Theology in the Raw - Why the Church Still Matters: Dr. Carmen Imes

Episode Date: November 3, 2025

Join the Theology in the Raw community for as little as $5/month to get access to premium content. Dr. Carmen Joy Imes is associate professor of Old Testament at Talbot School of Theology, Biola University, in Southern California. She is the author of Bearing God's Name: Why Sinai Still Matters, Being God's Image: Why Creation Still Matters, and Becoming God's Family: Why the Church Still Matters. Carmen also has a YouTube channel where she releases weekly Torah Tuesday videos. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Church is not just one more thing to check off on our list of self-improvement. This is, I think, how we often approach church, like Monday I go to the gym, Tuesday I go to the therapist. We think of spirituality as like, now I'm checking the spiritual locks. Instead of, I have committed myself to these people in this place, and together we are becoming something we cannot be on our own. Hey, friends, welcome back to another episode of Theology Draw. My guest today is, once again, Dr. Carmen, Joy, Ims, who has a PhD from Wheaton College. She's Associate Professor of Old Testament at Talbot School, Theology, at Balli University

in Southern California. She's the author of a few books, including the, almost said the Space Trilogy. She's the author of kind of like a biblical theology trilogy. The first book is burying God's name, why Sinai still matters. Second book is Being God's Image, why creation still matters. And her third and recently released book of the trilogy is becoming God's family, Why the Church Still Matters. Carmen also has a YouTube channel where she releases weekly Torah Tuesday videos

would highly recommend checking that out if you're a YouTube kind of person. So really enjoyed this conversation. Carmen is a delight to talk to. super brilliant, knows the Old Testament inside and out, and isn't afraid to wrestle with hard passages. And also she just writes in a very, very accessible way and yet brings scholarly vigor to her writing without you even realizing it because she writes so clearly. So really enjoy this conversation. I think you will too. Please welcome back to the show, the wonder only Dr. Carmen, Joy Iams. Carmen, I'm so good to have you back on

Y'all, I think this is episode either three or four. Maybe it's three. But anyway, I, you know, one thing I so admire about you is that you are clearly a capital S scholar. Like, when I read your stuff, it's just, it's so responsible. You love the academic world, it seems like. Like you probably enjoy reading technical articles on, on the, you know, the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the. check along. But you also have a massive heart for the church. And I shouldn't be surprised. Like any Christian scholars should have that, but you and I both know that's not always true. Can you take us back as far as you want to go? Like when did you really fall in love with the church? I can't remember a time in my life where my life didn't revolve around the church.

And when I think back to my childhood, my parents, my parents never asked on a Sunday morning, should we go today? Like, are we going this week? There was never a question about that. It was just a foregone conclusion. Of course, we're going to church. And when I was growing up, we went Sunday morning and Sunday evening. And we went through a time of kind of wrestling as a family with whether we were in the right church when I was in junior high. And for a while, we were two-timing. We were going to a Christian Reformed church, and then we'd go straight to a wildly charismatic church right after that for their late service, which was a kind of theological whiplash. So I guess that's the closest we came to a deconstruction as a family. My parents were wrestling with whether we were in a place where the Holy Spirit was being given free reign. And eventually we left the CRC and landed in the charismatic church for a season. until it imploded and then we found another church. So I've been part of lots of churches,

but when I look back on my life, I feel really grateful for God putting me in such a wide variety of churches where I could see his beauty and glory on display in so many different ways. I gained from the Christian Reformed Church such a solid handle on theology and on the importance of the Old Testament

and on even liturgy, like the value of liturgy. And then I gained from the charismatic church this love for the work of the Holy Spirit and the possibility of healing and the, and the, this, I think that's where I first experienced that the church could become a family. Because we were going through some, some deeply distressing times in our extended family right about the time that we were starting to visit the charismatic church. And we just felt enfolded into this group of people who loved us so well.

And it was just a different experience from my childhood church. So a lot of people who grew up in a situation like I did where they attended church very regularly go through a period of deep distress or deconstruction over what they received from their parents. And although I've certainly changed my mind about things, I've grown to see the Bible differently than I used to to interpret particular passages differently. I've never been through a time of deep questioning whether church was a good idea or whether the Bible really was supposed to be my authorities. I'm just really grateful for the wide variety of churches I've been able to be a part of. All of them have shaped me. I mean, that's interesting because I know a lot of people that had similar experience, like church was on an option. They went twice a Sunday, three times a Sunday.

But that had like almost a reverse effect. Yeah. they ended up, or people that went through multiple church experiences and that did the opposite. Yeah. So was there something in your own heart or journey that caused that experience to have a positive effect on your view of the church? I think for a lot of people who grow up in the church, if they're forced to go or it's their parents thing and it never really becomes their own, maybe that's part of the process. or if they're in very toxic church environments, you know, that I'm thinking of like extreme forms of purity culture that they're kind of reacting against later or Christian nationalist or

whatever. I think I've been in a string of churches, none of which were perfect, but all of which were relatively healthy. So that's part of it. And I also had a deep sense of calling from the Lord, starting when I was like eight. So for me, it wasn't about, like, I wasn't going because my parents were making me. I was going because it was the thing I wanted as well. So at eight, I volunteered to be a missionary. Like, there was a distinct moment where we had missionaries who came to our church. They were like, hey, we could use some help in West Africa. And I remember very distinctly looking around the room at all of the grownups who were sitting in folding chairs around me and thinking, none of them are going to go. Like literally nobody in this room is going to West Africa. They have houses. They have cars. They have kids. They have jobs. It would be very disruptive for them to go. But like I kind of looked down at myself and went, I'm available. And I could actually organize my life starting right now so that I could be available to do this. And so at eight, I was like, all right, I think I want to be a missionary. And then at 12, this was right at the time when we were when we were two timing in this CRC.

