067: Renewing Your Relationship With Scripture with Zach Lambert

Is reading Scripture hard for you?

Understandably, weaponized scripture makes it hard to want to pick up the bible ever again. But if you are at a place where you want to renew your relationship with scripture, pastor and author Zach Lambert talks us through how we can read the bible in ways that lead to healing and wholeness. In our conversation, Zach talks to us about his brand-new book, Better Ways to Read the Bible, beginning by sharing his personal story. He shares how to be aware of the lenses we read scripture through and ways to replace harmful interpretations with healthy ones.

Guest Spotlight ✨ 

Zach is the Lead Pastor and co-founder of Restore. Born and raised in Austin, he holds a Bachelors of Science in Communication, a Masters of Theology, and is currently pursuing a Doctorate of Ministry at Duke Divinity School. He is also the co-founder and board member of the Post Evangelical Collective—a group of pastors, artists, and leaders committed to full inclusion, holistic justice, deep and wide formation, a gracious posture, and the Way of Jesus.

Links & Resources 🔗 

Website | Instagram | Twitter/X | Substack

• Searching for Sunday by Rachel Held Evans | Amazon | Bookshop
• Knock At the Sky by Liz Charlotte Grant | Amazon | Bookshop
• I’ve Got Questions by Erin Moon | Amazon | Bookshop
• The Very Good Gospel by Lisa Sharon Harper | Amazon | Bookshop

Similar Episodes You Might Like

• 021: Deconstructing Deconstruction: Finding an Invisible Jesus with Scot McKnight and Tommy Preston Phillips
• 036: Burning a Path to Renewal with Erin Moon
• 037: Sacred Silence and Finding God Through Mystery with Liz Charlotte Grant

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Episode Transcript 📄

Zach Lambert
It's really simple to read the Bible as just a moral rule book. Okay, it says to do this, so I do it. It says, Don't do this, so I don't do it. That's really attractive. In a lot of ways, it works. But what happens, I think, is that when we reduce all of it to just a moralistic framework, we end up actually missing the richness that happens in the text. We end up policing things that really God has no desire for us to police at all because we feel like that's now our job.

Brian Lee
Hey, friends, welcome back to the Broken to Beloved Podcast. If you're looking for practical resources for recovery from and safeguarding against spiritual abuse, then this is the place for you. I'm your host, Brian Lee. As an ordained pastor and fellow survivor, I know what it feels like navigating life after spiritual abuse. I also know what it's like to want to prevent anything from happening to the people you know and love. It's why Broken to Beloved exists.

And we can't do it alone. We need your help. Support our work by becoming a donor to help our podcast and programs possible. Just head to brokentobeloved.org/support or click the link to donate in the show notes. Today, we're talking with pastor and author Zach Lambert and his brand new book, Better Ways to Read the Bible. Zach is the lead pastor and co founder of Restore. Born and raised in Austin, he holds a Bachelors of Science and Communication, a Masters of Theology, and is currently pursuing a doctorate of Ministry at Duke Divinity School. He's also the co founder and board member of the Post-Evangelical Collective, a group of pastors, artists, and leaders committed to full inclusion, holistic justice, deep and wide formation, a gracious posture, and the way of Jesus.

I want to let you know that there are some technical issues with my mic for the first few minutes, and it may be difficult to hear me at first, but it sorts itself out quickly. And now, here's my conversation with our new friend, Zach. Zach, welcome to the podcast.

Zach Lambert
Thanks, Brian. I'm so excited to be here.

Brian Lee
Me too. It's lovely to see you again. Congratulations. Let me start there. Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing. I'm really excited about it. Really enjoyed reading it. I think people are going to love it and hopefully really take to it and take it to heart because There are so many of us in this community who have been harmed.

Zach Lambert
Absolutely.

Brian Lee
And your opening story is so familiar to so many of our listeners. You talk about being kicked out of your youth group for asking questions, but then you also talk about going back to the only religious world you knew. What did that feel like reentering as an adult after leaving as a teenager?

Zach Lambert
Great question. I think that the story is familiar, even though all of our circumstances are a little bit different. But the familiarity is if you came from places where questions were seen as equated with doubts and doubts were seen as equated with bad, then it can always be really difficult. But I think I've come to the conclusion that the opposite of faith is not doubt, really. That the opposite of faith in a lot of ways is certainty. Because if you're just absolutely sure about absolutely everything, then where is the faith needed? How do you actually trust God and trust a community and all that stuff? When I went back later in life to reengage church, I really was trying to bank on that idea of trust, of saying, I don't have to have it all figured out, and I want to try I think, Rachel Held Evans talks about this a lot in Searching for Sunday, just the idea of stepping foot into a community is vulnerable, but especially if you have significant church or spiritual trauma, it can be incredibly, incredibly difficult. I tried to go slow, give myself a lot of grace, try to engage in ways that felt doable, and not get forced or pushed back into an engagement with religion or church that was so triggering that it ended up moving me away from God and not toward God.

