Episode 283 - Liz Charlotte Grant

[00:00:07] Speaker A: Welcome to that Makes Total Sense, a podcast dedicated to exploring God's generosity and justice. I'm Alexis Busetti, a Christian, aiming to ask good questions and encouraging you to do the same. Every one of us is wired by God to live out generosity and justice, but the how sometimes eludes us. That makes total sense is a way for us to get together, posture ourselves as learners, and challenge one another to practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day. Okay. I'm here with Liz Charlotte Grant. We're processing in different ways this morning. If you don't want me to say that, he can cut that out. Is that fair? [00:00:50] Speaker B: No, go for it. Yeah, I talk politics all the time. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah, great. We're processing in different ways this morning because as we record, this is the day after the 2024 election. This will air sometime around the inauguration, actually, I think so in January, close to when the book comes out. And I actually am feeling so grateful to be able to take a time out from my phone from, admittedly, a little bit of doom scrolling from the news to be able to have this conversation. I'm also grateful that even in that, I've been able to just connect with community, who's also just processing, with a lot of processing today. So anyway, we may not talk about politics, but I just kind of wanted to throw that out there. Like, this is kind of where we are right now. But I am grateful to talk to Liz Charlotte Grant today. This book, Knock at the Sky. Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible. This is incredible. Liz, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. [00:02:06] Speaker B: I mean, I. I feel so honored both to be talking to you and to hear that feedback on this book. I. I really appreciate it. [00:02:14] Speaker A: Oh, it is. It is just so beautiful. It feels felt to me. I. I got up in the mornings. We have a puppy who I'm I'm hoping isn't like chewing something or peeing on something right now in another room. I'm afraid to call her in because that might, like, wake her if she actually is slumbering at the moment. Delilah is her name, but I would wake in the mornings a little bit before everyone else except for Delilah. So Delilah and I would sit in the den and I would pour myself a cup of coffee and read this. And it felt a little bit like a devotional for me just to have this time. I don't know what I anticipated before I cracked it open, but it was just absolutely beautiful. I think what I thought was like, oh, is it going to go kind of real technically through Genesis. And I was kind of almost preparing myself for that. And then when I opened it and that was really wasn't what it was, I was like, oh, this is great. Now, again, I'm a. I'm a theologian, so I'm happy to technically go through text, but this felt just kind of softer than that for me. So, anyway, so I'm really. I'm really grateful for that. [00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah. For those who might not know, it's an interdisciplinary commentary, so it's. And I'm a creative writer, so I'm not a theologian. So, you know, sorry. If you were hoping for deep theological insights, we got them, though. [00:03:52] Speaker A: That's the thing. I can't wait to talk about it. But, yes, as a creative writer, I want go ahead and continue locating yourself, because I think this will be important as we continue our conversation. [00:04:00] Speaker B: Right, right. So I actually write about multiple disciplines. So I do go deeply into the text of Genesis, kind of from a historical critical view, or maybe like cultural theology view. Alexis, we were just talking about. And so I go through Genesis 1 to 32, so the creation of the cosmos, through Jacob wrestling with the angel or God or whatever. But because I'm a creative writer, the way that I approach the text is pretty different. It's. It's more literary theory and literary criticism than it is kind of biblical exegesis. And in fact, it's isegesis, what I'm doing. So it's much more kind of mid Rashik in its tone and the way that I approach things. You know, Aviva Gotley Zornberg, I quote in the book, she's phenomenal. If you haven't heard of her, I recommend you go by every single thing she's written. And she writes about kind of her goal. She in particular studies sort of the midrashic texts of the rabbis, kind of applying that back to the Torah. She herself is Jewish, and she writes about her goal, and this is a goal that I took up as well, is to see what can be said about the Bible. And so my aim in this book was not. Was not to come down hard on the truth, the interpretation, but to say as much as I possibly could about the text that we could approach it creatively. So I include stories of archeology and stories of science, you know, origin stories of science, which of course, matches this origin story of the Book of Genesis. I tell origin stories in the arts. You know, I bring in fine art criticism. I talk about a little bit of memoir. I mean, it's just kind of. It goes a lot of different places. So I feel delight, excited that it held together for you. Alexis. That's. That's beautiful to me. [00:06:03] Speaker A: Oh, it, it did so much more than hold together. And if we talk about origin story real quick, part of the origin story of this podcast for me was coming from a background that I will say suits part of parts of my personality, which is like, you name in the book certainty, having the right answers, you know, things like that. And in my faith journey, I started to ask myself and God and my community in different ways, what if, like, what if all of this isn't about having all the air quotes, right answers, but what if it's about asking better questions? [00:06:48] Speaker B: Right. [00:06:48] Speaker A: And so part of even this podcast for me is like a medium for me to be able to ask questions, to talk to people who are also asking questions, for us to ask different questions, and then see how those responses maybe even probably build up to more questions, things like that. And so for me, when I read your book, I felt so much of that. And I actually love that you're not writing from the perspective of a trained theologian or biblical scholar, because I think as a community of believers, to have perspectives of people from different vocations, different areas of expertise, different practices, I think we've lost what we can share with one another when it comes to this text that we, we claim is sacred. And