and the Charismatic Church, and I went through a two-week period of time at 12 years old where I felt like the Lord was hounding me with the Great Commission. And everywhere I looked, it was about the Great Commission. So it was a very dramatic time for me. I was in a Christian school. We were memorizing the Great Commission for our memory verse that week. I showed up at the CRC Church and somebody read it as the like scripture reading of the day. Then we went to the Charismatic Church and somebody stood.

up and gave a spontaneous word from the Lord and it was the Great Commission. And then I would flip on Christian radio and they'd be reading it or singing a song about it. I'd open up a book and it would fall open to the page about the Great Commission. I mean, for two weeks, it was like everywhere I looked, there it was. And I felt this unmistakable sense that God was saying, Carmen, I want you to disciple all nations. I want you to be available for this work. Like, this is what I'm calling you to. So all through high school, while my classmates were headed to the mall to look for dates or going to the movies. Like, I was literally home reading missionary biographies and pouring over missionary

newsletters because I knew that's what God was calling me to do. So that nerdiness and that devotion, I think, came because the Holy Spirit had grabbed a hold of me at a young age. And I'm so grateful for it. I was probably insufferable to live with as a teenager. If any of my high school classmates are listening, I apologize for whatever arrogance or difficulty that I exuded in my enthusiasm to become a missionary. But I'm sure that none of them,

precisely none of them are surprised, that I am in full-time ministry to this day, that I'm teaching Old Testament is like right on brand. Did you ever go through any season of doubt? Or de-churched or questioning? Never one that led me away from the church. I went through a deep time of spiritual dryness when right. Ironically, we became missionaries, my husband and I.

We moved to the Philippines. And that was that initiated the driest spiritual season I've ever been through. That was really hard. I felt like, Lord, I've given you my life. I've sold all my things, said goodbye to all my people, and I'm here. and I don't feel you at all. I don't feel your blessing. I don't feel you moving.

I don't know why we came. We feel kind of useless. And that was a really hard time. But it wasn't like I was questioning whether I should be part of the church or should worship God. Like it was still, that was still the only thing I wanted, but I couldn't understand why there wasn't a feeling that came along with it that I was on track. So that was hard. Yeah, yeah. Do you know why that happened?

Was there something in the Philippines, or is it almost inexplicable why you had a season of spiritual drought? I think it was the wonderful grace of God that humbled us. You know, I went thinking I had a lot of answers for people and I had more questions than answers about what does it look like to be useful in another cultural context. I felt like my training didn't match what needed, what the needs were. You know, I came armed with an inductive Bible study method, and I was, you know, working among primary oral learners who may have been literate, but, like, didn't have any books, pens, or paper in their whole household because they, they didn't operate as literate. And I didn't know, I felt like it would have been much better for me to become a nurse and come here,

or a lactation consultant or a micro enterprise, you know, something like Bible isn't what they need. They need to figure out how to make a living and figure out how to raise their children safely and with good nutrition. So it was a definite time of re, of disorientation in terms of my sense of preparedness to do ministry. I saw that the world is far broader and more complex. And this is honestly one reason why I love teaching at Biola so much, because I'm getting to train people for a lifetime of service to Jesus, but they are studying all different majors, including nursing and business. And I can see how my narrow preparation in Bible has turned out to be, like, it's become a wonderful career for me, career path, but I'm so glad to pass on what

I've learned to people who are going out into so many other different careers, because I think that's the sort of edges of gospel ministry is where we're interacting with people in every sphere of life. Yeah, yeah, that's good. That makes sense. Did you go to the Philippines after your Ph.D.? No. No, it was before my master's.

Oh, before you master? Okay, so early on in your journey. Yep. And during your PhD studies, you went to Wheaton, right? Yeah. Yeah. Did you study under Dan Block? I did.

Yeah. Yeah. He's wonderful. He's one of my favorites. I mean, it's not my, yeah. I don't want to. He's great. He's on the short list. He's a great, great mentor. I heard he's incredibly humble, too. He's so humble. Yeah. Yeah. Just very approachable, very full of joy. I knew when I met him, this is the man I want to become like. So I, you know, you become like who you train with. And so I was very picky about who I wanted to study with because I wanted them to have the kind of character that I wanted to emulate, and Dan Block certainly fit the bill. And while I was at Wheaton, I was part of a theological education, a global theological education discussion group where we talked about missions, talked about like bringing theological education globally. And I always assumed that I would do that someday. Okay. And what I didn't realize is that it would be via YouTube and like making resources and, you know, having books translated into other languages, I assumed I'd go places. And I am actually going back

to the Philippines next year for the first time in 20 years to speak at a conference. But I've ended up in Southern California, which was not the original plan. Before that, you were way up and like high up in Canada, right? Yes. I mean, not that high up. Not that high up. So Alberta, you can drive for like 10 hours and still be in Alberta from the U.S. border. just go north for 10 hours, maybe 13 hours before you get to the northern border. And I was only like three hours from the border. So there was lots of Alberta above me. Okay, okay, okay.

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They get exposed all this stuff and also like their worldviews just turned upside down. And some full on, you know, they just go liberal or lose their faith. Others don't go that far, but they might just not come back to like an evangelical view of scripture. One reason I chose to go to Wheaton is because what I saw is that the faculty at Wheaton attended both the evangelical theological theological society meetings and the society of them. biblical literature, which are kind of the two and, you know, the two ends of the spectrum and, theologically. And so they, they were still committed to their evangelical faith and to serving the church, which is what you see at ETS. But they were also quality scholars who can engage at SBL and hold their own and had respect from other scholars at SBL. And I, I was like,

that's what I want to become. I want to become someone who, who can bridge the gap between the Academy in the church, who can bring my faith with me as I do scholarship. And who's not, what I saw at Wheaton was that none of the professors were afraid of the questions being asked at SBL. They engaged the questions without fear, but from a solid commitment to the authority and inspiration of scripture, not in the sense of like kind of an apologetics where like you, you try to prove everybody wrong everywhere you go. But like in a sense of, yeah, there are actually some views, evangelical.

