Theology in the Raw - 676: #676 - A Conversation with Tim Mackie

Episode Date: June 18, 2018

On episode 676 Preston has a conversation with Tim Mackie. Tim is a creative writer and director for The Bible Project and an adjunct professor of Old Testament at Western Seminary, both in Portland, Oregon. Learn more about Tim here.

Hello, friends. I am Preston Sprinkle, and I'm here with my friend, Tim Mackey, a fellow Tim Mackey, a fellow Bible scholar, man of the church, and if I could say not your traditional kind of Bible scholar, you'll see what I mean as we progress in this conversation. But you're listening to Theology in the Raw, where we like to talk about tough subjects in the Christian faith and also like to interview some interesting people doing interesting work around the Christian world. And I am here with Tim Mackey. Tim, thanks so much for being on Theology in the Wrong. Yeah, absolutely. Preston, it's good to talk. So you are, from my vantage point, most widely known for your work in the Bible Project. I mean, this has been a... I mean, I cannot think of a greater gift to the church than the Bible Project right now.

I mean, this is just such an incredible resource used by such a wide variety of people. I mean, I talk to people who would be more, quote unquote, progressive, people who are very conservative, everybody in between. Everybody loves the Bible Project. Like, this is just like, it's such a gift for the church. So just to get us going, can you give us a little bit of background, who you are as a man of God, a scholar, a pastor, and then also how you got into the Bible project and we'll go from there. Yeah, totally. Let's see. All right. I grew up in Portland, not known as a paragon of Christian anything, culture, whatever. But it's American city on the West Coast. So yeah, I grew up here skateboarding. My parents were Christians. I didn't really like church and I despised most of it. I don't know, from a pretty early age. Yeah, I still don't know quite why.

I think it was just I got hooked. I got my first skateboard at 11 years old, and I was hook, line, and sinker, whole deal. And the whole ethos of that is like, you know, just stick it to the man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my parents represent the man, of course so does jesus and the whole deal so so were you raised in the church though was it our family attended church and okay they picked their battles with me you know by the time i was in my early like 13 14 and so they just quit making me go except like on holidays and family stuff that kind of thing so yeah i didn't

participate no youth group camp or anything like that um so uh yeah that yeah so it was actually through um uh an outreach ministry to skateboarders at um a skate park a public skate park but that was sponsored and run by a church um that i became a follower of jesus when i was 20 almost 20 and um i had just been going to the park for years somebody every week stands up and gives a jesus talk and uh yeah just years jesus worked on me he became really beautiful to me and then unavoidable i found I had to make a decision about him. And so there you go. That was a pretty radical kind of conversion experience

in terms of the trajectory of my life. And so Multnomah University, it was Multnomah Bible College then, was across the street from that warehouse skate park in northeast Portland. And so I had a couple friends. We'd all gone to skate church. We all became Christians around the same time, started following Jesus. And so we signed up for classes together. And a number of us went overseas, like, within a year. We went and spent a summer in the jungle with bible translators like Wycliffe you know

like super super intense and I came back I was like I want to follow Jesus I want to do whatever and so I signed up for Greek naturally but this community was that I was became you know learned how to follow Jesus and it was like people. It's like just incredible community. It was the full like mid nineties, jars of clay, acoustic, read your Bible a ton, memorize whole sections. It was awesome. It was like, it was awesome. I loved it. And it was totally new to me. And it was all in skateboard culture with my friends. Anyway, so I became a Bible nerd, got hooked. And with a couple of these friends, we signed up for Greek and then Hebrew. And really, the key was I was introduced by one professor and then a few others to the Bible as Israelite Jewish literature.

the Bible as Israelite Jewish literature, that Jewish literature and a Jewish Jesus is how this God has revealed himself to humanity. And that was so odd. It wasn't like the package that I was familiar with from my parents, the Christian belief package. And, but it was way more interesting. And so the history,

language, culture, there you go so pretty much since then yeah then i went into phd studies uh and got my phd in in the jewish studies department at the university of wisconsin oh wow yeah yeah yeah that so if people know that that is a really high powered submitted studies program, it was the deep end of the pool. Right, yeah. Yeah, but it was awesome. I wanted to get outside the typical kind of Christian world for theological education.

