The essence of this podcast episode resides in the profound discussion surrounding the intersection of faith and science, particularly as it pertains to the theory of evolution. Joshua and TJ interview Jim Stump, Vice President at BioLogos, whose expertise in both philosophy and science illuminates the dialogue on how evolutionary understanding can enhance one’s faith rather than undermine it. Stump articulates the significance of recognizing Christ's centrality in creation, which serves as a foundation for fostering unity among Christians amidst diverse interpretations of scripture and scientific findings. Throughout our conversation, we explore the implications of evolution for theological concepts such as original sin and divine intention, challenging listeners to reconsider traditional narratives while embracing a more nuanced understanding of God's relationship with creation. Ultimately, this episode seeks to encourage listeners to engage in gracious dialogue, fostering community and unity within the church, regardless of differing perspectives on these complex issues.

The Whole Church Podcast engages in a profound dialogue with Dr. Jim Stump, Vice President of BioLogos, a prominent organization that seeks to harmonize faith and science. The conversation delves into Dr. Stump's rich academic background, including his PhD in philosophy and his commitment to exploring the intersections of science and Christianity. Throughout the episode, Stump articulates his journey from a conservative Christian upbringing to a nuanced understanding of evolution and its implications for faith. He addresses common misconceptions within evangelical circles regarding the compatibility of evolutionary theory with Christian doctrine, emphasizing that science does not undermine the reality of sin or the need for salvation. Rather, he advocates for a perspective that embraces the complexity of creation and the role of humanity within it. Stump's insights challenge listeners to reconsider their preconceived notions about evolution and encourage a more profound engagement with both science and scripture, ultimately fostering a deeper faith that transcends traditional divides.

In a thought-provoking episode of The Whole Church Podcast, Dr. Jim Stump, Vice President of BioLogos, shares his insights on the relationship between science and Christianity. The discussion spans various themes, including the historical tensions between evangelical beliefs and scientific understandings of evolution. Dr. Stump reflects on his academic journey, emphasizing the importance of dialogue and education in bridging the gap between faith and science. He argues that many evangelical Christians harbor misconceptions about the scientific consensus on evolution, which can lead to unnecessary divisions within the church. By framing science as a tool for fostering awe and wonder in creation, Stump encourages listeners to embrace a faith that is informed by rigorous scientific inquiry. The conversation culminates in a challenge for listeners to engage compassionately with those who hold differing views, reinforcing the notion that unity in Christ transcends intellectual disagreements. This episode serves as both an educational resource and a heartfelt appeal for greater understanding and collaboration among Christians.

Takeaways:

1. In this episode, Jim Stump articulates the profound relationship between faith and science, emphasizing that both can coexist harmoniously within the Christian framework.
2. Stump discusses how understanding evolution can enhance one’s faith, rather than diminish it, by providing deeper insights into the nature of God and creation.
3. The conversation highlights the importance of engaging in gracious dialogue between differing viewpoints on faith and science to foster church unity.
4. Jim Stump mentions that both evangelical and scientific communities can benefit from mutual understanding, as both sides often misinterpret each other's positions.
5. He suggests that personal relationships, particularly those formed across ideological divides, can significantly enhance unity within the church.
6. The episode underscores the necessity of moving beyond simplistic interpretations of scripture to embrace a more nuanced understanding of biblical texts in light of scientific advancements.

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Check out all of the other shows in the Anazao Podcast Network and find merch to support some of your favorite podcasts on the network's website:

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Listen to Jim Stump's podcast, "The Language of God":

https://biologos.org/podcasts/language-of-god

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Check out more from BioLogos:

https://biologos.org/people/jim-stump

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Check out TJ on Systematic Geekology:

https://player.captivate.fm/collection/f4c32709-d8ff-4cef-8dfd-5775275c3c5e

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Hear more from Joshua on Be Living Water:

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Colossians 1, 15, 20 in the Christian Standard Bible say he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.

For everything was created by him in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for Him. He is before all things, and by him all things hold together. He is also the head of the body, the church.

He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him and through him, to reconcile everything to Himself, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.

This pricopy of scripture comes at the beginning of the book of Colossians and is describing the centrality of Christ in the scripture and the church and in creation. Gemstop how might remembering the centrality of Christ better engender Christian unity?

Yeah, well, the passage is about the role of Christ in creation. Everything was created by Christ, through Christ and for Christ. So maybe we start there with something.

Everybody can affirm that all of this that exists comes through Christ and is for Christ. And the rest are details. Yeah, right.

Good stuff. Hey guys, welcome to the Whole Church podcast. Possibly your favorite church unity podcast, but if it's not, that's totally cool.

We're not in competition because that would be weird and self defeating. I am, of course, Joshua Knoll.

I show up to the show every week so I can announce the one and only greatest podcaster, pod Almighty TJ Tiberius 1 Blackwell. How's it going, TJ? Welcome to your show. Yeah, thanks.

We're also here, the really exciting guest, someone I follow for a while on one of his podcasts, the Language of God. He's recently been on another podcast in the Amazon podcast network, your Matter Matters.

Had Jim Stump guest and I was like, you guys gotta get me connected. I love this guy. Excited. Today we're gonna talk about faith, science, church unity, evolution, all kinds of fun stuff.

So we're here with Dr. Jim Stump of Biologos and yeah, can't wait to get into it.

All right, Jim Stump, the one and only, is the vice president at biologos and hosts Language of God. Like we mentioned, he also writes and speaks on behalf of BioLogos and has a PhD in Philosophy.

So philosophy guys out there bother Jim about all of your questions and not. Not us. That's your. That's your ticket.

Was formerly a professor and academic administrator and his earlier Books include Four Views on Creation, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science of Christianity, and An Introduction to the Issues and How I Changed My Mind About Evolution. Most recently he's published the Sacred How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper faith.

If you're on YouTube, you can see Josh has one on. He almost always has one on because they're super comfy. My favorite one is called the TJ quote on the back. It says nothing on the back.

Yeah, yeah, it just has the logo. My favorite bit.

It's the best one. But check out the Onzel podcast network website for other shows like ours. Shows that we like to like. Shows that are good and on our network.

Yeah, we got a few new ones on there too. I highly recommend Theology on the Rocks. We've had them on recently on our show.

Impaging Pixel is one that's more mature audience, but talking about books and video games and at least one of them said they're non binary. So you get a little bit of that kind of flair in it and they always go off the rails. And if you're ADHD like me, that's just fun.

So that's my recommendation for the day. Wrong podcast, but it's fine.

One thing I do always like to do on this show though, for whole church listeners when we kick this off, we always kick it off with a holy sacrament of silliness, actually, because it's impossible to be divided when you're being as silly as I like to be. Jim, TJ and I are gonna go first. Today's silly question is which book of the Bible would be least interesting as an anime? I'm gonna make TJ go first.