views out there that are just bad views. They're not, they're not consistent with how literature works or how, how textual production worked in the ancient world or how the cultural context should influence us to understand scriptures. So, so I saw them taking on board critical ideas in a judicious way, in a way that didn't rock the boat of their faith, but was kind of in a process of continually revising. And that's what I wanted to be able to do. And I feel like that's been, that has shaped my journey so much because the men and women who teach at Wheaton and who trained me there are scholars who are continually doing this. They're the ones in the zone where I feel called to work. And so when you're in that zone, you tend to be attacked from, you open yourself

up for attack from people on both sides. You're not conservative. enough or you're way too conservative. So I'll have people, I had somebody at SBL tell me a couple years ago, Carmen, you are the most conservative person I have ever met. And my response was, you need to get out more because like, really I'm not. But then I have people at ETS who probably think I'm like the most liberal one walking around at ETS. So it really depends on your context. I have a high view of scripture, but I don't, I don't like fall into a neat and tidy box because I'm always evaluating, like, what's the best way of reading this?

What makes sense of all the evidence? How can I, and always asking the question, how can I live faithfully in response to the scriptures? So I haven't been through a crisis of faith or like a deep doubting of scripture, but it's been a continual remodeling project. Yeah. Like, I haven't taken down the house.

There's been no wrecking ball. But like every room has been remodeled, you know, over and over. So the essential structure is still there. Yeah. Yeah. How would you describe yourself theologically if you grew up CRC, charismatic, gone through all these journeys, been at different schools and everything? Like, do you have a theological tradition or denomination that you fit most in? Or do you feel like it's kind of a hodge budge? I used to say that deep down inside I was probably an Anglican. Okay. But I hadn't ever been to an Anglican church when I said that. And now I'm in Baptist Church, that's we call ourselves liturgical Baptist. So it's sort of like Anglican

light. It's a good fit in a lot of ways. I don't know what I am, Preston. I feel like it's really hard to just find one tradition and say, here's where I belong, because I have an appreciation for parts of every tradition. Over the past year, I've had the chance to speak at a dizzying variety of denominations, like from Southern Baptist to PCA, PCUSA, United Methodist, Global Methodist, Free Will Baptist, I mean, just like men and I, just across the spectrum, it's been so fun. And I feel like I belong in all of them in some way. And yeah, so I don't know if I'll ever find my like perfect home. I feel the exact same way. I mean, given the fact that I've been in kind of Parachurch. type ministries. It's like you. I mean, I echo everything you said. I've spoken at and rub shoulders with and become friends with so many, probably up to 20 different denominations. And most churches I speak at, I find something of several things that I absolutely love. And maybe some other things like, well, I probably wouldn't do it that way, but whatever. It's, it's, but I find so many

things to embrace and celebrate in the diverse expressions of the Christian faith. I am a real fan of the Global Methodist Church, which is just emerging like the United Methodist Church just split over the issue of same-sex marriage. So those embracing same-sex marriage are staying with the United Methodist and the Global Methodist is the group that's broken off and said, we want to stay faithful to the historic definition of marriage between a man and a woman. we believe in the work of the Holy Spirit and we believe in being global. So I love the way it truly is a global movement.

They ordain women and have women in leadership. They, again, room for the Holy Spirit. They're Wesleyan. So probably, like, if I was like picking from a list of denominations global Methodists would be a really good home for me. But there doesn't happen to be one right where I live. Yeah.

So. I've never heard of, I don't think. I think I've heard of global Methodist, but I know about the split. I mean, it's only about two years old. Okay. Now, why do, so why, how is that different than the free Methodists? Because they would be on the traditional side of marriage? You know what?

I, I don't know. I'm not an expert in the history of Methodism, but we did attend a United Methodist Church for six years when we lived in Charlotte. And it was a very gospel-centric authority of scripture kind of Methodist church. and a mega church. So that was actually a wonderful experience, but then when we left there to go on for the Ph.D., the pastor said, beware of Methodist churches, because most of them are sliding left really quickly. And so we haven't been part of a Methodist church since then.

Okay, okay. So you've written, is this your third book, Becoming God's Family? It's my third book for IVP. Yeah. Okay. And is it technically part of a trilogy? I know you use that language in here or I know Esau who wrote the forward used the language. Referred to the trilogy. Yeah. Yeah. I'd call it a trilogy. I didn't set out to write a trilogy. I set out to write one book about my dissertation, then had the idea for the second book. And then pretty quickly was like, yeah, there's one more that really, like I really need to say this too. Can you give us a 30 second summary of your first two? And then I would love for you to let's linger on the. one that just came out? Yeah, so the first one is bearing God's name, why Sinai still matters. It's

the distillation of what I learned in my doctoral dissertation on the command not to take the Lord's name in vain, which I argue is really about God placing his name on his people so that they become his representatives among the nations. So I have a missional reading of this command that I think makes better sense of the literary and historical context. And so that was like me trying to take what I learned and disseminate it to Christians in the pew who need to understand their identity and vocation as Christ's followers. After it came out, I realized, you know, my bearing God's name starts in mid-exodus and takes us through revelation, but there's stuff that comes before that in the Bible that I think Christians really need help with too. So then I wrote being God's

image, why creation still matters, kind of as a way of helping us understand the nature of our embodiment. So I understand the image of God to mean that we are three-dimensional, like we're embodied representatives of the presence of God on earth. We've been commissioned to represent God's rule across creation. And so creation still matters because the resurrection is coming. God is going to make all things new. So I'm tracing the theme of what it means to be human. And when I got done with that, I realized, you know, you could read both of these books and think it's all about me. I'm the image of God I bear God's name

and I realize that in the West we really need to recover the collectivist nature of scripture we don't read the Bible if we're white Westerners we don't read it as talking about us

we tend to read it thinking about me and I wanted to put the accent on the community of faith that God is forming into which his presence can dwell So I was realizing as we went through COVID, so the first book came out just before COVID hit, I wrote the second one during COVID, and what I noticed so that you can see how a book about embodiment would have come out of the COVID years, because we're doing all this virtual stuff, Zoom and Riverside, all the things, all the ways we connect digitally. And I realized, like, we need to make the case for what are our bodies for? Why do they matter? But the other thing that really it put the accent on, COVID put the accent on, is it matters that we gather together.