That's really the advice that I continue to give to people, is so many people that walk into our church here in Austin are dealing with significant trauma and even spiritual abuse and things like that. That really going at a pace that allows them to experience flourishing, not that it's not hard, not that it doesn't take courage and bravery, and not that we don't get disappointed, but really trying to be trauma-informed in the way that we engage with it is It's something that, gosh, I wish I'd had more knowledge of when I was stepping back into it because there was just this constant pressure to go all the way back in, even as I tried to go slow and give myself grace. I did not have any a trauma-informed lens. Neither did the people that were running the churches that I stepped back into. And so that way it was pretty difficult.

Brian Lee
I imagine. I'm guessing at points you found yourself overwhelmed or in over your head as you're being pushed to go all the way back in when you don't know if you're quite ready. How did you navigate that?

Zach Lambert
I don't think I navigated very well, to be candid with you. I think that because I grew up in spaces where any vulnerability was considered weakness, I really just tried to push through when I got into those, when I ran up against something. Like I said, I think I would go back and I would have conversations with friends or the girl I was dating at the time who's now my wife, and we would talk about it. I think try to really give myself grace, and other people would try to give me grace, but I felt this deep internal pressure to just push through. Just pretend like it was okay, just fake it till I made it, a thing. And that was not actually helpful long term. It actually made it much more difficult to reengage with faith in a healthy way because of that constant pressure to push through.

Brian Lee
Thank you. Thank you for sharing all of that. I know I did the exact same thing. It's like when you don't know, you don't know what you don't know, and you just push through things or you're forced yourself through things, or you try harder through things and white-knuckle your way. And even the idea of grace, it's like I heard grace preached me my entire life by my pastors, by my mentors and coaches, and it's like, Brian, you just need more grace in your life. I was like, I know, but I don't know what that means. How? And I don't think it was until I was a way too old adult, which is probably just shaming myself.

But it's like, then I finally figured out. I was like, Oh, grace, that's grace. And once you get it, and it It was from learning about the Enneagram and that Sleeping at Last song that just says, "grace requires nothing of me." And something in me broke and broke open. I was like, Oh, so I don't need to just keep trying harder and more. That's what grace is. And then it's crazy how almost immediate for me the effect was, and the scales falling off to recognize how little grace I extended the people around me because of that same thing. And so I appreciate your awareness to navigate that, to own. It's like, I didn't navigate it very well, and it can change the way I navigate going forward.

Zach Lambert
Absolutely.

Brian Lee
And offering that grace and space for people. I love you tell a story about your mentor, Pete, who encouraged your questions and doubts, right? And then engage them with a compelling kindness. After experiencing what you did in youth group as a teenager and being basically kicked out for asking those questions, what did that relationship with Pete do for you?

Zach Lambert
Well, I'll, to be honest, it was jarring at first.

Brian Lee
Yeah, I imagine.

Zach Lambert
It felt so different from what I'd experienced. I think that is also a commonality that a lot of folks have in this space. When you do experience maybe some pastoral care or a church or something like that that is much healthier, it can be jarring at first. Moving through that was really like Pete was so kind, and the church was kind, too, in the sense that my first, probably six months at that church, they didn't ask me to do anything. I just could come and sit on the back row and engage as much as I wanted to leave early if I needed to, those kinds of things. That actually helped me move back into a space that was much healthier. But yeah, it was two parts of it. There was one part where just the fact that he was encouraging questions was so amazing, but also the fact that he was making time for me as somebody who was a mega church pastor and theoretically busy all the time, which I knew that he was. The fact that he would just walk in my office and say, Hey, I have an open lunch.

You want to come out? Or he actually, during my time there, he told me, If I ever preach and I get it on video, that he'll sit down and work through the sermon with me, talk me through it, help me through it, and to grow as a preacher. I said, Okay, even if I just set up a camera and it, you'll do that. He's like, Yeah. I used to do it probably once a month. I just go set up a camera in one of the rooms in the church and preach to it. I'd write a whole sermon. He'd give me an hour and just work through the sermon with me and give me feedback. Yeah, That's so kind and encouraging. I think I was really transformed, not just by the openness and encouragement of questions, but by the openness to make time for something that he didn't I didn't really get anything back for. I think that he probably felt good about it and those kinds of things. But from a personal game, even a structural game for the church, the return on investment of his time into me for his actual, the things that he worked on was pretty minimal.