so if I am missing something, if I can't ask Liz, a creative writer, what are you bringing to this? Like, when you read Jacob, I mean, I'll, I'll just. Jacob is the freshest for me because I just finished it and Jacob's at the end. But like, you use this language of him rolling around with God in the dirt. [00:08:01] Speaker B: Yes. [00:08:02] Speaker A: You know, like, I am not a creative writer. When I'm picturing this wrestling, you know, that's not what comes to my mind. But, man, how enriched I felt when I'm reading those phrases of Jacob rolling around with God in the dirt. And it just puts. I can feel it in my fingernails almost. You know, it just gives, it just brings that humanity back into a story that is so familiar to many of us. So I'm grateful for your perspective as a creative writer and, and what you bring to this. And it absolutely held together for me and brought in so many different aspects of humanity. I mean, I could bullet point some like, I mean, lightning strikes and, and, you know, paintings on ceilings and, and, and, and, and women who end up, you know, translating and people. I mean, it's just, it was just such a beautiful, a beautiful tapestry and so. And so, again, I'm really grateful for it. Thank you for kind of sharing a little bit of your. Your context and where you're coming from. There are a couple of notes that I want to bring up, and I imagine that there'll be threads for us. They also might be a little bit of almost like housekeeping, because I feel like at the beginning, we may have. May have lost some people when we're talking about isegesis or, you know, some of these kinds of things. Sorry, guys. No, no, it's great. Lots of people in two ways. One, some people are like, I don't know what that means. And two, some people are like, I know exactly what that means. And I already turned you off. Like, I was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm already. I'm already done with that. [00:09:36] Speaker B: That's heresy. [00:09:37] Speaker A: That's heresy. Right? So maybe that's the first note. Tell us what you mean when you say part of what you're doing in your text is isegesis. [00:09:47] Speaker B: Yeah. You were talking about kind of bringing in people and different voices from different disciplines to read the text alongside the experts. And that is very much my aim. It actually is not. I mean, the term isegesis, I know, has some baggage around it, and that's because probably the fundamentalist modernist debate just. It was a. It was a messy. A messy experience for all of us. I think what I really mean is that the Bible is more than just historical criticism. Like, we should be able to read the Bible beyond questions of inerrancy, even beyond questions of that the academy is asking. We should be able to approach the biblical text, I think more like the rabbis approached it. So I actually draw a lot from the rabbis as I am examining the text. And my sweet theological editor often felt uncomfortable about how I did that. And it. And, you know, no shade on him whatsoever. I mean, I think that's a very common experience to feel like, why would you draw from these sort of legendary, at best texts, you know, to try to translate the Bible, you know, which is God's inspired word to us. And I actually believe that too. One of the things I write about is how Midrash has been misunderstood. We have understood it to be sort of this legendary sort of soup, you know, like, it's like just sort of weird stories. They're sort of ancient. They kind of go into the same category as, like, say, the desert fathers or mothers or some of the contemplative writers, the mystics. I think, in reality, what is behind the study and the work of Midrash is a real reverence for the biblical text. There is a sense of this text matters to my life and my community, and I need to know minutely in every detail how this applies and how God arrives here. And so a lot of Midrash deals with sort of the silences and the text, you know, especially when we're talking. And actually, this is part of the reason I wrote about Genesis at all, because I was very curious about these sort of prehistoric encounters with God that humanity had. You know, whether they had them in fact or whether there's some kind of mythology mixed in. I mean, I actually don't think it's very easy for us to decide that, you know, if you can tell I'm not a literalist. So I'm sorry in advance if that's offensive to you. I think my goal is actually much more, much broader. Like, I want us to be able to have meaningful conversation about the text, even with people outside the church. Even with people inside the church. Like, I want us to be able to engage this literary work, this literary masterwork from the ancient near east, with the curiosity, with openness, with a real desire to meet God there, because I think we can. And so, you know, my goal is much more. Let's actually just get us in conversation about this text in a really meaningful way. [00:13:33] Speaker A: Okay. So thank you for that. Again, kind of moving through some of these, a couple of these in. In your text, you mentioned you. You have different ways that you identify God. Sometimes these get bulky. So I will say I have been trained. I have been trained to write with. About God with using no pronouns and just it. This just. It just gets clunky. That's fair. So I sometimes will revert to using he, him, his pronouns for God because of the clunkiness for me. But, you know, I thought, I don't know, maybe I can try it in, you know, in this conversation. We'll see. But I wanted to name that, that you also are using generally genderless. You know, so God's God's self. Or instead of saying him her, we're talking like God's xyz. So sometimes the sentences for, you know, can get a little bit clunky in my writing, but also for. For you, you don't just do that. You also use different words for God. So can you talk just a little bit about your decisions surrounding that, why that felt important for you as a writer? [00:15:07] Speaker B: First of all, you're right, it is occasionally clunky. [00:15:13] Speaker A: I didn't feel the clunk as much in yours. As I feel it in mind. But I think it's because my writing is papers, not creative, so I don't feel like I can step in with some of the. More, you know, kind of creative capital. [00:15:26] Speaker B: Yeah. So I. I call God all sorts of things. I mean, I. I think part of that is responding to God in Genesis in particular, where. Where God is still fairly unknown to these people. And so I felt like I actually had a