It isn't all about me. It's about what God is making us into collectively. And I wanted to help people see that the global church has so much to offer us in seeing how the Bible is telling the story of a community, not an individual. For example, when God sets his people free from Egypt, he's not just giving them a get out of jail. free card and then just sending them on their merry way to kind of go live your best life now. Like, do whatever you want to do. It's not, it's not self-determination that they're walking into. It's, they're going from serving Yahweh, sorry, from serving Pharaoh to serving Yahweh. And they are, they're coming under his lordship. They're becoming his servants and they're being brought into a community. They camp together around the presence of God. They don't

go off on their own. And I think that we live in a time when so many Christians have become disillusioned with the church I've walked away from the church have just been like I don't I still believe but I don't need I don't need other people to follow Jesus and I don't think the Bible actually has a category for a believer who doesn't connect with other believers like it's just an anomaly in scripture

so I wanted to to woo people my hope my prayer for this book is that it wooes people back there are there are a lot of reasons people have left the church. Some of it is just like life is full and I need a morning to sleep in and it's just like a lot of energy to go and I'd rather have a morning to myself. Some of it is I am turned off by the hypocrisy, the cover up of abuse, the toxic leadership styles. There's actually really good reasons that people have become disillusioned with the church. And I'm trying to paint a hopeful picture of what we can become, what healthy church should look like or can look

like, and to re-energize us to engage again and to discover what we've been missing. You work, I mean, you teach that. You teach undergrad and seminary or just undergrad? I do. Yeah, both. So you're, okay, so at least I would assume the seminary, it's not going to be as much of this. True. Church people, you know, like, I imagine undergrad, you, you, you, you probably have all kinds of students with all kinds of perspectives on the church. We have a lot of students who are all in and they're very committed to the church. And probably, I mean, I haven't like gone around and gotten people's face and asked them, do you actually go to church?

Are you part of a church? What church are you part of? I don't follow them around. But I suspect that many of them think, why should I go to church? I already go to chapel. Yeah, right. My spiritual needs are being met. I've already checked that box.

Right. And I have a little section towards the end of the book on why chapel doesn't replace church, kind of a word to Christian college students, because I think it's so essential that we become part of an intergenerational multicultural family and that goes through all this, all across the entire lifespan. Chapel's cool, but it doesn't replace church because it's not baptizing people, it's not, there's no celebration of communion or very rare. in chapel. It's not a community that's committed for life. These are the students who happen to show up this week. Right, right. Yeah. I felt that when I was in my Christian College days. And to think about Christian College chapels is typically, I mean, just to peel back the curtain a little bit, I mean, most Christian colleges have a really big budget to ship in some of the best speakers and, you know, the worship is engaging. You're with all your friends. The speaking

usually is really dynamic. And I remember feeling like I'd go to church on Sunday after going to chapel. We were required to go three days a week at Masters, Master's College, now, university. And I mean, to be, I guess it's been, what, 30 years. I could probably admit this now, but it was kind of a letdown, you know? Yeah. To go to church. Yeah. It's like, well, I just heard John Piper on Friday and like R.C. Sproll on Wednesday. And now, you know, and, and, had a great pastor. He's a great preacher, but he wasn't John Piper. I mean, maybe some people are like, thank God. Most of them aren't. This is, I think, part of what COVID did is since you're at home watching church online, like, why watch your

pastor when you could watch Andy Stanley? Right. And he is a lot better communicator and way more engaging. And so I think it actually, there were some benefits because it extended, you know, so many churches up to their game in terms of technology. And, made it possible for people who are homebound to connect. But at the same time, it opened up this, why go to my own church when I could tune into any church? And then our standards for what a good sermon should entail just went way up. Yeah, yeah.

And so now the average pastor is like, how do I ever measure up to that? I've gone back and forth on whether that's a good thing or bad thing. I used to think that was a bad thing. And maybe it is. But part of me also is like, I don't know. Like, if pastors are preaching kind of mediocre sermons, and they just feel like, well, I just need to keep, this is what I need to keep doing. Like, I do want to up the bar a little, a little bit.

Sure. But then you can't, if the, if the standard is, why I've access to the 10 best communicators in the world, it's like, well, nobody's going to match up to that, you know? Right. I don't know. It's hard. One of the things that's missing when you're tuning in on YouTube to listen to a preacher is that is not somebody who knows you. They're not walking with you through the seasons of life.

They're not going to show up when you're hospitalized. And they're not listening to the Lord or your congregation. And I think good preaching is not just delivering material, like delivering content, but it's actually loving these people in this place by listening to God on behalf of these people. and helping to shepherd us through this season. And so, yes, you can learn something on YouTube, but you can't be loved by YouTube or by the preacher on YouTube. And so I think we need to reevaluate what is actually,

what are we supposed to be doing on a Sunday morning? And if you think, well, I go to church to learn something new or to be entertained in a way, like to have my ears tickled, then you could easily be like, well, yeah, this church isn't doing it for me. Right. But what if it's we gather not to learn something new, but to be prodded back to faithfulness?