Because he watches the most anime. I think so. I don't watch a ton. I'm just curious, Titus, why

this is not a lot.

I mean, I feel like you can get some like conversation like slave. I don't know. It could be some interesting stuff.

Every other book in the Bible would be.

Yeah, because I think the go to answer for most people would probably be Leviticus. But there's a stoning in Leviticus. There's a lot of reasons behind why those laws are happening. And I think it could actually be interesting.

You can get some meat out of it. When I was really trying to think of like what would just be not Good.

Titus.

I partially.

I want to say Jonah because I just think the story of Jonah is stupid, but I'm not going to say Jonah. I'm gonna go with. I'm gonna go with Numbers, because you'll end up with an anime that has a lot of those, like, filler episodes in the.

Fillers for Numbers is just genealogy, and there's no way that ends up as a good show. I just. I don't know. I don't you.

Fair.

Jim, what do you think? What book, the Bible, do you think would make the worst anime?

Yeah, I'm probably the least qualified person to answer such a question. I do have one of my kids who likes. Who likes anime, and she has exposed me to a little bit of it, but I'm not entirely sure.

But my intuition leads in the. Into the realm of the shorter book. So maybe Jude. I don't know. What can you do with Jude?

I consider Jude also. Yeah.

Yeah. I like that answer better than Numbers. I think you can make a genealogy really interesting.

Well, yeah, because Jude does mention Sodom and Gomorrah. Right. You spin off a little backstory there. Flashback. I don't know.

I don't know.

They're all.

It could work. It's.

I don't know. I think I'm too creative. I feel like I can make any of these work, really. Jonah is just the dumbest story in the Bible, in my opinion.

So I do want it.

Or, like you could do.

At least I'd go back to Jonah anyway.

I just.

I'm not convinced you can make a good a story that I would enjoy out of Jonah. So I just really don't like Jonah. No.

Well, that's fair. But apart from the sacramental, you know, deeds that we do on the show, the actual episode starts by usually sharing each other's stories.

So we have found in our time doing the show that the best way to engender unity is to listen to one another's stories. So, Jim, could you, if you don't mind, share some of your history with the church or faith in general with us and our audience?

Sure. And thanks for having me. I appreciate being asked to come onto a show like this and share. I am always tempted to say that I was born into the faith.

I don't actually think that salvation is something that you inherit, but I was certainly born into context where it made believing easier for me than it is for some people. And I'm not entirely sure what to make of the fact that it's easier for some people to believe. In a loving God than it is for other people.

But I came from a family who was deep into the church, were Midwesterners in Michigan and Indiana. And as long as I can remember, I was always in a church that loved and cared for me.

I wasn't subjected to awful abuse or any of the other sorts of horror stories that come along with that, and found it pretty natural thing for me to follow in the way of Jesus.

Of course, there are all kinds of questions that come up as you're growing up in that regard of how you reconcile other things that you hear and see in the world. But it wasn't hard for me to commit my life to Christ and to do my best to follow after him.

I originally went to school thinking I was going to be a math and science kind of teacher. And right after college, my wife and I both had education degrees and we went to Sierra Leone, West Africa, to teach in a mission school.

And it was there that I started reading for the first time more seriously. I mean, in college it was mostly math and science problem sets that were homework.

And I started reading when I lived in Africa because there wasn't much else to do when the, when the sun went down and we had a generator, but even that went off until you had a lantern.

And I read books and started reading like pretty serious philosophical literature, 19th century literature, and Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky and Herman Melville and these kind of big ideas.

And I'm not the first person that I've heard to say this, but somewhere in that, that intersection between the analytic skills of math and science and then these big ideas from 19th century literature, I decided I wanted to be a philosopher. And so was also always sort of interested in apologetics kinds of things. And that's sort of what I thought philosophy was.

But came back from Africa and went to grad school in philosophy and realized that there is a difference between apologetics and philosophy and. But somehow was always interested in using that in service to the faith that I've always held.

And so then started teaching in philosophy and then got further and further involved in biologos and the science and faith work of BioLogos. And so have always been pretty closely affiliated with church and faith and a community of people who takes these kinds of things seriously.

Yeah.

Just in case anyone's curious, before the show started, I was on the phone with Josh and I was telling him that sometime in the next couple of days I'm gonna read Fear and Trembling and then the Brothers Karamazov. And he was like, hey, I don't know what you're talking about, man. So we're not particularly philosophically adroit.

The Brothers Karamazov was one of those books that I read then, and it became really, really important. And then actually, for gr, I, you had to submit a paper. And my paper was about the Brothers Karamazov that I wrote to submit to go to grad school.

So it's got a. It's got a soft place in my heart.

I basically, I need podcast assignments to force me to read. Philosophy is usually what happens.

Like, I had never read any of Tillich until I was going to theology beer camp, and apparently I was hosting a conversation about video games and Tillich, and I was like, well, I'm just gonna read three volumes of systematic theology real quick and did that in, like a couple weeks. I could do it. I just need, you know, I need like a. This is your deadline. Do that. And then I'll hyper fixate and use ADHD for good.

But I need something. Speaking of, what's up? So you mentioned philosophy, science, faith, all that stuff, if I'm understanding right.

Your doctorate is philosophy of science, is that correct?

Well, it depends how you count such things. It's from the philosophy department at Boston University. So My diploma says PhD in philosophy, but within that, you specialize.

And I specialized in what's often called the history and philosophy of science. So I wrote a dissertation that was about. Originally I wanted to write.

I asked if I could write about how science and religion interact with each other, and they're like, no, this is a philosophy department. You can't do that.

And so instead I did this historical examination of how in the scientific revolution, so 16, 17, hundreds, Copernicus, then to Gala, really starting more with Galileo, how the advancing science interacted with the. The philosophy of the day, and then the other way, too.

And so kind of charted this back and forth between scientific discoveries that challenged the metaphysics of the time, then how a new metaphysics, say, that recognizes the existence of force.

But what you saw throughout that time was this advancing sort of dialectic, this dialogue between science and philosophy. And so that's what I wrote my dissertation in, was how the science and philosophy of that time period in particular affected each other.

But I always did that with an eye toward thinking how science and religion affect each other and appear in dialogue. So, yep, it's Philosophy of science.

So how long was your dissertation at the end?

Like, how long did it take me? Or how many pages?

How many pages?

I can't remember. 300 and some. And, I mean, that sounds wild. And it was. And it's very intimidating.

Think about it in that regard, because before I wrote that, the longest thing I had ever written was 20 pages long. And so I was like, seriously, now I have to write a book. How do you do that?

And I sat down and, you know, you create an outline, and you think through. Here are the seven chapters that it's gonna be. And you start working on it. And you have to go so in depth.