little bit more freedom to engage the text that was in front of me with these different names. So it's, you know, you have, like, you know, God is a hovering spirit, the poltergeist at the beginning of the world, you know, who hovers over the waters. And that's all we know at that point. You know, that's it. If you're going through the text chronologically, all we have is a spirit hovers. [00:16:13] Speaker A: It's weird. [00:16:14] Speaker B: It's super weird, you know, And I. I wanted to bring back some of that weirdness to us, you know, to make some of the familiar strange again, because I think it sort of activates us something important. Like, I think it's important for us to notice our own feelings, what happens in our bodies when we hear these words. You know, when I call God the poltergeist, when I call God the voice. You know, one of the metaphors in the first chapter is God. God speaking the world into existence is like Whale song. [00:16:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:16:54] Speaker B: And I think examining God as an alien voice, because, by the way, God has no throat. Right. [00:17:03] Speaker A: I loved that whole section. [00:17:05] Speaker B: I'm like. [00:17:05] Speaker A: I was blown away. I'm like, oh, my goodness. I've never thought about this before. [00:17:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Like, God has no throat, so how did God make a noise? Right, Right. Because, like, voices have containers. They have lips and cartilage and teeth and spit and, you know, a. That has kind of a desire to speak something. Right. We know God has a mind, but God doesn't have a mind. Right. God doesn't have a brain. God doesn't have a throat. Right. So how does God speak? So I started thinking about, you know, these. This alien speech. And of. Of course, I thought of whales, as anyone would. But, you know, and then I. And then I write about how with the Golden Record, this was a. A project NASA did In the. The 60s, they sent this record into space, and it had kind of voices and messages, audio recordings of the planet Earth. And they sent it into space on a satellite in hopes that it would reach literal alien life in the galaxy. And they included on that record Whale Song, because What if aliens throats are more like whales, Right? Like, maybe the whales would have to transfer us. [00:18:31] Speaker A: Right. Understand whalesong. So weird, right? [00:18:35] Speaker B: We know that whalesong is some sort of communication. We don't really understand it. Whales have names for each other, they have family units. They. I mean, they're. They're wild creatures, you know, and they might have been the first and biggest intelligence on our planet. We don't really know for sure. And so I find it fascinating to think of God through that lens now. Okay, it's got a whale. Of course not. It's a metaphor. [00:18:59] Speaker A: Right. [00:19:00] Speaker B: But I do think imagining God as the voice, you know, for me, that's. That's when I come back to a lot, the voice that helps me remember, you know, God doesn't have a body. And I think separating God from those pronouns was important for me, too. You know, I wrote this book in the midst of so much, and, you know, my background is white American evangelicalism. And so there were so many scandals coming out of these, you know, white male pastors and their mega churches and their, you know, I. [00:19:39] Speaker A: And they just keep coming. [00:19:40] Speaker B: They keep coming. And I feel deep sadness about that because they have represented God to so many people. And the truth is that they were never God. But in a sense, we sort of gave up our autonomy to them, our spiritual autonomy, and we said, this is what God's like. And, well, you know, now God has had an affair and with the pool boy or whatever, you know what I mean? Like, so then what do we do with the idea of God and how do we engage the Scriptures again? And so a lot of those questions also informed my decision to make God genderless in my writing. You know, Jesus, of course, is gendered male, but I think there's actually good enough reason from the text itself to say God is not specifically gendered in spirit form, you know, either as, quote, unquote, Father or as Holy Spirit. [00:20:39] Speaker A: Yep. [00:20:40] Speaker B: You know, and in fact, there's. There's quite a bit of evidence to say that the Holy Spirit if, If they were gendered would be female. And that, to me, actually feels very important. There are just so few instances where females are a big part of the story in the Bible. And. And to me, the fact that God might not be male really mattered. [00:21:05] Speaker A: Yeah, thanks for. Thanks for touching on that and naming that as we go through. Again, there might be some folks who are, like, feeling a little bit uncomfortable, but I just say we go with it. [00:21:18] Speaker B: Well, I'm glad. I want them to reach out to me, like, let's talk like, I want to hear from you. I actually have enjoyed a lot hearing from people who disagree with me about this stuff and just having dialogue. I mean, this is what feels important to me. [00:21:33] Speaker A: Yes. [00:21:33] Speaker B: To have these dialogues, to allow like multiple voices to speak, to hear these different perspectives about God, about the scriptures. You know, the inerrancy has kind of stolen that from us with the idea that we have just like one answer, one certain, one certainty, you know, for the church. And I, I don't think that's the case. [00:21:55] Speaker A: Yeah, no, I, Yeah, I, I agree with you on that. So thanks for, thanks for naming it and letting us. That kind of be one of the threads that goes through. But when I was going to say that might make some people feel uncomfortable. I also think it's good. And I think that this is part of. Part of what your book does for me. Again, I'll just name it is, as you said, I'll just repeat it. It helps make the familiar less familiar. Makes the familiar strange again, which I think is entirely worthwhile. One of the things that I was taught to do in a biblical interpretation class was to. And this, this is going to sound wild for some folks who have heard different things from the pulpit or who have been trained in different ways of reading, but one of the things that I was taught to do is to pick a character and just put myself in the place of that character. As I'm reading, I did a paper where I did that with Bathsheba, who is not a Genesis. I know, but as I was reading through it, I'm like, oh, snap. She actually has no quotes in this. So