[00:00:05] 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. Practice generosity and justice in a tangible way every day.
I am really grateful to my guest today who has written a book called Bad Religion, Good News, an honest guide for the spiritually disappointed.
Scott Bessenecker is joining me today. And Scott, I forgot to tell you prerecord I was reading this. I never do this. Only been in our new city since the fall and, you know, so we've joined a new gym and all of that. And at my old gym, it would be commonplace for me just to sit and kind of just sit around, wait for a class to start, you know, whatever. And this one, I haven't done that yet, but I found myself there several minutes early. And so I brought your book, which I was reading at the time and was sitting in the lobby. And one of the guys who works there passes by me and he's like, what are you reading? And I just kind of flipped up the COVID because I thought, I don't really know how to answer this question if he really asks me.
And then he goes, bad Religion, Is that about the band?
And I said, I, no, but I think that would be interesting, too. And then he brought me, you know, showed me what he was reading, some book on dark psychology, by the way, which, anyway, I was like, hopefully it's not a how to manual.
But anyway, so it's not about the band, it's not really about music, and
[00:02:02] Speaker B: warms the cockles of every narcissistic author's heart to hear you about you reading it in public and seeing interest when you show the time. I wanted to just call it Bad Christian because, like, that's what I am and what I want to talk about.
But, you know, as author, you don't get to choose title. So, you know, people buy books based on title and that's the prerogative of the, you know, they want me to like the title. So, yeah, I finally. But yes, they also mentioned there is a band called Bad Religion that, you know, might show up in Google searches for your book, which I. I've yet to listen to them, so maybe I need to sort of be a fanboy.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: I don't know them either. But I have a feeling that while my husband is going to be producing this, that. That might be this, his background soundtrack, you know, if that. If that. If he's like, oh, yeah, Bad Religion, he might pop that up. I don't know. We'll see. Seth, it's open to you.
[00:03:05] Speaker B: I see a wall of guitars behind you, so I assume there's a musical household there.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: There. There is. I wish I could say that I was. I was one of the ones, but I just. I just barely. I just barely mess around, so. It's not about the band. Bad Religion. Good News, An Honest Guide for the Spiritually Disappointed. And, Scott, it's not new to us, that there are many of us who are currently spiritually disappointed. And I want to get there.
But what I might want to start with is that you, in the book, reference the decades that you've had in Christian ministry, but also just as a Christian, so in churches and in other Christian communities.
And so part of this book records, offers, gives, gives some receipts on some of the sources of disappointment in your lifetime. In my lifetime.
But what I also appreciated about this, because I would say, lest we think we're the only ones, like. And I don't want to start off, like, for anyone to think I'm like, church bashing, but I'm just saying, let's just say what. What is.
Christians have had a lot of really disappointing, bad, violent, terrible moments in our history, and you talk about those, too. So this isn't just what's been happening in the 2000s and as my kids would say, the late 1900s. I mean, since we've been alive, this goes back.
This goes back even further and also globally to different places, not just in the US And I wasn't sure if I was gonna start this way, but I'll go ahead and start this way. When I was preparing my notes for this conversation, I thought of the quote. You probably know the one I'm talking about. That's been attributed to St. Augustine, who says something like, the church is a whore, but she's also my mother.
And that is kind of the sentiment that I have often, as I think about the way the church has treated people now in some instances, but also over time, this. This really complicated, complex, difficult relationship that Christians have with the church, which includes us.
[00:05:48] Speaker B: Yeah.
Yeah. When I got done with it, I thought, is this kind of an apologetic?
No, it's more an apology.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:06:02] Speaker B: I'm not trying to convince anyone. Well, I mean, kind of to stick in the church. It feels like it Feels like, Alexis, the people I knew 30 years ago who are really strong Christians are either not Christian now or they're Christian nationalists.
It's like these two really strong poles ditch the faith or retrench and get super dogmatic.
And it's like, I think there's another way through this, you know, being pulled to one pole or another.
And I think it has something to do with sitting in these disappointments and working through these disappointments rather than papering over them with the great stories of. Yeah, but Mother Teresa and Corrie Ten Boom and Dietrich bond like, great. Yes, sure, let's celebrate those folks.
But can we just sit for a little bit in the messed up things that have happened and examine our own wounds and maybe our own contributions to the sad, sorry things that the church has been part of?