I rarely learn something new on a Sunday morning. Yeah. Especially not when the preacher is preaching on my book, which is what happened. The preaches on the Old Testament. I mean, yeah, literally this past Sunday I heard a sermon on bearing God's name, and it was on my book and they quoted me. So I didn't learn something new, but I was taking notes feverishly because it was so beautiful to hear how this speaker was addressing this congregation and what he thought the takeaways would be.

Like he did things with bearing God's name that I've never done before, and I've preached on it many times in lots of different contexts. But he was listening to the Lord for this moment, these people in this moment, and helping them, you know, his emphasis, was on what names have you been carrying that you need to lay down? Like, what have you been called or what have you told yourself about who you are? And you're leaning into that rather than into the name God gave you to carry. And that was a beautiful application that I've never really leaned into as I've spoken on the book before. So even showing up to a church service where someone is literally preaching on my scholarship, I still walked away, prodded to become more like Jesus.

So for me, it isn't about learning something new. It's about listening to God together, showing up and waiting for the Holy Spirit to show up and do what the Holy Spirit does. And my favorite part of Sunday was the guy next to my husband told him during the greeting time that this is the only church he's ever attended and he's been coming for three months.

And he's just like brand new, like, okay, I'm here. I'm here. Like, what's this Christian thing? And I love that. There's across the nation, there is a resurgence of people returning to church, which is exactly what I've been praying for. And what I hope is that this book will help re-ignite our vision of what is it we're doing. We're not here to entertain this guy who's just shown up.

He wants an encounter with the living God. And we're gathering with him so that we can all encounter the living God. And that doesn't happen in the same way at home on your couch because you're by yourself. Okay, I'm turning 50 years old next year. I can't believe it. And I'm already feeling the effects of aging. I mean, our bodies simply make less energy as we get older. But now you can help recharge the batteries of your cells by taking Motipure's longevity gummies, which transform cellular damage into energy by delivering six times more your lithium A than a glass of pomegranate. Motipure is the only Euro-Lithian A supplement on the market clinically proven to target the effects of age-related cellular decline, and now you can take this powerful supplement in gummy form. That's right, the first ever longevity gummies powered by mitapur make it easier to put energy into your day. The longevity gummies will increase your sustained energy, boosts muscle endurance, and support faster recovery after exercise.

If you want to stay strong and energized now as you age, then you have to try these mitochondria gummies. And my friends over at Timeline are offering my listeners a free sample of the new Might Appear Gummies. Just head over to Timeline.com forward slash theology gummies to get started. That's timeline.com forward slash theology gummies. Your sales will thank you. What would you say to somebody that would say? Okay, all that sounds good. On paper, I might agree, but Maybe they go to a church and they struggle to even kind of follow the message, you know, it doesn't feel particularly relevant or even impactful.

And they have a couple superficial conversations, if at all, once a quarter, they might take a shot of grape juice and a wafer in a massive setting. They have baptisms once a year, you know? So it's like, I don't know. Like, if I was being honest with myself, I'm just speaking for this person. And this person is listening. I'm sure. I don't know. I've like convinced myself that this is actually worth the hour and a half of my week. Is it just like check off my box? And I was physically in a room with other

believers. And, you know, once in a while we did a sacrament. Is that like, do they just stick it out and stay in this? This is such a good question. And I think there's a couple of ways to get at an answer. One is to say, church is not just one more thing to check off. on our list of self-improvement programs. Like, this is, I think, how we often approach church. Like, Monday, I go to the gym. Tuesday, I go to the therapist. Wednesday, I show up at my AA group.

Thursday. Like, we have all these different areas of life that we are checking off. You know, I go to book club. We think of spirituality as, like, now I'm checking the spiritual box. instead of I have committed myself to these people in this place and together we are becoming something we cannot be on our own. And so I think if we bring ourselves to church recognizing this mysterious thing that God is doing to knit us together, it will reset our expectations. If you're showing up, walking in and walking out without really connecting with other people,

then I would say something is wrong. And it probably needs to, to, like, probably you need to recommit yourself to engaging with people while you're there. And this can be challenging because not everybody is chatty. But show up early. Hang around afterwards. Don't just jet out of there. Look around to see people who you haven't met before. Welcome them.

Like, you don't have to be an official greeter to be someone who extends welcome to those who walk through the door. And that can kind of begin creating a culture. of connection, it's, I think, really important that we gather with smaller groups of believers throughout the week. So joining a small group or a Bible study or something where you're going to have more life on life getting to know each other is that helps the big gathering because you're going to see people that you actually know better and are doing life with. The other thing to say is that church is not primarily about what we get out of it, but it's about what it's doing to us and what we're bringing to contribute. Every believer has something to contribute. The New Testament says

that we are gifts to one another, gifts to the body of Christ, and that we're to be there to build one another up. Everyone brings particular strengths that they can offer to the group that the group is impoverished without it. And so it's not just about, okay, is this scratching where I'm itching? But what are you bringing with you to offer? Whether that's an official role, my mom is someone who doesn't want to sign up to work in the nursery or to make sandwiches for the, you know, whatever event, or to lead a thing. What she really thrives at and where she's offering the most benefit is when she's,

She shows up early and stays late just to connect with people and just to love people. And she's watching the room like, oh, so-and-so seems down today. And she'll go over in it and ask them how their week was and offer to pray with them. Or, oh, look, so-and-so has somebody new with them. I'm going to go meet this new person. And, oh, there's the person who had surgery last week. I'm going to see how it went. And so she does a lot of shepherding in the time before and after the service.

She's not on any official list anywhere. But that's the gift she's bringing with her to the church. And I think all of us have something to bring. Yeah. I guess that's what an amazing example of how we should all be. That's your talk and I started feeling convicted. Good, good. Yeah, no, it's good.

This is not about me. It's about us. I used to have more of that. But is it age? is it, I feel emotionally spent a lot of times because my whole week is like you. It's like you do. People, people, people. Yeah, just ministry or just output, output.