It was really just selfless. Then I remember encountering that selflessness in his leadership, and that was something I had not previously experienced. That level of selflessness from a pastoral leader really blew me away. It was one of those moments where I had a lot of models over the years where pastors that I engaged with, I would say things like, I don't ever want to do that. But this was probably the first time that I had one where I said, Okay, I want to be selfless and available to people. Some of this comes down to the fact that if we're pastoring and we don't have time for the people that we're pastoring, then what are we even doing? I think we're not even really pastoring anymore. That's something that I've, again, taken to heart in my pastoral ministry leadership at Restore over the last decade has been creating time and space for people, even when it doesn't feel like you, quote, unquote, get anything back in return.

Brian Lee
Yeah. I love that. I can see how that would have shaped your approach to ministry and leadership and all of those things today. Have you been able to identify, because it is incredibly generous of him to take that amount of time to sit with you to help with sermons and the additional time just listening to questions and encouraging questions. Have you been able to identify for yourself why it was you? Because there are a million other places he could have been or people he could have been spending time with, and he chose to make that investment in you.

Zach Lambert
Man, that's such a great question. I'm not sure I've ever really done a ton of introspection around that. I do think that there was something Holy spirit involved in in the fact that because we originally got connected and I was just the person in front of him asking for some help and mentorship, that the Holy spirit is timing and encouragement for both of us to take that vulnerable step and either ask or say yes. I think God was certainly involved in that process. But I don't know.

It'd be an interesting question, I think, to ask him, right? Was there something about me that reminded him of himself, like a younger version of himself or something like that. I do also, I know because he's told me this, that the fact that I'd had such toxic engagement with pastoral leadership, I think he felt some level of burden or responsibility to say, Zach needs a different picture of this, and he's in front of me and I can provide that, which might be different from a church member who asks for mentoring and doesn't have the same background or is not going to move into pastoral leadership where he might feel like, I'm not sure how much I have to offer. I think in the moment that we started talking, he was like, Okay, I think my experiences are actually probably what's needed in a space like that.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that's beautiful. And I think there's a sneaky side goal in asking that question. It's just for you to recognize the value. Like you said, there wasn't much return on investment for him, but there was something that he saw in you that said, Yeah, this This is worth my time.

Zach Lambert
Yeah, I know. You're exactly right. And I don't know, I'd love to hear if you've had people that have just like... Because that wasn't the... It wasn't the first time somebody was generous in their pouring into me. It was certainly the healthiest, and it would not be the last time. But have you had those experiences, too, where you just felt like this person is just being generous with their time and support?

Brian Lee
Yeah, beyond any understanding, right? Why me? There's no need for this. I can certainly I think of examples of that. And the first answer that comes to mind just because of the sphere that I'm in now is for me, it's those little glimmers of belovedness. It's like, Oh, I guess I am worth it in a little way. If this person can see me in this way, if this person can interact How redemptive for you to have Pete to step into your life at that season in life, to offer a new framing of what leadership looks like, of what mentoring looks like, of what engaging with questions looks like. Again, it helps you to develop the way that you approach your pastoring and leadership today. You've developed all of these lenses as a result of your experience for how we view and read and interpret scripture. Right at the beginning, you write, Although everyone reads the Bible through a lens or a set of lenses, there is no neutral or unfiltered way to read it. Many people are unaware that they're doing so and have never stopped to take stock of the assumptions they bring to the text and how those assumptions impact interpretations.

I love how much you go into, and I love doing the nerdy stuff. It's like none of us are reading it on the surface. We're all doing our own interpretation, and we're all bringing lenses to the way that we interpret. And this is the way that you approach your preaching in Austin to say, Hey, listen, when we talk about the Bible, when we share the Bible, when you read the Bible, here are lenses. Tell us about those lenses before we jump in any further.

Zach Lambert
Yeah. Well, so I think that there are lenses that we carry based on identity and experiences into spaces like this, right? So in the book, I talk about how there was a time when I didn't understand what social location even meant, what the intersection of being a cis-hat, straight, white guy, middle-class white guy meant when I'm doing biblical interpretation and different from people who are bringing other identities and backgrounds and experiences to the text. I also realized in seminary that there was this really interesting phenomenon that existed and still exists, where there is a set of lenses that are considered normative, and then everything else is considered aberrant.

I remember having this experience where going into a Christian bookstore and realizing there was sections around Black theology, and Latino-Latina theology, and AAPI theology, and queer theology, and feminist theology theology and all that. But there was no European theology section or white theology section or male theology section. Realizing what we've done over the last really 2000 years with Christian theology is to say this one set of lenses is normative and everything else is aberrant and needs a label to it. I think we've seen beautiful redemption in some of those labels.