You know, dissertations are really deep and really narrow, and so you dig as deep as you into. Into something. And I got that, a draft of the first chapter done, and it was 40 pages long. And I was like, seriously, I guess I can do this.

I just need to do that six more times. And, yeah, I think it ended up being 300 and some crazy pages long. But I'm not sure anybody besides my dissertation director has ever read it.

T.J. wood, if you send.

I don't know, I might read it. I will read it. I'll read it.

Because I'm adhd.

Be honest.

Yeah. Yeah. It's interesting, though, how often, like, math and philosophy end up going side by side.

And listen, if Tripp's listening, I said the name Alfred Whitehead here. You're welcome, Trip. But, Jim, before we move on, though, we talked about science. What is it that first really piqued your interest in science?

So I'm tracing the religion line where. In this frame for you and your life, where you like. Actually, I love science, too.

Yeah. So as a kid, as a male student growing up in small towns in Michigan and Indiana, I did okay in school. It wasn't like.

It wasn't like we had magnet schools or we didn't have, you know, some even sort of special instruction. But I was one of the brighter kids. And in those settings, bright male students were often pushed toward math and science. And I didn't.

I mean, if I would have known as a high schooler that philosophy was even a thing, maybe I would have said, yeah, that's what I want from the beginning. But I didn't know. I didn't know it. All I knew was math and science. My dad started out as a.

As a junior high science teacher, so that, too, doesn't exactly qualify him as a scientist, but we had that orientation in our, in our lives at least to think, at least we weren't, we weren't somehow brain brainwashed that science was an evil thing that Christians had to stay away from. That that was never part. I was in these conservative communities and undoubtedly they would have said evolution, what? No, we don't do.

But, but it wasn't like they were crusaders against science in that regard. So I did pretty well in math and science and so just thought, yeah, that's what I do.

I started college as an engineering major thinking that's what someone who does math and science does. I've heard of that profession and I got into it a little bit, was like, know I kind of like teaching.

That's what both my parents were public school educators. And so I thought, yeah, I could be a teacher and teach math, teach some general science and maybe be a cross country coach.

And you know, this was just me. The, the, that was kind of the limits of the horizon that I had seen was available to me. So that's, that's why I started in that.

So then that, that experience I was talking about in Africa where I was more drawn to philosophy and then got to grad school and they said, well, you are math and science, so let's put you in this philosophy of science course. And I was like, what's that?

Okay, I guess, I mean, I was very naive going into grad school in philosophy, but found that I really enjoyed thinking about science.

So I usually tell this joke when someone asks, what's a philosopher of science that, you know, scientists are the people in white lab coats that work in laboratories and do experiments. And philosophers of science usually wear all black and sit in dark rooms and just think about what scientists are doing.

And that's not far from the truth.

I mean, I don't do experiments, but I read an awful lot about experiments and I'm engaged deeply in trying to understand and interpret what's going on. But yeah, I'm a philosopher of science, not a scientist.

But my attraction to science has always been, been there from the beginning of thinking how the world works and what we can know about it and what are the limits of what we can know about it and questions like.

And people want to know more of his story. Absolutely. Check out the Sacred Chain. It's a great book. I love audiobooks. I listened to your entire book yesterday.

I think I've read bits and parts before, but I don't think I finished it. So I was like, let me front to back finish this thing. Because I'm a weirdo who's like, I want to know about something and I'll go to chapters.

So I need to hear the whole thing. But you hear more of his story there.

It took me three days, three days to record it. So you listened to it all in

one day or it's easier to listen. I can. Two times. Three times speed.

He's a freak. Yeah, he doesn't listen to anything at the default speaker.

And then everybody talks slow. When I talk to them in person, I'm like, why aren't, why aren't you talking in three times? But no, the.

Yeah, so you guys get more of a story over there. It's great stuff.

I do think it's interesting just as like a little note, like, how many of these doctrines, whenever you get like really into it, are kind of interdependent of like math, philosophy, science, etc. Ethics. Even if you go to philosophy of science, I think ethics kind of tie in there a little bit too. Yeah, a lot of stuff. Really interesting.

But you've been with biologus for a while now.

Curious, in your work with biologus, have you found this ministry to be more one of evangelism, apologetics, or how might you categorize the ministerial purpose of the organization?

Yeah. So biologos affirms Christ centered faith and rigorous science and gracious dialogue. Those are our three core values that we have.

The rigorous science part, we often come back to that qualifier, rigorous, and we're never quite sure how to succinctly describe the fact that we follow the consensus of modern science.

Again, we're not a scientific organization in the sense that we don't have a laboratory, we're not doing experiments in, in the office, but we are deeply engaged in following the results and the findings of science in that regard.

But what that does, when we say Christ centered faith and rigorous science, it puts us in the middle, straddling two sides of what's normally opposed in our culture wars.

Right.

You got science on one side and there's a whole package of culture war issues that people on that side are usually in favor of and a whole set of them that they're against. And usually the religion side is the other side. And that means we have two mission fields at biologos.

We have the people who accept science but don't accept the faith that we, that we're committed to, and then we have people that accept the same faith that we're committed to but don't really like the science. Side. And so we have something that the communications people always say, this is the worst thing ever.

You should really have one clearly defined audience. But we have two. We have two. And we do our best to relate to both of those.

So there is a kind of evangelistic aspect to that when it's people who don't accept faith but do accept science. And we're able to show how their acceptance of faith does not mean they have to give up science, because that's what a lot of them think.

But then on the other side, we have people who are already in the fold or already in the family of. Family of God, the family of Christ. But yet their non acceptance of science sometimes causes other sorts of problems and can be ways.

I mean, one of the biggest things, one of the biggest findings in this regard that we've seen over the last few years is that I think it was the Fuller Youth Institute that did some surveys of people who grew up in the church and then subsequently left the church and interviewed them, asking them why. And science is one of the biggest reasons.

So in that sense, that's also a kind of evangelism, I guess, of keeping people in the faith who would otherwise leave by showing that science and faith don't have to be in conflict. We don't advertise or put on our webpage evangelism, as this is what we do. But there's a very real component of that that we do.

And one of the interesting dynamics of this you might find interesting is that because we have two groups, each group that we talk to loves the fact that we're talking to the other group. Right. So when we're around scientists, they're like, we're so glad that you're trying to get those Christians on board with what science is doing.

And when we go and we talk to Christians, they say, we're so glad that you're talking to those atheist scientists and trying to persuade them that Christianity is okay. So both sides likes the fact that we're targeting the other side.

It's always easier to be like they're the problem. As I heard Dan Koch's podcast recently. So that's trying to think of what he changed the name. It used to be. You have permission.

And now it's like religion on the mind or something.