And this wasn't a theology degree. It was language and history. Right, yeah. And there were Jews and Christians of all stripes there. It was wonderful. And, yeah, I mean, I just basically read nonstop for seven years. But it was wonderful. You've done, you know, you know how that goes.

But what I found was personally when I started to teach in a university setting, I did student teaching, I didn't like it. And I didn't like that I had to be diplomatic and how I talked about my own faith in a public university setting. And so, you know, I'm most of the way through my PhD and I'm like, I don't think I want to be a professor at a university. Like what am I going to do? And, uh, but an opportunity to start teaching at our church we were attending opened up

and then that Blackhawk. Yeah, that's right. Blackhawk church we were attending opened up. And then that. Black Hawk, right? Yeah, that's right. Black Hawk Church. I spoke there a couple of years ago. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, I heard about that. Well, there you go.

Yeah. So really healthy, awesome church. It was really oriented towards making an impact in the university and integrating into the life of students and faculty. And so I just taught classes at the church to basically to graduate students and faculty. So I just started teaching biblical theology and had a blast, learned how to preach and there you go. So then I just,

I've been on this path of, I don't know what I am and my pastor, my professor, I stopped trying to figure that out and just enjoyed trying to be a bridge figure. Because I love biblical scholarship, but I don't want to participate in the career culture. Oh, that's so good. Yeah. That's a great word.

Yeah. So anyway, there you go. So the Bible Project happened through a friend of mine that I met at Multnomah while I was reading for seven years. He had started a marketing company, John Collins, and then yeah, he happened upon the medium of the short animated explainer video. And so he had honed that, he had built out a small animation studio. And then when I moved back to Portland to teach part-time at Western,

part-time and then a pastor at a church here in Portland, he pitched the idea to me of like, hey, I make these videos. You're a Bible nerd. We're friends. Let's make some videos and see what happens. So it was really, truly like just kind of a harebrained idea and um we spent a year and a half just a side project making the first two videos oh really okay yeah and then oh wait what day is today may 15th ah so we turned four years old um on saturday is that it four years old yeah totally yeah i i thought it was like eight years old at least or something.

Wow. Four years old. Yeah. Four. Yeah. In terms of the YouTube channel went live. Wow. So John, I mean, so here's the thing.

I'm the Bible nerd and John loves biblical theology and loves to talk. He's an intelligent question asker. So thorough. Yeah. Yeah. And so just, I don't know, the chemistry of our friendship, we just love to talk and learn from each other and learn from our conversations.

And so the videos are basically just a distillation of conversations that John and I are having through the whole Bible, themes, books of the Bible. And we now, and it was his idea to do crowdfunded. So instead of making our own website and you have to pay to watch, we'll just ask, wave to people at the end of every video that's for free on YouTube and then just ask, hey, if this was helpful to you, help us make some more.

And that has worked out well, right? Yeah. Overwhelmingly. Yeah. you help us make some more. And that's worked out well, right? Yeah, overwhelmingly. Yeah, it turns out there's a lot of people in the world who care, who really love it when they're actually able to understand the Bible on its terms. If you're not comfortable giving the numbers, I'm totally fine.

But I mean, I know a tiny bit about that world and I know those videos are not cheap. Oh, sure. Could you give a ballpark on what a typical five to ten minute, five to seven minute Bible project video might cost from A to Z? Yeah, you know, it depends on, we make a lot of different styles. So some we make that are basically just, you're watching a big illustrated poster diagram get drawn

while i give like a super power lecture uh so those those come in at about like eight to ten thousand dollars for okay and those are typically seven to eight minutes long or five minute-ish full color animated ones um Depending on the style. Sometimes it's stick people. Sometimes it's full blown. Yeah. Range anywhere from like 15 to $30,000 peak. Wow.

Yeah. So it was first John and I just volunteered. It was just a side project and every, as our monthly support grew, it was just about keeping artists on for more and more of their time to just be able to dedicate their work. And then we kind of hit the stipping point about two and a half years ago where we could then begin to float.

