Is Your Theology Too Small? A Conversation with Trey Ferguson

Trey Ferguson of the New Living Treyslation and Three Black Men podcasts joins us to discuss his new book Theologizin' Bigger: Homilies on Living Freely and Loving Wholly. We talk about the Bible, the difference between "theologizin'" and theology, the racial dynamics of deconstruction, why evangelicals are so obsessed with "facts," why they're prone to grifters, white theology vs. Black theology, shame, heresy, Twitter (I refuse to call it X), and what "Michael vs. LeBron" has in common with theological frameworks. Trey is insightful, hilarious, gregarious, and humble. We hope you love this conversation as much as we did.

You can find the transcript for this episode here.

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Transcript

NOTE: This transcript was auto-generated by an artificial intelligence and has not been reviewed by a human. Please forgive and disregard any inaccuracies, misattributions, or misspellings.

Randy  00:06

I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle is a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.

Kyle  00:15

We also invite experts to join us, making public space that we've often enjoyed off-air around the proverbial table with a good drink in the back corner of a dark pub.

Randy  00:24

Thanks for joining us, and welcome to A Pastor and a Philosopher Walk into a Bar. Friends, today we're talking to Trey Ferguson. Trey is a pastor in Miami, Florida who wrote this book, his first book theologizing bigger Homily is on living freely and loving holy, Trey has a powerful voice. And I don't mean just mean the sound of his voice. I mean, he has there's weight to what this man says I love to this conversation. And I just My biggest hope is that Trey gets more of a platform. He already has a pretty large platform, but more people need to hear from Trey Ferguson.

Kyle  01:03

Yeah, I think you're gonna be blown away by some of the stuff he brings in this episode. I don't say that lightly. I don't say that often. Even I love all of our guests. But this is special. Yeah, he's I've been following him on Twitter for a couple of years. And he's a great Twitter follower. Highly, highly recommended really funny. And also really fun to watch him engage with certain kinds of other people on Twitter. He's also a great writer, it turns out and just super thoughtful and it was a lot to learn here. Absolutely.

Randy  01:29

So I'm excited to share tray with you guys.

Kyle  01:51

Trey Ferguson, welcome to pastor philosopher. Welcome to a bar.

Trey  01:54

I appreciate you having me. I'm looking forward to being at the bar right along with Shaw. Yes,

Randy  01:59

yes. Speaking of being at the bar, do you have any drink of choice when you're having a drink or beverage? If you do drink dry? Yeah,

Trey  02:06

I do drink. I am a fan. What depends on where I'm drinking. I'm at home. I'm usually a cognac man. That's what I prefer. I'm a simple man. Cuz I say we'll get the job done. Chase anything. But if I'm at a bar, and I don't feel like looking through it, then you will find out what the bartender is capable of usually a double A jack. And again, it'll get the job done.

Randy  02:27

Okay, okay, a double Jack is legit. Yeah.

Kyle  02:32

Yeah, so bar is an actual theme of our show. So we usually have some kind of adult beverage featured in each episode. So we

Randy  02:40

go. Yes, yes. All right. So

Kyle  02:42

we're talking with you, Trey about this book that you just wrote? When is this thing officially out? Is it out now?

Trey  02:48

It is out now came out on January the 16th. Almost two months old?

Randy  02:53

Are you nothing on Twitter? Kyle?

Kyle  02:55

No, I gave that up hard.

Trey  02:59

Almost envious.

Kyle  03:00

I have a question for you later about it, actually. All right, yeah, you can do that. So the book is called theologizing. Bigger Homily is on living freely in living holy. And it's kind of based on your Twitter presence, which I'm going to have some questions about eventually, because I've been a follower of yours for quite a while. It's a really great book. I like it a lot. I've got some friends who are like, really into your stuff, and are really excited about the book. And I'm excited to talk to you about some of this stuff. The first question super obvious, and I know that you're just gonna, it's probably like the 1,000th time you've answered it. And that is, what is the difference between doing theology and theologizing, which is in your title, we talk to lots and lots of theologians, we have them on all the time, every time we have one on Ask them what theology is, I like doing that? Because I always get a totally different answer. So for you and your experience, how do you understand the work of theology? How do you understand the work of theologizing? How's it different,

Trey  03:52

it really will not draw that distinction. I'm not really trying to provide a new definition so much it's evoke a different image in your mind, right. theologizing is the work of doing theology. However, when a lot of us think of theology, we're thinking of something that's sort of an academic pursuit, right? We're thinking of the right way to talk about God. And when I name it theologizing, what I'm trying to do is present a more active image in your mind where we're not just studying God, but we're engaged in the actual work of trying to determine what God is doing in the here and now we're trying to present not just a snapshot of who God is and what God is like. But we're trying to document in very real time, we're trying to catch a motion picture of who God is and what God is like, not only in the past, not only within our tradition, but within our very own lives, right. Theology is thinking, active thoughts about what God is doing. It's taking seriously the idea that God is living So it builds upon theology and the work of theologians and empowers the person doing the theologizing. Regardless of what level of schooling or training they have, you don't even have to be a Christian to engage in the act of theologizing. If you are thinking about a concept of God, and deciding that it does not make sense for you, you're actually doing theologizing, even if we're robbing at different conclusions, but it's the act of wrestling with what it means to think about to talk about to imagine to believe in or not believing to trust in God.

Kyle  05:32

Yeah. Do you think being informed about the academic side of theology? Or maybe just the more formal side? Does it make you better at theologizing? Worse at theologizing? Neutral?

Trey  05:45

I think it's neutral. I don't think it makes me better at it. What it does do is it lends some sort of air of credibility to the work that I do. Because I know lots of people who don't have the academic training that I do, and are thinking really dope thoughts and having really great conversations, but there are people who are quicker to dismiss them, because they don't have whatever letters behind their name, right? I jumped through a couple more hoops not to prove myself to other people that just like kick my leg off the table, like okay, well, now, what are you gonna say right now? Well educated. I'm exactly as educated as John MacArthur, right? Right, right, we have the same number of greys we're like, let's let's set them all right there. And so this is greeted with because I present the way that I do. And because of the way I talk, the way that I do, there are people who are liable to think less of my presentation, the work that I do, and things that I say. And now that I've taken that leg away now that it's been demonstrated in multiple settings that I have done, the actual work and the academic work, all you have to stand on is the fact you just don't like the way I'm saying things which I'm finally you can dominate it.

Kyle  07:02

So I mentioned a little bit ago, your Twitter presence, this reminded me of it and I've been a follower of yours for I don't know how long, at least a year, probably more. Now, that said, I've been off Twitter for a while. So I don't know what you've been doing recently. But one of the things I loved about it, is I'm gonna say this as complimentary away as I can. You're really good at provocatively engaging with people who might not always deserve to be engaged with. You do it in a gracious way. I've seen graciousness from you on there, which is hard to do on Twitter. But I've also seen a kind of, I'm going to call it a kind of like delicious combativeness. That is, I want to say it's still humble, it seems humbled to me, but and it's also like encouraging through a kind of provocative, challenging posture, other people to try to be humble.