I talk about voice. She has no voice in this. In this first part. She does later, but she doesn't in this first passage where we meet her. And just thinking about how that feels as a woman, you know, coming into this with no voice. And that that experience hit me as I was reading your book and the chapters on Hagar. I mean, one of the places. Help me if I'm. If I'm misremembering where you talk about she. No one calls her by name. Yeah, God's the only one. No, none of these other characters in this text call her by name at all. I mean, this is wild. Like, put yourself in the place of Hagar. [00:24:02] Speaker B: You're. [00:24:03] Speaker A: You're there. Your entire life is dedicated to this family, to this couple. And you're doing just, I mean, un. Unfathomable things with your body. [00:24:17] Speaker B: Your. [00:24:18] Speaker A: A surrogate. But this is not a surrogate. That happened through modern medicine. This is a surrogacy that happened through, like, actual sexual intercourse, whatever, that ended up looking like there was definitely a power dynamic going on there. [00:24:33] Speaker B: Correct. Yeah. [00:24:33] Speaker A: And then throughout this text, the only place where we know and meet Hagar, the people who have created the situation for her do not call her by name. [00:24:47] Speaker B: Yeah, this. [00:24:49] Speaker A: Like, we need to sit with that. I think it does us good to sit with that, because everyone knows the story of Hagar, you know, everyone knows. She's so familiar to us. This story is so familiar to us. It hit me again when you are in the chapter with Abraham and Isaac, the binding of Isaac and. And where God's voice comes and says, your only son. Well, if we look at the patriarchs as the ultimate protagonists, that doesn't even, like, for me, you know, for years, it's like, oh, yeah, of course, you know, because who are the protagonists in this picture? Our God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Like, that's what we say. But dang, if Abraham doesn't have another son, he absolutely does. He has a firstborn who is also the father of nations. And it's not laid out that way in the text. Yeah. So. So anyway, I also thought of that while you were talking about some of the scandals that had come out and all these things. Like, let's make Abraham strange. This familiar character. We sang about him. If you grew up in white evangelicalism, I know, you know, Father Abraham, you could do all the handwriting just like me. Even still. But let's make. I'm not saying let's throw shade on Abraham. I'm saying let's make him strange. Like. Like, what if this was the headline. Yeah, here we go. This is what happens with our trusted faith leader. Multiple situations with him. [00:26:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. Like he perpetually. It's not just. I've heard it preached that he's passive. I. I think that that is a misreading of patriarchal ancient Near Eastern culture, because no patriarch in that time was passive. Everything. Everything that he did was an active choice, you know, to bring the slave woman into his sheets, to listen to his wife and then to do nothing as she is abusing her slave. [00:27:04] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:27:05] Speaker B: He doesn't run after Hagar two times. They leave her in the desert to die. [00:27:11] Speaker A: Yes. [00:27:11] Speaker B: You know, the first time she runs away. The second time she's put out, she. She's kicked out with basically basic rations, they expect she will die. You know, and the first time she's pregnant when she runs away and they. There's no mention of Them coming after her. I mean, imagine a pregnant body in the Sinai Desert. Desert walking to Egypt. [00:27:39] Speaker A: Well, and before that, when you're, you know, when we see Abram and he's. He's going through. And he's like, yeah, like, she's my sister. Like, this is. This is. This is an intentional deception. And again, let's make that weird. [00:27:57] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:27:58] Speaker A: He basically says, take her and sexually assault her. [00:28:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:28:03] Speaker A: My wife. [00:28:03] Speaker B: Go ahead, Pharaoh. Yeah. [00:28:05] Speaker A: And do whatever. [00:28:06] Speaker B: Twice. He does it two times. [00:28:08] Speaker A: And do whatever you want to with her. Just save me. This. This feels problematic. So I'm going to pause for myself, and I want you to. I want you to say what you're going to say, but I'm going to pause for myself. And just because I needed. Early on, when I was starting to look at the scriptures differently, which I think is a lot of what your book is about, I needed people to give me permission to. To feel things when I was reading the text and so. And to sit with these untidy stories. So I just kind of want to name that right now. Like, it's okay to feel, like, gross about Abraham when we read that text. Like, it's okay to sit with this man and say, gosh, he's a hero. Gosh, what about this situation with his wife? Oh, my goodness. What about the power dynamics? Like, it's okay to sit and feel the feelings of this untidy story with Abraham. Okay, I'm done. Go ahead. [00:29:15] Speaker B: No, that's beautiful. I think what struck me about that story and actually those. That chapter was hardest to write when I was writing about the surrogacy and about Hagar liberating herself, but running away into the desert and then being called back by God, That's God's word to her to return. [00:29:37] Speaker A: I hate it so much, though. [00:29:39] Speaker B: I hate it. I hate it. That. That was the hardest chapter to write. And I. I struggled with that because I. Watching Abraham abuse both of these women was deeply troubling. And then to go to the commentators, there is a legacy of gaslighting about Father Abraham. Some of the early. The early church fathers said that Abraham must not have felt sexual desire for Hagar while he was having sex with her to have his surrogate son, because that would have been unholy. He wouldn't have enjoyed it. [00:30:31] Speaker A: And doesn't one of them go as far as to say, like, you. You quote him like, he's the only man on the planet that this has ever happened to. I'm like, what are we doing here? [00:30:41] Speaker B: I mean, that was my take, to be fair. [00:30:43] Speaker A: Oh, that was yours. I just remember reading it. But I'm also. But okay, but really, really, I know. [00:30:50] Speaker B: You know, so many parts of the Scriptures, to me, what makes them