Yeah, I'll just call it Dan Koch's podcast.

Yeah, Dan Koch. But he.

I was on that podcast once, but

he recently he was talking about. In philosophy or philosophy psychology.

They've shown how it's just as hard for many people to Deal with questions of your own existence, existentialist as it is to take moral responsibility or to look at yourself and be like, maybe I'm the. The problem. And just seeing how that anxiety is similar in both, like, how it activates in the mind.

I was.

That's one of the times I usually psychology is just above me, but that was one of those things I was like, that's actually incredibly interesting.

Yeah, yeah, I think it's interesting just like, seeing which Christian scientists, like, become Christian Scientists. Like, who doesn't?

Because I remember being in, like, my freshman year private Christian school biology department, the head of the department was like, on the team that created the first test tube baby, like, breeds ostrich, all kinds of stuff that normally I would be like, really? The school supports that, but doesn't matter. He just still believes in God, still goes to church also. Incredible, incredibly gifted biologists.

Yeah, yeah, sure, man. One of the scientists that helped work on the God particle goes to Pastor Will's church. So that's kind of cool.

He does.

Or did. Yeah, I think he still does.

I want to talk to him really bad. But is there a type of church that seems more open to, like, the work of BioLogos than others? You know, like, denominationally?

Like, when you go to a Catholic church, you're like, oh, yeah, these guys are going to dig it.

Catholics have not had the same kind of problems with science that Protestants have.

And I haven't done the deep dive into why that is, but I would certainly suspect it's because of the Protestant doctrine of sola scriptura that Catholics say, no.

We also have this other magisterium of the church and it has authority and it can resolve lots of disputes, whereas we Protestants say, nope, it's only the Bible. And the way I read the Bible versus the way you read the Bible, who's going to settle the dispute between us?

No, we're just going to go start our own church.

And so the fact that Protestants have said we have this one text and that's what's authoritative, and there's no higher authority that can settle disputes, leads to all sorts of divisions.

I mean, there's a great big book called the Oxford Encyclopedia or dictionary, Oxford Encyclopedia of World Christianity, that charts all of the Christian denominations in the world. So identifiably distinct denomination. And they do that over time, too. And up until the Protestant reformation, there's like 10.

And after the Protestant Reformation, it just goes exponential. And the. The last count I saw was like 40,000.

Gosh.

Something. Many different denominations. So the church denominations that insist on a sort of, this sounds derogatory. I don't mean it that way.

A sort of flatly literal interpretation of scripture are the ones that have the most trouble with any sort of scientific doctrine. Because that's not what I mean. Scriptures written 2,000, 3,000 years ago.

I don't think God was in the business, whatever you make of the doctrine of inspiration, I don't think God was in the business of smuggling in 21st century science into the text. That's not, that's, that's not what they were thinking about or considering.

So you go from the shape of the earth to the place of humans in the cosmos to evolution, to the God particle you mentioned.

You're not going to find a whole lot in scripture that, that if you're, if you're reading it in that very sort of woodenly literal way of reading it, that. Yeah. Then it, then it becomes hard.

So the, the churches that are open to, you know, interpretive, you know, of understanding the relationship between the original audience, the authors and the culture in which first came from. And understanding that that is who the text was written to. Right. So yeah, it, I, I fully affirm that it.

Scripture is written for all of us and that we all benefit from it. But there was an original audience and that that affects what we see there and how we ought to interpret it. Yeah.

Which leads to a good segue. And we're going to talk some about your book the Sacred Chain because I know you mentioned a lot of this in that book.

Especially one of the things I think I remember is you talk about how American evangelicals seem to have even bigger problem with that than, you know, other parts of the globe.

I do want to pause and say whether you take the Bible literal or not, what I know for certain is that God's president does in fact reach all four corners of the globe. Let that sit in. Yeah. So you mentioned this. American evangelicals seem to have a little bit more of a problem with it.

And the thing is that I, I love the title Sacred Chain especially like as I understand more going through the book, seeing how it's actually this chain of events, this chain through evolution where we discover what is human, what makes a soul. And that's kind of the point of your book is what is humanity's role in creation?

As well as kind of talking some about evangelicals response to scripture and you responding to them, I guess kind of would be, I put it. Why did you think now is the time you needed to write this book?

Get it out there or has it been in work for a long time and you thought just needs to happen eventually?

Well, it was in the works for a long time.

And it was originally two books that, I mean, I guess I should say it was originally one big idea that by the time editors and literary agents and everybody who gets involved in a project like this was done with it, this part of it was, was hived off.

And it's mostly telling my story of, you know, again I said I grew up in a pretty conservative Christian environment and it wasn't that we were evolution anti evolution crusaders, but I just wasn't exposed to it. I never had a class, so I was a math and science guy and I never had a class that addressed the science of evolution.

I just, it just wasn't something that happened in the, the little schools that I was part of.

And so when I was, when I was exposed to evolution and the evidence and the science of it, which is different than the philosophy of evolution that we can maybe talk about, but being exposed to the science of it, these big questions came up in my mind. And it was like, well, what do I do with the Bible? How do I interpret these passages?

And what does it mean that the universe has been around for 13.8 billion years? What does that say about God?

What does that say about our species if we've only been around the last 300,000 years, you know, a minuscule fraction of that overall time. And, and how do we understand species changing into other species? What does that say about a creator?

And, and then most challenging to me was, and what do we do about all the death and suffering and that that comes with a very old planet? And, and things evolving over time. And so the, the book into five challenges that arise for me. And I don't think I'm unique in that regard.

These are the kind of questions that come up for lots of people when they consider the science of evolution and how it fits with Christian faith. So I wrote about it to say, here's how I worked through those and for each of those. So the subtitle is. Now let me see if I remember.

The subtitle is How Understanding Evolution Leads to Deeper Faith.

So one of the points I was trying to convey in there is that we don't have to just like somehow begrudgingly go along and say, well, okay, the scientists are telling us evolution must have happened, so we're gonna have to figure out which of our doctrines can survive and how we're gonna reconcile ourselves to all of this in there. There are some surface level challenges to each of those points that I.

That each of those challenges that I just brought up, but in my experience is really understanding them and really pushing through brings you to a deeper place, a place of understanding God better, a place of understanding the world that God created in a better, deeper way that's more satisfying and I think gives better answers to some of those questions than the answers that I had kind of inherited.

So I wrote it to try to show other people that there really are good ways of understanding the science of evolution that can push us to a deeper and I think a better, more authentic faith.

It moved me. Yeah, good stuff.

So really interesting piece you mentioned in the book is how many evangelical Americans think that the theory of evolution is more contentious among scientists than it really is. I'm not saying it's not.

