been happening in the history of Judaism and Christianity all along.

And it has forced people both to listen to each other and together listen to the guidance of the Spirit in concert with listening to the scriptures. And it has been both a unifying and separating experience throughout Jewish and Christian history. And so for me it points all the way back to whatever moral or ethical guidance the Bible is giving. It's not a systematic statement of that as such. If it was, it would be a lot more clear to a lot more people throughout the last, you know, the millennia. So the way that communities get moral and ethical guidance from the scriptures is a dynamic process. And the way a given tradition

has developed a way of doing that, it's very easy to think, well, that's the way it ought to be done. And I do think there are better, more helpful and less helpful ways that communities do that. But it is a dynamic process. It is a dynamic process, but I think would you say that the Bible does have an agenda? Yes, very much so. The process should be aligning us with the agenda that the Bible has. Yeah, if a person or community wants to align their lives, yeah. It isn't like the biblical story and its message.

Here's a playground, go explore, and then come back with whatever you want. No, yeah, the whole premise of the first story of humans in the Bible is about who gets to define what's good and what's bad. And God gets to... Humans are God. That's what the whole story is about. It's about producing people who can discern what's good from what's not good. And the Torah itself, the Bible itself was thought of as a tree of life that's

supposed to bring you to help you understand. Absolutely. Yeah. Moral or ethical formation of people and their character and of communities and how they live in the world. But the question is, how do I get the Bible? Yes. How do you get the Bible accomplished that time? And it's not by treating it as a rule book.

Won't get you there. Won't allow the Bible to do what it was designed to do. So I mean, there's all sorts of traditions with all sorts of positions. Do you think that if we all come to the Bible reading it and it's grain through the correct paradigm, this will align more and more? Should it? Because if the Bible does have an agenda, right? Sure. And if it actually is telling us what it means to be truly human, what it means to really be righteous, what it means to do right by the what it means to really be righteous, what it means

to do right by the God and others, to be rescued by God, all these things, it really has a clear stance, then there should be this alignment happening. Sure. However, the communities that are going to embody that ethical vision, that moral vision, that are going to embody that ethical vision, that moral vision, what it means to be human, will be a whole bunch of diverse expressions because the human family, there's so many different cultures. It does seem to me that there will be core universal convictions that are kind of core to human nature and experience. Yeah, like do not murder. Totally. For example. And this is where it's confusing, because that's a law in the Bible. It's a rule in the Bible that Moses gives.

And it's also a rule we live by. And it's a rule that you would anticipate every Christian in any context no matter what should always live by. So then all of a sudden you're kind of like, oh, well then the Bible does have rules, and so I need to find more of those in the Bible. Okay, so that's a good example, do not murder. So it's formulated as a moral guideline in the 10 commandments.

Jesus himself quotes it, but then also says there's a lot more to it, and he gets underneath it, and he starts to give these case studies examples about how anger and dishonoring people publicly making fun of them, devaluing them, yeah belittling language, that this itself is a kin to murder. And all of a sudden, you're like, well, is there a rule anywhere of, don't ever make fun of somebody? We'll belittle them. Well, that seems to be what Jesus is getting at.

Now, we're to the what Jesus is getting, huh? Now, we're to the question of, as a rule book, tells you what to do. Wisdom literature is about forming certain kinds of people who need thin rule books because the spirit and the core convictions that are expressed in different rules are written into their character. I think this is the vision of human beings that Jesus was

trying to paint in what we call the sermon on the mount. So with what Jesus does with that rule of do not murder, kind of shows you that if you just, if you just come and go, okay, there's a rule do not murder. And then I'm going to not do that thing and I'll be good. Yeah. She's saying like actually know, let's meditate on it. Totally. Let's treat it as wisdom. What's underneath that? And now all of a sudden, it's not just whether or not you're killing someone. It's how you're just the language you use towards people becomes a rule of sorts, a rule of life, a way of monitoring our behavior. And what honoring the Bible as wisdom literature does also, and as narrative and meditation

literature, is recognizing there's a lot of other ways the Bible addresses murder that aren't through moral rules. Cane and Abel begins a major motif of depicting violence and murder. It's a profound exploration of the meaning of murder. And then you'd follow the train of that motif through the narrative of Genesis through Second Kings, and it's a sustained meditation on the problem of violence and murder in the human communities. And if you don't have radar to know that there's a narrative exploration of this idea, this

moral issue, if I'm only looking for rule, I'm going to miss out on all this other stuff the Bible is trying to say, because I was looking for a reference sentence for it. So that's a good example of how using the Bible as a rule book, we'll all miss out on what other things the Bible is trying to do. And then I'm likely to not even really use correctly the moral rule because just taking the 10 commandment statement at face of value, Jesus himself shows, no, it's so much more. There's more in underneath that. I've been in a few settings before where I'm kind of working through this and certain traditions Protestants get really twitchy when you're like the Bible's not a moral handbook. And what we're not saying is the Bible isn't trying to shape our view of what's right and wrong. We are saying that

question is how does it accomplish that goal? And it actually does it in ways that many Christians haven't even thought to imagine yet. In powerful ways, but we need to learn how to hear the think, for other people. Sure, yep. I don't know. Maybe an illustration is, as a Yeah, I don't know. Maybe an illustration is, as a teacher, I've been thrilled to discover the world of digital whiteboards.