Both John and I coming, dedicating more time and float, you know, just the organization as a whole. And so, and now, yeah, it's remarkable. more time and float. You know, just the organization as a whole. And now, yeah, it's remarkable. We have about 9,000 monthly supporters now. And we're going to hit a million YouTube subscribers

by the end of this year. I don't even understand what that means. That's crazy. It's been a remarkable journey. Really crazy. It's been a remarkable journey. Really, really amazing. It's truly a team effort. I get to be a nerd and read and write and talk with John and then help on the front end of storyboarding

and some visual development. And then once we get those things locked in, I just let the artists take over because they think of stuff way better than i could think of yeah it's been really so is it this is your full-time job right are you still pastoring um yeah so as of a year ago a little over a year ago i yeah i switched over to make this my full-time gig yeah that's crazy and you guys have i mean you have you have a video on every single book of the Bible. Is that correct? Yeah, we have, yeah, I think it's 115 videos total right now, something like that. 115, okay. So,

yeah, every book of the Bible, we have about a dozen biblical theme videos. Okay. Theme. We have a how to read the Bible series that we're about 10 into. And then we're doing animated little trilogies or quadrilogies, I don't know, where we go through a section of the Bible, but with really beautiful animation, and it's really simplified down to its essence. We did the wisdom books. We did Seraphim Torah. We did Luke, and we're going to do Acts this year. And, yeah, we can see about three to four years more of videos we'd like to make.

Okay. And half of that list came into our minds in the last year. So we're kind of just enjoying the ride and trying to be responsible. You might be putting Bible college professors out of business. No, I'm serious. So I remember a couple years ago, I really started watching a lot of videos. And I remember I was teaching Old Testament survey at a Bible college, a small Bible college.

And as part of my preparation, I would watch a Bible college or a Bible project video, for instance, on the Psalms, on the Psalms. Yeah, sure. I'll never forget a couple of days before I'm going to get my lecture and I say, I'm going to check out what Mackie and Collins have to say about this. I'd watch your video, jaw on the ground, thinking I'm going to cancel class. I i'm gonna just have them watch the video like five times and i'm gonna give a quiz on that video because there's way more that you do in that video than i could ever do in a two three hour lecture like it's just like there's something the combination of the visual medium yes with power lecture for some of them and some of them are just john and i having a distilled conversation of an actual conversation that you know we had right upstream of the video and uh yeah the combination john loves brain science and so as part of when he was kind of

crafting the skill and figuring out the possibility of these videos. There's some ratio of brain engagement with length of time being not too long but short, visual, oral, you're hearing, you're seeing, short time. You can do more in five minutes than you could in a lecture room in 60 minutes. Really? Yeah, in terms of what your brain is able to come, isn't that remarkable that's amazing so he's really taught me the less is more principle when it comes to these videos the cutting room floor is being piled high with stuff when um we're finally done there's so much stuff we leave out but i've come to see that that it's a value in in at least in these videos anyway it's great it's

been an amazing journey. So are you, I mean, are you, from an outside perspective, it seems like you have like, for a Bible nerd, it's like you have like the dream job. You get to be a scholar. You get to produce stuff

that tons of people are watching. A wide spectrum of Christians, evangelicals, whatever, really like you and your stuff. It's like, who doesn't want to learn more about the Bible? Like, is there, what's the con? Like, well, what's the, you know, evangelicals, whatever, really like you and your stuff. It's like, who doesn't want to learn more about the Bible? Like, is there, what's the con?

Like, what's the, you know, are you, what part of your job do you not like? Yeah, totally. You know, for me, the biggest challenge has been, you know, I was a part-time professor. I was in local church ministry, and this was getting off the ground. I have about a three-year period where I can now see I was going crazy. Doing way too much. So, to be honest, I'm just, like, 2018 is, I feel like it's the first time since I started grad school, over a long time, I've been living over my skis. And so I'm just grateful to be in a place where I was like, oh, I have a job with a workload that I can accomplish.

It's wonderful. I really advocate having one job for people. Anyway. I have one more Bible Project question. Yeah, yeah, that's great. Then I want to get to know the team. There aren't many cons. I really am pinching myself at this season of the project.