Trey  07:55

And I think that's fair.

Kyle  07:56

I'm curious how that fits in with this concept you have of theologizing? Like, do you do you take what you do on Twitter to be practicing theologizing.

Trey  08:06

I'd take what I do on Twitter as a part of integrity. And I think that that is the best way to theologizing is with integrity, bringing the fullness of who you are to the table, right. And so what you take is as good the adjective you used in front of combative, but combative, right? And humble, all of that is true about me, I'm not here to deny any of that. And what I am doing, when you see me doing that is taking up the space, I plan on taking up. I don't ever like I try not to meet anybody with confrontation, what typically happens is I say stuff from my account, because that's what my account is for is for saying the things that I want to say. And when people like decide to meet me, as though they have the ability to put me in my place, what will often happen is I tell them what my place is right? You don't get to tell me like you. And because what you just described it, there's a humility there. And I think that that's true, because mine in my view, what humility is, is telling the truth about yourself. And I don't think more highly of myself than is warranted. When I don't know something when I'm not at a literal expert in an area like I will say that I don't know is a perfectly acceptable and even wise answer to be, but I don't have a lot of patience for is people who are hobbyist in certain areas, trying to meet me as an equal in an area. I've literally spent years and years and a ridiculously embarrassing amount of money coming and showing myself improve in certain areas. Right. And so that confidence rubs some people the wrong way. But confidence and humility are not in opposition to each other. Yeah, I like being humble does not require you not being confident in what you do. No, it's admitting what you don't know. Yeah. And that whole posture of like, Oh no, I can trust my expense. durian says, I can trust my experience in certain areas. But there are certain things where I need to lean into community and other people's experiences and understanding that a large part of what I talked about what I'm saying theologizing bigger because my argument is that the fullness of God necessarily exists outside of whatever tradition that we've inherited. And it's only in that holding our inheritance with humility, and humbly, that we can gain a clearer picture and a clearer understanding of who God is and what God is like. Yeah,

Randy  10:34

I love that. Brilliant. Yep. Keep going.

Kyle  10:37

Awesome. So let's dig into the book a little bit, there's a quote near the beginning that struck me and I want your thoughts on it. And it's about the Bible. I know, we're gonna have more to say about the Bible later, but I'm gonna launch it with this. And also a topic near to my heart, which is ethics. And so you say, I consider it an act of great cowardice to remain planted in the status quo, just because you haven't found the exact chapter and verse to direct you to do otherwise. That hits home for me, because I grew up in a fundamentalist context and Kentucky, for what it's worth, where that was the source of everybody's ethics. In fact, no one had even considered that there might be a different source of ethics. And if you had suggested to them that there was they would have been deeply offended about it. So how do you think about getting moral norms or moral direction from the Bible? Because you have some strong things to say about that in the book? And what is your take on how one ought to approach the Bible about moral issues? Most

Trey  11:33

definitely, I would argue that like even the communities that insist that we aren't getting our ethics from the Bible are not telling the whole truth. I'm not saying that they're lying. I'm saying that there's something behind that stance, we might find our reasoning for the ethics that we hold, grounded in some scripture, we could find a proof text for it. But if we were to all of a sudden, like, burn all of the Bibles and get into a massive, like cataclysmic event wherein our memories lost our recollection of the Bible, a lot of those ethics would still be in place, because happenings are something that are determined in community that is what rarely happens as well. When I talk about shame later on in the book, shame is part of what a communal understanding will do. We're trying to push you away from certain behaviors and certain activities. Ethics is almost always shaped by community, right? And that's something that's actually attested to in Scripture, John, one one says, In the beginning was the Word and where it was with gotten to where it was got this idea of the word, the action of God, this divine reasoning, what is right, this indestructible concept of right, is already there in the beginning, according to the Bible itself, right? What we have recorded in the Bible are the ethical frameworks of various people. That and that evolves. And one of the problems was saying that, Oh, our ethics are biblical, is that there's not only one epic provider, and we see multiple ones reflected, and we see them working that out in about, we see somebody asking Jesus about divorce. And they cite one scripture in Deuteronomy, and Jesus says, Yes, but that's not what God intended from the beginning. And so our ethics have to be different than that, right? There are different viewpoints, pointed to and alluded to, and presented in the Bible. And so I think when we are honest about what we have in this library that we know of the Bible, this collection of books and this collection of writings and these different efforts, ethical frameworks that are presented when we're honest about that, then it confronts us with the reality that we do have agency in the societies that we choose to build and the ways that we choose to live, which is why Jesus presents an ethical framework that is grounded in the new commitment that he gives us to love one another, that is most clearly and succinctly embodied when he says, or most succinctly stated, when he says that all the commandments hang on them, do unto others as you would have them do unto you that that is the grounding ethical principle. And if we come across an idea that does not seem to fit that then we find that there's there are some times ethics presented in the Bible this like their their regulations, on enslaving other people, however, if you would not yourself like to be enslaved, and perhaps we shouldn't be enslaving anybody, right? Like, we don't need every proof text when we are grounded by principles that serve not only our community well, but how we you the way we'd like to be treated?

Randy  14:36

Yeah, it sounds to me like less of a diminishment of the Bible and more of a different hermeneutic a different way of interpreting and seeing the Bible a different way of seeing what's rising to the surface in the Bible rather than proof texting, like you're saying, Would you agree? Yeah,

Trey  14:53

absolutely. What what I'm saying I'm not at all time denigrate the Bible. When I say that this is not the only source of ethics. What I'm saying is is that we need to be honest about the ways that we are handling. What I don't have respect for when I say that it's an act of great cowardice. When we do things that people are rightfully calling into question and we hide behind scripture. Well, the Bible says, Oh, that's not that's not for real. You're not You're not being for real. Right? The name Israel means wrestles with God if we, if Jacob can wrangle a blessing by wrestling with God, that we should be able to wrangle something beneficial from wrestling with the words of God, the word the word about God, we should be able to do that. And when we refuse to do that, by hiding an ethical frameworks that we've inherited, some of which are not as grounded in Scripture as we'd like them to be. I think we're actually abdicating our role as followers of Jesus, who is the living word, right? Yes, yes.

Kyle  15:47

Yeah, that's good. Yeah, on the Golden Rule thing like we could go further to. And we, because that's not something that just appears in Christianity, it appears in literally every major religious tradition and several non religious ones, right. It's, it's such a common ethical framework that it's almost a joke amongst ethicist, like you find it literally everywhere, every major, in fact, to the point that every major modern philosopher, and by modern I mean, from the modernist period, wanted to come up with a way to fit it into their system, and then explain why Jesus actually agreed with them. Like when he's when he said that he was actually, you know, in my pet theory, and here's how that makes sense. All of them did that. And it's because it's universal. So I would go as far as to say that the Bible isn't just it's not just that it's not the only source of ethics, I would go so far as to say it's not a source of ethics. It is a record or a documentation of various ethical conversations. It's a it's a history of the ethical positions and stances that various peoples took on certain issues. And you can watch them in real time figuring that stuff out and changing their minds about some of it. But it was never the source for any of them. There was always some kind of deeper, I would argue, universal intuition. And that bubbles up in various forms, and it literally every human tradition, right.

