Rohadi: Pastor Trey. So before this episode airs I will be playing the children's song, the BIBL. E. That is the book for me. I don't know if there are any remixes of that cult classic. But we're going to talk about your book that I don't know if you interrogate. Is that the right word? But you bring the Bible to life in new imagination. Trey: There we go, there we go. Oh, yeah, II think part of it is an interrogation, but not interrogated for the sake of interrogating, interrogated for the sake of familiarity and intimacy, you know. a relationship that changes from one of distant reverence to intimate transformation. Rohadi: there are words that we often use as Christians, or that we've heard preached from the pulpit. and some of them need to be reclaimed. Because for a lot of folks, especially in the deconstruction crowd, they have a complicated relationship with Scripture, a complicated relationship with the Bible, and you are giving us pivot points to reclaim and embody expansive imagination. I feel like you used my imagination in the book. I could be wrong! Trey: a lot. Yeah, yeah. Like one of one of 2 towns, probably like one of 2 towns. Maybe. Rohadi: I mean, I think I read it. Yeah, more than more than happy to endorse your book. Welcome to the show. We kicked off, but let's slow down and, intro. You are one of the few guests that have been on this show more than once. Trey: That's the way it's supposed to be. I feel like I'm home here. Let them know to me like. I'm regular like II am. I am here. Rohadi: Yeah, it's like you never left. Trey: Yes, sir. Rohadi: Every guest that comes to the show I asked them to situate themselves to the land. So where I've already alluded to, where you're at. If you want the full intro of trey. Then you're going to hit up the earlier episode. I probably should have had the number, whatever. Where are you situated, and whose lands. Do your feet touch right now Trey: Fo sho. I'm in Homestead, Florida. That's the southern portion of Miami Dade County. The lands of the Seminole, Mikasooki, Muskogo, Taino, and sequest peoples, many of whom are still here holding it down like they never left this beautiful thing. Rohadi: We're gonna center around your book, your debut book. I bet you're gonna come back on for a third time for all the next books that you're gonna write, but also for all the different ideas of how you approach publishing. That's a different show on this show. We're gonna be talking about theologizin bigger. Homilies on living freely and loving holy. So I want to approach your debut. Congratulations man. I'm so excited for how many people are. Gonna pick this one up because there is within contained within gems Rohadi: again, I'm going to keep using the word imagination that we don't often pick up in in Christian land, especially on these shores of Turtle Island. Where we are given permission to think and live in life-giving ways, and you're bringing forward to the center. I hope the new center. These different ways of thinking and being within both Christian faith, but also reclamation of sorts of the stories in the Bible or the Bible most confidently. Trey: Yeah, I appreciate not only your congratulations, but your help at every step of the way, long before theologizing bigger was a concept. You helped me out as a friend and and as an author that I was aspiring to be in terms of showing me the ropes and a few different things you didn't hesitate to lend your voice when we were looking for endorsers. I appreciate that you were the very first person to actually leave a review on good reads, or you're the first one and I will not easily forget the support and the enthusiasm that you've shown, not only for me as an author and a creator, but as a friend every step of the way. So I appreciate you. Bro. Rohadi: Man, the the pleasure is all mine. Thanks for pumping my tires there. I didn't even know I was showing up. I was just like this dude. I've got to get behind the ideas that you have, and you also have a way of interacting with folks online, which I think is is the antithesis. Now, no, it's not the antithesis, because that puts it on the same spectrum compared to the the regular Theo Bro online. Your response is...very pastoral in a way, but cutting to the heart of the matter with a sense of comedic delivery and I think that is life giving cause you give people a chance to walk, to walk away intact. With maybe their dignity. But you will put the lot blast check out Trey's Twitter, for example. And you you turned all that stuff into a book. Not all of it. But you brought every chapter it has like a tweet or something. Trey: Yeah, most definitely. Then that was shout out to to jazz Robertson, who who was like, Hey, you need to write a book, and I was like, I don't have anything right. She was like you just turn your tweets into a book, and II struck the middle ground there. But yeah, I gotta. I gotta stay true to me. Cause at the end of the day I'm not just this stack of theories and theologies. I'm a person who does a lot of thinking things that I nature. And there are people who desire me to show up a certain way like, Oh, I