So that was, you know, part of finding a middle way between ditching the faith or becoming a Christian nationalist.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Gosh. I mean, I hadn't really thought about like that anecdotally, but you see it quite a bit. Yeah. Where it's just kind of like we're gonna throw the baby out with bathwater or we're gonna get really entrenched in this to this extent. Christian nationalism.
Search that on the website.
That makes total sense. You can find a million places where we talk about that. I can put some in there too.
Some episodes list some episodes here too, about how harmful that is.
And then I do think we see some folks out here that would include what you're talking about to say, let's not ignore. And also let's try and say this isn't how we want to do things.
I'm thinking about some kind of labeled, like Christian progressive movements now who are really trying to, you know, trying to do a similar thing and kind of offer another way.
And, and I want to say that that is something in this book that I found helpful in its lack, if I could say that is that this is. It is more of an apologetic or an apology, as you mentioned. And it is not really a how to guide of like, now we. Now we know this, now what do we do? Well, here's how you can, you know, X, Y, Z.
But there are.
And this, you know, warmed my heart because this is part of what I try to do here. There are a lot of questions in this book.
And to be honest, I don't always find the questions at the end of chapters in various books. And we try. I've written them, you know, but I don't always find them to be, you know, like the Most helpful thing for me.
But kind of the way that these were organized, I found them to be helpful because it's like we've just fed you a lot. You know, here is, here is a lot. Here is a survey in some cases of a topic or of a time in history.
And then it really is like.
And now that I know that, you know, for me, I would say just like, how does that sit with me?
Some of these things I had read before, some were brand new, but either way, I felt the invitation and I was grateful for the invitation. Not necessarily to say, now what do I do?
But how does this sit with me?
And then that may lead to different actions in the future. It might just lead to a moment of lament where you do just get to say, this ought not be.
And then that begins to or continues to form how we live out our lives or these parts of our lives as disciples of Jesus. So, I mean, what.
Tell me a little bit more about that part and that process for you. Because, I mean, many of us have, are not familiar with a lot of the things that you introduce in this book.
[00:10:58] Speaker B: Yeah.
I reference early on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as like, there's just something beautiful about telling the truth.
[00:11:10] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:11:11] Speaker B: And can we just be honest for a little bit and tell the whole truth?
I, I referenced this experience that my family went through Frank Lloyd Wright's tellies in west in Scottsdale.
And I was like enamored with Frank Lloyd Wright and his process and his school.
My Gen Z daughter was researching all the dirt, thinking, okay, this is cherry picked, this. I know there's another story here that they're not telling and that bugs me. And I think there are a lot of young people who feel like, is there, you know, I, I don't need a hero story. I just need an honest one. Can you just tell me the whole truth and not sort of set up this glorified veneer?
I, I can handle the truth. And so just in the interest of wanting to tell the truth and like you say, sometimes it's just about naming things. And so at the end of the chapter, I'll try to. Okay, let's do some personal reflection.
And I think, Alexis, I try to be even handed, though it's really hard.
In the chapter on missions and cultural genocide of our missionary forebears, I want to ask, do you know missionaries and what they've sacrificed?
Just take account of people who have made really hard decisions to move away from their homes and sacrifice things.
That's honorable.
And there's another Part of the story that I think is important to acknowledge when you've got friends who are. Grew up on a reservation, part of the Native American community. It's like there's a story there about missionary boarding schools that aren't that far from our present and Kill the Indians, Save the man. Being a sort of. Really missionaries are like saying that and believing that and actively trying to strip folk of things that are precious in their culture rather than allowing the Holy Spirit to adapt the faith to that culture. Yeah, that happened and that did real damage, I think, not just to the Native American community, but to the whole church.
Like in some ways, any conversation we have with people of the Muslim faith, they're carrying the Crusades. My gosh, really?
1100 A.D. and well, there's something about trauma that sticks with a people and like that casts a long shadow. Slavery and the church is supportive. Like these things still cling to us and it's important for us to acknowledge them and to lament them and maybe do a little self examination to find out where those things exist in us.
[00:14:31] Speaker A: Oh yeah. I mean those personal questions were really tough.
I want to get into. I'm so glad you brought up the missions chapter. That was one of the places where I have notes and I want to come back to it too.
But before we do, I want to ask you to retell one of the stories that you tell in the introduction.
Because this was what first gripped me and I found myself.