Obviously, some people hold black theology or womanist theology or queer and own the label. But the idea that was ingrained in me in seminary, or attempted to be ingrained in me in seminary was, all those other things need clarification. They need a label, whereas this other kind didn't. For me, with the lenses, and my response to that was, Well, I got to take off all the lenses that I have. I got to read the Bible fully, objectively. I make the joke that that lasted for a week until I realized that's totally impossible to do. We can't take off who we are, what we've been through. And so after we come to the conclusion, the realization, I guess, that we all bring perspectives and biases, and that that's not a bad thing. In fact, I think when we're doing it in healthy and diverse community, all of those experiences and identities come into the text in a healthy and diverse community and actually make our interpretations much better. So that's one set of interpretive lenses. The ones that I engage with really deeply in the book itself are, we've also been handed some lenses, maybe without even realizing it, if we come from especially more fundamentalist or conservative evangelical spaces.

Then to identify these four lenses that we were often given, like I said, maybe without even realizing it, that lead to some harmful outcome. So a lens of literalism, which is just reading every Bible passage as if it must be factually, historically, scientifically, literal, often missing any nuance. The second one is Apocalypse, which was That was a big part of my Southern Baptist upbringing, which was essentially like, Jesus is coming back, everything is going to burn. We're all approaching the world through this fear-based, judgment-based mindset that ended up a lot of times excusing violence, because if God was going to come do violence on God's behalf at some point, then I guess we could do violence on God's behalf now. That was a really toxic outcome. Moralism which is really just the Bible being this rule book used to control behavior rather than engaged with context and culture and all that stuff. The final one is hierarchy. This one, again, was probably the other one that was the most prevalent in my upbringing in the Southern Baptist Church, which was essentially the Bible teaches us who's in charge of who, and who's better, and who's worse, and who's closer to God, and who's not.

Like I alluded to earlier, you don't realize just how toxic that really is until I think you pull the mask off and look behind it a little bit. The big thing for me was starting to experience the hierarchy lens, specifically through the perspective of some of my friends who were women or LGBTQ or racial minorities or other historically marginalized populations, and seeing just how damaging that hierarchy lens has been. In the book, I attempt to take those four and say, Here's how to recognize them, and Here's how to dismantle and disregard those, and then how can we replace them with healthier, quote, unquote, better ways to read the Bible?

Brian Lee
Yeah, it's so helpful. I think you tell the story, there was such a telling quote, especially when you talk about this idea that theology needs labels, unless it's white, straight, male theology, in which case we just call it theology. You say, One professor, a book by a Cuban-American church historian, told us to keep in mind that it was written by a Latino theologian, and so was probably biased. I just thought, Oh, my Lord, if that doesn't capture the whole thing.

Zach Lambert
It's amazing. Looking back to I have the privilege of... I was in the room, I know the specific professor, and the book we were talking about is Justo Gonzales' book. Even the disparity between the professor who said that's accomplishing accomplishments, and Justo Gonzales' brilliance and accomplishments, the goal of this guy in this classroom being like, Hey, take Justo Gonzales with a grain of salt, but take everything I say, like word word for word is just the pride, the arrogance, the audacity of that statement is just wild to me.

Brian Lee
That's how it feels. And I appreciate how much care you take in describing these lenses of harm, literalism, Apocalypse, moralism, hierarchy, that there's not necessarily a shaming of those lenses, but an explanation that helps us to understand where they came from. It gives us context. It's like, Hey, if this is the way that you think about the Bible or this is the way that you think about faith, I get it because this is the water we are swimming in. This is the culture we were brought up in. And have you considered another way of thinking about it? Which I appreciate because this is not shame-based theology. This is not blaming people for the way that they believe things. It's trying to approach it with that empathy and compassion, which I so appreciate. Because We're never going to get shamed. I mean, this is not true. We get shamed in doing things all the time, but it's never going to be helpful or produce good fruit.

Zach Lambert
Yeah, you're exactly right. I'm so glad that came through. That was a huge desire of mine in that first section with the harmful lenses. I also want to say I understand not just these harmful lenses from the perspective of this is the water we've swam in and it's what we've been brought up in, but also in that they're still attractive in a number of different ways Let's take the moralism lens. It's really simple to read the Bible as just a moral rule book. Okay, it says to do this, so I do it. It says, don't do this, so I don't do it. That's really attractive. In a lot of ways, it's It works. We should take something like Jesus saying, The two most important things are to love God and love your neighbor, and say, That's a moral imperative, or the 2,000 plus verses to care for people in poverty and immigrants and things like that and say, That's a moral imperative that we have. But what happens, I think, is that when we reduce all of it to just a moralistic framework, we end up actually missing the richness that happens in the text, and we end up policing things that really God has no desire for us to police at all because we feel like that's now our job.