can only be me and you can approach me as something other than me at your own peril. But at the end of the day you will get me in fullness right, and I am somebody who is at once dedicated to the wholeness of my brothers and sisters, my siblings in Christ and creation, and someone who is very comfortable in my own skin. Right? I don't necessarily crave or need validation from Internet strangers who don't seem particularly enjoyable to begin with, and sometimes that call us away. These these interactions go, you know why they like that. Rohadi: Nobody is inviting them to the parties. Trey: Yeah, you know it. It ain't gotta be that way. You you don't, you don't. Jesus did not die and raise on the third day for people to be out here living like losers out loud, you know. That's a choice. You don't. You don't have to live your life like a Herb, and I don't mean losers positionally in society like the your social location. I mean for you to be out here just taking Ls, just because you don't know how to interact nicely. That's a choice. You don't have to do that anymore. There's freedom on the other side of this, right? Like I made myself really easy to love. God made me really easy to love how to do the hate thing. I'm better at it than you. Rohadi: and and I think that you. You translate that approach and to almost a game in that. If you want to play a game when it comes, and it's sticking with this whole Theo Bro or Christianity perspectives, theology. As you have stated in the book, that you are theologian, you are trained. You got the degrees like I am qualified right? And I'm think of my interactions with friends as well dude like the audacity you have to come on deck to me with Scriptures, with ideas. and your approach in response is one that plays a similar use the term again game. So whenever there's a controversy, a particular theological opinion you're using the same tools of Scripture and understanding and theology to come in many respects to very different places or conclus, and one that typically grants life rather than takes it away. And I wonder if, like a lot of the interactions that you have is just a mounting frustration in folks who who's worldview is starting to get chipped away. Foundational block by foundational block. Have you seen it in in kind of that lens? Trey: Yeah, most definitely, because it's not a secret that I am a bit of a provocateur at times, right? And it is grading partially because I'm a black man who says it does what he wants to do right. I'm I'm not ignorant to that fact. There are some people who naturally, whether or not they're able to name these things. They view my position as one of catching up. Trey: I'll I always. They want me to prove my theological bona fide, because there's this inherent belief that black theology is inherently deficient right? And what frustrates a lot of people is that I don't feel the need to prove myself. I've already proven all that there is, everything you need to know about me. It's already been done. You get to feel how you want. You can disregard me if you want, but I'm not like I'm I'm at a place in life where I'm confident in the going crowd, or whatever II don't feel the need to prove my bona fides to anybody at this juncture, but when it comes to being a provocateur, my philosophy is that there is no such thing as growth that happens in comfort. Growth is a naturally uncomfortable process. That's not to say that it is a bad thing, or or like displeasureable. But even there there's a term even physical growth called growing pains. Trey: You see it throughout nature, right? Like one of the things that spurs like mollusks when when they're growing like there, there's a discomfort when they're coming up against their shell. And one of the things that I view as as not only a calling but a gifting of mind, is moving people to this place of discomfort that then allows them to grow beyond their current constraints, because at the end of the day I don't think that faith constrains us. I think that some of the systems that we've inherited some of the the the communities that we've inherited are a bit constraining. Trey: and because I believe that the God of the universe is bigger than any one faith system or any one faith community, including the ones that I've inherited I will often try to lead people through this process of seeing things in a a little bit of a bigger light. Now some of that comes from the fact that I was raised by people who prioritize that level of questioning and that level of examination, and it took me a while to realize that's not everybody's testimony. Trey: The same time, I think there is value. And leaning into that discomfort sometimes, and leaning into those unknown places that may not have been prioritized in the tradition that you've inherited right? And so when you say some of those interactions might be undergirded by me chipping away at foundational blocks, using the same tools of Scripture in the story of Jesus. Yeah, no, that that's absolutely there because I view certainty as somewhat inimical and antithetical to faith. The comforts that we enjoy will often have