I'll say we must both have Gen Z kiddos. Because I'm like, I found myself both cringing, which is what they would say.
I found myself both cringing and also like for this to be like way too familiar, you know, to, to my own thoughts, experiences, you know, all of this.
But you, you had an encounter with someone on an airplane.
If this had happened to me and I was retelling the story, my kids would call me a Hufflepuff and say, mom, he was just trying to read his book and say, yeah, but it had a really interesting title. So I asked him about it. And you asked your seat mate, your RO mate, about the book that he was reading. Can you retell that? Because that colored a lot. I often thought back to that experience that you had while I was, while I was reading.
[00:16:04] Speaker B: Yeah, so I'm sitting next to a guy on a plane and of course there's lots within the evangelical world, this is prime territory for conversion.
So like you're on the lookout.
Well, the guy next to me is reading Bertrand Russell's why I'm not a Christian.
Oh my gosh, Lord, here's the opportunity. Thank you, Jesus.
So noticing the title, I simply ask, hey, is he convincing?
Why he's not a Christian.
Oh yeah, this is a really convincing book.
I've never read it and so I've no, I have no authority to really speak into it. But like, that was, that was the open door. Yes, this guy is convincing.
Oh, is this part of his argument that the church is really messed up and that's part of why he's not a Christian?
Guessing there.
Oh yeah. You know, Bertrand Russell outlines like the dastardly deeds of the church and Christians and so I have this clever hook.
Oh yeah, Jesus attracts messed up people.
That's why the church is full of them.
You know, that was a pretty clever response, but it was like a little disingenuous. It's like, hey, you know, just because they're messed up people in church, well, maybe that's because Jesus draws messed up people.
And I think any, any introvert, the bane of their existence is a chatty Christian next to them on a plane.
Suddenly you stumble into a spiritual conversation you never intended to, and the seatmates like, rubbing his hands, glorifying God, that this is the moment to convert this guy. And so he just, you know, smiled politely, turned toward the window and rested his head against the, you know, plane like, yeah, thank you, this discussion's done. I kind of see where you're going here rather than, you know, sympathizing with the guy.
Oh yeah, or even I'm one of those bad friends folk.
I understand that. You know, here's some of my experiences that have really turned me off and kind of entering into empathy rather than, oh, I've got to create an apologetic to why Christians do bad things.
Oh, I know Jesus said he came for the bad people and the sick, not for the healthy people that will convert him.
And yeah, it shut down the discussion and I think probably contributed to setting me on exploration of why. Why is it that the church is so full of messed up people when like part of the entry point to discovering Jesus and coming into relationship is like, I know nothing about morality and I need you.
Like, I am messed up.
But then all of a sudden we become subject matter experts on morality and politics and economics and social stuff and everything becomes a hill for us to die on.
And I think this guy could sense that, that overconfidence in my clever quip and it shut things down.
[00:20:14] Speaker A: Thanks, Scott.
Gosh, there's so much there that I could take and go with and ask about.
But maybe that, maybe, maybe that subject matter expert piece.
I live with and am loved by and am deeply in love with a PhD level research Earth scientist.
And I know nothing about earth science, like, at all. Like, not even a little bit. Like, like, like he was reading a paper last night and I, on. On one of his devices, and I said, what you reading?
And he paused for, like, kind of a long time.
And then he said, like, a couple of the, maybe like, keywords that you would find, you know, if you were trying to search this journal. And even those keywords tend to go over my head.
And I would say, because I love him. There are, like, some things I know about, like, you know, what he does for a living, but for the most part, no. Like, for the most part, just like, just. No.
And I think that that's interesting because one of the things that we spread wide in evangelical or evangelical adjacent spaces is come as you are to Jesus.
You might already be a subject matter expert in some of those things, and you might not be, but come as you are. But it's like the moment that we make that commitment, we feel like we are, or the expectation is that we now are these subject matter experts on all things.
Yeah.
Moral is a. Is a good example. But. But everything else, you know, charity.
Yeah. Moral adjacent things. Right.
And not only that, but we will die on every hill.
We will die on incongruent hills at the same time.
And.
And that's confusing.
Yeah. I mean, I don't know, Scott. I mean, like, this is nowhere in my note. We're like, way off here in. In no man's land. But I'm like, that feels, that feels confusing, I think, to.