Brian Lee
Yeah, that's true. There's so many ways I could go with this. I think one of them is this idea of In addressing better, quote, better ways to read the Bible, right? That we're going to move away from the lens we've already talked about and move towards lenses of health around Jesus, around context, around flourishing, around fruitfulness, that you offer really helpful, again, lenses and nuanced, careful, thoughtful ways to do that. I appreciate the way that you discussed that level of nuance without dividing into polarized camps, without taking sides, without black and white. I think given the polarized culture that we live in, for those who might pick up your book or not even read it, but just read a description about it or just find three posts that you've written on X or Twitter or wherever, and they just want to outright dismiss the whole thing as liberal wokeism or maybe even heresy, depending on which camp they're in, what would you want them to know?

Zach Lambert
Oh, man, that's such a good question, Brian. I think I'd want them to know that Jesus loving people can come to different conclusions on things and that we should be and have historically been able to have conversations across lines division and ideological divergence with grace and health, so we can again. If you want to understand maybe what some people that you would be quick to offer a label like liberal or woke or heretic actually believe about scripture and some of these things, and this is a really good resource, even if you don't agree with any of it, just to better understand where somebody might be coming from. I tell a bunch of stories in the book. I I would challenge anyone who might fall into that category of a quick dismissal as liberal or woke or heresy or whatever, to read the stories of the people in the book and still feel like if they can come away with these people don't love Jesus or they don't care about the Bible. Because that's just not true. These are people who have been pursuing Jesus, pursuing church, most of them their entire lives, and they've just been really hurt, and they needed a better way to engage with the text and with faith in general.

The fact that they didn't walk away, the fact that they... I understand why people walk away. I'm also not offering any judgment for people that their deconstruction leads them to a place of like, I just can't be a part of this structure currently. I get that. But the fact that these folks didn't. They kept pursuing faith and community and the Bible. I would just defy anyone to say, Well, they don't actually care about Jesus or faith or something like that.

Brian Lee
Yeah. Well, I had a conversation with Scot McKnight and Tommy Preson Phillips about their book, The Invisible Jesus. And it's this idea you say the same thing. It's like, I can tell you why I left. I can tell you why so many people left. It's not because we wanted to go in sin. It's not because we wanted to do things our own way. It's because we were taught Jesus and we're not finding him in these churches anymore. That's exactly right. You say they're not rejecting the Bible, they're rejecting harmful ways of reading it. Yeah.

Zach Lambert
And I think that's true in my experience with people who they actually want to engage with it, the scriptures. Yeah. Yeah.

Brian Lee
And So I love the lens of Christ, of Jesus. And you say Christians spend so much time arguing about what is biblical and unbiblical, when really we should be distinguishing between what is Christlike and un-Christlike. Tell us about that.

Zach Lambert
Yeah, I would say it comes from a little bit of a misunderstanding of what the Bible is, right? Which if we think the Bible really is just this moralistic framework or it should be read literally. And what I What I mean by literally is this wooden literalism like everything the Bible says means that that's something God endorses. When in reality, there are some really terrible things in the Bible because the Bible is an attempt to tell stories of humanity and God and their interaction with each other over a period of a few thousand years across a few different continents with probably 40 plus authors and three different languages. It's a big span collection of books that all attempting to tell what they can about, like I said, who God is, who we are as humans, and how we are supposed to interact, and historically, how we've tried to interact with each other, whether it's gone poorly or well. For me, the question of, is it biblical Biblical is... I mean, it's just unhelpful in the sense that genocide is biblical. Oppression and marginalization are biblical. There are stories of that happening, even happening in the name of God in the text.

Rachel Held Evans talks a lot about you can find what you go looking for when you go looking for something in scripture. It's so big that you can grab a verse here or there to support war or peace, slavery or abolition, equality between sexes and genders, or hierarchy between sexes and genders. You can grab little pieces and make it say what you want it to say. So again, the question needs to move from biblical/unbiblical to So is this actually what Jesus would be having us do as we attempt to be Christians, which means little Christ? So is this thing Christ-like or not really is the question we should be asking.

Brian Lee
Yeah. What I love is a Jordan Harrell, I think, the quote that you have there. Like you said, genocide and loving enemy, slavery and chain-breaking, patriarchy and countercultural elevation of women, retributive, violence and grace-filled restoration. Like all are biblical, only one is Christ-like. That's exactly right. And I love that you share a quote from some seminary professor later, a text without context is a pretext for a proof text. And I think so often we see that whole proof texting thing where people are pulling one verse from here or there to get it to say what they want to believe.