us tethered to places that God is trying to call us out of and so I don't really shy away from being that I guess you can call it an irritant, or or or that agent that that probes you in places that make you a little uncomfortable. Rohadi: But I mean, it's it's not like you're going out looking for this. There are people who like drop through people's mentions. Trey: Not doing that. They come into you, for I really don't bother nobody like I just be tweeting into a void, and it's happened to be a lot of people to follow me. And then there are people who feel like I owe them arguments I wasn't like. No, no, that's not what this is at all. You're free to disagree. You call me a false teacher. You call me a heretic? Oh, so you're not even gonna answer my claims. That is correct. I will not. What would Jesus do? Jesus sat there and and let people say whatever they wanted to say, only spoke up a couple of times, that that's where we are right. Now you get to say what you want, and I get to know who I am. Rohadi: One of the aspects, and and fill in the blanks for me in in your voice. Is that and and digging the I don't need white dad's or Mom's approval or affirmations in the things that I do or say like they do not inform me. And I echo that they do not inform me either, like I'm past a place where I need that affirmations. Old Rohadi:, years ago, might have been trying to to cause way for at least a place. But New Rohadi does not care because he's out doing something somewhere else, and it just doesn't matter to me. There are so many people who are around in community and neighborhood that are not part of the engine anymore, very different in Canada than than America. There's there's more folks up here that are sort of operating outside of the bounds of institutional or, in America's case, white evangelicalism.but you and your voice and fill in the blanks like I said. I think a lot of folks would expect you or perhaps place you into a box. and part of that is connected to racist tropes of being the black thought leader or black preacher, and embodying that type of world view. And and my take is is yes, those things not the trope of it, but to the history that that goes before you, but you're also teasing these out in in a new light. which I don't always see within institutional paradigms. But I am not the expert in those spaces and places. I my my sense is the way you use story, and the voice that you have is and I'll be careful in the way I say this, but it's like almost this new third way. And I know third ways. We always use that term the third way. But it is this decolonial adventure. Trey: Yeah, I don't know to what extent anything I'm doing is original. I do stand on the shoulders of people in their tradition of black theology. And when I say that I don't just mean all black people doing theology, I mean people who Trey: view the black experience as a legitimate starting point, and then a legitimate launching point for doing God talk and and having conversations about theology. Right? I stand on the shoulders of Bishop Henry Mill turn. I stand on shoulders of Jarina Lee and of Howard Thurman and Marla Kane, and of Kelly Brown, Douglas, and Dolores alike, though those are people that I admire in that way. Trey: But earlier I mentioned I can only be me. I can only show up in authenticity, and I even talk about it a bit in the book the way my mind works. I'm always spinning stories. I'm always sermonize, and I'm always doing that right. And if there is any truth to the notion of a vocation. or a calling, or the fact that this is something that God, the Creator of the universe. as as designed me to do. Then I have to believe the way that I'm specifically wired as a human being has to bear on how I carry these conversations so reuniting that passion for the things of God and theology, and theologizing, and all that stuff with the ways that I draw connections between history. possibilities, all of those things like this. the only thing that feels like me as opposed to trying to be somebody else. I'll never be Martin Luther. I'll never be Howard Thurman, I'll never be. I'll never be those people. but I can be me, and I can do that pretty well. Rohadi: There's a beauty in in your words, and I want to stop their pause around them, because I think it is an affirmation for listeners as well in that you have found assuredness in your voice, in, in who you are and it's not because you're a preacher. It's not because you're a minister like you don't need to be those things to find your home and place in Christ. There's folks out there that are are being tossed to and fro in many ways, but you can find your anchoring and place and assuredness in yourself and you in community that puts you in a more beautiful place. Don't need the credentials to do that. You can find that. That that home, really, that home. Yeah. Trey: yeah, that's that's really what it is. That is part of what salvation looks like. That is what liberation looks like. You. Recognizing that God made you good creation, that God was pleased to craft you as you are. That that's some of what that looks like right as