Trey  17:04

Yeah, I don't find any problem with that at all. I think that that is actually almost plainly what the Bible even says, and fairies.

Kyle  17:12

Yeah, Never again, never claims itself to be the source of any kind of moral theory or authority that I know of. And in fact, it doesn't offer one.

Trey  17:22

Unless we are to claim that every time that the Bible refers to the word it is talking about itself, which is in itself a problematic argument requires a lot of question begging. But that's not the end whether Yeah, he's no,

Kyle  17:35

no. Thanks for going down that rabbit hole with me appreciate it. Another thing that stood out to me in the book, and I'm not sure I totally followed it so unexplained to me, it's probably because I'm a white guy. So you talk a lot about in house discussions. There's a whole chapter about that. And you connect that with what they can teach us about the Bible. So I want you to explain to our listeners, but also again, to me, what do you mean by in house discussions? And what can recognising them recognizing when we've overstepped our bounds when we get into one? What can that teach us about how we should approach the Bible?

Trey  18:10

Yeah, I think, for me, this was easier for me to conceptualize, because as a black dude who grew up around black people, I had to wrestle with what it meant to have a bunch of white people paying attention to the stuff I said all the time, like I had to be very judicious about what I said and how I said them. There were certain things that I said, when I understood or thought that I was primarily speaking to black people that my audience is primarily black. They didn't have the same reservations, though. And now like, that's no longer the case. And so I have to be careful because I recognize, like, what's the best way I can say this, okay. Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Toby, people who wanted similar things, for the same people, right? Dignity, right to self definition, liberty, for black people in the United States and around the world. They disagree about the proper mechanisms and the proper strategies to get there. Sometimes they disagree with each other on many things. But ultimately, they were speaking mostly to black people about black people. And some of those disagreements, for instance, Malcolm X, was known to refer to Martin Luther King as Reverend chicken wing. Right? That makes sense to the various people within the communities that we're speaking to about what was being communicated. Now, if you are not of that community, you can have some sort of ideal understanding about what Malcolm X is trying to say about Martin Luther King when he referred to him as rubber chicken. I will not advise either of you to go around referring to Martin Luther King, as rubber chicken link Correct, right. For reasons that I hope are self evident, if not, do I do I need to break? Now? Thank you. Okay. All right. So when I say that, is there a certain things right, there are certain words that I will use when I'm speaking to certain people within my community that I would not use in conversation with you, because I don't think that you would have much use for using those same words and those things terminology, I smell what I'm clicking right now. Right? If you were privileged enough to walk into a barber shop on a Saturday morning, and here's some of these conversations taking place, you might learn a lot about the world that you did not previously know. Because the people in that barbershop experienced the world in different ways, slightly different ways than you do. Right. You might have your your understandings, broaden your horizons broaden a little bit, but at the end of the day, is not really a conversation about you. Right. And what I'm saying right there is that there are entire conversations, dialogues happening between people who are perfectly intelligent, who are perfectly valid in the way they experience in ways that honestly have never crossed your mind. If you are a white person in the United States of America, majority of the time, the majority of white people here can live the entirety of their lives without having a single meaningful relationship with a black person, or a Native American person like that. That is a truth. It's not like a character judgment, it's a reality of where we live. And so if you were to become privy to a lot of these conversations that might not make sense to your reality, or the way that you experience life, like there's a lot of fruit that can be gathered there. But that doesn't then mean that the conversation is universalized in a way that you can repeat all of those things and have it make sense to somebody else who was not in that room. So when I talk about in house discussions, I'm talking about the fact that there are differences in the ways that communities experienced the world and discuss things. When we're talking about the Bible, we have to understand that none of these writings were written to us, I am perfectly fine and affirm the reality that they were written for us by the power of the Holy Spirit, and by the providence of God, that all of these things were recorded for our reflection, a mirror so that we can see the ways that we have been shaped by the world around us, and how Jesus is able to transform us to look more like God instead of the world around us. I'm perfectly fine with that. But all of these things were actually crafted in different discussions, right? If you forget the fact that Jesus was a Jewish man who ministered to Jewish people, with Jewish concerns at the forefront of his mind. There's a lot of things about this story that we're going to miss, if we continue to send to our experiences in discussions that are not about us in that way. Yeah. And so earlier, you spoke to like the universality behind the golden rule in everything. I think there is a universal truth behind the desire for self determination that undergirds much of the Scripture in the Hebrew Bible. And in the New Testament, when a lot of what they're wrestling with is how can we remain faithful people of God, under the threat of exile, whether in a Syria or Babylon, or Persia, under the threat of of colonization and domination, whether that's by the Greeks, the Macedonians, or the Romans, like, what does that look like? And Jesus's answers, we're almost sort of worried about the wrong things. Our problem is much greater than that. Because even without all of these threats, we've been so marred, by the way that the world around us shapes us. We can't live it to the fullness of who God called us to be in the first place, right? When we look at the universe, and the universality of the way that sin shapes the world around us, we can make a lot more sense of these conversations without erasing the humanity of the people in this story. That was a whole lot of words. Am I speaking at all to your question? Yeah,

Kyle  24:08

totally. Yeah, I love it. So when we're approaching the Bible, knowing that it wasn't written to us knowing that, you know, very few people in the world have even approach a real understanding of the context in which it was written that you have to go to school for many years to even begin to approach something like that the average person who picks up the Bible and tries to read it is not going to have that context is not going to be able to just step into the worldview of the person who wrote it, or the person who first heard it. And knowing that as a white person, for sure, this was written to people who had concerns that I have never had and will never have, and have a hard time understanding, knowing that I am getting into In other words, as soon as I open the Bible, I'm getting into an in house discussion. And yet, this is the sacred text for all Christians. So how do you recommend We go about overcoming that hurdle.