And sometimes you just kind of come in on Sunday. It's like I'm just kind of exhausted. Like I need a break from output. And if that's the case, maybe what that means is we need to cut back throughout the week so that we have energy to bring to this group of people that we're committed to. Yeah, that's good. I mean, it's part of it, what you're saying could be tough in a bigger kind of multi-service thing where people are almost programmed to come sit, listen and disturb, leave, because we've got to get another service in.

Yep. And I'm not. Got to empty the parking lot, make room for more cars. Right. And I do think there is a natural danger in large churches that it becomes consumer. and you know, you're there to just absorb at as a, as an observer instead of as a participant. There are, I think it is possible to have a large church where you're involved and that might be signing up to greet people at the door or lead a small group or serve in the nursery or something.

No. It's like you have to find a smaller community within the bigger church. I love, I love small local churches where nothing flashy is going on. They haven't rebranded. They haven't tried, you know, updating their logo and, like, having some, like, new launch or whatever. They're just faithfully serving Jesus and plotting along. And sometimes the best family connections. Like, the church is really becoming family in places like that. Because when you don't show up, they notice you're not there. Yeah. Yeah, we're at a small. We recently switched over to another church. It's a really small church, 80 to 100. Oh, wow. Nice. And there are zero bells and whistles. It's kind of refreshing to just go analog. Everybody has their different preferences. So this is purely just my own.

But I just, I'm so kind of done with bells and whistles. I don't know. Like it's just almost like. With a tightly scripted like we have a two minute intro and then we have a three minute for this. And then there is something beautiful about a low key community that's just trying to show up and love each other well. Yeah. And this one does. This one is, it really is a big family. A lot of kind of people that are de-churched, they were kind of going to give church one last try. And they two were done

with the stage and lights and everything. So you have a lot of people that are there intentionally, you know. Yeah, it's been, it's been great. It's been refreshing. And they meet like in the afternoon at 3 p.m. So I don't have to worry about getting up early. Nice. You still get to sleep in. It's actually hard, though, because my family, we're pretty. active, we like to do things. And especially during the summer, come 3 p.m., we're at the river, we're on a hike, we're swimming, we're doing something. And it's like, oh, wait, we've got to, we're going to go to church still. It's like, oh, we've got to regroup, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's pros and cons. But, um, so yeah, your book is, uh, I am a few chapters in.

Um, it is, it's almost like a, it's almost like just like a summary of the biblical story. Like, I know it has a theme becoming God's family while the church still matters. Yeah. And that theme is there. But it's, I feel like I'm re-learning the storyline of scripture. Is that kind of like the, yeah? I mean, it is a story lot of scripture becoming God's family. And all three books do this.

All three books trace a theme through the Bible. And so they're all three works of biblical theology. So this might be a surprise to some people. They look at the title to think, oh, this is going to be a practical book about how to do church. Yeah. Well, it does have practical implications, but I really am trying to take you through scripture to see, look, God's family of faith has always mattered. Yeah. God has always intended to work in and through us as we gather and become family with each other.

And sometimes we royally screw that up, and we end up becoming sources of harm instead of of healing. And look what God does when that happens. And here's an example of where there were a few faith. faithful people and a bunch of people went off the rails theologically and they're dabbling in the wrong things and look at the result of that. And so I say at one point this book is less like a bag of microwave popcorn

and more like a crock pot meal. Yeah. It's like a slow cook. If you want to get to the part where you can see a vision for what the church should be, you have to work through a lot of examples in scripture that show what didn't go well and what could have gone better.

Yeah. Yeah. And then we get to the part where I say, okay, what would it look like if we gathered and sort of reframed the reason for our gathering? Not as the dissemination of information, not as the checking a spiritual box, but as actually gathering together to wait for God to break in and do something among us that we cannot do for ourselves. So we come to worship, to hear the word preached, to participate in God's work, but undergirding all. all of that, we're coming to wait for Christ's return. Hmm. If you see me looking down, it's because I'm writing a question that something you said just pinged me. So I don't want people that think I'm not paying attention. It didn't look like that to me. I'm like off text. I always forget they say that they guess and I always wonder if they see me looking down

or they think I'm getting bored. I'm not. You were on Facebook scrolling. No, no, I could see you were writing. The book is, here's what I love most about it is it's, it's so accessible. Like if you're listening right now and he's been a Christian for like half a year and you don't like to read books and they're like, oh my gosh, I'm a scholar writing a book, this book is so easy to follow.

And yet, you're an academic, you're an academic. You have a PhD in Old Testament. And what's, what I love about it is it's just like you're just surveying, you just pulling together stuff in such an accessible way, but then you'll drop these scholarly nuggets in throughout. Like, I was just reading this morning how, and I, I mean, I didn't even know this, not that I'm the standard or anything, but like the, the, um, Ark of the Covenant was modeled after, like the same shape and size and, and all, everything.

The technology. The technology of the Ark of the Covenant was, was, was, was, it's similar to the one that Ramsey's the second, the Pharaoh of the Exodus had as well. Yeah. Yeah. This is something that's pretty new to me as well, that I learned after going to Egypt, seeing a bunch of artifacts, and then reading more widely about Egypt as I work on my Exodus commentary, that the size and shape and the proportions of the tabernacle mimic the proportions of Ramsey's the Seconds war tent for the Battle of Kadesh. And we know this because he put it on like 10 different monuments in his lifetime that have survived to this day. So he was very proud of this battle. It's the most publicized battle in all of human history. This was like his crowning achievement. And if the Israelites left Exodus during the reign of Ramsey's the second, which I think is most likely, then they would have seen this and heard this proclaimed and it was told about on all these monuments.

And then the particular technology that they used to make the Ark of the Covenant mimics Egyptian technology. from that time period. So no other culture was making wooden boxes covered with gold foil put on carrying poles. But this is what they were doing in Egypt during this particular time. So the more I study Exodus, the more I just am like gobsmacked by it. It's such a great book. So the Arch of the Covenant, there are similarities. But there's also like ideological differences.