long as we are led to believe, as long as we feel compelled, that we have to look like anybody else. That ain't Jesus. Then then we're not really free. We're not really experiencing the fullness of the life that God has called us to Rohadi: oof. And and there's there's some healing there, especially those who have been wounded within the context of Christian community, that there's some healing that needs to go down and places and spaces in your own self that says that you can be free from the tangles that said that you were less than that you can be free, and find your whole self and people who resonate with that pursuit as well, even though in many respects, especially if you're at the start of that type of journey it. It seems lonely but you can find that freedom. Rohadi: Let's talk about the reclamation of sorts of some of the stories towards that freedom, because that is a very different salvation than the one that is routinely preached within contemporary Christianity, one that says that we escape this world for heaven and the clouds. It's a disembodied salvation.and one that when you think about it, it makes sense. If you have no needs in the present, you can just escape here and go spend eternity someplace else, but it also means that there is no tangible, incarnate embodied liberation or salvation here and now that I can touch, feel, smell and be a part of. and you are opening the door and giving language for the latter Trey: most definitely. I think we have to be honest about the fact that the the get out of hell free card salvation that is preached is in many senses bankrupt. Rohadi: It's not orthodox. Yeah. Trey: right? And and it's also a nice little sleight of hand that we could talk about this wonderful eternity. That remains rhetorical. and I'm not saying that it's not real. But I'm saying that there is literally not tangible. It is a faith declaration, a faith statement. We're selling people something that they can. We we cannot demonstrably prove, or anything of the nature. and that in my opinion, is tough to take seriously. It is hard to scare people with an eternal hell, eternal, conscious torment, who are experiencing hell on earth, and if you cannot address the very real plight of people here and now. they don't have much of a reason to take you seriously messages of salvation. and I think it's important to note that the Jesus that we see spoken of in Scripture is one who meets material needs in the here and now, even as he speaks of a coming kingdom that is yet here, right. the physical healings and the physical liberation, those tangible needs are a sign of the inbreaking of that kingdom. And so I think it's important for us to wrestle with whether or not we take it seriously when Jesus instructs his disciples to pray on earth as it is in heaven. If that is truly our prayer. then we cannot stop with the eternal implications of what salvation means. We are invited through baptism into the life, burial, resurrection of Jesus. We're invited to partner with Jesus and making all things new right here and right now. Rohadi: Yes. Amen. I want to touch on this idea. It's it's gonna be a story, that is. And and I wanna speak to bipoc folks predominantly. But white folks, too. They're going to resonate with this story. I want to generalize here not drilled down into specific theological conundrums. But the reclamation of the Bible. Rohadi: Let's tease that out. Okay, let me paint the picture. I had friends who have lost contact with now. But they come from a vein of Christianity. That is right leaning. We'll call it conservative, perhaps fundamentalist. They believe in certain aspects of the Bible sin. A particular theologies around sin and atonement. Why did Jesus have to die of most importantly, humanity and what it means to be image bearing humans in pursuit of fullness of life. And they will use Scripture to pull away at others humanity, and I think predominantly LGBTQ community for queer folks for trans folks. They will have particular worldviews of environment certainly around race. You're using the same, not using. You're invited into the stories of the same thing. Scripture, the Bible. Yeah. Coming out with far different ways of understanding what's happening here. So how should we contend with the oft-sided phrase of the Bible says, or this is what the Bible says around, say same gendered marriage around trans folks around all these different intersections of controversial topics, that for lack of better term, the right has in juxtaposition to what the left has. Now, I know I just put that on a spectrum which yeah, many ways we operate outside of. But there are bipoc folks who are within I would name as the clutches of fundamentalism that seeks to from bodies rather than breathe newness. Trey: Yes. when it comes to reclaiming that for me the only spectrum that matters is the spectrum between cosmology and eschatology. the creation of the world and the last things. The revelation of the kingdom here and now, right, and the line connecting those 2 points, the spectrum we will call the way right at. That's what Jesus is calling us to everything else