It's pretty fun. So I'm, I don't know how to say this. When I see the quality and the demand of Bible Project, part of me goes to, gosh, they could really monetize these things. Like these are, I mean, so much time, energy, money, like you could charge money for these and it wouldn't even be like, oh, now he's trying to make money. No, like this is like worth it.

But you guys, is it in principle? And are you guys like, is this etched in stone that you you will never these will always be free and is it because you have enough support from donor support or yeah can you unpack that a little bit just kind of how the bible project and money and monetizing it kind of yeah is related yeah uh yeah you're right we it's a yeah one of our core values is generosity as an organization. And we really believe in the gospel generosity ecology, the ecosystem that generosity creates. And so it was really important to John and it didn't take him long to convince me that we would actually come out better in the long run with this project

if we didn't make a paywall or a subscription or anything. And so I just trusted him, and he was right. So, yeah, so in terms of videos, stuff that we produce, yeah, will always be available for free on our YouTube channel. We have some broadcasters or media organizations have picked it up and our main license is just if you put it behind a paywall as an organization then you need to pay us licensing fees if you're going to pay people to watch it then tell them to come watch it here for free and if they you know what i? Like it's just, because I think the entry of barrier,

I want the barrier entry to be zero. The Bible is hard enough to work, you know? So why shouldn't, anyway. So yes, that's a principle that it all is for free. That's awesome. Yeah. All right. Tim Mackey, the person, you already said,

you know, you're a skateboarder. You're a man of the church. You are very gospel centered, Jesuser. You're a man of the church. You are very gospel-centered, Jesus-centered. You're also a scholar. Where on the, if I can say, evangelical, say, spectrum, the theological spectrum, where has your journey been? Were you raised super conservative, and now you're centrist? Were you progressive, and now you're centrist were you progressive and

now you're conservative or and i don't i don't actually like any of those yeah yeah um how would you describe your sort of theological sort of subculture yeah well i guess yeah the environment like the skateboard ministry um could be you know put in the Brad category of extremely theologically conservative American Protestantism. It wasn't, there wasn't a political culture war slant to it. It was a progressive outreach ministry in an urban setting to skateboarders. Culturally, it wasn't, you know, conservative looking, but just in terms of uh approach to the bible ways of reading the bible my introduction to the bible you know was in that

was in that kind of um setting multnomah uh is in that same category too but the professors i was most attracted to were the ones who were actually interested in just exploring the oddity of the Bible and how it doesn't actually fit our systems very well. I found myself drawn to those teachers. And so I think that's why I ended up fascinated with history and language and the culture behind the Bible was because it, it just, it always, it's messy. Yeah. You know?

Yeah. And so, yeah, there you go. So I have a really firm commitment to historic Orthodox Christian worldview. Christian worldview. And my commitment actually even is so strong that as I've learned more and more and more about Second Temple Judaism and the Jewish messianic nature of the early Christian movement and how much of that got lost in the history of Christian orthodoxy. So I'm not like a Hebrew roots guy necessarily,

but I'm pretty pro rediscover the lost Jewish heritage. Okay. Yeah. Cause it's just the Bible. What I mean when I say that is the Bible. So yeah, there you go. I'm nervous about the term evangelical mostly because of the last you know a couple

decades of redefinition of that word and so i just prefer historic christian orthodox kind of thing i'm curious about that i you know i i've got several friends that we have this kind of ongoing dialogue about whether the term evangelical needs to be rebranded or ditched. Like, does it? And I don't, depending on the time of the day, time of the week, I don't know. I don't know. It is so loaded with political stuff. It has a bad, it's collected kind of a bad reputation.