Trey  25:03

Yeah, man, that's the whole thrust of the book is understanding that what we have inherited, even the hermeneutic, the lens that we are reading the Bible with, is not the only one that there is. And so I'm not here to invalidate anybody's spirit. Well, no, there are certain things that I'm like, oh, maybe this isn't the most valid way to do that. But the moment you can, as as wherever you are, whether you're a white man or a black man in America, or whatever the moment you can pick up this sacred text, and accept the reality, Oh, snap. This was not written to me like this is not all about me in that way. I'm not essentially the moment you can take on that level of humility, comfortably, without feeling insulted, personally, is the moment that you can read the Bible with fresh eyes, right? And so, as that happens, there's something sacred about the posture of humility in and of itself. Philippians. Two, has this hymn quoted where it says that Jesus did not think of equality with God as something to cling to, but empty themselves taking on the humble position of a slave? What if you decided that when you open the Bible, just for an exercise, you want to spend 30 minutes reading the Bible one morning? And what happens if I try to read this through somebody else's eyes? What would it feel like if I were to try to put myself in the shoes of an indigenous person in the United States? What is now the United States trying to record record with what it means to claim to my inheritance under the phone of an IP? Like, what what would these things speak to me in that moment, and you'll start seeing new things pop up, right. And I think that we learn more about God when we understand that we, and what we've inherited. It's not the only thing that God is concerned with. That the very truth of Jesus is grounded in the fact that there's infinite, an incorruptible God put on finite tude and the person of Jesus Christ, so that the truth of God could walk in the human experience. And what that should or could encourage us to do is to think about the fullness of the human experience, recognizing that the one that we have is not the only one. Right? And so when you ask me like, oh, like, what steps can we take? I think we have to be very intentional not about tossing out what we have received. But inviting other voices and perspectives to the table. So that when we eat at the table of communion at this fellowship, that it's not a homogenous table, but one that more clearly reflects this, Scott at this eschatological vision of all of the nation's being there, and all of the demons being there, right, including the ones who gave us this text in the first place. Yeah.

Kyle  28:06

Yeah. Good. One more question about the Bible, at least for me, we can move on to something else. So there was a chapter in your book about the Ark and Kentucky I'm from Kentucky, I grew up not that far from where that ark is. I have friends and family members who go there and think it's the best thing ever. And I know people from outside of Kentucky who like to travel to it, because it's a big deal. Oh, yeah. And I've you know, I was a young earth creationist as a kid, everybody I knew was young earth creationist as a kid and Ken Ham was one of our heroes. And so you have some stuff to say about that arc. But the point of that chapter is not to just complain about the arc or to make fun of the creationist it's to talk about the role of facts in religion, and particularly facts and how we interpret the Bible. So, a couple questions about that, where do you? Where do you think that obsession with facts came from? I think it's a good example of the sort of stuff we were just talking about trying to make the Bible into something that it wasn't based on our particular social needs. And it serves the interests of the almost exclusively white young earth creationists in Kentucky really well to make the Bible all about certain kinds of facts. Hilariously, they get almost all of them wrong. But nonetheless, that is the point for them is just reading a list of facts off of it, and then like illustrating them in our theme park. So where do you think that comes from? And what is a better way to look at it?

Trey  29:26

So the obsession with facts, I think, comes in large part from enlightenment thinking, right. As we become more more motivated by reason and more fascinated with reason, and a lot of this happens outside of the church, but the church of course, grows with this thinking, particularly around 16 1718 Centuries, right? But the ways that we understand the world, more empirically things that I made sure like that impacts not only the arts and sciences, but the ology which was at one time viewed as one of the higher sciences, one of the higher arts, and then becomes marginalized as we have more ways of knowing the world, right. But what that births is this search for certainty. And a lot of people call it a search for truth, like I'm seeking truth, but what we're really looking for is certainty. Which aren't, those aren't exactly the same thing. Right? So there is a truth or there's room for truth in which Oh, wow, a lot of this stuff, we may never understand one of Einstein's greatest things, or great points is that Einstein claims to believe in God, even if he doesn't believe in a personal God, because Einstein believes in something called mystery, right? The more I know, the less I know, is paraphrase. He doesn't say those exact words. But some people have exchanged truth for certainty. And oh, we need to search for this, this certain idea, this, this bedrock that, that we have to be able to hold people to believing in and to being able to prove and the whole apologetics industry is around convincing people that we can be certain things that we really can't, right. And so what happens then is we look for things that we can argue to be true. And that is what it looks like to be faithful when certainty is prized at that level. Whereas the faith that is presented to us in the story of Jesus, and in the sacred text that we have, is really about trusting God with what we do not know, trusting in the character of God, that what we do not know will work out for our good. And a lot of times we lose track of that when we're so busy trying to prove that some of these facts are actually demonstrable in an empirical fashion that the authors of these texts and the custodians of these stories weren't even concerned about. It's not what this is for. It's not what this is about. We're not reading journalism. When we're reading the Bible, we're reading the ology we're reading anthropology. And a lot of this stuff gets mixed up when we superimpose modern standards of empirical truth and epistemology on ancient texts that were meant for a completely different purpose. So

Randy  32:41

this is really similar to what you were just saying, but I want to ask you to tease it out. Just because I think this is an important thing you say in the book in that chapter, that the Bible is not as concerned about conveying facts as it is with communicating truths. What is the Bible trying to do forestry. So

Trey  32:57

what the Bible is primarily concerned with is presenting the character of God and the faithfulness of God in ways that can be trusted, like, which is something that you can't really prove empirically, in a way like, okay, I can prove to you that this chair can hold a certain amount of weight by placing that amount of weight is something that we can empirically and objectively test. But when we're talking about the character, of an in finite, incorruptible being, that is a matter of faith, you will have to actually take that on some things that you can't prove. That's how that works. The Bible is collection of stories, a collection of poems, a collection of thoughts, and arguments about that character of God interacting in the actual history of a people in a way that well, of course, it can't be empirically proven, right? Um, I think the clearest presentation of this, I think it was probably David Sloan Wilson, who draws this distinction between what he calls factual truth and practical truth. And he argues that practical truth will always win out over factual truth because the people claim to factual truth in an evolutionary sense, right? Like, they're at a disadvantage, because it's almost like, Okay, if we take the 45th, President of the United States, we launched an assault on fake news, and at one point has a communications leader who says things like, oh, no, those are alternative facts. And what we have seen in the wake of that is a bunch of people who are really concerned about what we can prove they are convinced that there is a plot to present people in such a way, and there's nothing that's your actual facts that your actual records can prove about that because the practical truth that they've accepted, will not make room for that factual truth. Right. And the Bible is primarily presenting practical truths. It's not to say that there are no factual truths presented or but that's never the primary thing. Yeah, it's always about practice. This is what you can know and accept about God, this is who God is. And sometimes these factual truths help lead us there. But whether or not you can accept these factory truths based on where you find yourself in history and in society, you need to take these practical truths with that is pretty consistently what is being presented throughout the Bible and all of his various genres and arguments. Yeah.