is a divergence, so much so that Jesus even points to at 1 point a point where a a Scripture, a law of Moses does not accurately reflect the way when he talks about divorce and say, Hey! Like? Why does Moses permit? The voice? If if it's not he. He says that that is a concession to your heart and hearts, but from the beginning that is not what God intended. The problem that many of us contend with. Even as we're dealing with the Bible said things that are clearly concessions to the hardened hearts of people living in a broken world. Trey: We are framing our worldview around those things as opposed to that spectrum I just mentioned. Where everything in my mind has to synthesize the creation of the world, the created order, cosmology, and eschatology. What do we believe will be the last things? Trey: And luckily Jesus spends a bit of time talking about this coming kingdom. So when it comes to things like same gender marriage. one of the things that Jesus says and Paul affirms is that marriage is not an essential in the kingdom. It just is not jesus even says he says that. Oh, you you br! You're mistaken in the kingdom that people will now be given in marriage. Normally, marry stops like, oh, like, maybe it's better not to marry Jesus like Hey, man like not everybody can handle that truth that that is what Jesus says. Paul. Says that again, Paul affirms when he says that it, it's actually better if if you can stay single like I'm not telling everybody to get divorced. It's better to stay single if you can't handle that to go ahead and get married. But so much of the emphasis that we place around the institution of marriage is actually more reflective of the cultures we inhabit than it is the faith that we carry right, or the Scriptures. At least th that that's that's actually right there in the text. And so what it comes down to for me is, where is there the most wholeness to be found, I fully affirming of the right of 2 people. If if they desire to to. 2 people of the same gender. If they desire to go ahead and get married. Let's let's let's do that at the end of the day. That's not in the kingdom at all. People ask me like, oh, so you think that God blesses that. I don't think that God blesses most, or or a bunch of hetero sexual use. Truth be told, I think we can examine the fruits and see that. And so there are times when I think that we have concerned ourselves so much with systems and practices that are like the main reason marriage exists in our cultures is a means of transferring property right like it's a like even in the Bible. Trey: and you can see that even in this I'm not being on Biblical when I say this, though, first, and everybody likes to point to Genesis 2, 4, I think. Where for this reason man shall leave his mother and father and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. It's not actually describing what happens with Adam and Eve. It's grounding a cultural tradition. And what happens with them? Because, according to the text, Adam does not have a father and mother to leave. They're patterning something after Adam and Eve, and then people like to say things like, well, marriage is supposed to be a picture of Christ in the Church. No, you have that backwards. Actually. What Paul was saying is that we should try as best as possible to make our marriage reflect the relationship between Christ and the Church, which is actually sacrificial. It's slightly subversive of the patriarchal norms of the time, because marriage was already a thing people who did not believe. and the same God that Paul believed in. So marriage is just one example right there. But one of the things we need to contend with here is a lot of what we insist are matters of quote. Unquote Biblical import are in the Bible absolutely. but they are not part of the created order, as we so much insist, and they are not things that Jesus affirms as being essential to the coming kingdom. Trey: Then we get distracted a lot by trying to baptize the culture in the language of the Bible. Did it? Am I answering the question? Oh, no, it's I think I was there, cause I felt like I go on for hours about this one topic there. But when it comes to like reclaiming the Bible in this way for me, what it looks like is okay. What are the things that we are to take here? Do we take this idea of a coming kingdom seriously? And what does that mean for us. I can't sit here arguing with people about marriage all day of Jesus says that's not even gonna be in the kingdom. Rohadi: when I think of taking a step back the approach. And and I'm hearing the approach of Scripture as a whole, which is markedly different than. and and forgive me for lumping in the crowd. For from a fundamentalist treating of Scripture that I'm hearing the narrative arcs and the themes which is the point of Scripture, I think in how you understand it becomes part of the lens in which and through which, you understand Scripture and its stories versus the off-sided answers to the eloquent ways that you have shared on marriage, and so forth. But but but Trey, the Bible, says, the Bible says, and will proof text these one-liners of why