And yet at the core, I love what the term's trying to accomplish. And yet, I don't know. Yeah, it's tricky. It's not an English word. It's a Greek word spelled with English letters. But we have those, baptism, Eucharist, whatever. There's lots of those in Christian vocabulary. But something about that word in particular,

especially because there's so many other readily available substitutes that communicate the same thing. For me, it's about communication efficiency. You know, if a word is going to distract more than half of the people I'm trying to communicate with, when there's a perfectly other good words that are actually more normal,

then why don't I just use those words? What would be a good substitute? I mean, you said historic Christian or Jesus follower? Oh, if I'm talking to Christians about where I would locate, yeah, I'm happily identified with historic Orthodox Christian belief and theology. Yeah, if I'm talking to somebody who doesn't have a framework for that yeah i would just word use words like jesus centered a high view of the authority of jesus's teachings and of the scriptures that he appealed to and yeah like normal language okay yeah yeah so um it's a big deal for the viral project but but it comes out of my own personality too uh and and maybe it's a big deal for the Bible Project, but it comes out of my own personality too. And maybe it's just because of Skate Church.

That was the name of the skate park, Skate Church. But it's just like Jesus became compelling because going to that skate park every week, he was talked about in language I could understand. he was talked and talked about in language I could understand. And so I just, that's from early on my first, I grasped who Jesus was because of other skateboarders using illustrations about ramps and like skateboard parts to talk about. And so I don't know that world.

I actually skated when I was a kid, but I never was like a skate park type kid. Yeah. Skate church, yeah. And I know that part of becoming a Christian means start learning new vocabulary. I get that. Yes. But there are some times where there's perfectly other good words.

So, yeah, evangelical, I mean, that's complex. And there's people that have very passionate opinions, and I'm not trying to put a position out there. But in my context here and for what we're doing with the bible project they're just the words not gonna yeah so that's why we don't use it who who listens to the bible pro who watches the bible project do you have a really it seems to me like a really broad range of brands of christianity that is that would that be would that be accurate or is it largely conservatives?

No, it's the whole spectrum. We have different kinds of analytics. YouTube gives us a lot of geography, gender, age, demographics. So 60% male, 18 to 35 is 60% of our YouTube subscribers, which is a pretty big sample. It's almost coming up on a million. So that's a pretty reliable percentage. So that's interesting. That's also you.

That's a general YouTube demographic. Yeah. I was going to say, but, and then feedback that we get, yeah, the whole spectrum, Catholic,

Orthodox, Protestants of all stripes, whatever, everything. To me, the most rewarding feedback we get is from people who don't identify as religious anything, but they feel like they're able to understand what their parents or co-workers or friends believe now and i can see i mean yeah we straight up have had letters and emails from self-identified atheists saying you know thank you for what you're doing you're helping demystify what i used to believe that's really but there's something for me just when if you avoid if you don't let the the debates of our age determine what you're looking for and i to me this has become the

biggest challenge and project now as i can see is just to hear the bible on its own terms not filtered through what i want it to speak to but really trying to listen to it and learn to read this literature along the weave, you know, going with the grain. And you'll hear all kinds of things you never expected to hear. And, but it also, you find that many of the things that seem so important maybe aren't quite as important as I thought they were. Anyway, it's been a great, great journey. So speaking of journeys, we were talking before the show about some different theological journeys you've been on.

And one of the questions that, I mean, in the nature of what I do, most of the questions I get have to do with sexuality, gender, LGBTQ questions. Thank you. By the would say thank you by the way thank you for the work that you've invested in those questions sure man yeah thank you helpful to so many people good thank you that's coming from you that means the time man um one of the questions that i haven't and i and i've kind of thought out loud about this on my podcast and a lot of my audience i think, is trying to figure this out too. It really does have to do with women in leadership positions in church, women's ordination, women teaching, however you want to word it.

I don't like women in ministry because ministry is a broad word that, of course, women should be in ministry. The question is, women, does the know allow encourage yeah yeah promote women in leadership positions and and we're talking earlier how you've you've shifted on that where you were on a more complementarian that only men should be in leadership positions in the church but more recently out of studying the bible you switched your view can you unpack that a bit for us? Yeah. You know, it has gone in steps. And, you know, I've only once for about five years been in a position where I could speak into that issue in a local church. So I was here in Portland at the Door of Hope Church.