To me, even as I kind of sit and think about it. But also just like, what does this appear like? You know, like I'm imagining your seatmate might have had some similar questions, you know, of, like, I mean, even just the phrase, like, who died and made you God? You know, like, we've heard this, you know, directed at. At Christians, what makes you this or. Or that.
And in doing so, we have caused and continue to cause a lot of harm, thinking or at least defending that we're doing something good.
[00:23:48] Speaker B: Alexis, have you seen the movie Conclave?
[00:23:51] Speaker A: No.
[00:23:53] Speaker B: Really great movie about the election of a Pope with Ralph Venus.
But Ralph Venus is the dean of the Conclave. He's cardinal that's sort of overseeing the conclave, and he gives a sermon at the beginning of the conclave, and he says, you know, I've been with the church a long time.
And I've seen one sin of the Church stand out above all others.
Certainty.
Certainty is the great sin of the Church. He says, lord, grant us a Pope who doubts and a Pope who sins and asks forgiveness. That kind of posture of humility that says, I don't know everything. I mean, even the Apostle Paul is like, things of God I see through a glass darkly. Like, I'm not even sure about everything.
Now, I appreciate that we, you know, have some blessed assurances and, you know, that there may be a few things that we hold on to as part of a faith. But the, the dean of the conclave suggests faith requires doubt.
Like, there's got to be something present that causes you to exert some sort of existential energy to say, I'm going to believe this in spite of these doubts and kind of being honest about the doubts or the kind of bombastic rhetoric I hear from fellow Christians about everything.
It's not just that we, we have so many hills to die on. We have so many hills to kill on, like, with our words.
That's where the injury. That. And people can sense our excessive confidence about things that, like, we're. We maybe don't know for sure.
And it's that sense that this person is. Feels morally superior to me.
And I can't.
I can't put my finger on it exactly. But, like, I feel that energy, this moral superiority, and that just shuts people down.
So in my Disappointment with the Church chapter, I talk about arrogance, insularity, this sense that we tend not to be in meaningful relationships with people outside the faith.
You know, not. Not to convert them, but, like, because they're made in the image of God and we have a genuine friendship. That does happen, but not for me. I've been in. I've been the Christian bubble my whole adult life.
My friendships outside of Christianity are very sparse.
And so insularity, like, there's some contagion. We can't have a meaningful relationship outside Christians.
And then division.
Oh, my gosh, we find so many reasons.
And I hope this book doesn't provide more for people to be like, I'm not one of those.
Well, kinda. Yes, you are. I mean, think of your relatives. Think of your cousins and your aunts and uncles. There's certainly one that you're like, I'm not claiming to be related that person. You are related to that person. And it's like our divisiveness, our insularity and our arrogance are doing us no good.
[00:28:01] Speaker A: That's exactly right. Becca McNeil, author and journalist.
In one of her books and conversation I had with her, this phrase lives in my head rent free now, where she talks about many Christians, especially evangelicals in the US and this concept of certainty worship that we're not only, as you say, in that we have this certainty in kind of in us, but this is an idol for us. Certainty becomes an idol.
And you're exactly right. Those things are characteristics of how we live and, and folks see them, see them in us.
You mentioned your chapters so far on disappointments with church and disappointment with missions.
The other chapters that you have are also disappointment with God, disappointment with prophets, also P R O F I T s, not P H E T s violence and also judgment.
And these are, these are big canisters. These are kind of big, big groupings here.
But you did a really great job of bringing out just a few really specific, particular personal examples in each one of these chapters. Like I said, historic and present day, that help us understand.
Again, I go back to the guy on the airplane that help us understand a guy like him, that sentiment of wanting to even read a book of like, why I'm not a Christian.
And I think one of the places that struck me, especially being in the violence chapter that I want to just mention right now is you begin that chapter with a story of someone whose family had been inside the Japanese internment camps that we had in the US and that that experience was what had made Christianity specifically not palatable for this person.
And I think there's a lot to unpack there because what someone could argue was someone could say the church didn't do that, create those internment camps, that was the US Government who did that.
And so, you know, that seems a little bit like, why would someone have a turn off to Christianity or to a church community at large because of experiences that their family had had with the government.
And I want to kind of use that as a, maybe a door to talk about a few things that you have in that chapter. And even, as you mentioned at the beginning of the conversation, how Christian nationalism plays a role now, not just now, but now that we can see it in some of these conversations that we're having about how the church has injured people and how we are, you know, complicit in that.