compelling over time and continues to be compelling, how psychologically true they are. You know, this is a work of literature that is 2500 to 3000 years old. You know, parts of it might be 4000 years old. It is an ancient work of literature, and yet it is so psychologically true in so many ways that I continue to find compelling. I do not think the way that we read this is psychologically compelling. I think, you know, it's not even physiologically true. Like, if we believe these people existed, of course Abraham felt desire for Hagar. I mean, you know, of course he felt lust. Of course he. Right. And so I think some of those questions, I mean, you would think so. [00:31:39] Speaker A: Because not to be graphic, but she did get impregnated. So, yeah, Something. [00:31:43] Speaker B: Something had to happen. Right? [00:31:45] Speaker A: That's. [00:31:46] Speaker B: That's just biologically, physiologically, yes. And yet it was so hard to read. Some of these fathers of faith really do backflips and backbends to try to make their hermeneutic fit. And it was because, of course, Abraham is a type of Christ, you know, so especially the early church fathers were very obsessed with this hermeneutic. You know, even. Even the rabbis were. I mean, I just felt like, so gaslit as a woman reading this text. Like, I'm seeing Abraham as an abuser. And that is deeply troubling that our. Our faith story begins with this man. On the one hand, he has, you know, the chapter before, of course, in the. In the preceding chapters in the Scriptures, I talk about Abraham getting out. And I. I love the King James version of that, which is get the out. It's like, so forceful, and there's kind of no way around that, Right? Like, if. If Abraham's going to obey God, it needs to happen urgently, right now, without complaint, you know, And. And as far as what we see, he does that, that is a miraculous act of faith. And yet the same man goes on to abuse both of the women in his household, the adult women in his household. And that is deeply troubling. And I think it really is okay to say that, to feel that, to feel the confusion when God tells Hagar to return. You know, for me, it was really important to read womanist theologians who are, you know, black women theologians, are reading from that perspective on purpose, you know, so reading. Will D.A. gaffney reading in Particular Dolores S. Williams, she wrote Sisters in the Wilderness, and it is really a diatribe on Hagar. I mean, it is her take on the story of Hagar and the way that the black female experience in particular draws from that. It's just a beautiful. It's a beautiful work. She's a great writer, too. I find most theology books dull. No offense, guys. I did not find William's book dull. She's a phenomenal writer. Excuse me. So I think, you know, in it and in Williams telling, this is an important thing for God to actually say, even though it's very mystifying, it truly is not safe for her in the desert. It's not safe for a pregnant body to be in the desert walking. She would die, you know, and God gives her this call, it's miraculous call, very similar to what God has given to Abraham. So again, we. We kind of see this, like, this paradox within. Within the text itself. You know, on the one hand, it seems cruel to send Hagar back to the household that had been abusing her. On the other hand, she is pregnant. She is walking in the desert without provisions. She probably will die there, you know, so if she's going to continue to be part of the family of God, in a sense, she does need to return. Mostly because she will live, right, like an Ishmael will be born. And then, of course, when they go into the desert, again, the way that Williams reads that is to say God provides a resource where there is no resource, you know, where. Where none existed. He provides a well in the desert, which is sustenance. I mean, that's it. And it's wealth in the desert, and it's. It's generations of people that come from this line of Hagar and Ishmael. And it happens because she returns. So there's. There really is, you know, this. This very challenging thread through these stories, but I think it's worth wrestling with. And in fact, one of the. One of the things that came up for me was kind of following this story all the way through and saying, okay, if we're. If we're continuing to think about Hagar and Ishmael, even to the binding of Isaac, right? So, you know, God says, take your son, your only son to Mount Mariah. No. Yeah, Mount Mariah. Am I right? [00:36:23] Speaker A: I think so, yeah. I think so. Trying to think back. [00:36:25] Speaker B: It's been a bit since I wrote that part. So take your. Your son, your only son, to Mount Moriah and sacrifice him there. You know, and, yeah, how we've read that Is like, oh, it's. It's so much, you know, Christ. It's typological, right? So we, you know, we see Christ, et cetera, et cetera. That's great. I think that's a true reading from what I can tell. Also, it's not entirely true that this is the only sun, right? So following the Hagar and Ishmael story, we're seeing, oh, actually, they're in the desert by now. Like, let's return to them and think about what that was like, you know. And, you know, Hagar being Egyptian, there is kind of a thread in feminist theology. I think Phyllis Tribal is the one who draws this out, talking about kind of the affliction of Hagar and Ishmael, how God heard Hagar's affliction and addressed it. There's very similar language to that and to the Exodus story, when God hears the affliction of the people, the Hebrews in Egypt. And so, you know, there's a theory that Hagar was Egyptian and was kind of picked up by the family after the pharaoh fiasco. And the question is like, okay, so this Egyptian slave comes. She then is enslaved and abused. She has this. This kid. And then they're, like, kicked out, and they go into the desert, right? They, like, wander in the desert because they've been liberated by God. Kind of, kind of, kind of. But then, of course, you have this. This Hebrew narrative. They become enslaved to the Egyptians, right? God sets them free to wander in the desert, but they have no land either, right? So there is. There is this tie there. But I think one of the questions I kept asking myself was, you know, is it possible that God is even maybe using some sarcasm here? Take your son, your only son, right? Like, what if God is actually poking at that? What if God understands, You know, what if this is like a way of actually asking Abraham to protest on behalf of his sons, which is not what he's done. You