queerness is not part of God's plan, why, marriage must be between men and a woman between. and that that is the treatment of Scripture. Can we take a step back and interrogate. Now, maybe not interrogate. What do you think is the catalyst for folks who are in that zone of more of a proof texting of Scripture, and they think that they are not doing violence to the Scripture to become more alert, of more life-giving ways. to appreciate and value the same writings. I think we have to realise a bit about the history of the Christian faith in general right. like proof texting as a practice kind of explodes with the Reformation. because the Reformation is largely wrought by the printing press. The invention of the printing press. which means that for the first 1,400 years or so of Christian history. The idea that followers of Jesus, that Christians were engaged in regular personal Bible study to the extent that we are now was just, not impossible right? The reason that most Catholic people have a different relationship with the Scriptures than most Protestants, and that is because their tradition is older, and was founded around and and then centered around things other than personal Bible study. So the whole solo script, short thing and everything, and like. No, that that is largely a technological invention like it was not possible for most Christians throughout history. And when we sit with that. what we need to realize is that the main way that people were able to carry these, the the Bible and the Scriptures was not in the memorizing of verses. but the carrying of stories. That is the heart of the historic Christian faith. And that's not to denigrate the role that some of these other Scriptures play, but at at the end of the day. That's not how this faith worked for the majority of history. There's a reason why this was built around rights like mass, or or or taking the Eucharist regularly, and and confessions and everything. Those are things that can be rehearsed over and over. There's a reason that the stories resonate because we could tell bedtime stories. We make up stories. It's a little bit harder for us to do that with epistles and things that our nation would. So that was how this faith tradition was handed down for centuries upon centuries before proof, text, and even showed up on most of our radars right? and when you do that like, realize? That's it's a perfectly legitimate way of approaching the Bible. Oh, outside of proof texting, I mean, now the other thing. When you mentioned doing violence to the text. Trey: I think we have to be able to call that what it is like proof texting. I don't view that as a very serious way of engaging Scripture to begin with, because what is often happening there is, we're we're doing this cut and paste job. Right? We're doing a little middle school collage. We're making ransom notes out of what we consider sacred text. We're doing patchwork quilts. And the only reason we're doing that like a patchwork quilt or or a collage is to cover something else. Proof. Texting will almost demand that you start with one presupposition, and then cut around the text to be able to support that right there. And we have to be comfortable naming the fact that that's not a serious or honest way of handling Scriptures. If you want to know what I believe about something, it's not best to cut around my words. It's best to read what I actually said. Rohadi: And it's kind of read my book. Don't just start settle for the kindle, walk Trey: right? And then to actually develop doctrines around the sound bytes and the kindle quotes of the Bible. I don't think it's a very serious way of engaging with faith. Rohadi: but I can imagine that many who are within that realm of of ransom, noting the Bible that they have produced doctrines that they have produced ways of of systematizing their beliefs. Yes. so in the sense that they're they would stay there using the same approach. Yeah, what is the chief difference? Are differences Trey: is that we end up with an approach, and often systems that are riddled with holes. Right? So a key example would be the penal substitutionary theory of atoning all right. It's most ardent, inherent, and proponents. Now they have walls and walls of proof. Text. Things, they say, suggest a penal substitutionary nature of the atonement in the Bible. However, if you put any of those verses back in context, it is very clear that it's not actually talking about what they say. It is right like they'll they'll go to the Scripture that says, The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, as though this suggests that points to a penal substitutionary atonement nature of the cross. When the fact of the matter is that God said in the Garden of Eden, that if you eat of this you will surely die. Trey: And somehow Adam did not end up on a cross. People been dying ever since then, between Adam and Jesus, everybody minus Enoch, and maybe Ma Melchies and Elijah died. Trey: Everybody already paid the wages of sin. According to Rome, is 3, 23 that that has already been done. It does not make sense, as you would then suggest. That means