You know, I've met a couple of people who, who say that they are scientists who are like, yeah, I don't really, I don't buy into the whole evolution thing, but do you think that misunderstanding contributes to divisions among some Christians on the topic of evolution? And is it possible to have church unity while disagreeing about that kind of thing?

Yeah. So this data is pretty remarkable.

I think when you ask evangelical Christians, do you think that scientists agree about the theory of evolution, something like 50%.

I wrote it in the book, and I don't remember the number off my, off the top of my head, but it's something like 50% of evangelicals say, scientists don't all agree on this. Okay. But remember, that's not asking do you agree with it? It's do you think scientists agree?

And when you ask the scientists, anybody that has a PhD in biology or in medicine, 99% of them, yeah, agree. And if you know anything about the way science works, 99% agreement, it's about as much as you're ever going to get crazy. Right.

And so the scientists themselves are overwhelmingly saying, yes, humans evolved. Evangelicals say, I think only about half of them think that that or half of evangelicals think, no, scientists don't all agree on that.

So what does that do?

I think that leads to a. I think it gives evangelicals in particular a kind of permission to dismiss science because they think, well, they don't all agree themselves anyway, so we don't have to really follow them. And I think that's problematic. I think it's problematic at several levels. It introduces a kind of dismissal of expertise.

And we could bring up other things about that. But if you're getting your appendix taken out do you go into the waiting room and just poll everybody there of what do you think you should do?

Or do you do what you think the expert says you should do?

Or if you're getting your car worked on, do you want somebody who has expertise in the field or do you say, no, I can do my own research here too, and I can just Google it and find out out. But yet somehow, with regard to this doctrine of evolution, we dismiss that.

And I think there's some accountability there for churches to not perpetuate, you know, a false narrative of, oh, look, how many people disagree with this.

Or, you know, there's another science and faith organization that gets a, gets a lot of traction out of talking about evolution as a theory and conflict and that nobody, nobody believes in this. Well, there's a lot of unpacking to do there.

There are all kinds of details about evolution that are huge matters of debate and discovery and looking for. But the big picture of common ancestry is not remotely unsettled in the scientific. In the scientific field.

That doesn't mean that truth gets decided by a popular vote. That 99% of, yes, that means it's true. No, it just means that it's not a theory that's in crisis. Right.

This is established, established as well as any science is established. So I think our churches have some work to do to acknowledge that and to say, to not misrepresent other people in that regard.

And that would go a long way towards the goal of church unity that you're talking about, I think.

Yeah.

The only biologists that I do know that are opposed to the theory of evolution are the ones who were brought up in that kind of evangelical camp and just happened to kind of fall into biology and are just so staunchly opposed to it from their upbringing that they cannot say, yeah, evolution happens, happened.

And again, you can find such people, you can find people with a PhD in biology that says, I don't accept evolution. That's because there are so many total.

I mean, there was again, the same other science and faith group did a thing one time of look at all of the experts with PhDs that we've gotten to sign this petition that says evolution didn't happen. And they got like 300 or 500 people pretty quickly to sign it. And the American Scientific. What group was it? Education.

Whatever the science education group is, they started one that said, okay, we're just going to get scientists whose name is Steve who accepts evolution.

And they instantly had thousands upon thousands of scientists whose name was Steve to show, okay, yeah, you found this sample size of several hundred people, but. But that is incredibly tiny compared to, you know, all of the scientists there.

Yeah, I bet that was a riot to be a part of too, because, you know, the first Steve got it and he thought about his friend Steve. Oh, man.

Yeah. Also just as like a, like a quick side point too.

I know there are a few people I don't want to name names because church unity that people point to be like, well, people refuse to argue him about evolution. None of the scientists will argue with him.

Them most of the time, if you look into those, it's because that person's using a lot of logical fallacies. Or the scientists are just like, yeah, it's not actually worth my time. I don't think it's going to get anywhere. And it has a lot less to do with.

They don't think they can win the debate. It's more of a, is this worth my time? And for most of them it's not.

And many of those. Many of those. So again, I said that BioLogos has this value of gracious dialogue too.

And so many of those spin very quickly out of the realm of gracious dialogue and turn into gotcha moments. And. Yeah, and they're just kind of grandstanding for their own audience rather than actually engaging in substantive questions.

But it has to be stated, again, there are all kinds of questions about evolution. There are all kinds of things that, I mean, this is a very active area of research. It's not like it's settled and done.

It's all the time coming up with new information.

And that's one of the things science is supposed to do, is when new information comes out, you say, okay, we now have to adapt to this and understand how this works. But the, but those are about the details. Those are about the details of how evolution works.

Not the, the main point that all life on the planet has common ancestors.

If you go back also now, it,

to me, it just like some fields in, you know, in science are currently just kind of of like gourmet cooking at this point. It's just refinement.

Yeah, right. Yeah. I mean, I'll just. To me too, evolution has come so long now that its own field of science.

So even if we're talking about like believing or not believing in evolution, to me, sometimes when you know enough, it feels kind of like being like, do you believe in chemistry or not? And it's like, well, yeah, there are some things in the study of chemistry we don't agree on.

But.

But chemistry is Real. What do you mean, do I believe a narrow that down for me a little bit. And that's where most people aren't actually going to have that conversation.

But you know what?

I'm going to start calling it the theory of chemistry.

I love it, love it. So I can't help but point out you talk a lot about C.S. lewis in your book. And part of my contract with the show is I had to.

CS Lewis wants an episode. You actually talk about the reflection of the Psalms. It's one of my favorite Lewis books. Not a lot of people have read it, which is crazy.

But in it he kind of talks about an understanding of where the inspiration of scripture comes from.

And he talks about like, yeah, these are human made products in a human time that was kind of lifted to inspiration that God later was like this, not like originally gave him word for word. Here's what to say. Tell him that it's good to throw babies against rocks, you know, like stop what God was saying.

But yeah, you use that to kind of show a different reading of scripture and even a different understanding of humanity's role in creation. So could you maybe elaborate some on that for our listeners so they know they need to read your book?

Yeah, sure.

So in each of these challenges I mentioned in the Sacred Chain, I find a guide, somebody to help help me through the challenge that leads me to this place of deeper faith. And with regard to scripture, it was CS Lewis and that book in particular reflection on the Psal.

So I think I grew up with just sort of inheriting what Lewis calls the top down view of the inspiration of scripture, which is that these are the words of God and they just kind of dropped down from heaven into the Bibles and the pews in front of us. And it has this view that the production of scripture itself was entirely God directed.

That the very words that are there are the very words that came from the mouth of God and that the human authors were just writing them down. And it's fascinating to think that is exactly the way the view of scripture in Islam is. The way the Quran was written is Muhammad heard from Allah.

The exact words. And he just wrote. Actually, I think it was that he memorized them all and then he spoke them and people wrote them down word for word for word.