Zach Lambert
Yeah. And I get why. I get why because the way we do discourse right now is pretty terrible and polarized. And so if I can grab a verse and I can use it to prop up whatever ideology theology I'm currently propagating, then that really helps, especially if Christianity is important in the conversation. But really what that ends up being is now we really are using the Bible as just a tool to make a point. That's a form of weaponization that I talk about all throughout the book is if you're in a fight with someone, and now you're grabbing back for the Bible and using a verse or a text or the whole thing, and now you're using it as a literal weapon in that fight to say, Well, no, actually, I win. I'm right. I'm on top. You're below. That is the definition of weaponization. Even if you feel like you're doing it for some righteous cause, which I think can happen to people who maybe would identify as more progressive. You can also weaponize the text. If you're just using it to shame and try to win every battle and stuff like that, and you're not actually engaging with it in a healthy way.

Brian Lee
Yeah, I appreciate that. Let's talk about flourishing and liberation. There's plenty we could talk about in terms of all the harmful ways, but I don't think we need to because everyone who's listening to this knows. What I want to offer them is hope. What I want to offer is like, listen, this thing has been weaponized and turned against me so often. I just don't know why I should pick it up ever again. And so I love that you offer this pathway towards, and you said this idea that God is for our flourishing, and that liberation being freedom from anything and everything that prevents that flourishing? What is flourishing and what is liberation?

Zach Lambert
Great question. I think if I go back to... Jesus has a couple of different times where I think you could say he gives us a mission statement or a why. John 10:10 is probably my favorite. Luke 4, when he preaches at the synagogue for the first time, is really awesome, too. But John 10:10 is just so succinct, right? He says, I came that they may have life and have it to the full. He juxtaposes that with the thief, which is this evil embodied that he talks about a lot. That has come to steal and kill and destroy. I have come that they may have life and have it to the full. And so that is Jesus's desire for absolutely everyone to have fullness of life. I think flourishing is the easiest word for us to really grab a hold of because we all intrinsically understand what it feels like to personally flourish, what it feels like to see someone we love flourish. We see it like when they really step into a job or a role that allows them to use their gifts fully. That's flourishing. We see it when they get to experience being fully known and fully loved.

They don't have to hide anymore. That's flourishing. We see it when they get to heal from some trauma, maybe through therapy or really get a diagnosis that they need or get some treatment that's helpful. They're like, I used to not be able to really step into any of this, and now I can, and I'm flourishing. So I think it's just so much of what we miss, I think, when it comes to both just biblical interpretation, but also this larger Christian life more broadly, is like an imagination for what it could look like to actually step into something like flourishing. And so the point of that chapter was really to try to help us say, Here's what flourishing looks like. Here's an imagination for it. And then what gets in the way, and then how do we get the stuff out of the way that gets in the way? And that I think the best explanation for that is liberation, and liberation theology more broadly. I made a joke on other podcasts that if all that happens out of this book is that people read James Cohn and bell hooks and people like that, James Baldwin, then that'll have been enough.

If all they take from it is like, I think I'm going to go read some liberation theology and really try to engage with this idea, then that will have been a massive success because I'm so far from the first person to be talking about this, and it really is just a synthesis of what these brilliant folks who have been practicing and writing about liberation theology for a couple of hundred years have been doing. My hope is that, like you said, just give people some hope, some imagination for what it could look like to step into flourishing.

Brian Lee
Yeah, I love that. I think, again, going back to the whole people deconstructing or leaving or stopping reading the Bible because they just want to do what they just isn't true in our experience. And something you said just reminded me of a quote I just found in another book I'm reading, but from Wendell Berry, it's this idea that we've liberated fantasy but killed imagination. And so we've sealed ourselves in self bullishness and loneliness. And you said imagination, and it just sparked that idea of imagining something different for ourselves. But we're so wrapped up in fantasy that we can't grasp something that could become true. And to be creative about a new future that moves forward for us. I love that you say any gospel work should be committed to holistic justice, concerned with the flourishing of people's souls and bodies, that they're not in opposition to each other. Tell us more about that, about this idea of social and spiritual liberation working together.

Zach Lambert
Yeah, I think that we have far too often reduced the gospel message to mostly one or the other. We've said your traditional fundamentalist folks, this is for hundreds of years, this is not like anything new, have basically just said, Listen, the gospel is a get out of hell free card. All it exists for is so that you can take the name of Jesus and you can be transformed in this metaphysical way so that now your eternal destination flips from hell to heaven. That's been a primary gospel message for a long time. In In more social gospel, and I'm painting with a broad brush because conservative fundamentalists also do social work, a lot of it. Then traditional progressive social gospel stuff has sometimes reduced the gospel really to just like, Okay, this is really just information that should move us toward doing good work in the world. My question is or my thesis is, I think it's supposed to be both. I think it's supposed to be holistic work, like that we be experiencing soul level salvation, which is really just this being set free, set free from the things that hurt us, that bind us down at a soul level, but also on a physical and social level I just think this is what we see demonstrated from Jesus all the time.