Yes. Can you? And you tease those out kind of briefly in the book. I would love for you to dive into that. So in Egypt, they're carrying these boxes on poles and on top of the box is either a model of Pharaoh or of a deity. So they parade their deities around like they would take the gods from their temple to go visit gods in another temple. Like regularly, they parade them through the streets. And the difference with Israel's Ark of the Covenant is there's no deity on top.

There's cherubim, which are these winged protectors around the deity, like that give them. homage and honor to the deity. So that matches Egyptian context where there's always these winged protectors on the box as well, or often, and especially when it's inscribed in stone monuments, like on temple walls, you'll see these winged creatures on top. So it mimics what they would expect to see, but there's a blank spot where you would expect to see a statue of Yahweh. And Yahweh doesn't put a statue there because he doesn't want to be represented by wooden stone. stone and metal, because he has already chosen us as his representatives, his images. And so there's this beautiful connection point with Genesis and the concept of us being God's image, even in

the construction of the tabernacle. It's, God uses cultural conventions that are meaningful to them in order to show them how he's different from Egyptian gods. That's so good. So where is the arc are they coming up buried today? Do you have an opinion on this? So, I'm, I think most likely, okay, most likely it was captured by the Babylonians and melted down and carried, you know, the metal was carried back to Babylon. I don't think it's anywhere. I could be wrong. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church claims to have it in their possession, but we can't verify whether they do because they won't let anyone see it. So there's a whole, like, hundreds of years of, like a particular family of priests that have,

that devote their entire lives to guarding the Ark of the Covenant. And it's very central in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. So maybe they have it. The idea was that perhaps the Queen of Sheba maintained a long-term relationship with the kingdom of Israel. And so when Israel was under threat, when Judah was under threat of being attacked somebody whisked away the Ark of the Covenant for safekeeping to someone in Ethiopia, ancient Kush, it's possible. We just can't verify it because they won't let anyone see it.

So the Ethiopian Orthodox Church doesn't just say it's buried somewhere here. They say we have it. No, they say they have it. It's like they have a particular location and it's like carefully guarded. And every Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a replica of the ark and their whole worship service is kind of centered around the ark. So it's become like their main symbol. So they may have it or the Babylonians may have melted it down.

Can you pull an Indiana Jones and go sneak in and... If you want your face to melt. Best answer ever. So you mentioned Pharaoh Ramsey's second as the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Now, few people might have caught this, but that would late date the Exodus. There's a debate about the date of the Exodus, whether it's late 15th century, what, 14, 46 or something. Yeah, that's the early date or like 1250 or something. Yeah.

Is that something you've looked into? Have you studied that? Oh, yes. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm writing a commentary on Exodus, so I have to deal with it. Can you give us just a quick for those who aren't familiar with the debate?

a 101 level summary and so the early date is the traditional date held to by evangelicals so this would be one of the rooms of my house that I've remodeled

okay because in kings when when Solomon dedicates the temple the text says it was 480 years after Israel's

arrival in Egypt and I think arrival so if you do the math if that puts you back to 14. No, that that's leaving Egypt. So 480 years since they left Egypt, I think. Sorry, sorry, I'm like working from memory here. Yeah. It's first king 6-1, right? Thank you. Yes. So if you take that passage literally as a literal reckoning of time back to the Exodus, then you have to have a

date in the 1400s because we know when Solomon founded the temple. Like within a decade, we've got the date. So the reason why I would cast out on that is because the number it gives is such a stylized number 480 is like 12 times 40 so which are both biblical numbers if you take a generation to be 40 years and this is 12 generations kind of stacked up so I think there are reasons to suggest that that number is giving an idealized or stylized account of history rather than a strictly calendar reckoning. So the reason why I think the late date is more likely is because there's all kinds of correspondences between the way things are described in Exodus and the realities during the time of Ramsey's the 2nd. For example, the Israelites are said to live in Pitham and Ramsey's.

And you could say, well, they just renamed it later. So the author of Exodus is using the name from later in time and updating it later. So if the Israelites came out in the 1400s, Ramsey's wasn't the Pharaoh then. So wherever they lived, just updated the name later. That doesn't actually work because the city of Pi Ramsey's was built by SETI, the first. Ramsey is the second's father, was occupied during the time of Ramsey's, and then became unused after that. So the branch of the Nile that brought it water had silted up.

And so they actually like picked up and moved elsewhere, took all of the, the monuments and move them else where there's no people living there anymore. So it had a very narrow window of occupation, and the spot's been found. So to say that it's just an updating of a name later doesn't make sense because later that city didn't exist anymore and because it didn't exist previously. So the Israelites couldn't have lived there in the 1400s because it didn't exist yet. So that's one example among many that scholars point to to say that it fits this date better, the date of Ramsey's the second. Okay.

This was the topic of a paper I wrote way back in undergrad when I was living and studying in Israel. And I got obsessed with this issue. So this is so much fun for me to hear you come back. Oh, yeah. I mean, you're just like jogging all right. So David Falk has a book on the Ark of the Covenant in its Egyptian context. And I would highly recommend it because what I shared about the technology of the arc I got from him. And he makes a really compelling case for why it has to be the late date,

why earlier date just doesn't work archaeologically or with the other sort of things that we see that correspond to history in the book of Exodus. now if you do uh here i'm going i'm jogging my memory you're jogging my memory um one of the pushbacks or not put not even pushback which kind of problems is if you late date it then you then you kind of you kind of crunch the time period of the judges into like 150 200 years or something yes and i would well they just you just have to say they overlap and they did yeah i i i see them as localized like the the narratives of of of the The judges are not, they're not giving a national history. They're showing us local leaders in a period where they were more fragmented.