That's not what our Bible is. That's not what our Bible says of itself and it's not how the Christian tradition has understood it.

I mean, first of all, each of the books of the Bible are typically named after the human that wrote them. Or the humans that they were written to, or there's a very clear authorship identified. And the Bible doesn't shrink away from that.

It doesn't say like, well, we're going to put somebody's name here. But we all really know that God said it all and this person just wrote it down. That's the, that's the top down view.

And when you have that, you get into all kinds of problems with some of these things. I was saying before about cultural elements that we find in scripture that God just put in there.

Things like the mustard seed is the smallest seed on earth. Is it really? No, it's not. It turns out it's not.

Or that our gastrointestinal organs are the things that are where the seat of consciousness is in my guts and in my bowels are.

You know, when we use I love, love you with all my heart, Scripturally it would be more consistent, say I love you with my kidneys, I love you with my, my bowels, that they actually thought physiologically that's the way things work. And it's pretty clear that that's in scripture.

And people who feel the need to hold on to that top down view of inspiration have to do all kinds of gymnastics to get around things like that and end up saying things like, well, that's. The Bible might say that, but that's not what the Bible teaches. And we're really only concerned with what the Bible teaches.

The Bible doesn't teach that your gastrointestinal organs are the seat of consciousness and everything. It just says that. And you know, that gets a little tricky to maintain.

And then so similarly with things related to science or evolution, it's not like the Bible says anywhere that people evolved from other creatures or that that wasn't on the table. Right. But there were these cultural understandings that are very clear in scripture that we would say that's not our culture today.

So yeah, in the reflection on the psalms CS look, Lewis uses the imprecatory psalms to say, is this really what God wants of us? That we should pray that our enemies babies will be dashed against the rocks? Is that really?

Or is there something else going on there in the production of this scripture? So Lewis instead said we should understand scripture as being inspired from the bottom up rather than from the top down.

So instead of God just dropping all of these words of scripture into our Bibles in front of us, Scripture was produced the way other literature of the time was produced.

That someone sat down with a quill on parchment and wrote words out and it's perfectly consistent with that, that those authors were somehow being guided by the Holy Spirit. But what they were producing was very much a product of their time and place. And instead that has been taken up into the service of the church.

So that's what Lewis calls a bottom up mode of inspiration, that these texts that emerge from specific times and places and cultures have been taken up into the service of God in the kingdom of God through the church.

And that doesn't mean that everything those people back then said was completely accurate according to modern standards, but it has been taken up and used by God in order to convey what God needs to. To convey to the people.

Yeah. Do you think people have to read scripture like that to advocate for both faith and science?

Well, lots of people don't, so you don't have to in that sense. But I think it answers more questions, it resolves more of the tensions when you understand scripture in that way. But again, you can hold that. No.

When, when Jesus says that the mustard seed is the smallest seed on earth, he really knew that it wasn't. And he was just saying that because his audience thought that. So he was just saying something to go along with what his audience thought.

It's an elaborate prank. You know, Jesus just pulling a leg on those scientists that we're supposed to hate.

You know, it could have been part of the sacrament of silliness that.

Yeah, he actually, he went back, he said that, and then he was like, you know, I can make smaller seeds.

I think it's the eucalyptus seed that is much smaller than the mustard seed, by the way.

Cool.

Somebody checked me on that.

I'm pretty sure that's right.

But a common reason that we hear for Christians who feel the need to deny the theory of evolution is the doctrine of original sin.

Because, you know, the belief is that Christ died and rose again for our sins because we're all born sinners who inherited the guilt genetically from literal Adam. So how do you respond to pushback from that kind of doctrinal stance?

Yeah, that's challenging in one regard, because that's been so ingrained into us and woven together with a view of history that evolution can call into question. But what evolution doesn't call into question at all is that we all sin. We all sin. We're still, all of us all in need of a Savior.

There's nothing in the science of evolution that suggests otherwise at all. So evolution doesn't undermine the reality of sin. What it does force us to grapple with is the history of history of sin.

So there's the, the neat story of a literal Adam and Eve that ate a piece of fruit. And that's what led to all the bad stuff happening. That, that, that story is problematic.

And I don't even, I don't even find it problematic solely on scientific grounds. I find it problematic on theological grounds to say that this somehow is Adam and Eve's fault. Who.

The characters in the story are portrayed as naive innocents. They didn't yet know good and evil, right? They didn't know good and evil.

And yet they're the ones that are being blamed for eating a piece of fruit, that they were told not to eat a piece of fruit. And as a result of that, all the bad things in the world have happened.

It seems to me that on that sort of story we say, God, why did you make it that, why did you set things up that way?

I don't see how that takes God off the hook of saying, I have designed things so that if two innocents do something wrong, the whole rest of creation is going to suffer. So there are still. But this is, this is part of what I mean when I say I think understanding evolution can lead to deeper faith.

This can push us in some other directions to see why God might have constructed a world where the capacities that we have today came about through evolution. And there's some hard stuff that comes along with that. There are lots of things that die and suffer. And the history of that.

We're pretty sure that all of that happened before humans were around to sin and do something wrong. But something about that evolutionary process created in us the ability to become the image bearers of God.

So whether you have a view of the image of God that's related to the capacities that we have or related to the calling that God has placed on our lives. Lives.

There's something necessary about us being able to be morally responsible, us being able to reason and to have language and even culture, that these are things that we see clear evolutionary stories to now. And what we see is that they made us into the kind of creatures who could bear God's image.

And that doesn't take away all the difficulties with the problem of evil.

But I'm not sure that, that it's quite fair to expect me to have to solve the problem of evil, given that nobody ever has in the history of the world. But what it does is, I think it points us in some directions that we see the.

We see the logic and the faithfulness of a God who would create in this way in order to bring about

creatures that have these capacities also, I always like to throw out there, if you're going to the history, original sin stuff, evolution does cause a problem with that interpretation. But we had other ways of interpreting how the history of sin worked before that.

Like, evolution didn't cause us the first thing ever to cause us to question how that worked. The Orthodox church has had a different belief on how sins work right from the beginning, way before evolution was thought of.

So, like, it's not the only thing that causes us to question this. So I don't know if that's a faith and science question as much as it's a purely theological question. Maybe.

Yeah, I think it is ultimately a theological question. Science doesn't have much to say about sin. Right, Right. So it is a theological question.

And what I like to say is that understanding some of the science has made us re examine the theological answers that have been given.

Right.

That makes some of them maybe more plausible than others. I mean, I know people in the evolutionary creation field that still hold to a literal Adam and Eve.

And, you know, there are ways that you can do that. What you can't do is say that there were two and only two humans from whom all the rest of humanity descended that lived 6,000 years ago.