know, he has been so passive. He's not protested for the safety and security of the women in his household or his sons. And we don't see him fight God here either. We read it as faith. And I kind of. I just want to kind of put a splinter in that for us, you know, just. Just so we think about it, is it possible that this is actually God's way of riling Abraham up and maybe he kind of fails? [00:39:28] Speaker A: So one of the. One of the questions that you rose for me, and again, I'm like, I'm. I'm great tossing these questions around. I want to say that before I get to the question, I'm pretty ticked off at Sarah, too. Like, I. I just kind of. I just kind of live ticked off at Sarah. So, like, we put a whole bunch of stuff on Abraham, and I think we should, as far as these questions go. But I get real ticked at. At Sarah, too, for sure. For sure. So that's kind of a side note. But one of the things that. And again, I think this is why it's so great to read in a community, because as a writer, you're. You're seeing some of these things. You know, my. My. My. My daughters are in high school right now, and so they're reading books by. By women authors in particular, which I just love. Some of them I haven't read, but they are either falling in love, slash hating some of these characters. And it's my favorite to see this happening for them. But I just think when. But when we can read this, like a literary work, you. Some of these threads get pulled together kind of more easily than when. We're just looking at this from a strictly historical, critical perspective. We're counting years between Egypt and Egypt instead of just, like, recognizing, oh, man, there's two Egypts here. And, like, what. You know, what are we doing with that? But one of the questions that you. That you raised for me that really irritated me was great. [00:40:58] Speaker B: I love that. [00:41:01] Speaker A: Was this just this, like, question of Abraham. And. And maybe I will. I'll say maybe his character. That was, for me, where. Where it irritated me was, okay, you see Abraham fighting, arguing with God on behalf of Sodom and Gomorrah, which you bring up. He has no skin in that game. Really? [00:41:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:21] Speaker A: I mean, Lot gets free from that whole situation. That's like the one dude he is, like, cares about, and then he gets out. But, like, Abraham doesn't live there. He doesn't, you know, like, it's not his people. Like, all of this in your. [00:41:36] Speaker B: She also doesn't care enough about Lot to actually go to his house that. Also to pull him out. Like, that's the angel of God. That's not Abraham. [00:41:45] Speaker A: It's not Abraham. He didn't know that. But, I mean, but even this, like, Lot, there is a connection. I don't want to, like, say that there's not a connection with Abraham. A Lot. There definitely is a connection. Is that his wife? No. Is that his. You know, so anyway, it's. I don't know. There's some bro love there. I get that. But it's like, okay, the question that irritated Me was, when we see Abraham doing this, like, what are we actually seeing? Like, he's not willing to go to bat for Hagar. He's not willing to go to bat, as you point out, for Isaac. He's not willing to go to bat for Ishmael. He's not willing to go to bat for Sarah. But, like, oh, my goodness, this is like, such a beautiful thing that he goes to bat for Sodom and Mora. I don't know. I. Again, I'm processing probably a lot of things with men in power today. Parentheses. But, you know, welcome to election week. [00:42:39] Speaker B: Yes. [00:42:41] Speaker A: In case you're just now joining us. But, you know, that was. That was one of those things. But again, I. I just want to say as. As. As people who find this text to be sacred, as you and I both do, probably as many of the folks who are listening do I want to interrupt with this little place. You have a quote that I put at the top of my notes where you say, God is not God's words. God is more. And you have a whole section where you talk about your craft as a writer. And then I think, what a beautiful picture, a beautiful analogy. You and I are sitting here as you're an author, and I'm just having a conversation with you. Liz. I liked this. Liz. I hated this. Liz. I didn't like when you made me wrestle with this. Liz. I thought that was bunk, you know, whatever it is. [00:43:39] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:43:40] Speaker A: Because you are more than the words that you put in these pages. And the words that you put in the pages are beautiful, and they're helpful and they're, you know, all of the things. But you're. But you're more than that. And so just like, I feel like a little commercial break to just say, like, God is more than this text that we do find to be sacred. It is. It is sacred. It is meaningful for God's people over time, including us, who have all of these, you know, centuries of separation from it. And so to. For me to say, I don't like thinking about Abraham this way, or I don't want to wrestle with that, or maybe I do want to wrestle with that. That is holy work. [00:44:25] Speaker B: Yes. Yes. I mean, I believe in the spirit of God. [00:44:30] Speaker A: Amen. [00:44:32] Speaker B: And so, you know, I'm no cessationist. I love, love being able to think of God sitting next to me on the couch as I wrestle these things to the ground. And in fact, I end the book with Jacob wrestling with God because that became a really important image to me. You know, it's an important image to the Jewish people. They saw themselves in Jacob and they saw themselves. Their midrashic practice was meant to be a sort of imitation of Jacob wrestling with God. You know, he wrestles with God and lives. And I think that is the thing that we sometimes miss when we think about the scriptures. It can feel like wrestling itself is unfaithfulness, that God isn't okay with us. God will be angry. You know, I. I think one of the things that story of Sodom and Gomorrah does show us is that God is not. Not angry in the least when Abraham comes to talk to him about something he doesn't understand and thinks God has gotten wrong. And I. I think as, let's say, white American evangelicals, we have not had opportunity to wrestle with the text in a meaningful way. You know, a lot of the. The commentators I draw upon are either liberation theologians or are black theologians. And I think that felt very important to me because those. First of all, I already knew the white guy's perspectives, no offense. You know, I kind of wanted to