that somebody had to get tortured to death in order to appease God right, but when you rip that verse from context and don't look at the actual that spectrum I was talking about the thread collect connecting the created order, the creation of the world and the last things. Then it's easy to plug these things and then build a different argument. That's how we can build arguments for things like chattel slavery. Trey: How we can build an argument for things like patriarch. We could do all of those things when we plug these out and skip all the parts where God identifies as a liberator. The foundation of the Commandments is, I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of slavery in Egypt. That's how God chooses to identify. And when we skip around and we do all these cutting and pasting and everything we can misrepresent the character of God in fundamental ways, which is honestly which is honestly what the serpent does in the Garden of Eden, when he says, No, God doesn't want this, because, like W. Misrepresenting the character of God is the easiest way to sidetrack somebody and get them out of the will of God. Right? And I think that we often put ourselves in danger of doing that very thing when we rely on proof, texting at the exense of sitting with the stories of God and the stories of the people behind the text, right? Even Paul's own story. When we separate ourselves from Paul's story in in in his own testimony of being somebody who was so zealous about the the Torah and upholding the law. When we separate him from that, we lose the impact of what he had to experience on that road to Damascus, where everything that he knew to be true. Everything he was so sure of was upended by the revelation of Jesus. Trey: and a lot of us act with that same zealous heart that Paul possesses before this Damascus experience. That then reroutes into being so humble by the fact they look, look. Everything I thought was was the way to this thing. And and mind you, Paul never disavows that, Torah, that that doesn't happen. What he does say is that this is not going to lead us where faith in the resurrection will. Those are answering 2 different questions. Yeah, right. We missed that whole part of Paul's story. When we cut these verses out of their context, the the story of Paul will will make the letters of Paul come into better focus for us. But the sound bytes from Paul are never gonna get the job done. Rohadi: You hit it there with the character of God. That's when I was teasing out the character of God because I can picture and and I'm creating that straw man. And in my, in my mind here of that Bible alone crowd but a particular world view of what that Bible says. Rohadi: And they would say, Well, you can make ironically the Bible. Say whatever you want. and we're just trying to faithfully obey what the Bible says. Yet when push comes to shove that foundational piece is how that narrative arc from Genesis to Revelation reveals a particular character of who God is. would you agree with this? I think that we can rest in that place where 2 very different gods start to emerge. There's the Christ figure and the God of Liberation who seeks humanity's wholeness and fullness.: the one that sets the captives free. And then, if we were honest to interrogate the depths and foundations that bedrock that informs the picture of who we think God is, it's the one that requires blood sacrifice to appease vengeance. It is the one that welcomes violence to the foreigner. It is one that does not hope for the liberation of all things. Did I drill it down too? Simply? You know II think I think you may have and and here's here's why, I'll say that right. I do not know if it is fair to say that there are 2 different portraits of God that emerge so much so that there are 2 different social locations that are telling the story of that. I give you example, that right? We talk about God being somebody who who supports vengeance and everything. Yes, there! There are very uncomfortable problematic stories in the Bible of genocide. But to bring that into current focus right? Like. if I, as a black man in the United States.celebrate the Civil War as the thing that unlocked the liberation of my enslaved ancestors. If I see God's activity there. We also have to deal with the fact that that is still to this very day the bloodiest conflict in the history of the United States of America. And so where you're sitting, and how you understand and what liberation looks like for you will often underta will often impact how we are talking about these realities. We see something sort of similar happening right now in in the Middle East, in in Palestine, where there are people who is in like no, these people have a right to fight for the freedom like no, but not this way, right? And so I think there are times. We forget that the people who are talking about God, commanding them to wipe out everything, are sitting on the shores of the Euphrates and exile in Babylon. trying to cling onto an identity where they are not oppressed. Right? which is, is, is, it sounds like I'm trying to sanitize the story. No, the stories are