Randy  35:24

So talking about Twitter, I hate basing conversations around Twitter, because it's such a tiny little echo chamber, but I've literally quoted Jesus and then have Theo bros arguing with me and talking about how that quote is, is often they'll talk through the all this formulaic Pauline doctrine. What's a better way of approaching the Bible than seeing just seeing the Bible as simply a set of doctrines that we can connect and put together this formula? What's a better way of approaching the Bible tray,

Trey  35:55

literally any other way? Yeah, if you were to sit there and just pretend for a moment that you don't believe in anything, and to treat the Bible as a collection of stories of actual literature that you might study in an English class, even if you're reading a translation, and you will read it as a piece of English literature, which is not the best way to handle the Bible. It's not the most faithful way, that's better than just viewing it as this collection of doctrines. And I mean that wholeheartedly, because what happens when we view it as a collection of doctrines is that we are bringing our presuppositions to the text in ways that will often lead us to miss all of the various things that we can mind from the text. It's almost as though like, you know, when you walk into a movie theater when they're displaying a 3d movie, and they give you the special glasses, right? I'm weird sometimes, like, I'll go in here and and watch a movie like, Oh, this is amazing. And I'll take the glasses off. I'm like, what happens when I take these off? And all of a sudden, she says, blurry mess, right? Like, oh, my God, I had no idea what I was looking at, because these lenses that they gave me were designed to present the movie in a certain fashion. But what happens if I don't have that lens? What will I glean? Like, oh, wow, there's a lot more that goes into this. There are layers in this film, that these lenses are filtering out for me to get a certain lens, right. And so one of the things I do on a regular basis, I read from three different translations of the Bible, like at a time in a day, doing my morning devotions, whatever, I'm not sitting there and one translation, because every translation is a commentary. Even if even if accidentally, right, I recognize that I'm being given a lens. And so the more lenses that I can wear, the less likely I am to be restricted in how I'm viewing these eternal truths, the less likely I am to be wearing somebody else's clothes, as I encountered this word, right? And so we say, like, what's a better way than that? I think the word I'm gonna keep coming back to his humbly, recognizing that what I've inherited, is not all there is it's not the only way of approaching this. And it may not even be the most valid way, it may not be like the most the way that is most grounded in Integrity and Authenticity. Right?

Randy  38:18

Yes, yes. Good. Thank you. If we can, let's jump back into talking about race and theology in America. And primarily, you talk about in the book about having the experience of realizing that many white Christians approach God, you said way differently than you do. You said, and you talk about the white theology you encountered in seminary, can you explain just a bit of your take on the major differences between Black Theology and white theology? If you can, you know, reduce them down to, you know, ideas? concise? Yeah,

Trey  38:49

I think it's important for me to note that when I say that I'm not saying that all black people believe this. There are lots of churches of predominantly or even exclusively black people that adhere to a theology that is almost indistinguishable from what you would find in most white evangelical churches. I mean, to say that outright, but then there's also this tradition that is born from what they call the hush harbors, right? of people who, back in the days of chattel enslavement, were ministered to and converted during the first and second grade awakenings or at least tried to convert. And what was birthed there was a tradition outside of the overseers jurisdiction, like they might go to a regular worship service and then out in a clearing somewhere have their own worship service where they're like, Oh, this guy that they tried to tell us about is actually fighting for our liberation. Right? They would read themselves, or see themselves in the story of the Exodus and wait on God to deliver it. And when I Say there is that what was presented to them was slaves obey your masters. What they received, or what they then proclaimed, rather, is that God is actually working to liberate us from this condition of slavery so that there are no more masters to obey in that way. Right. And so there is a black church tradition that is born of a God who hears the struggles and the cries of people who are struggling with their lot in life and their plight in life, as opposed to a guy who was sanctifying a status quo. And what that means is that we have people in today's day and age, right like in the current church, who are using the same stories, the same standards and the same symbols to communicate very different things. Because those are two different versions, or visions or understandings of God that are standing in opposition in that moment. The God that was presented to them told them that this was their lot in life, the God that they were proclaiming says that there is more for you in life. And those two things cannot coexist. Right? So what I realized is that their entire theological systems if think about the fact that there were entire denominations that were birthed during the antebellum struggle over the future of enslavement or slavery in America, that means there are theological systems where like, No, this is the way that God ordered the world. And there were some denominations that were struggling, well, is that really the case? Can we be enslaved in other Christians? And then we have other denominations that were like, no, not only is that not the case, that is antichrist, that is against what God is doing. And they're all using the same Bibles. They're all using the same stories, but presenting them in very different ways. And so when I talk about the difference between like a white theology and a black theology that is grounded in that hush harbor tradition, what I'm talking about is the fact that when we say the word God, when I was talking about the

Randy  42:05

same thing, okay, how so?

Trey  42:09

So, one of the things that I keep finding myself in, in the Twittersphere lately is a battle over the doctrine of penal substitutionary atonement, right. And I have no quarter for that I. And to be clear, that is something that even some black people affirm, either outright vocally or, or, implicitly, in their theology. I'm like, oh, no, that does not make sense that God would find the fulfillment of divine justice in the sorcerer of an innocent man or place with the guilty, that doesn't make sense. scripturally it doesn't make sense ethically, like nothing of the sort, right? A lot of that is grounded in who I say, or who I believe God to be. And the nature of God, God who stands with the oppressed would not then condemned the innocent, in place of the guilty because that in and of itself, is how oppression works. Right? Think that it is irreconcilable, who I believe God to be. Whereas if you believe that God is One who sanctifies, the status quo might make more sense to you, that God could somehow find justice, and the torture of an innocent man to death, right? James, James comes across in the legendary draws this this parallel, that's impossible to miss once you see it, between crucifixion in the first century, and lynching in the 19th and 20th centuries here in the American South, right. And the idea that a God who could reasonably be called good and just would find the fulfilment of justice in the cross and the Stasi ation of the wrath of God in such an act, to an innocent man who was not only the innocent, but righteous, the very righteousness of God speaks of one vision of God, whereas another vision of God is actually enraged. The wrath of God has intensified in the crucifixion and overcome in the resurrection. Those are two different stories about God, you can ground either one of those stories in the scriptures in theory, right? What we have to wrestle with is which one of those presents not only a more faithful image of God, but an image of God that might actually lead us to a society that can reasonably be called good purpose that answer the question. Absolutely.

Randy  44:23

100% Yeah, I love it. A great example. So I'm going to quote from you because literally, there's three paragraphs on page 66. And I've just got in all caps as big as possible after these three paragraphs. Damn. It's just good. And it's from Chapter Six what you called straitjacket faith which straightjacket faith is basically about in your I'm saying this out loud so you can correct me where I'm where I'm wrong, Troy but where we've kind of put the the code of the Empire over our Christianity in a way that has completely changed our Christianity and our faith and in journey with Christ. What Do you agree with that about?

Trey  45:00

Yes, fair enough.

Randy  45:01

Okay. All right. So let me read this. I'm gonna read your words and then I'm just going to ask you to expound on them a little bit. All right? Yeah, you say the marginalized people of this world are the most capable of imagining a more inclusive world. the disabled community is best equipped to lead us to a more accessible world. Women are best equipped to lead us away from misogyny, the racialized among us are best equipped to author a world without white supremacy indigenous peoples can be can best help us reverse colonization, queer people can best help us combat a number of phobias, faith in what we have not seen yet still believing is what drives us to envision better ways of showing up and taking strides toward it. That's bad news. To those who like the ways we show up. Now, the closer you get to the centers of power, the more attractive Caesar's gospel sounds to you, it does not require a conscious decision, a passive acceptance of the status quo will suffice. Before you know it, you've become a chaplain to an empire. Your gospel demands that people lay down their culture, autonomy, and right to self definition, you coax them away from the Gospel of Jesus, placing the imagination of gifted them in a straitjacket that prevents it from building anything worthy of hope. Can you tell us where that came from what you were getting at there, even though it's very obvious.