I served as a pastor for about five years. for about five years. So, you know, that was my, I had five years in an environment where it wasn't just about figuring out theologically and biblically how it works, but actually what does this look like practically. So those have been two really different important learning environments for me. But I've always, seriously, I remember reading Paul's letters for the first time

it's still like a memory that I have and uh um there were so many puzzling things in there but definitely first Corinthians 14 and 11 um these are some of the classic passages where Paul says comments about some women in these churches and what they were doing. And I was just like, Whoa, that's really interesting. Like that, that doesn't fit. Um, well, let me say it this way. I was introduced to the Bible through Jesus. Um, I didn't care about the Bible. Jesus became beautiful and compelling to me. And so I just, I just really read the gospels a lot and didn't, that was the first, my first entryway into the bible and so i remember

from the very beginning just thinking like the thing that jesus was doing with these kingdom of god communities and then what i see paul carrying that on but then there's just these handful of passages corinthians there's a couple letters of timothy there's a couple And how do they fit? Because the way that I see people appealing to those texts in Paul and the things that they're building out of those, it is a disconnect. So before I even had language for it, I've always tried to understand what's going on here. There's always a disconnect for me um so anyway yeah where where i'm at now um and i i'm not happy with the terms of the debate but in terms of i'll try and summarize

it quickly because i'm bad at being concise i heard so um i think what we see in the New Testament, what we see in Paul's letters, is an urban missionary who is trying to steward the announcement of good news about King Jesus. That through his life, death, and resurrection, a whole new future opened to humanity. And through the Spirit, the life love of jesus can remake us individually and corporately together um and paul's gospel of freedom right not slavery to idolatry or to certain interpretations of the torah anymore and if you look at what paul like the people that he mentioned in in his letters who he talks about as his co-workers, he mentions men and women, like all over the place as his co-workers. And, you know, in the first century, to have women in the roles that Paul puts them in, like in his greetings, you know, when he talks about Aquila and Priscilla, or Phoebe, or Junia. I know there's some debate on Junia, but there shouldn't be. I mean, it's really remarkable, like the

on-the-ground communities that he describes, and that we see at work in the Book of Acts, are communities where women are being given a social mobility and a status and honor in those communities that was unknown in the first century. There was no parallel to it. And so that's for sure why one of the many reasons Larry Hurtado and Rodney Stark, historians of early Christianity, tell us that this was one of the main reasons Christianity grew. So all that stuff started to sink in and then all of a sudden I was able to come back to 1 Corinthians 11 where Paul is telling certain women, I mean these are really complicated passages about head covering and filming. In 14, 1 Corinthians 14, about evaluating

prophecy. And the more I've read and studied this text, the more I see Paul using contextual strategies so that the witness of the gospel isn't compromised by people abusing this new freedom of these, that men and women have in these communities. I think that almost every time you see Paul hedging in a particular church community, and there's not that many, there's Corinth and there's Ephesus, basically, are precisely contexts where new Christian women would be most likely to overuse their new freedom found in the early Christian communities. And then that's precisely,

that's precisely what you see. I'm not being concise. Am I? Okay. So let's, let's, let's get up. We don't need to get nitty gritty,

but the first Timothy two. Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Yep. That's right. And I know there's a massive debate about when he says, I do not permit women to teach or exercise authority.

That's right, yep. In particular, and again, I haven't done a lot of study on it, but the exercising authority, athoutane or whatever, it's a really unique word and a lot of debate of whether it's an intrinsically negative kind of authority, which wouldn't rule out all types of authority, or whether he is ruling out all types of authority. Yeah, yeah. And then you have him appealing to the creation account.

It's just it's kind of a messy passage. I remember looking at the bibliography of a commentary a few weeks ago, actually. I'm like, I just want to give up. I'll just focus on something easy like LGBTQ. I don't have time to read literally like 25 books written just on this verse and hundreds of articles. All with good arguments, you know. So the problem is, you know, that one paragraph attracts all the attention. To me, it was most helpful was starting to read people who were talking about the communication strategy and the themes of that letter as a whole.