And so they're overlapping. And that whole period is just a dumpster fire, basically. But these are like snapshots of things going on. Right. And doesn't the archaological record is so tricky. It's highly disputed. It seems like every dating and ends up being questioned 20 years later and stuff. So you have, like, Kathleen Kenyon's famous for saying Jericho wasn't around in the 1400s.

And then Rick Hess responds saying, well, I think I haven't studied deeply yet, Kathleen Kenyon's work. But I think one of the claims that archaeologists make is if it's a late date, Jericho wasn't a big city to be conquered. So if the Israelites are arriving there in the mid-1200s, like how is the story of the walls falling down at Jericho even happening? Because there's not a bustling metropolis there. And I would argue with Rick Hess that, no, it was a small military outpost. And so it was more of a symbolic victory than like an actual, like massive military victory. It's like they are winning their first battle and it's very exciting because it's their first one.

the text doesn't actually claim that there's a you know 100,000 residents or something right there's another archaeologist Bryant Wood who question uh Kathleen Kenyon in her dating because as you know you date um again I'm everybody please fact check everything I'm saying because I'm going back on 30 years memory but um he you know you you date the destruction cities oftentimes based on the style of pottery that is embedded in the destruction layer. Yeah. And Bryant Wood was, he did his PhD on mycine pottery or something. Anyway, he, he analyzed her pottery, the tool for determining the date.

And he said she's getting it all wrong or whatever. And so he said it actually is compatible with an early date, I believe. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, there's so much. Yeah, the archaeology, the numbers. Do you think, sorry, while I have you, well, we're off topic. Did two million Israelites come out of Egypt? Have you wrestled with this? Because the archaeological record across the board says there's no way. Yeah. There were, there were an, there were, the estimate for the population of Egypt at the time of the Exodus, if you take the late date, is 2.2 million people. So if you've got two million of those are, Israelites leaving. That's like way out of balance. And you don't have two evidence of two million

people in Canaan at the time when the conquest is happening. So I talk about this briefly in bearing God's name. I have a short section on the number of the Exodus. And this would be another room of my house that I remodeled. I don't believe that the Bible, there are a number of proposals that are out there to try to explain what's going on. Some people say the numbers has been exaggerated, maybe exaggerated times 10 for emphasis, maybe that it reflects the population during the time of Solomon as a way of theologically saying, all of you were the people that God brought out of Egypt. I actually think that the best explanation is that it's a mistranslation, that our English Bibles have mistranslated the Hebrew, because Hebrew doesn't use numerals, it uses words for

numbers. And so it reads 600 LF men without children came out of Egypt. So just counting the men, there were 600 LF, and an LF can mean a thousand, but in many cases it doesn't. And it often is used to just to indicate a military unit or a clan. So you have, and the military units would have been clan based. So you have all the men from a particular clan are called up to battle. You'd have between six and 15 men from that clan that are of fighting age. So if you have 600 military units that are clan based, you end up with a total of about 6,000 men. So if you average 10 men per military unit, 600 groups of 10 would be 6,000 men plus 6,000 women plus however many children they had, you're around 20,000, up to 25,000 Hebrews leaving Egypt rather than

rather than 2 million. So that actually works with the population of Egypt. It works with the population of Canaan. It works with the amount of time it would take to cross the Sea of Reeds in one night with that many people. It works with like sustaining being sustained on food and, you know, manna and water in the wilderness. Like there's a lot of problems that dissolve when you revise the number. And of course the fear that some people have is, Why are you diminishing the miraculous thing that God did in Egypt?

And I would like to say, what is not miraculous about 25,000 people being set free from slavery at the same time? Because I'm pretty sure international justice mission, it has never released that many slaves at once, you know, doing a sting operation. So I think that it's still a tremendous miracle and that we have in our English Bibles exaggerated the number because we didn't understand the Hebrew text. And now there's this long tradition of it. And that fits for all the specific, really specific numbers for the tribes in the book of numbers. Like that LF applies to each one of those kind of. It does. It's interesting.

There's never a number in the one's place. And there's like certain, I don't have it in front of me. But statistically speaking, this doesn't work as thousands. there there it doesn't solve my approach does not solve all of the issues with numbers and I hope that someone will do a dissertation on this and really figure it out once and for all it seems like the misunderstanding of it as thousand goes back quite far and some of what we see might reflect that so even the septuagint is taking it as thousand rather than military unit so so it's it's not like a complete home run And this just it miraculously solves everything all at once. But I think it's a better solution than any of the other ones that I've heard. Well, if you take the traditional $2 million, I mean, it's not like you're up against every piece of historical literary and archaeological data, which isn't inspired. You know, there's problems there.

But it's like, I mean, last time I checked, I think they said the most, the highest possible number of people living in Canaan. a route with the time when they would have entered was like 80 to 100,000. And that's like pushing it as far as you can possibly. And so if there were two million Israelites, why were they afraid of the Canaanites? Right. They would just overrun them. If there were two million, why is it a really big deal that Pharaoh's got 600 chariots coming after them? There's two million of them. Like that's not very many. They can crush that in a moment. So there's a lot of internal evidence in the Bible. Just aside from archaeology, there's a lot of internal indications that two millions is not the right number.

Okay. So this is a good example of what we talked about at the beginning, like, of the kind of process of rethinking or revising what you've been taught in evangelical spaces. And this is the kind of work that I love doing, saying, how do we take scripture seriously? It's authoritative. I would even say it's inerrant. And yet, the history of interpretation has been riddled with errors. So how can we get back?

behind that to see what scripture is really claiming and then and then put that in its historical and cultural context. Okay. Again, the book is becoming God's family. Why the church, why the church still matters. I encourage you to pick up Carmen Ims' book. And yeah, thanks again for being a guest on the algebra, Carmen. Really appreciate it. Yes, so glad to be here. Thanks for the fun conversation. Thank you.