That's not on the table anymore. Unless you say, well, God just created everything to look like that happened. Which you could say, but that leads you down all kinds of other paths.

This.

But so understanding the science does place some parameters on what we can say about the history of events in the world and when certain things happened. But it doesn't answer questions like what is sin? Or what can we do about sin? Those, those are not. Those are not scientific questions to begin with.

So the debate about sin is. Is properly a theological debate.

Yeah, yeah. I think surely if they were scientific questions, we would have evolved to not sin anymore. So we wouldn't go to hell.

We're getting there. Don't worry about it. It's a process.

You know, it's a process. Speaking of, a lot of more progressive Christians like to use ideas like evolution to promote process theology or, you know, similar ideologies.

But process is the idea that we're all entangled and are in a constant state of changing into what we will one day be be including God as a God who is in that process. So do you believe evolutionary science requires Christians to commit any particular understanding of metaphysics to God?

Requires, again, is going to be too strong for me. It may suggest some of those.

May suggest some of those ways or at least it raises questions that can be answered in certain ways that, again, I like to promote the idea of a conversation or a dialogue between science and theology. And I don't. I don't think that science gets to determine theology, but science does show us a lot about the world.

It doesn't say how theology should answer the questions that it poses, but it gives some things that theology needs to provide answers for.

So, for example, when science shows pretty definitively that the universe is very old, 13.8 billion years old old, it makes theologians ask some questions of some of the long cherished doctrines, like, what's God been doing all that time? What is God's relationship to time?

What is.

Yeah, what is time? Science, Science isn't going to answer what was God doing all of that time?

But it might by showing that we've been around, the universe has been around for 13.8 billion years, and Homo sapiens only 300,000 years ago. That might make theologians ask questions about, well, maybe humans aren't the only thing that matters to God.

I mean, because during that 13.8 billion years, 40% of it, not much in the universe was going on except stars were doing nuclear fusion and producing heavier elements that we're all made out of today for 40% of that time, whereas humans can have a fraction of 1% of that time. And so maybe that makes us say, maybe God likes nuclear fusion. Maybe God delights in all of that, too. And even if, which I think is.

I think it's perfectly consistent to say God intended to create human beings and to create human beings in the image of God, you can still say that that's not the only desire that God has and that God likes the rest of creation and that the lavishness of creation that is required in order for a world like ours to evolve is something that God delights in. I think that's. I think that's a lovely view of God that is encouraged. So that's a metaphysics of God that's encouraged by the science.

But no, I don't think it forces you to.

I mean, evolution, the, the real challenging thing for metaphysics that, that evolution brings about is the questioning of fixed species and fixed forms and fixed essences. And so we have to have some way of, of reconciling. What it means to be human is not this static thing, right? And it changes over time.

And there was never a time when a human had parents who were not themselves human. That's not the way it works. But we can, in our lineage, go back far enough where we say, oh, but those weren't human. Human clear back then.

And in some way there's a, you know, that subtle changing over time that can lead some people toward process kinds of conclusions. And then you try to create a bigger worldview and picture that takes all of that into play. And lots of people find at least elements of.

Of process thought more amenable to evolution. But I think it's too strong to say it forces you in to that.

Those first 5 billion years, those were just for the panpsychists, you know, that's. They really dig that.

But is there a way that we can use science as a helpful tool for a variety of faith traditions within the church, rather than something that one side embraces as a weapon against the other while the other treats it as a threat?

I mean, I think one of the, one of the best ways of using science is encouraging awe and wonder, and that should stretch beyond denominational lines and whatever other lines have been drawn in the sand theologically related to those being able to show.

Yesterday I was interviewing for the BioLogos podcast cast the novelist Marilyn Robinson, who's not a scientist by any stretch of the imagination, but she said when she needs to find hopefulness, she reads science journals. And she said, I just love seeing what we have discovered and the kinds of knowledge that's generated and the. The.

So another, we've been doing a series on, on the language of God that we've just called Cool Creatures, where we take one, we did ticks, we've done octopus and ticks, and have several more in the works that you just dig into these and you find them just remarkable. You find this is incredible. These things exist. God knows and loves these things too.

So I, I think there's ways of using science that can just sort of excite sight and to draw out awe and wonder for people. That is a pretty helpful and useful thing.

Yeah. I will say along those lines of.

I remember when I was in Bible college, maybe I guess what you call it, when I was in college for Bible things, I just got really tired of evolution arguments and I couldn't make up my mind what side I wanted to be on and wasn't convinced that I cared at that time.

Time.

But I follow BioLogos just because, like, sometimes you would just have those things about science and beauty and creation, and I'm like, yeah, sometimes I just like hearing the positive things, the things about wonder makes me happy.

And as someone who's just generally averse to conflict, sometimes certain kinds of conflict, I should say you know, sometimes certain kinds of conflict I'm averse to. Yeah, I was like, this is, this is nice.

But one thing, thing we do always like to ask people before we start wrapping our show up, as I know we're getting ready on time here.

It's just if you had to provide a single tangible action that would help better engender church unity, Christian unity, something our listeners could go do right now as soon as this is over. What do you think they could do that would help better engender unity in our churches?

Invite someone you disagree with to go to coffee with you and sit and get to know them as a person rather than just treating them as a set of ideas or as arguments that are to be debated. But find people that are not entirely in your camp, whatever your camp is.

And however you define a camp, find a person and get to know them as a person person. I, I think that would cover over a multitude of, multitude of, of relational sins in our world today.

You can, you can both order a cortado and then you can bond over how bad cortado is.

I'm gonna ask you about that one later. I don't know what that is, but

it's just espresso and steamed.

Yeah, that sounds bad in like a

4 ounce cup, but it depends. But what would change in the world if everyone took your advice and took out one of the others so called to coffee? What changes?

We would, we would see a lot less of us versus them in the world. There's interesting evolution behind human ability to group ourselves into these are our people and those are outsiders over there.

But the next book that I'm working on right now, that was originally part of that one.

One big idea is trying to show that the development of our species and our moral capacities has been one of including more and more and more people in those we count as us. And relationships are the way to do that.

And unfortunately there's kind of a hard cap on the number of individual relationships any one of us can maintain. About 150, according to anthropologist Robin Dunham. Bar and dumb.

I'm think my numbers are much lower.

Yeah, but to, to get to know other people as people is a great way of, of realizing that we all have more in common than we, we have differences.

Good stuff. Good stuff.

Beautifully said. So the, the last thing that we do like to do before we actually wrap up is called a God moment.

And we just like to ask everyone to share a moment where they saw God recently in their life. Whether that be a blessing, a challenge, Or a moment of worship, whatever it may be. I always ask Josh to go first.

Yeah, but just to give the rest

of us time to think.

So Jim, if Josh go, you can go first. If you are trying to get off here.