Trey  46:26

My whole thesis is that when we think larger thoughts about God, it frees us to live a more fulfilling life and allows us to love people better, right? The antithesis of that is that when we think smaller thoughts about God, it places us in cages and in bondage, and makes us poor lovers of our neighbor, right? And that's what I'm trying to explain. They're like, how did we get to this point, where this God, who becomes flesh and dwelt among us, as the first chapter of John tells us, and as the 10th chapter of John tells us, that in opposition to the thief comes to steal, kill and destroy, has come to give us life and life more abundantly? How do we get to this point where there are so many people wrestling with the trauma that the people who claim this faith have inflicted upon them? And my argument here, is that when that faith and when these stories are subjected to and and placed under the ethos of an empire that is already in motion, that it loses so much of what it was meant to communicate, right? I think it was John F. Hart, who said, No, it wasn't it wasn't John can't remember which author it was, I'm about to attribute somebody the wrong way. But the quote here is that we have forgotten to be surprised, something of that effect, that the followers of a Galilean peasant, within a matter of centuries become the dominant faith of the most powerful empire in the world. Right, the same empire that crucified the Savior that they proclaim, yes. And when we are capable of doing that, right, when we're capable of forgetting that, that that change of lens, then I think we are in jeopardy of losing the power of the truth behind this story. That the worst that this empire has to offer us is overcome by the power of God in the resurrection. I need to make that perfectly clear that even as some people get uncomfortable about it, because the Gospels talk about how it was the Jewish people who put forward Jesus for crucifixion and everything but an inescapable factual truth, right, we're talking about practical truth versus factual truth is that Jewish people did not have the power to crucify. As a matter of fact, if we look at this from a historical stance, one of the things that we're wrestling with one of the reasons why that story in John eight Some people claim is not offensive to the Gospels, but it's included about the woman caught in the act of adultery. And what do you say we should do? And that question is presented the Jesus one reason behind that might be that even though the law of Moses call for execution that the Jewish people of the time, like if you look at this, factually, from a historical standpoint, did not have the right to capital punishment anymore, that was ceded to the Roman Empire. And so it was only the Roman Empire who could execute Jesus and it's only the Roman Empire who would execute Jesus in that fashion. To believe that a Jewish group of people and Jewish mob however you want to phrase that is capable of forcing the Roman Empire to do something that it did not want to do does not accord with factual truth. It does not right. And so what we have to reckon with is that what actually puts Jesus on the cross, even if we are to assume the truth of penal, substitutionary atonement, that God is really behind this and all these things and everything, the people who drove the nails to Jesus's body for Roman soldiers, that were agents of an empire. And even if God ordains, that God actually makes a commentary, God over overrules their power in the resurrection. And so the story of Jesus is fundamentally one in which the power of God will always outweigh whatever earthly systems are in charge right there, that God is the King of the universe, that God is the Ruler of the universe. That's the story of the gospel. And anytime we use that story, to undergird the way that things are we are stripping it of its power, we are placing it in a straitjacket, we are saying that no one man should have all that power. And I think that that is a tragedy. For the simple fact that this story was first proclaimed by people who needed to know that this empire did not have the ultimate power over them and their people. Yes. Go ahead.

Kyle  51:09

I think we get into right there.

Randy  51:12

Yeah, that's it.

Kyle  51:14

Okay, changing the subject very slightly. I want to talk about deconstruction a little bit if that's okay. It does come up in your book. I want to know this. And this is just a genuine question for me based on a feeling I got while reading the chapter that mentioned deconstruction, do you think that what is commonly referred to as deconstruction in the United States in the last few years, is primarily a white phenomenon?

Trey  51:40

Yeah, I think most phenomena in the United States are primarily white. Yeah, I think the conversation is largely dominated by white voices. I don't think it's unique to white people in that way. But I also think there's room to explore the extent to which it is something that goes unnamed in many faith traditions, including white people's traditions, but like a lot of the questions that are coming up with things that I've been wrestling with perpetually since forever, like that is the constant tension in which I live with my faith, right? The second section of my book is called like the white man's religion. And that's because as a black man in the United States, I have to wrestle with Okay, what does it mean that I am a Christian? What does it mean that at some point, the colonial law started in the 17th century, Christian and white were almost viewed as synonyms, like in a legal standpoint, what does that mean for me and my faith? And so I'm consistently evaluating things that are just now becoming questions from people doing what they're now calling deconstruction. I don't do that as a character judgment. The majority of the people in this country are white. So I say that like halfway tongue in cheek, but also, from like, an actual factual standpoint, the majority of phenomena in the United States are white. There's a lot of white people here. Yeah, and, and so I think when we are able to name that for what it is, it does present as opportunities to examine if there are other voices and traditions that we could be drawn on to broaden our horizons, as many people claim to want to do in this process of deconstruction.

Kyle  53:12

Yeah, yeah. So we've talked about deconstruction quite a bit on our podcast, we have several several guests on who have written about it. And we're always trying to get a handle on what's going on how varied Is it good, seems like a really pluralistic thing depending on who you're talking to. But the through line that as I've experienced it, is what people are deconstructing from is primarily some kind of abusive or toxic church structure that not just fails to be inclusive, but it's like actively exclusive and really harmful ways. And very certain of itself and, you know, just has a lot of cancers in it, the in order to get out of you kind of have to tear down the whole thing and start over. And that's been the experience of most of my acquaintances and friends who are describing themselves as deconstructing. And I can see one making a case that many of those systems, that a crucial part may be an inherent part of the thing that makes them dangerous and harmful, and abusive is their whiteness, I think there's probably a convincing case to be made for that. But I also think that there are aspects of the deconstruction experience that are I'm gonna use the word universal, again, somewhat more universal than that, because certainty exists in other ways too, outside of white structures and or feigned certainty, I guess I should say. And there's, there's all sorts of things that are worth deconstructing from, or re examining, that are not so obviously bound up with what I would take to be entailed by a white social structure. So like when that does that kind of examination does happen in black church spaces. How does it look different in your experience?