learn a different way. But part of that was realizing these folks have had to contextualize and recontextualize scripture in so many ways and yet still find it sacred. They see God there. They. They believe the scriptures are inspired. They have authority over their lives. And so I was curious to see, you know, how have they reckoned with these things? Because, you know, if you are black in the United States, you have to reckon with the fact that Scripture was used against you and your body and your people to kidnap, enslave, beat, rape, murder your body and the bodies of people you knew. And so you had to wrestle with God and say, what does this mean? Is it right? Are they using this? Is this what you think, God? You know, if those people had not done that, I don't know if they would have survived, you know, And I am just so deeply grateful for their struggle on paper that we can learn from their voices that we have across time. I mean, I. I just am so, so deeply grateful and humbled to learn from them. And I think, as I will say, as white American evangelicals, you know, usually it's gone our way, right? Like, we read like blessing and prosperity in the gospel, in. In the Bible, because that's what we've had, you know, so we can read it quote, unquote, literally. We can read it quote unquote, literally, as oppressors, you know, as the favored ones. And I. I think we have a lot to learn from people on the bottom who have had to engage God's word more creatively. And their wrestling matches with God were my inspiration. I mean, for this whole project. [00:48:25] Speaker A: You tell one of the. I don't know, at this point, I kind of think it's a. A legendary story about Howard Thurman's grandmother. And for those who aren't. For those who aren't familiar, give us the Cliffs Notes of that. Of that story, and then we'll go on. [00:48:43] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Howard Thurman's grandmother was enslaved, an enslaved sharecropper in Florida. And Dr. Howard Thurman, for those who don't know, he inspired the civil rights movement and activists. I mean, he. He was Dr. Martin Luther King's teacher. So he is sort of the basis of the nonviolent resistance that was the civil rights movement. And he wrote a book called Jesus and the Disinherited. And this is where this book comes. This. This story comes from. He writes about his grandmother, how he would read the Bible to her after, you know, I mean, this is years and years after she has been freed from her slavery. But she could not and never asked to have him read. Okay, wait, let me back up. She could not read. She was never taught to read. And so she would have Howard come and read the Bible to her, and she would ask for different things, and he would read them to her. She never asked for anything by the apostle Paul. And eventually Thurman became curious and asked, you know, why do you. Why don't you ever ask for the epistles, you know? And she described how when she was enslaved, her. I. I hesitate to use the word master, but that's what he was. Her legal master and employer would not allow his slaves to meet for worship themselves, which was a common practice. And when he did allow them to worship, he took them to his church, where his white pastor often would preach from Paul about slaves submitting to your masters and how that submission made God happy. If you were a happy slave, you would please God. I mean, oh, the ick in my body even telling you about this. And so she said, I promised myself that if I ever was freed, I would never read Paul again. And for her, there was a sense of spiritual autonomy where she said, you know, she realized that she could not read Paul even with more context, you know, to kind of understand it better, quote, unquote. Like, the way that it had been weaponized against her was so harmful to her sense of self and her sense of self and, well, being. Her idea of who God was and who she was to God that she, she said, no, I will not read that. [00:51:37] Speaker A: This is where I am. I'm going to, I'm going to begin to land the plane from my end. But I want you to respond to this because if you would, because I think I like how you named her, her spiritual autonomy. So that's, that's one aspect of that, of that we can, that we can take away from that story. And by that I don't mean, oh, everybody gets to be pickers and choosers. And, you know, that's not what I mean. It is. She had been severely wounded by, in, in her case by white men who misused and abused authority to tell her, try to tell her who she was in God's kingdom. And it was lies. They just weren't true. And, and she chose not to revisit that in that way. And I think that's great. I think it's beautiful and I think it's honorable and brave. I think it's a brave thing to continue reading the scriptures when they have been so misused against you. [00:52:58] Speaker B: Absolutely. [00:52:59] Speaker A: That is brave. That is a brave thing. So that's. So that's one thing is this spiritual autonomy. Where I want to, where I want to kind of start, start the conversational dissent for me is this. We've, we've danced around it, but I'll just say it. This idea that there is some sort of absolute or objective way to interpret these sacred texts. This form, you, you call it truth. I, I have sometimes here in other places named it as theology with a capital T, which is for us in the US it often looks like white Protestant reformers interpretations. [00:53:56] Speaker B: Right. [00:53:57] Speaker A: And that is the, the objective kind of. The Bible said it and I believe it and that settles it, you know, kind of bumper sticker theology. But we have to name that. That also is a perspective I'll get. Like, I'll go there and my listeners are used, are used to it. But there was a. Lots of people have gone there. But I'm thinking right now about a book called. Oh gosh, if I could. If I can think of the. Now I can't think of the name of it. But, but Pastor Daniel Hill, he has a second book called White Lies. He has a first book called White Something, but where he talks about white whiteness as a culture. Whiteness, you know, and, and it's like so many times white folks, especially in America, like look at themselves as cultureless and it's like, no, no, no, no. Like you have a culture, you know, like you say you're gonna go get ethnic food or, you know, this or that. It's like, ever. All of these other things have names, have adjectives, have taglines, have whatever, but you are like some sort of this, like, objective thing. And so with. With culture, this