[00:32:00] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I think my friend Mako's father, when he and his family were interred before Mako was born, was looking to the church as, as a Buddhist slash atheist, like, okay, I know something about Jesus, Prince of Peace.
Surely the church will decry this kind of detainment. That's maybe not quite concentration camp, but it's.
But it is dehumanizing.
Surely the church who says every person's made in the image of the divine and follows the Prince of Peace, is not going to let this happen.
[00:32:59] Speaker A: And if I can interrupt and to say this is happening on American soil. So Buddhism is not the kind of. The majority faith of folks.
Especially at the time most people who are claiming a religion in the US Are claiming to be Christians. So that to me is like he's looking out, perhaps saying, all of you people out here are.
Many of you are claiming to be Christian and this is happening.
[00:33:28] Speaker B: Yeah, here.
And yeah, so may have made assumptions, but probably based in reality that a lot of the people who were the guards who were interring them and whatever, worshiped on Sundays and followed the Prince of Peace and didn't seem to see anything incongruous with a group of people simply based on the fact that they came from this country with a lot of hope, believing that there was beauty in this place.
And all of a sudden they're being interred. So, yeah, that.
So when Mako became a Christian, his dad was like, how could you do this to us?
The church was silent and perhaps even participated in our incarceration unjustly.
And so from there, I talk about World War I, where you've got Christian nations like Austro Hungary, Hungary and Germany against Christian nations like the US and they're theologians justifying Jesus really wants you to kill those other Jesus followers.
You know, for.
For the Allies, it was, you know, making the world safe from tyranny. We've got to stop these people.
Well, you know, you're killing people who are sincerely following Jesus and believe that Jesus has also instructed them to kill you.
The others are like, hey, this Christian nation of Serbia up. You know, they. They started it. Like they threw the first punch.
We're just defending, like, we're.
We and our allies are defending the fact that. That Serbia is rising up. And so we. We have a just war. According to Augustine, we can do this, and Jesus wants us. So, you know, you see these theological statements on both sides in the form of that version of memes. They were like postcards. Here's Jesus blessing the German armies go. And, you know, the kingdom come through you. The Reich is the kingdom.
And then Jesus with the British soldier in a foxhole, blessing him as he, you know, kills the German Christian or Austrian Christian. And you hear this sort of, oh, the Christmas where they came out of the foxholes and celebrated Christmas because they had this Common faith. Then you know, that word got back to the generals. I don't write this in the book, but word got back to the generals. That Christmas Eve party went on between these warring folk, and they're like, we got to shut that thing down real fast or else we're not going to, you know, advance this war.
And the propaganda that the Church indulges in with war, including the current one with Iran, it's like, this is a holy war and Jesus is on our side.
The Jesus who told Peter to put down his sword because those who live by weapons are going to die by weapons. So therefore, you should not live by weapons is the point.
And like, no, in this case, you do live by weapons.
And we need the Church's backing. And so the centuries that that kind of manipulation of the Church has occurred.
And like I say, Alexis, I'm trying to be even handed because I do think there are people in the military, like, I'm about protecting vulnerable people from the strong.
And like, there are people made real sacrifices and people conscientious objectors who, like, they gave their lives, too, refusing to take up arms, but wanting to sort of walk a different way or a third way.
But our readiness to indulge violence because we think there's some kind of redemptive beauty, or maybe not beauty, but this redemptive piece to violence, I think is misinformed.
And talk about wounding the church, wounding others.
It's when, you know, Christians on both sides of a battle line believe that their allegiance to a nation outweighs their allegiance to a savior who says, put down your sword, I think is doing harm to the view of Jesus and certainly to the view of the Church.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: When you were talking about the propaganda, I was thinking this elevates. You know, this isn't like we're subject matter experts. I mean, if things like this were happening on an individual level, we would say, we would. We would put it in a category of spiritual abuse. You know, to say to use the name of God or to use scripture or to use some sort of spiritual authority to defend your right to harm someone else, you know, or to say, this is why I'm doing what I'm doing is because God has said this is what needs to be done. And in many of these cases, as you point out, you know, 100 years ago or today, that is war. That thing is war.
And if you're Christian or even if you're not, but if you're in a. In a place where there's majority Christians and how do you Argue with the, with God, you know, who is saying, this is what is, this is what is necessary, this is what ought to be done. Or even this is good.