From the opening paragraph to the final paragraph, that letter is putting out a whole bunch of fires in Ephesus, specifically for opening lines caused by false teachers who are deceiving people in the community, especially by their interpretations of the Torah. He says it in the opening paragraph, especially by their interpretations of the Torah. He says it in the opening paragraph,

that myths and genealogies connected to the Torah are at the root of the false teachers and what they're doing. And then in more than one place throughout the letter, he makes clear that the false teachers are targeting wealthy, influential women in the community, and some of whom are widows. That whole thing about the widows and, like, wealthy widows who have means to take care of themselves and that whole thing, it's all connected. on a group of influential elite wealthy women who treat the Sunday gathering as a fashion show and have grabbed the mic, but they're not theologically trained yet. And so he just says, dude, start over. The ladies don't teach. Let them gain a theological education. Let's do this

whole thing over again. So when he says women, I do not allow women to teach exercise authority. He is thinking specifically of a specific kind of woman in the church at Ephesus in that particular cultural context. Yeah, that's right. Those kinds of women I don't allow. That's right. And I actually think that makes the most sense of his appeal to the Genesis 3 story as well. Yeah, that one always throws me off. Because Eve, when he says, he talks about, you know, it was the woman deceived and not the man.

Many people take him to be deriving a universal principle from that. So somehow women are more susceptible to being deceived. So somehow women are more susceptible to being deceived. But Paul talks about Eve, Eve's deception and temptation, in his second letters to Corinthians. And he tells the whole church of Corinth not to be deceived like Eve. So for Paul, the Eve deception story, he can use it to describe all kinds of different people, not just women.

Does that make sense? So he's not appealing to Eve as a symbol of femalehood, like what Eve did is based on her femaleness, and therefore all females are more prone to deception. Yeah, that's right. You're saying he's just using that as just an example. males are more prone to deception. Yeah, that's right. You're saying he's just using that as just an example.

It's an example of how there's that little glitch in the Genesis 3 narrative, and Jewish interpreters from a long time ago have picked up on this, where it's the Adam, the male human, given the divine instruction in Genesis 2. But then in Chapter 3, the woman just, she knows about it, in chapter 3 the woman just she knows about it but we're not told how she knows about it we're not told of the conversation and then um it's precisely she misquotes the divine command you know she says don't eat of it and don't touch it uh there's a whole bunch of really interesting other things going on there and then that's what the snake capitalizes on is now it all becomes these series of little misquotations and so what paul highlights um is precise it's precisely that breakdown of passing along the divine instruction which creates

a perfect parallel with these women they haven't been properly instructed and so what they need to do is take a time out and get an education. And they shouldn't be the ones teaching the community right now. So I actually think it makes better sense of his comment. Ben Witherington has a commentary on the pastoral epistles. And he works really carefully through that text, wades through the massive bibliography. And he's not the only one that says that,

but he kind of brings together that, people who advocate that reading of the passage. And he does it in the context of the whole book. Holy cow. Anyway, there you go. I was going to ask you for people, voices, writers, speakers. Yes, you know, and the other most significant contributor to this is a scholar, Cynthia Westfall Long,

who's written a book called Paul and Gender. It's fat, and it's systematic through all his letters. But she's developing Paul's theology of male and female, distinct profile and their relationship. It's brilliant. It's so brilliant. And to be honest, that's what kind of compelled me to finally embrace the, again, what category? why I don't like egalitarian as a title is because that equality in our cultural setting can be heard by people as erasing gender difference and to me that's exactly it's precisely the opposite of what this whole thing is about the whole point is that Genesis 1 it's male and female one humanity consisting of two gendered others and that otherness in unity is the image

of god and so it's precisely the difference of gender that when it's brought together in the unity of the spirit of jesus to reflect um the wisdom and love of god and teaching and instruction and what it means to be human as a community of Jesus together. It's in the gender difference that the, that the beauty of the thing is shown. And so, you know, some people use the term mutualism,

mutualism, mutualism. I kind of like that, but whatever. Yeah. I think Paul, um, when we watch him saying his comments that we often misread as misogynistic is Paul putting

out fires. And if you look at the people he names, at the way he talks about power and leadership and authority, the leadership communities were as mutualist as their cultural setting allowed to be effective. But he cared mostly about the effective witness of the gospel. And so, like you see him in Titus, he's really concerned about the behavior of the women there, and also of older men who drink too much, because their behavior is going to make the Christian communities look repulsive, even to their pagan neighbors.