happens with race, but also with theology that it's the. The white man reformer. Theology is theology with a capital T. And everything else is named. It's Latin American liberation theology, or it's black liberation theology, or womanist theology, or it's feminist theology, or it's postcolonial theology, or it's. You know, we can name all of the things, but they all have adjectives in front to describe what they are. As if when we read name your favorite white reformer, I.e. theology, the capital T. And everything else has to have some sort of classifier. And I think that what we are learning as we continue to open books and open our minds for folks who are writing from not that perspective is that, A, objectivity is a myth when we're interpreting. And also that B, that as we've talked about in this conversation, and we can learn so much from one another. To put it negatively, we rob ourselves and each other when we choose not to read and listen from different perspectives. And I don't know, maybe the last thing for me is also, what would it look like if we decided not to discount ourselves as readers? And for me, that's what you demonstrate in this book. Like, you come up, like, page one, you're like, I'm not a scholar. I'm not a theologian. I'm like, okay, great. I'm with you. Okay. I'm a writer. Okay, great. I'm a woman. Okay, great. I'm an American. Okay, great. I'm a mother. Okay, great. You know, all of these things. And like, what, Like. Like, what would happen if, trained or not, we just said, I love God, I'm loved by God. Or we said, I. I. This. This text is sacred for me. And so when I read it, you know, we treated it like our favorite song. You know, like, what do you hear when you hear this song? Oh, I feel these memories. Or this comes back to me, or I can still smell the. My mother's perfume, or, you know, whatever it is. And we treated this text as kind of those intimate things that we. That we might treat something else. Like, what might we gain from that? And what might we be able to share communally if we allowed ourselves to come to the text as that kind of reader? I'm done, man. [00:57:49] Speaker B: I completely agree. Gonna pull this up real quick because have A story I want to tell. Oh, here we are. Okay, so I, I know that the metaphor of the body is the preferred metaphor for the church, Right. I kind of actually wonder if the metaphor of a nervous system might be more helpful, you know, and when I think about that, and I think about all these different perspectives on God and the way that God, I believe, still speaks in the world to us individually, to us communally and through the scriptures and what has been written about the scriptures, frankly, I mean, you know, they're not on the same level in my mind, but I need those perspectives. When I think about this kind of conversational hermeneutic, I think about this legend of the Kabbalists, and they were the Jewish mystic heretics, okay? And it. They have this story about how on Mount Sinai, when God is delivering Torah to Moses and to the people of Israel, they say, okay, there were 600,000 Jews present, right? And they stand in the shadow of Mount Sinai and God gives Torah, but God doesn't give Torah just to Moses. In their telling, in their telling, they say, God allots each one in the crowd a tiny portion of Torah. And so it's Torah divided by 600,000, okay? So each one understands the portion they received, but only their portion. And so to interpret Torah on the whole, to interpret God, to understand who God is, they actually had to piece all the fragments together, all 600,000 of them had to work together on this 600,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. Only by including every single member, every piece in the group project of interpreting would Torah be complete. And I cannot think of a better metaphor for how we approach the Scriptures. What would it look like to honor the story, the wisdom, the experience of each human who has encountered our loving, terrifying, beautiful deity? What would it look like to say, what can you teach me? I think that level of humility. It doesn't mean we don't have opinions. It doesn't mean we don't come down on a particular interpretation for ourselves. It doesn't mean that we don't believe we're right. But what does it look like to make the table bigger and longer and wider? What does it look like to really honor these people that God has made and the, the divinity that God has put into each of us? I think that is the question that I have for the future of the church. How can we mirror and model the tenderness with which God has created each one of us and the wisdom that God has put into each of us? I think that's. That's our challenge going forward. [01:01:32] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it's a beautiful and wonderful challenge. Liz, thank you so much for being with me. [01:01:39] Speaker B: This has been so welcome. [01:01:40] Speaker A: A real joy on an otherwise kind of day. [01:01:47] Speaker B: That's fair. [01:01:48] Speaker A: Real joy. Tell me the. Or tell us remind, what is the date that this releases? [01:01:56] Speaker B: Yeah. So the book is called Knock at the Sky, Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible. And now you know what that subtitle means. It comes out January 7th. So day after whatever happens at the Capitol. [01:02:18] Speaker A: That's right. We did have to. [01:02:20] Speaker B: That's when my book comes out. [01:02:22] Speaker A: So that's when your book comes out. [01:02:23] Speaker B: Let you know. [01:02:25] Speaker A: Well, I'm going to encourage everyone to grab a copy regardless of what happens on. On that day. As I mentioned, I loved it. It ended up being kind of a. Kind of a devotional for me. You were a conversation partner for me through your book even before we sat down today. And so I think that's my major encouragement is grab a copy and allow yourself, you know, whoever you are, wherever you are, to come to the text, make it weird again, make it, you know, ask these questions, defamiliarize ourselves with it, and just see what happens when you, when you just open yourself up to the text in that way. So, again, thank you so much for coming on. It's just been a real pleasure for me, too. [01:03:15] Speaker B: Thanks. [01:03:16] Speaker A: The links for all the resources mentioned in today's episode can be found in the show Notes, music and podcast production by Seth Buscetti. Be sure to give a a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also visit us@thatmakestotal sense.com.