Author Archives: Gregg Monteith

100: What’s Next for Untangling Christianity?

Today John and Gregg celebrate–and reflect on–100 episodes of the “Untangling Christianity podcast!”

John begins by mentions how he and Gregg have met their goal of publishing 100 episodes in (at least) 100 weeks, and by keying on a listener’s question, from Amy, about whether the podcasts have changed over time.  He notes that his perspective has changed gradually since the beginning of the podcast, but mostly in becoming more comfortable being “where he is at” and with the fact that John has a number of questions about Christianity, and being accepting of that fact.  John also explains his hope that, in future, the UC podcast will include “other contributors,” such as the recent interview with Dan Dailey.

Gregg, too, would like to “open up” the podcast.  Gregg envisages this as having opportunities for some of the things that he and John have been discussing to be applied / “lived out” in real life.  So he notes the discussion groups he will be facilitating over the summer and autumn, and wonders what possibilities there may be for those participating in the groups to share (their experiences in the groups, what they are thinking about relative to the topics, etc.).

 

99: Is Christianity Easy?

In this episode John and Gregg discuss the idea that being a Christian should be “easy,” a notion with which Gregg largely disagrees.

As part of doing his own work John has been making slow progress in his reading of a Chronological Daily Bible, with commentary by F. LaGard Smith.  John has been in Genesis and comes across a section where Smith inserts a section observing that the book of Job possibly happened at the same time.  Gregg references Dillard and Longman’s Introduction to the Old Testament to offer some information on Job, including considerations of its genre.

John questions Smith’s conclusion about the reason for Job’s adversity.

Job’s life will become the basis for a literary masterpiece dealing with suffering and the issue of its causes.  Little does this humble man know how his very personal adversity will be a source of comfort to multitudes of fellow-suffers for centuries to come. That fact alone might well have something to do with why he is called upon to experience such adversity. (page 22)

So John wonders, does God really bring suffering? Or, at what point does suffering amount to “evil”?

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98: Examining Exceptional Experiences

In this podcast John and Gregg once again return to “the Eagle” in order to discuss the notion of experience and, particularly, to contrast everyday experiences with exceptional experiences.

Gregg begins by explaining how he wants to relate exceptional experiences, and particularly experiences of God, to something called Speech Act theory (by J. L. Austin). John seeks a definition for experience and Gregg believes that experiences in general are composed of—and require—three components: 1) an external event that I can recognize and evaluate as being “really there,” 2) my own action of recognizing and evaluating such an event, and 3) my responses to whatever I recognized and evaluated.

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97: Talking Church with Dan Dailey

In this episode John and Gregg welcome Dan Dailey, author of the blog post that’s been the subject of the last two podcasts–Episode 96 and Episode 95. Dan’s posts, The Sin of Forsaking Fellowship, is here: https://danieldailey.wordpress.com/2015/05/08/the-sin-of-forsaking-fellowship/ .

John and Gregg talk with Dan to get a better sense of the intentions behind his blog post with the goal of giving him “a fair hearing” regarding his perspective on church and church-going. This after speculating in previous episodes about Dan’s situation and motives.  They’re grateful for Dan’s willingness to dialogue and the opportunity to talk with him firsthand.

John and Gregg both look forward to the listener feedback on this episode.

96: Evangelizing a Church?

In this episode John and Gregg continue from last week’s podcast by resuming their conversation concerning Dan Dailey’s blog post titled “Sin of forsaking fellowship.”

Gregg notes, concerning his comment about being obligated to attend church in last week’s podcast, that this is, more accurately, an obligation to love others “rightly” (i.e., even as one loves oneself). And we best manifest this by offering to those in need. Particularly, where we are in a position to offer to other Christians this is an opportunity to follow the example of Jesus, as noted in John’s epistles, where Christians distinguish themselves on the basis of how they love each other.

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