Jesus was not... He's speaking to sometimes 10 people, sometimes hundreds, sometimes thousands, and he gives zero alter calls. That is not what he's doing. But he is also not just entering into physical or social needs. There's always this combination. He's like, I'm going to heal, whether it's a physical and or social ailment. And I'm also going to offer this larger, more beautiful concept of what it means to follow God, what it means to be loved by God and to love others, that I would call a very spiritual component. So the gospel is always social and spiritual, and There are a lot of people, like I said, a lot of people that have been talking about this for years and years before me. One of the people that talks about this in such a beautiful way is Martin Luther King Jr. He says, There are some who still find the cross as a stumbling block, and others consider it foolishness, but I am more convinced than ever before that it is the power of God unto social and individual salvation. ' And so you had this, this was an animating factor for King, where he believed that he wasn't going to leave individual transformation and salvation behind, but he also believed there was something greater, something social and communal about the gospel, and that really it was working in its fullness when it was working together.

Brian Lee
Yeah, I appreciate that. I think there are so many populations and communities who have experienced that harm of one or the other and on the extremes of one or the other. I don't think we cannot talk about the fruitful list lens and all these other lenses and how you use it to offer a defense and a path to both liberation and flourishing for social and spiritual for those in the LGBTQIA+ community. And the way that you read and interpret scripture in both Matthew 19, Isaiah 56, other places, give that population that sense of hope that they may not have heard before.

Zach Lambert
Yeah. This is It's an issue that is really deeply personal to me, even as someone who's straight and who's heterosexual and cisgender. But our church is about a third LGBTQ+, and it's been that way before we launched officially since our very first core team. It's always felt like this is a community that has been repeatedly told, especially in the American fundamentalist church spaces, that you really don't have a place in the family of God unless you change who you are. I just think that when we actually look at the fullness of context in scripture in the way of Jesus as outlined in the gospel account, specifically, we see a completely different message. We see historically marginalized groups based on sexual orientation or gender, these sexual minority groups, as seen and uplifted by God in the Isaiah passage that I mentioned in Matthew 19, and also in Acts 6. I mean, Acts 6 in the story of the Ethiopian eunuchs radical inclusion into the family of God, Philip's baptism of him, is such a powerful story. There's so many amazing things that I outlined in the book about the story that have just given me and the queer folks in our community so much hope.

But one of them is the fact that if If you read that story, Philip is somewhere else. Like the Ethiopian eunuch is traveling on this road in a chariot, going back home, and God sees them in the chariot, going back home, reading scripture, would have just been denied entry to religious spaces because of their status as a eunuch, as a sexual minority. The way the text reads is that God physically transports Philip from wherever he is to the road right next to him. I think of Star Trek and like, beam me up, Scotty. He grabbed Philip and he beamed him over to the Ethiopian eunuch and said, Minister to this person, teach them about me, answer their questions, and then baptize them. It was this full... Then he transports him back. He beams Philip back to wherever he was before. It's this unmistakable thing. This could only have been God's work and God's idea. That's the the text is presented. It's like God is intimately involved in directing this inclusion of the Ethiopian eunuch, and I think of sexual and gender minorities forever. I think that was a definitive moment in the early church that we should have continued to carry forward over the last 2,000 years, but some other things have gotten in the way and people have gotten really hurt.

Brian Lee
Yeah. I appreciate that you also highlight the fact that Philip followed through. He could have been there on the side of the road and said, Well, no, this doesn't feel right, even though you beamed me here. Or when the eunuch says, What's to stop me from getting baptized now? And Philip could have said, Well, here are a whole bunch of rules or here's a whole bunch of cultural reasons why. And he said, Well, look, there's the river. Let's go.

Zach Lambert
That's such a good point, Brian. And I think for us who are attempting to be allies, and this is true for LGBTQ+ people, but allies in a broader sense, Philip is such a great example of that. The fact that he did step up and follow through and the fact that the answer to the question of the eunic of what could get in the way of me being baptized could have easily been answered with a myriad of excuses to not baptize the eunic. Philip doesn't. Philip steps up and says, No, God has called me to this, even if it's unpopular. We obviously see that with Peter later on in the story of Cornelius, and don't call anything that God has made unclean, where Peter had been calling a lot of things unclean, and God appears to him and says, Don't do this. Then Peter goes back and gives testimony in the Jerusalem Council five chapters later in Acts 15, that it's a part of changing the trajectory of the early church for Gentile inclusion. He just says, Listen, I used to think like you, and I had my mind radically changed. That's the purpose of allyship, is to use whatever power or privilege you have to say, No, I'm sorry, exclusion doesn't work in the family of God.