First, they have chalkboards. Right. And you have whiteboards. Yeah. And now the next step. Yeah, the projector screens. That was in the somewhere. Oh, yeah, this overhead projector.

Yeah, that was next level. So digital whiteboards. Yeah. So I just went to some of our artists here at the Bottle Project. I was like, give me your favorite digital drawing app. Yeah. This app called Procreate. So I use it as a digital whiteboard for just varied, you know, simple drawings and so on.

But then a couple of our artists showed me stuff that they've done on Procreate, and it's like stunning, stunning artwork. And I realized like, oh, I'm using Procreate as a whiteboard app, but I'm nowhere near tapping in to the true capabilities of this thing. But I'm using it. It's working. I use it and it works good for what I need it to do.

So what we're saying is kind of like that. It's for treating the Bible as a moral handbook. You can make it do those things, but you're going to miss out on its full capability. And likely probably misuse it on some occasions with that paradigm and approach. Maybe that is the way of illustrating what we're getting. I think there's also a fear that this is just an excuse to reintroduce new morals that are more socially acceptable or more palatable instead of just being firm with like,

there's just certain things we need to have rules and convictions about that aren't gonna be easy. Yep, sure. And so there is a whole other dynamic that is actually treated in the storyline of the Bible, which is that the way God's people express faithfulness to God has developed throughout time because God is working in and through people

in their cultural context. And so the idea that Gentiles, who non-Israelites, who might eat foods that have been sacrificed to other gods, but that like take them home and have them, that was such an appalling idea for some of the earliest messianic. Morally reclined. Messianic Jews, not just like,

theologically offensive, morally offensive. And so that was something that was a paradigm shift that the spirit took those early communities through. And so throughout church history, different church traditions have developed different views about how that process works. Some traditions think that that dynamic and development just continues a pace.

And some say it continues up to a continues a pace and some say it continues up to a certain point. And some say it doesn't, shouldn't continue at all since, you know, the statements of the apostles and the moral guidance they give. And so that gets us into other territory that we're not trying to get into so much. I think what we're trying to just say is let's honor the way that the biblical texts are designed to form people's moral world views. And what traditions and people are gonna go do with that moral world view?

That would require somebody with a lot more knowledge of church history and other dynamics than just us. But that's an important conversation. Does that make any sense? It does, but I guess what I'm saying is this paradigm, and we haven't really gotten to the paradigm. But if it's not a rule book, and I can't trace a rule book, then what we're saying is we're giving an opportunity for people then to design new rules, new rule books, potentially. And what I heard you saying was, then the Bible

doesn't give the guardrails for when you've stepped out a line or not. Oh, got it. Okay, if that's what you heard me saying, that's not. Okay, quite what I'm trying to say. I think the Bible does provide a vision of, yeah, what is the good and the beautiful, but it provides it within a cultural framework of its authors, namely ancient Israelites and early Messianic Jews living in the first century.

So the question is, how do we appropriate their framework and language in context that are totally different and totally different culture and time and place. So it's not a free for all, but it is how do we embody faithfulness to that moral vision of the biblical story. And historically it's just a fact. The Christian communities who pledge their allegiance to Jesus who believe the Scriptures give us a word from God, but they disagree on certain aspects of how to embody that faithfulness in a different setting.

And that's just a fact of church history. And so you have to say, there's something's broken with the Bible that it didn't provide us with that clarity. And so that's where a lot of people go, is they ditch the Bible. Or they say the Bible is providing a moral vision, but in a way that's different and has given birth to some different traditions and how they go about discerning right from wrong.

Well, as in there also the position you're just not taking the Bible literally enough. Oh, sure. Some traditions have that view, but it's my conviction that if you probe far enough, every tradition has its own incoherencies and idiosyncrasies that will show that it is itself a tradition. We're getting into controversial territory where I suppose, and that just is what it is. But I think it requires a lot of humility for leaders in different church traditions to be careful that we don't just assume that my tradition's reading the Bible is just its face value very clear meaning.

Okay, so ultimately a Bible project, what we want to see is humans flourishing for there to be Shalom and new creation through the power of Jesus. And being faithful images of God. Yeah through the power of Jesus. And being faithful images of God. Yeah. And images of Jesus. Loving God by loving others. But I think the suspicion and worry is that if you're not going to cheat the Bible's

rule book, then we're going to start deciding what's good and bad on our own terms. And it can just spiral out of control so fast. Yep, sure. If you just watch it like as soon as you do that, then this is going to happen and then spiral, spiral, spiral and now just we're living in debauchery and hell. Sure, but you can flip it over and you can say you can also highlight how a certain tradition has developed a whole way of making sense of a certain moral vision and then being very rigid about that and Then without realizing it or maybe while realizing it is doing all sorts of terrible harmful things to people Yeah, and not even

Thinking about it because it doesn't fit within their paradigm Yeah, and so of course the example on the world stage right now is Protestant traditions, you know, the European-American white dominant Protestant traditions, the elevated personal piety, personal morality, particularly sexual integrity, all the while, you know, propping up often with the Bible, propping up cultural institutions that were killing and enslaving people. And so it's that kind of thing where you just go, oh, if we can see that now with some kind of clarity, what are ways that my tradition is doing some other kind of analogous thing right now? That's what I'm just saying. We just need...