This is a, this is a virtue. You know, I think back to doctrine of discovery, you know, kinds of things of, like, this is what you ought to do. This is our mission.
And the mission includes exploitation, violence, you know, all, all of those things. Like, how do you, how do you argue with God?
[00:40:20] Speaker B: Yeah, there's like sanctification of violence because, oh, we are invading this territory called the New World.
And there are people who aren't really interested in our coming.
Let's just get rid of them.
This, the, the use of the Israelites coming into the promised land was the church propaganda for taking over the New World. I'm not saying that there's not, you know, complexities there. And like, okay, is there a way to share it? And some of my native friends readily admit, oh, yeah, there were tribes that were more hell bent on war than other tribes.
It's not like the noble savage picture. Like, there's, there are challenges here, but that we rush to physical violence so quickly as Christians or allow ourselves to be drawn in.
And like you say, we should have a little bit of a discussion here. And of course, there are a lot of beautiful traditions.
My book is published by a Mennonite publisher. They have a strong peace tradition within the Mennonite family.
So within our Christian family, there are pacifists who feel like no, under no circumstances do we kill on behalf of the interests of state.
Like when there is a difference between allegiance to Jesus and allegiance to America, we choose allegiance to Jesus. And this is one of those categories that we choose allegiance to Jesus.
And I think you're suggesting probably some kind of internal discussion has to go on. And that's not to say that there aren't Christians who choose to take up arms who haven't had that discussion. I think probably some have and come to a different conclusion as part of our, you know, question about certainty. I don't want to be so bombastic in my pacifism that I don't acknowledge a brother or sister who's really worked through and come out differently than I have on this. And I want to honor and respect the person's desire to sacrifice even their own bodies in order to protect the vulnerable as they understand it, through violence.
And I might say, oh, there may be other ways to protect the vulnerable than through violence. And they'll say, yeah, but there are some folk for whom, you know, that kind of diplomacy doesn't work. Violence is the only language they know. Okay, I hear that.
And that may be. I may be wrong.
I think that's what people want to hear, and they want to hear it sincerely. I may be wrong.
And not just a.
You know, I'm just saying this to appear humble, but really believe. Yeah, you could be wrong and just acknowledge that I've got convictions. I'm going to stand on them. I'll try to make them as few as possible so that I'm not dying on every hill. But like, yeah, let's talk about war, which of course leads to judgment. And the chapter on, you know, the wrath of God that's going to sweep through the world and annihilate those who don't follow Jesus. Can. Can we talk about that a little bit or, you know, can we think about this some? Like, how did those images of the vengeance of God, where they come from, how did they develop?
Are we allowed to question those?
You know, that's in the Bible. My gosh. Can.
You can't question the Bible, can you?
[00:44:39] Speaker A: Yes, yes. But don't take my word for it.
No, I'm glad that you brought that up. I was gonna go backwards in the book to prophets, but let's go forward in the book to judgment, because I think that is part of it, is what was going on in my head was, I think, part of what I'm hearing in our discussion. But also what's present in the book is part of the problem is, I think when we just accept the status quo as is and don't ask those questions. So, yeah, there may be folks who come to different conclusions than us, like, thoughtful conclusions, but what kind of harm are we doing when we don't question some of the things or we just accept the status quo as is? Um, I think the theological harm as you're, you know, going towards that was one of the things that struck me, I think, very vividly when I was getting my M. Div.
Is I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, so much of the theological teachings that I grew up with in Bible belts America, I was.
I don't want to say, like, I was led to believe, like it was some sort of malicious thing, but I will say, like, just use that phrase. Like I was led to believe this is the way that it had always been. Now, I grew up in a tradition that was younger, so like an evangelical tradition that was. That was younger, you know, Protestant, younger, traditional.
And so some of those things were, like, as old as the denomination, which is only a Couple hundred years or, you know, at the time, or, you know, it's like, okay, like a century and a half, but compare that to how long Christianity has existed. That's like a baby theology.
And, and so, but even so, questioning some of those, especially the harmful ones, was not welcomed.
It wasn't allowed. And I would say not only did I experience harm, but I know that I harmed others by perpetuating theologies that I didn't think I could question.
I just accepted them in this kind of certainty way that we're talking about and, and, and, and spread those and taught those and had conversations with folks where those were the kind of meat of it.
And I just kind of don't believe many of them anymore.