It's not a part of the heart of God, and so we're going to do something different. I can't abide this anymore. And so, yeah, Philip Peter, so many others, I think, are beautiful examples of allyship all throughout scripture.

Brian Lee
Yeah. There are a couple of quotes that I want to end with, and I'm trying to pick which one. And I think the one I'm going to go with is this. You say that when God wanted to give his word to the world he created, he didn't write a book. Instead, he became a person. And I love how many times there's this running theme throughout that when God wanted to show up, it It wasn't through verbal stuff, it wasn't through written stuff. He stooped. That he got down low. He became one of us. He became embodied like us. And so for people who are tempted, not just to read or misread the Bible or to point to it as the authority on everything, which has its truth and has its theology and has its things. At the end of the day, what we're looking for is that fruitfulness for that Christ that is threaded throughout all of these things. Help us as we approach a better way or a different way to read the Bible, to be reminded of what you're saying there, that he gave us a person.

Zach Lambert
I alluded to this earlier, but The label Christian was first used pejoratively to describe followers of the way of Jesus, because Christian literally translates to little Christ. It was like, Look at those little Christs over They're there just like that Jesus that got crucified. Because that was a scandal. This person that you were saying was Lord and divine and all of this stuff is now hung up on a Roman cross. Yeah, it's scandalous to continue following that Jesus even after his death. Now, obviously, they were fully convinced, as am I, that Jesus was resurrected, but they knew that it was more than that. It wasn't just this hope of resurrection someday. It was that this Jesus actually gave Give us a way to live and move and show up in the world this way of Jesus. If we want to be people who follow the way of Jesus, if we want to be Christians, little Christs, in the original understanding of what that would be, it's a whole lot less of checking all these doctrinal boxes and defending all this dogma and a whole lot more of how we show up, how we treat people, how we engage with God in humble service.

I think about Micah 6:8, "What does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly before your God." That is an embodied practice. As you said, Brian, Jesus showed us the ultimate version of that embodied faith by putting on flesh and coming to Earth. I love that John 1 says that he made his home among us. I think Eugene Peterson's translation in The Message is that he moved into the neighborhood that God put on flesh and moved into the neighborhood. That's what we're supposed be doing, is to be taking the way of Jesus and that Christ-like posture of following Jesus into everything that we do. Because like I said in the quote you read, when God wanted to show us what God was like and show us what it means to follow God, God didn't send a book or a collection of text. God became a person, and we have that person as a model for how we're supposed to live in the world.

Brian Lee
Yeah. Thank you so much. Zach, thank you for taking the time. Where can people find or connect with you if they're looking?

Zach Lambert
Yeah, I'm on most socials. I'm probably most active currently on Substack. So if you're a Substack person, I'm on there and write really long form stuff, which is a lot more fun. But I'm also on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook and threads and Blue Sky and all of that stuff. All of them.

Brian Lee
We'll have the links for everyone in the show notes. Everyone, go get a copy. Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing. We'll have links for everything in the show notes. Zach, thank you again for being with us.

Zach Lambert
Oh, thanks, Brian. I just want to say, too, not just thanks for having me on, but thanks for all the work that you do in your ministry and your organization. I know the podcast is just one piece of it, but the work that you do to meet people where they are, to help transform trauma, to help people heal from spiritual abuse and neglect is making a real difference in the world. So I don't know if you get to hear thank you enough because it can be thankless work. So let me say thank you for doing that.

Brian Lee
I appreciate it deeply.

Zach Lambert
Absolutely.

Brian Lee
What a thoughtful and care-filled conversation. If you enjoyed it as much as I did, be sure to follow Zach and say thanks for being on the show. You can find links and all the things in the show notes.

Coming up on the show, we have Monica Dicristina, Rachael Clinton Chen, Ben Kremer, Dr. Arielle Schwartz, and so many more. Next time, we'll be talking with Megan Febuary about how writing about our stories can help move us toward healing and wholeness. Subscribe or follow the show to get new episodes automatically. If you enjoyed this episode, please leave us a rating and review or share with your friends. It really helps us to grow and continue providing quality content for you.

And a big thank you to everyone who made the show possible through their financial support. We truly couldn't do this work without you. Consider a donation today at the link in the show notes. This episode was hosted and executive-produced by me, Brian Lee. Editing by Heidi Critz and postproduction by Lisa Carnegis.

Thanks for taking the time out of your day to listen. I hope it's been helpful. Here's to moving toward healing and wholeness. Together. I'll see you next time.