That's the humility. It's the humility to just say, I can't just assume that my tradition's reading of the Bible, especially if it is a moral handbook reading, is this has been dropped out of heaven. Every tradition is gonna introduce distortions into the moral vision of the Bible. And so we need to pay attention to church history, of different traditions, people who are different

than me, and trust that the Spirit will guide God's people. Cause history hasn't stopped, and God's still at work in the world, guiding people into new and charted territory. The question is, what story is giving that guidance? And yeah, there you go. That's why I'm at now. And this question, I'll be working on

for the rest of my life. But I think by definition, it's a question God's people have to be working on for the rest of human history, because that's what it means to be human, right? To subdue the land and rule it as kings and queens and be stewards of creation, to go into new uncharted territory. Yeah. How you doing? Good.

Okay, so the last and third aspect of this reference book mentality we've called, I think you probably came up with this phrasing, but the Bible is a devotional grab bag. So the assumption underneath is the Bible exists, and I think this is the right intuition. The Bible exists to connect me, not just to ancient people and what they were trying to say, but to the presence of the living God and of the Spirit of God and the presence of Jesus, to put me in tune with that living one to help guide me in my life and my community in the world. That should be delightful. It does, yes, yeah, discovery, fun, learning, challenge. Ah, ahs.

Ahs, yeah, epiphanies, this kind of thing. So the Bible is designed to overhaul your view of reality and connect you to the living God in a personal way. Totally what it's designed to do. The question is, how does it do it? How does it do it? So if I've developed a habit, and this is tricky, because I've been very personal

and I've kind of backed down on being so dogmatic about, I talk about this, because I have my own favorite parts of the Bible. Yeah. And there are times when I go and read those favorite parts. Yeah. Because they remind me of things that are true and real and I feel the warmth fuzzies and so on.

But the trick is, is that becomes my main mode of engaging the Bible. I go read that paragraph or just that sentence or just that part of a page. But I make sure not to read too far because like further in the paragraph is that one really crazy thing? Yeah, I don't know what to make make of that and so I put that like that's the devotional grab bag. Yeah. Yeah. So again right in tuition, but poor execution. Right.

Because the execution becomes pick and choose and when you do that you lose the thrust of what the whole unified story of Jesus is trying to do or the whole paragraph or the whole story or the whole unified story that he's Jesus is trying to do. Or the whole paragraph, or the whole story, or the whole letter, poem, whatever it is. And so all three of those, theological dictionary, moral handbook, devotional grab bag, there are three different ways of treating the Bible as a reference book.

I haven't heard you frame it that way, which is really nice. Yeah, it's more recent, formula. And the Bible is not a reference book. And so that begs a question, what kind of book is it? And that's what we're going to jump into. The shorthand we use is unified story leads to Jesus. But that begs a lot of questions, what does that mean?

And so we'll jump in to unpack that. What kind of book is the Bible? Yeah, we've developed seven. Not intentionally, it just turned out to be seven. Yeah. We've developed seven. Not intentionally, it just turned out to be seven aspects that are important to what we mean by the unified story, at least Jesus. So let's turn and do that.

Thanks for listening to this episode of Bible Project Podcast. Next week, we're back continuing this discussion on Paranods. If the primary way that God is at work in the world through His Spirit is through people, then it makes all the sense in the world that God is at work in the world through his spirit is through people, then it makes all the sense in the world that God's Word would be communicated through a human word. And the human words are not incidental, they are the way. The divine word is communicated.

It means I shouldn't go hunting for an explanation of the Bible's origins that can't be traced to any human agency or that can't be explained historically. It's a dead end. The Bible doesn't need that kind of origin story to bolster its divine authority. That's not how the Bible presents itself. Today's show is produced by Cooper Peltz. Zach McKinley is our editor, Dan Gummel, our senior editor, and Lindsay Ponder created the show notes. We're taking questions for this paradigm series,

so if you want to ask us a question, we'd love to respond to it, email your question to infoetjewingthebibletproject.com. Try to keep it to about 30 seconds, or so, and let us know your name and where you're from. Bibletproject is a crowdfunded nonprofit in Portland, Oregon. Our mission, our paradigm, as you will, is to experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus.

And we're able to do this and give it away for free because of the generous support of many people, just like you all around the world, so thank you for being a part of this with us. Hi, this is Celine and I'm from Pennsylvania. I first heard about Bible Project on YouTube. Hi, this is Snatchy and I'm from Nigeria. I first heard about a Bible project through YouTube and I used to buy a project for personal learning and spiritual growth. My favorite thing about Bible Project is the classroom. It helps me learn other small details, believers pass by in the

Bible that are significant. We believe the Bible is a five-story that leads us to Jesus. We're a crowdfunded project by people like me. Find free videos, study notes, podcasts, classes, and more at aboutproject.com. you