That is true.

I'm not trying. But I will go first and let you guys wrap up.

It's just up to you. I just want to respect your thought. I know you said.

I live in southwest Michigan, right along the shore of. In a little beach town. Not like I don't have a house on the lake, but a couple of blocks away.

Now, by the way, I'm stinking filthy rich.

I don't want you to get the opinion that Biologous overpays its employees somehow. No, but I'm close enough that I can walk down by the beach.

And right now, as we record in February, it's been the coldest, longest winter I can remember. And the lake is just incredible looking right now with the big chunks of frozen ice.

And my wife and I walked out the pier on Sunday where there's a lighthouse out at the end of it that's just covered in this ice that's been blowing up against there. And where did I see God? I see God in nature like that. I see God. That's part of the awe and wonder that I was talking about.

Using science and understanding how that works, that I'm moved to worship by seeing natural scenes like that just blow me away. And looking out at the expanse of frozen lake water has been one of those.

I like seeing pictures of that stuff, but I'm a Florida boy. If I see any piece of ice outside, I'm not going. But I like to look at the pictures.

Right. Have you. Have you read Camping with Kierkegaard by Aaron Simmons?

I have seen it, but I've not. I've not read it.

Well, it sounds like you might not need to, but you might like to.

It's enjoyable.

But.

Yeah. Jim, I know you're getting ready to go, but whenever that next book comes out, let us know because that sounds. Sounds like it's right up our alley.

I'd like to have you back on.

All right.

It's been a joy.

Super.

Yes, sir.

Thanks. Appreciate it.

Yeah.

Pleasure's ours. Josh? Yeah. Do you have a God moment?

I always.

Jim broke the phone.

I always have plenty. I think I've already spoke about my mother in law for a God moment that's kind of ongoing.

This time I'm gonna go with I have in a weird way, because I don't. I Don't do birthdays. Let me just put that out there. I don't usually get my friends birthday presents, just not a thing that I do.

I don't like birthdays. I think they're dumb. But last year I saw something that was like, yeah, this would be a great birthday present for tj.

It was less a birthday present, more like, this is a good thing to get TJ and it happens to be near his birthday, so I might as well give it to him for his birthday. Even though I don't usually do such things. But I've never been able to find it. Like, it's been really long.

I'm like, where did that thing I got TJ go?

And I have had a little bit of guilt throughout the last year going, I wonder if I saw that and decided because I don't do birthdays to not get it for him. And that kind of made me sad because I was like, I hope I really did just lose it. It didn't decide not to get him.

Gaslit yourself.

Yeah, I gaslit myself really bad about

this you didn't get me yet present.

And then last week we're going through the garage and we found it, and I feel a little bit better.

And now I just have the challenge of do I want to give him a really, really late birthday present or just wait till May and then be like, yeah, I'm just a year behind. You know, it's wrapped.

This is an early birthday present either way.

But yeah, yeah, so that's mine. Realizing I did in fact get you something and not feeling guilty about that possible thing. I gaslit myself to believe. Right.

I actually am kind of in the same boat with Jim, although not actually. Even though it would be awesome to be on like a Lake Michigan icebreaker with Jim, that'd be awesome, but in a different way. So I.

If you're watching and wearing glasses, that's a new thing. If you're not watching, imagine. Imagine I'm wearing glasses. And now you're on the level.

So, you know, it's just the past couple years, my vision has been deteriorating pretty slowly. Pretty slowly. And I got off work early one day when got my eyes checked out.

And a week later, a week and two days later, I get a call from America's Best, which is right next door to my son store. Super funny. I was at work, they called, said they had my glasses. I was already at the front door of my store, so I just walked to them.

She hadn't even put my glasses down to call the next person.

When I walked in, it was.

It was really funny.

But I wore them for about 30 seconds, maybe a minute when I was, like, sitting down with the person, like, trying them on, getting them shaped and stuff.

Stuff.

And during that minute after I took them off, my vision was already blurry because that's how. That's how I have astigmatism in both eyes.

I only got one. I need to catch up.

And apparently my eyes have just been straining super hard to be able to see normally, just in general. And it took about a minute for my eyes to be like, oh, flying. Finally. Thank God. So now if I. If I take them off, I just.

I can't read anything on my screen.

Your eyes have been begging for help.

It turns out my eyes have been screaming, crying for help. But I think it is insane that as a species or. Yeah, I guess the first eye doctor. Whoever is that in Genesis. First eye doctor genealogy.

But the fact that our bodies are this complex and we've been able to find that out is incredible. Find it out and solve it. Because if you ask me, glasses being able to fix astigmatism, that doesn't make any sense.

Yeah, it's wild.

My eyes are shaped like footballs. How does a different thing on the outside of my face fix that?

I think if you wear glasses, you should be able to classify yourself as biological iconic.

It's close. It's definitely close.

You just need to, like, screw the glasses into your head so that it's, like, you know, part of you.

Yeah, yeah. But I think that's divine. That's crazy, isn't it? So if you like the show, if you didn't like the show, please consider sharing with a friend.

I was gonna finish this without my glasses on, and then I realized I couldn't.

An enemy or a cousin?

Friends, Enemies. Cousins.

Especially your cousins.

Especially your cousins. Go to the website, purchase one of our T shirts. Promotes the show, helps us grow, all the other good stuff. Yeah, it's very helpful.

And while it's not free, they are super comfy. They're so nice to wear. Josh, which one are you wearing right now?

The Trinity Knot diars. Trinity Knot one. Which is awesome.

Trinity Knot.

That's theology. And just looks good in green. You know, Irish and green just feels right. Yeah. Also check out some of the other shows on the Z Podcast network.

I mentioned Paige and Pixler earlier. That's over there. Got a shout out. Something from Brandon. So check out the Kung Fu Pizza Party. Check out Christian Ashley with the Let Nothing movie.

Podcast. If you want to hear someone who doesn't believe in evolution, Christian's there. We still love them. Yeah, I do. Yeah.

But we hope you enjoyed it. Coming up, we're talking with my good personal best friend ever, Michael Morelli, to discuss his work on his podcast, Personal Manifestos and more.

After that, we're gonna have another roundtable discussion on church engagement focusing on topics like social justice and Christian nationalism with Aaron Simmons, Ben Chica, Jill, Elizabeth and others. Then we're going to have on Pastor Sarah Hinilke. Hinlicki.

I say Hiniki, but I'll just say really quick.

So Wilson to discuss her podcast, Queen of Sciences, a Lutheran theology podcast. And finally, at the end of season one, Francis Chan will be on the show.

Yeah, probably. He doesn't know about it, but I'm sure that's not a problem. I'm on all kinds of podcasts I don't know about. Probably.

Yeah, he can't be that busy.