Trey  54:56

Yeah, why people didn't have a monogamous moment. I believe on on harm or harmful theology, or bigotry or the quest for certainty. They don't. Right. And so it's, it's easy to place a lot of the blame at the feet of the white church and white Christians and white evangelicalism. But I think it's a cop out, right? Because to be clear, a lot of the blame does deserve to father. But if the best that the black church can imagine is equality for black dudes, and we're just the misogynistic as as, as some of the white charges that we left behind, and we still got work to do, right? If we can at least let women preach, but we're still as homophobic as everybody else. And we still have a lot of work to do. Right. And I think what has to be done is examining the hermeneutic that led to these positions in the first place, and asking if we'd done the necessary work, to create the distance that we claimed we wanted in the first place, what to create the renovation or whatever have you whatever that looks like. And when you ask, like what that looks like, for me, it has to be, are we really presenting and embodying the love of God without redefining the love of God? A lot of us like do this trick where we talk about, oh, we speak the truth and love word allows us to be jerks in Jesus name. Because we're saying, like what we call hard things, when it's really just the easy thing. It's the same bigotries and the same hierarchies. And the same things that everybody has been saying whether or not they identify as a Christian, but we're putting proof texts behind them and everything. And we say that we're speaking the truth and love and because it's, there's a protest attached to it. It is actually about God's love. But if God's love is filtered through the lens of Jesus, who operates in mercy and understanding, right, if I don't sit there and look for the little sleight of hand where what Jesus says Go and sin no more, okay, yeah, cool. But look, are we saying it to, but if we look at how Jesus is going and says, oh, like the greatest commandment is love and that you will be known by your love and that on Judgement Day, we're not judging by believing in the right doctrines. But how we treat the least of these. If we look at how Jesus says that, we can know what love is, because as we said, Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you that golden rule that is so universal, that Jesus says that that is the standard by which were judged. Do we take that seriously? Are we still trying to claim to old understandings of the story that are really just sake realizations and sanctification of a status quo that is not serving the least of these? Well,

Kyle  57:20

real pastorelli? What what do you say to someone who is not sure anymore, that they can stick it out in the church or even in Christianity?

Trey  57:31

So that's always tough for me, right? Because I, obviously still identify as a Christian. But at the same time, I maintain that there are people who will have to leave their churches to find God. And what I mean, when I say that is that all, if God is spirit, looking for those who worship in spirit, and in truth, then there has to be some element to God that is found outside of whatever it is that we've inherited. Now, I know there are people who hear those words and like, cool. At the same time, I don't even know if I can believe in God at all, or God, this concept of God. There's not much that I can say, right? Like, I've had people who have friends in that situation, they're like, Okay, maybe you could talk to him and bring him back into the fold. And I recognize that there is not anybody who comes to that place lightly. Like I don't think anybody just wakes up when it's like, you know what, I don't think I want to believe in God. I don't think that that's how that goes. It's after a lot of wrestling because, you know, we grow up with these, this faith and everything. And they know, it's a long and arduous process. The God that I believe in is one who is faithful enough to still commit to your wholeness, whether you believe in that God or not. And my desire is that you would come to know that God as I do, that, you will come to know that God as the very embodiment of love, the commitment to the wholeness of creation of the world around us, including you. My desire is that you would come to know that God, but my care for you, and your wellness, and your wholeness is not really dependent upon your affirmation of that guy. I believe in the Great Commission to go and make disciples, right. If you ask me to I will baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son of the Holy Spirit. I will teach you the commands of Jesus to love your neighbor as you love yourself. I would do all of those things. And if you decide not to do any of those things, I will love you anyway. Because I believe that that's how faithful God is right? And so when you ask like, what do I say to somebody who just just can't do it anymore? If I say, Okay, I love you. I love you anyway, my love for you, my care for you is not dependent on you believing the right things. Even as I hoped that you would come in Oh God, my God, right. But at the end of the day, oh, by the way that I view you is not dependent upon how you've handled the trauma of your life. Yeah, I don't always mean we're gonna be best friends. But at the end of the day, like, oh, is love when I'm called to do or not?

Randy  1:00:35

Trey in chapter 10, you speak about shame in some unconventional ways. We in the church, especially in the evangelical church, in the last, I don't know, 20 years or so. We have made a living off of talking and singing about how God takes all our shame away. And Jesus is purpose is to take our shame away. And you seem to think that shame can be a good thing. Can you bring us into that concept? And tell us what your thoughts are on shame and how it can be a good thing?

Trey  1:01:01

Yeah, when we say about taking shame away and everything, yeah, that's good. There's a lot of unhealthy shame. But a lot of how we understand shame is shaped by Western understandings of shame. It's like an English translation, we understand that a lot of it is shaped by like Ms. Brown, and shamans, this negative thing, which is all well and good, but there are lots of cultures around the world, including all of the cultures that construct the Bible, which view shame as a part of a healthy society as well, right? Like Paul, straight up says a couple times, I'm saying this to shame you. Yes, shame is one of the byproducts of what it means to live in community where accountability is actually a thing. And so I think when I talk about shame, and I've realized this, because, and I got the name of what it is a lot of white people from evangelical traditions who are strung up on this, whether they're still in those traditions, or they're trying to get rid of shame as one of the harmful aspects of evangelicalism, which I get, right, I'm not here to denigrate that, but they only get caught up in this negative aspect of shame. And some people have told me straight up what they desire is that I use different language, which I hear wholeheartedly, I'm not encouraging anybody to use the language of shame. What I'm talking about is this idea of communal accountability. Right? That said, I don't think it's fair to police the language of other people who come from other cultures, right? Where that word Shame does not carry the same baggage, you get to not use that word. Like there are black people who don't think that anybody should be using the N word cool, don't use it, and maybe won't even use it in your presence. There's a whole lot of other black people, they don't let some Edwards law between them. And at the end of the day, like you're gonna spend all your time trying to argue with them about that word, or you're just going to say like, Yo, agree to disagree, right? And so when I talk about shame, in the book, I'm talking about what it means to live in community, where there are expectations about what it looks like for us to live well, right. Shame is the vehicle by which I decided to stop living raggedy, because I realized that my parents brought me up better than that. I was ashamed when I looked in the mirror and saw somebody that did not reflect my parents. Well, my family well, okay. And I think that's a good thing. Yep. There is a healthy shame in that regard, if we need to call it something else, because I heard somebody like, oh, let's do away with shame, and use healthy guilt instead. And I said, yeah, that's, that's what shaming? That's exactly what I'm saying. No, but shame is different. Okay. Yeah. Don't say it. But what I'm telling you is, there's lots of people in the world, right? Who don't read Les Brown Books. You saying, in a different lens, right. So that's my argument there. And I think that when I explained it that way, if I if I use a different word, I'm gonna say more people will hear what I'm saying. But that word, since people are thrown away, I get it. I get it wholeheartedly. I wish that it didn't have that baggage for you. I understand that it does. But when I'm getting that is that there is a way about living in community responsibly. Yeah.

Randy  1:04:03

Yeah. So lay it out for us if you can, because I got no issue with you saying, let's like there's some aspects of shame that we should actually hold on to, what should we be ashamed of as a culture? That you're kind of getting it? Yeah,

Trey  1:04:16

cool. So Prime example, right? Every fourth of July, we celebrate freedom in America. We don't have any problems talking about how America is the greatest country on Earth. There's a great sense of national pride about democracy and freedom and all of these things. We have a collective pride about these things. We have no collective shame about the bad things that we've done. I think that's a mistake. I think that's an error. I think we're missing an opportunity for self reflection, when we don't carry a national shame about the fact that the way for the United States was paved with the genocide of indigenous peoples. I think that there is a shame. When we think about the powerful the most powerful economy on the planet was jumpstarted by years of forced free stolen labor, right. I think we did there were missing opportunities for shame. And even if and when we acknowledge these things in passion When passing. Now, if you were to go to Germany, there's all sorts of reminders about the ugliest part of their history so that we do not do that again, here. When we talk about those things too much, we start banning books in schools. And we start empowering school boards to know we don't want to talk about those things, because we don't want to make children feel bad. As though there is a harm and feeling bad about the bad things we've done. We don't have any problem teaching these children to pledge allegiance to a flag before they understand what that flag stands for. You don't know what the red bars in the flag stand for before you start pledging allegiance to it. And when we start thinking about the fact that the red stripes represent blood, why are we talking about the blood spilled in the fields, not the blood that was spilled on field before those fields were there to defend, right? There's all sorts of layers to this, that we miss when we won't be fully accountable for the bad things that led to what we want to celebrate. Yep.

