3: Ways We Read the Bible

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In this podcast John and I discuss how the Bible can be read from a devotional perspective and from an academic perspective, and that both have advantages and disadvantages.  This led into a discussion of how he and I should reconcile the fact that we have taken a dimmer view of Kyle Idleman’s Not a Fan than other readers.

How can so many people have found the book transformative yet we found it problematic on many levels?

My view was that, while our experiences are valuable and informative, we need to examine how we interpret those experiences and the conclusions that we draw from them.  Further, where this transformation is based on biblical understandings we need to gauge the validity of these understandings against the biblical text.

2: Prologue | Not A Fan by Kyle Idleman

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This episode kicks of our in-depth discussion of Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman.  We start in the Prologue and begin discussing Idleman’s core message–question of whether your are a “Fan” or “Follower” of God.  Neither of us is convinced that these are the best categories.  We also discuss Idleman’s loose handling and use of the “Feeding of the 5,000” to make a point.

John raises an issue that seems to be missing or presupposed in not a fan which is why someone should or would want to be a follower of God.  Looking ahead to chapter one, Idleman appears to be leading in the direction of suggesting that the issue of fan vs. follower is critical towards determining where a person will spend eternity.

We look at this a little deeper and question whether this doesn’t cheapen the whole meaning of love and being in relation with God–the idea that people will simply chose the “right” answer of “being a follower” because they want to go to heaven.  Is that really the only and best relationship to be in relationship with God?

Gregg talks about being overwhelmed by God’s love and that being in love is what makes him a follower, not where he is going to spend eternity or duty.  He also talks about how when we are in love we respond in different ways and are transformed–we like the people we become.  We don’t love God for naught–that isn’t a love relationship.

We also start to talk about the notion of “experience” and what that means and how it plays out in what we believe.

And there’s more too, so listen to the episode and tell us what you think.

1: Introducing the Untangling Christianity Podcast

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In this first episode John and Gregg talk about how this podcast came about and what’s behind it’s name and how it grew out telephone conversations Gregg and John have had over the years.

Often these conversations explored aspects of Christianity that John found puzzling or problematic and wanted to clarify. Somewhere along the way John had the crazy idea to record them, hoping that others would find the conversations as useful as he had.

Our first recordings discussed Kyle Idleman’s not a fan, a book popular in the evangelical community that we found unsatisfactory on a different levels. As we considered and grappled with Not A Fan we came to a deeper awareness of what we felt was missing and at times misguided in its message. These recorded discussions will form the basis for many of our first podcast episodes.

Gregg closes this episode out with some thoughts and counter-points to those that may feel our approach is too negative or critical.

We’re Going Live

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Jumping In
It’s time to kick things off here.  We’ve reached the “just good enough” stage with this project and believe it’s better to start putting our content out into the world so we can iterate and refine as we go instead of waiting until it’s “all ready.”

To that end we are still getting the iTunes feeds and all the other syndicated networks you’d expect you could consume podcasts from configured.  If you want to be notified when they are ready, sign-up for the mailing list and we’ll be sure to let you know there as well as here, when they are ready.  We’re hoping to have that squared away in the next month or so.

In the meantime, think of yourself as a “beta user.”  You can listen to episodes on the site with the embedded player or download the mp3 files to your computer to listen to in the player of your choice.  You’re also encouraged to leave comments for episodes you listen to and have thoughts on: agreement, disagreement, constructive criticism–they’re all welcome.