are problematic. But it's one of those things that I can almost sort of relate to one of the things we talk about the character of God. What I see uniting from Genesis to Revelation, is that God is a Creator who creates things for our sustenance. Right in the Garden of Eden everything was called good and sustained the people that God created in the new heavens and the new earth. God then again rings order out of disorder. God makes all things new. It's the same thing we see happening in Genesis. Right? That's the common thread there. And what happens is in the Bible. We are reading the story of a people. Trey: the people that we see that we're in the story of in in the Old Testament. They're not speaking from a Universalist perspective. They're saying, this is who we are as a people. Th. This is what defines us as the Hebrew people, as as the people of Israel, as as and a lot of times we lose sight of that because their Scriptures have been incorporated into our Christian faith, which is a more universal faith. It's not so much marked by ethnicity in that way. But these Scriptures work say no like we. We keep getting dragged in exile or oppression. Slaves in Egypt. We're exiled in Syria and Babylon and Persia. Now the Greeks are in our place, and all this stuff, and sometimes: when you're that used to being held down, you need got to be a fighter. You need got to be a warrior. You need that right and so we often sit from a place of privilege when we say that oh, wow! Their God was Xyz like, no, I've I've been sometimes places where well, I've I needed God to be. That am what is really being communicated there is that through the dry places and the hard places the same God who created Paradise Forest in Eden. made a place to sustain us in this this place, right here, right and and and that's the united character there. But we often erase the people behind the text. read ourselves into the text and have a hard time relating to the stories they're in. It might make a sense when I say that. Rohadi: I think that's that's one of the dangers that we do not divorce ourselves from the magnitude of how we interpret Scriptures through our own lens, and do not understand how it might have been understood by those first listeners of the stories. Trey: Yeah, for sure, you know. thing is always like II would talk about it in the book a little bit. When I talk about in house discussions that we're we're missing a lot of context. Some of that context will never like recover fully. And that's okay. But the more that we're able to remove ourselves from the world of the text more than we're able to decenter ourselves, I think the more we'll be able to understand what they were trying to communicate about God. Because, yes, like, when when we read the text objectively right? Meaning that like we're, we're as close to the the the truth being communicated as the original audience and the original author. That that's essentially what we're saying, we're saying we're reading the text objectively. Then some of these stories are troubling, and it's still troubling when we think about it. But when we restore the humanity to the text. And behind the text we see the emotions that are shaping these stories. Some of that stuff makes a little bit more sense. Right? Rohadi: Well, that's a that's a feature of restoring the humanity to the text. Trey: Yeah. Rohadi: And many times that's a skill. And and if you happen to been in in a community that has teased out some of those questions. It's really hard to come to a new understanding of how you might approach the Scriptures. I want to end now with you. Have this chapter in your book in the final part, as we trail out here Rohadi: the future looks different. I know you don't position your community, the church that you are. You lead as a and you wouldn't. Deconstruction is predominantly a new movement out of white Evangelicalism. And you may not use words like decolonizing. but there is a particular way of being in our in our modern world. So I wonder can you tease out now some of the features of what this current and future posture of both Christians, but also Christians in community. looks like. Trey: I think the future of our faith is humble as Jesus was and to whatever extent we come to power or the levers of power is is only leveraged for the benefit of those around us, not just those. Oh, look. think, act, and sound like us. and I think that as we embrace that humility it will engender a curiosity and as we embrace that curiosity, it will lead us to seek more consistently. And as we seek, we will realize all of the things that we once held as absolutes that were, in fact cultural subtleties, and nothing more right. Trey: I think that we will acknowledge an absolute truth even as we recognize that we have not always been the guardians or stewards of sad truth. but seekers just like everybody else. And I think that as we embrace this humility, this curiosity seeking tendencies That we will begin to look more like the disciples and the people that Jesus called us to be as opposed to agents of the very imperial powers that crucified him. To begin with.