And so that's what he cares about. So anyway, I explored some of this in the videos about Paul in the Bible Project. But anyway, there you go. I could go on a lot longer. You could too, obviously. Tim, this is super helpful. My audience, I think, is going to appreciate this. So thanks for your honesty.

I love getting people as they're kind of fresh and the cement is still a little bit wet as they're exploring. And the one thing I just love is to see people wrestle with Scripture and see where is Scripture taking me? And I'm going to work hard not to project where I want Scripture to go onto the Scripture. Totally. But let Scripture critique my presupposition.

Yeah, that's right and it's the most difficult thing to do i think that's why that's why you know anything i say now i'm always hesitant to say anything now because it's like well this is where i'm at but there's so many things where i just have had five more years to reflect on genesis whatever and now i can feel I have more clarity. Tim Keller has a saying, you're always stupid now. Like instead, you know, when you look back at yourself a year ago, and I didn't get it.

So stupid back then. And he was like, just start telling yourself, I'm stupid now. And then at least it makes you humble in the moment. My wife and I often talk about how we look at our older generation, how they did things. We're like, man, how come they weren't more teachable and understanding and so authoritative top-down or whatever? But we often say, okay, in 40 years, what are going to be our major blind spots

where our kids are going to be like, how could you think that way? How could you think that this was the right way to do things? Yeah, that's right. So I think just having an ongoing posture of humility, I mean, is all we can do. Well, Tim, love, love, love what you're doing for the kingdom. I don't think I've actually explained too much about the Bible Project. But I mean, I'm assuming most of my audience, 99% will know about it. Where can they find the Bible Project just in case they don't know what it is?

How can they learn more about you? Yeah, got it. Yeah, just you can Google the Bible Project or just thebibleproject.com is our website. Or go to YouTube and search Bible Project. Go to your computer. Go to the interweb. And so, yeah, our short description, we're a non-profit,

crowd-funded animation studio. We make short films about all the books of the Bible, the literary design and themes that run throughout the Bible. And we believe the Bible is one unified story that leads to Jesus, and that should be offered free to the world so that everyone can see that for themselves.

Highly, highly encourage my audience to go check that out if you haven't done so. And if you haven't done so in the last six months or a year, I mean, you guys are really cranking out a lot of videos in the last year, especially. So go visit Bible Project. And I just, I've taken my kids through a lot of the videos. So like from my, oh my gosh, from like, for me as a 42 year old Bible scholar professor, I'm like, oh my gosh, that's what Psalms. And my nine year old is like, oh, so that's what Psalms. Yeah, totally, totally. It's so brilliant.

Like it's like kids can understand it. And yet Bible college professors can be discouraged by watching it because we're like, crap, I can't match that. Yeah, you know, it's funny. We have never sat down in any video and thought about kids. But I think it's just the visual medium and the commitment John had and that I have full on adopted is just to simplicity and communication. It's not simplistic, but simplicity and communication can really bridge a wide audience. Oh, it's so good.

And it's so funny. We'll get into a video project. That just happened with a video we were working on, and we thought we were clear with draft three of the script. And then all of a sudden some artists pointed out some things. We're like, oh, that's not clear at all. Oh, my gosh. We thought that was clear.

So it's hard to be clear, isn't it? Oh, yeah. Oh, it's super hard to be clear. And Preston, you're a good writer. You're like a good communicator to a broad audience. And it's an enormous amount of work. Oh, it's so hard. It's so hard.

Well, thanks so much, Tim. And I hope lots of people go to your website and YouTube channel audience and it's an enormous amount of work oh it's so hard yeah it's so hard yeah well thanks so much tim and i hope lots of people go to your website and youtube channel as a result of this talk yeah so thanks so much you've been listening to theology in the raw uh if you want to check out the pod so this is both a youtube video so if you're listening to this go to my youtube channel press and sprinkle and you will find a video portion of this talk. If you're on YouTube and you just want to podcast it, this is also a podcast. Without the video, you can go there as well. So thanks so much for listening to Theology in the Raw. Thank you.