So, and, and, and, you know, some of that is surrounding, surrounding judgment.
Last night, I don't remember what was happening. One of my kids said, oh, that music sounds like, Sounds like something they would play if someone was talking about the Rapture. And I said, tell me what the Rapture is. Because I'm like, I didn't think that this. Kiddo new, you know, and so this kid starts explaining it to me. And I was, like, kind of surprised because it's not something that we, that we really talk about in our, in our house or in our, in our churches now. And I said, can you imagine growing up believing all of this? And then, you know, I went into, like, this, this weird beheading stuff that, you know, was kind of there, like thief in the night, you know, kind of thing. And I was like, this was, this was, this was scary. You know, this was scary stuff. But judgment. Hello. I was sitting in a room not long ago where a speaker stood up and said, raise your hand if this question about hell had anything to do with your decision to follow Jesus and keep your hand raised if you were a minor when that happened, you know, like under the age of 18, and the hands that shot up in that room and stayed up in that room, I mean, it was maybe not most of us, but it was many of us.
Yeah, it's wild. Scott.
[00:49:09] Speaker B: What if. Alexis, mercy triumphs over judgment?
Like, what if that.
That's actually. That's from the Bible, right?
[00:49:21] Speaker A: Right.
[00:49:22] Speaker B: What if it's true?
[00:49:24] Speaker A: What if.
[00:49:24] Speaker B: What if it's true that mercy triumphs over judgment?
[00:49:29] Speaker A: Preach that sermon today. I want to hear it upset you.
[00:49:33] Speaker B: Well, you know, yes. There are people that you do feel like, okay, some kind of judgment has to happen here.
[00:49:40] Speaker A: Sure, yeah.
[00:49:41] Speaker B: What if mercy triumphs over that?
And what if our vengeful pictures of those who don't follow God that have made their way into our descriptions and into Scripture, like, came out of a period where the Israelites in exile, they only knew conquest through violence.
Like that was the only language that they understood or that they witnessed. And therefore their understanding of the triumph of God was filtered through those experiences.
Can we unfilter them through the like. Can we challenge that a little bit?
What if Jesus becomes the lens through which we understand the rest of scripture and we start there and recognize that God allowed people's individual circumstances and cultures to bleed into what they wrote?
How does that help us in wrestling through some of these questions about the triumph of God through redemptive violence of the unsaved, unchurched, whatever.
And, you know, that transcends denominations. I think evangelicals are famous for their hellfire.
That's not just an evangelical thing, not just a Protestant thing. This idea of the vengeful torment of God transcends denominations.
[00:51:26] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, yes, but where would
[00:51:32] Speaker B: the horror genre be without that? You know, so we got that going for us.
[00:51:37] Speaker A: When you mentioned that, I did. I did kind of get a kick out of it in the book.
But I think that it's good that you bring that up in all of this, that it's not just, gosh, how do I phrase this? Because you start with a disappointment with God and you end with this disappointment with judgment, which I've blamed kind of in air quotes, bad theology on that. But I think that there are folks who would just read the Bible and say, this feels like God to me. Like, you know, not really equate any people with that, but saying, like, it looks like this God is doing more than suggesting that there is an eternal damnation, hellfire, punishment, you know, situation.
And so the bookends of this, of being disappointed with God, like God's self is.
Is an important point, I think, to get, if I take this back to Airplane guy, to just, you know, just kind of say this, why I'm not a Christian is a very.
There. That's a very nuanced question as well as answer, meaning in part to say we can't just blame Christians for that. Like, even when we look at our sacred text with no help from interpreters, there are a lot of really, really hard things in it, all over it that are hard to understand, that if someone were reading at face value, they would come to those conclusions, you know, that we've talked about. And that's.
Some would say, yeah, those parts are. Don't feel inviting, you know, those aren't Welcoming those don't feel. Loving those don't feel like mercy is triumphing over judgment when we see, you know, when we see these kinds of things. And so I'm appreciative for what you've done in this book with, you know, where I would equate it with, like, people, disappointment with people, church missions, prophets, violence.
But I also just want to name that included in some of those questions is, like, sometimes a wrestling with God's self and also a wrestling with these sacred texts that we hold really dear and that it's this.
This kind of. This. This religion that you're naming as, you know, bad religion. In the. In the title is a complex.
It's a. It can be a complicated faith.
Yeah, things are hard to reckon with.
[00:54:45] Speaker B: I think, Alexis, we.
We want to bleed all the mystery and the mystical reality of our faith out of it in this quest for certainty.
I don't know. I may be wrong. There's lots I don't understand.
It's like, really, Even Jesus said that, ah, help me here to, you know. And good Hermeneutic says, you know, you take the whole. And, you know, recognize that there were individual and cultural influences and there are different styles of writing, different books that are different genres, and you take all that into account, but there's also mystery.
And so I get Paul, who's like, I just kind of see this dim image.
And I know that's not going to be the case all the time.
At some point I'll know perfectly, but it's not now. I do not know perfectly.
Too bad that so much of the church does say that they know perfectly when the Apostle Paul can't even admit that.
So the mystery of our faith has got to be part of it. And I think our desire to control and our desire to know overrides us sitting with the complexities and the mystery and sometimes the dichotomies that we encounter in Scripture.
Like, we rush past those and we want the, okay, what book, what theologian is going to give me the answer?
I hope it's not Scott Bassnecker. That means some people will say, oh, yeah, but Scott says, please don't. Don't do that.
There's got to be some space for us to sit in the. I don't know of a lot of stuff.
[00:56:54] Speaker A: God, I've been thinking about the last question that I want to ask you, and I've been spinning a lot of them around in my head and realizing that some of them end up asking for an apologetic. So I'm not going to ask you any of those questions. In my head, that the answer would be an invitation for an apologetic. But I think what I would, what I would ask is when you encounter folks, and I'm assuming that this has been you at some points, I know it's been me.
But when you encounter folks who are struggling with some of the questions that we have talked about today, with some of the disappointments that we've talked about today, and some that we, and some that we haven't, some that are, that are under the surface for folks, if they say, Scott, your minister, What do you do with this? What do you do when you have disappointments? What, what might you tell them?
[00:58:25] Speaker B: I, I think our immediate response to being hurt or offended. Well, first of all, those of you dealing with religious trauma, you don't need Scott. You need people for whom this is their job.
So counseling, counseling, counseling, working through church trauma, some of which is really, really serious stuff.
But for those of us who feel like we're dying the death of a thousand paper cuts, every time there's another church leader who says something stupid or does something stupid and feels like it affects you, the immediate response ought to be self examination.
Jesus talked about logs and specs.
I think if you're a little more concerned about the log in your eye than the speck in that other Christian's eye, you're. You're doing well.
And so self examination would be one.
The one that's probably hard is forgiveness. Like, you can't control reconciliation. That institution that hurts you, they're not gonna, I mean, I don't know what reconciliation with an entity looks like. In one on one, you can probably work out if the person's willing to sort of admit, yeah, I did this, and you're willing to say, I contributed this. You could probably find a way with the church, with even a local body of believers.
Reconciliation isn't possible, but forgiveness is.
You can forgive. You control that.
Now, I'm not saying it's easy, and I'm not saying it's just sort of a, you know, mind game. If you just tell yourself, I forgive, I forgive, I forgive. You probably have to sort through some stuff.
I think self examination helps you to say, oh, actually I've done some pretty squirrely things in this regard. I can understand a little more the fallibility and maybe my expectations were, well, I don't know, maybe we ought to hold decent expectations of people who follow Jesus. But looking at yourself, I think may help you to say, okay, yeah, that, that's not okay.
But I I can forgive them because I've done lots of not okay stuff and then the third thing. So self examination, forgiveness and journeying with a community.
Which is hard because if it's a community that has hurt you, to be part of a safe community that you could process things with and walk alongside.
We are not meant to do this thing alone.
Be part of a community that's willing to walk alongside you even if they don't completely align with everything.
But you feel safe with them and they're able to deal honestly and beautifully with your questions and walk with you and you with them.
I think community, forgiveness, self examination are partial antidotes to our illness Diseased Church
[01:02:03] Speaker A: We've been talking about Bad Religion Good News an honest guide for the spiritually disappointed by my guest today, Scott Bessenecker. Scott, thank you so much for for being with us, for writing this, for sharing it, and for the conversation today. I appreciate it.
[01:02:20] Speaker B: Yeah, thanks Alexis, for your thoughtful questions and engagement with the material.
[01:02:27] 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 us a review on itunes and subscribe at your favorite podcast listening app. You can also Visit
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Sa.