Randy  1:05:54

Thank you. Cheering that was brilliant. So I have to ask a question about the chapter about grifting and Grifters and you even say you're you could be a good grifter? Well, yeah, I'd be great. You say that Christians as a people are historically particularly susceptible to Grifters, which seems obvious in this time, but I want to flesh that out a little bit. Like why do you think we Christians we modern day Christians in particular, are so susceptible to Grifters to conspiracy theories to all sorts of things like that?

Trey  1:06:27

Because we got magical incantations, right, somebody says the right words, and then they're on our team. We have somebody who was very demonstrably not really a believer in the things that we say we believe somebody like the 45th, President of the United States, who would quote a scripture while quoting it wrong, right? Or say something like two Corinthians when like, you don't have to be in charge that long before you know that we say Second Corinthians. But all of us like, no, they're fighting on our behalf, right? And I'm like, Oh, you don't you don't see this for what it is. Or we'll just let anybody in. Right? And what I'm saying is, if people from inside of our ranks can notice that, Oh, this feels a little bit fishy, then you can rest assured that people from outside of our ranks, people who don't believe the same things notice that about us. And like, Oh, if push comes to shove, and we're gonna make it happen, right. I'll give you an example. I was in Israel a couple years ago, right. And I went, you know, there's tourism is a big thing there. And they put together these little Disneyland experiences for like large groups of Christians. I was there with a group of charismatic evangelical pastors, maybe about 30 of us. And I noticed something a few days into the trip. But sometimes I saw a guy would like, walk ahead of us. And as he was introducing us to a group, he'll be like, Oh, this is a group of evangelical pastors. And I didn't think anything of it. But I noticed that like, every time that happened, within a matter of moments, folks are trying to sell us stuff, right. And sometimes, it'll be like little trinkets. Sometimes it'd be like jewelry. And I'm like, oh, yeah, like, here's the shofar for $600. And I'm like, Oh, how is it that like, every time we go somewhere, I get a tourism thing is the thing. But I realized that what was happening is that once we were identified as evangelical pastors that was like, oh, yeah, it's time to go, right. They know that that is our back. When we are in the Holy Land. We want to show everybody that we was here, and this is what we do. And it doesn't matter if they believe the same things as us. They know what we believe. And so they're start telling the stories that we want to hear. Now me, went over there again, it's not a character judgment on anybody. But I went, I went to Israel to understand how people that are experienced World, a lot of the people I encountered the moment they understood that I was an evangelical pastor as as we were introduced or whatever. They decided to tell me what they thought I wanted to hear. And when we become known as people that can bend to other people's whims, the moment we hear what we want to hear, what value is our witness at that point? What are we even doing? At that point? What good is salt if it has lost its flavor? If you think that you can speak to a container of solid tell it the things that it wants to hear and it is going to do what you want to what are we even doing here? Yes, right.

Kyle  1:09:32

Any follow up, sir? Sounds like everything he says is like, I'm gonna take that and it's gonna be a snippet. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. I mean that in the best possible way. Yeah, Trey,

Randy  1:09:41

brilliant stuff. You have this section where he talks about heretics. And you say something similar to the Christian faith we've inherited? Well, this is a quote the Christian Christian faith we've inherited was bequeathed to us by heretics. Tell us what you mean there.

Trey  1:09:56

I was really looking for a way to slap buckwheat into my mouth. I don't know. But at the end of the day, the Friston framework is incompatible with in Judaism, right, all of the original Christians, the people that we think of as the original Christians were Jewish people, who arrived widely regarded as not Jewish by Jewish people was like, oh, no, we don't believe in this like this. This is the that God could incarnate as a human being anathema. Right, that, that God could be three in one anathema right? Here, O Israel, the LORD our God, the Lord is One blessed to be like that that's in Scripture is embedded in their beliefs. And so when we understand that this faith only exists, because people who at one time believed one system said that this thing actually means what could mean or could be presented as something else, when we understand that it's only because people were bold enough, or crazy enough, depending on how you view this to do that, then we understand that heresy, that orthodoxy are all really political constructs. And I don't mean that in the electoral sense, I mean, and how power is assigned to people when we understand that the Creed's or not the Apostles Creed, the Nicene Creed, at least, was the result of a council that was convened by the Roman Empire. And we understand that oh, a lot of what it means to be orthodox is actually determined by who has the power at the right time, right. And so, at the end of the day, we got to reckon with the fact that Oh, when you think of what it means to be a heretic, or what it means to be Orthodox, or heterodox, or whatever, a lot of that is determined by who has the power who has the microphone at any given point in time. And at one point in time, the people who started this thing that we call Christianity did not have the power. They did not have the microphone, right. That's in our DNA. Yes.

Randy  1:11:58

Heresy is in our DNA. Yes.

Trey  1:12:01

Yes. Yeah, it was it was, it makes it better Bishop Yvette flender. And I do quote her and she says that the only difference between a heretic and a prophet is time.

Randy  1:12:13

Hmm, yeah. Yep. I love that quote, as well.

Kyle  1:12:16

I've heard the same quote about the only difference between a cult and a religion.

Randy  1:12:20

Okay, we're gonna leave that. Different conversations. Yeah, yeah, no, it's real, though. Yep.

Kyle  1:12:27

So one quick follow up to that. And only because I have enough Catholic friends, that it's in the back of my head, which is how do you understand the work of the Holy Spirit in guiding the direction of the church in 60 seconds.

Trey  1:12:46

So the Holy Spirit is proceeds from the Father. I'm getting like I don't I don't do the whole flow thing we talked about when we talk about them, but but the work of the Holy Spirit is that which is not only evidenced around us, but within us, Holy Spirit is what empowers me to talk the way that I do. Because I don't believe that there's any more of God in you are you are you than than there is in me. I believe that the moment I profess, Jesus is Lord and Savior that the spirit that lives in Jesus actually comes in me, right? It was, I think it was Matthew Tyson. In his book, a Jewish Paul calls it pneumatic gene therapy, when he talks about how Paul views this whole situation, that our literal internal matter. This is Paul's, like physiology, that he's writing this under or what he's hypothesizing Paul, under how he understands this story is that our literal physical composition begins to transform the moment we accept Professor Jesus, and that like, our flesh, and blood is literally like, in the resurrection. We have pneumatic bodies, our bodies are numerous. It's the spirit, right? And so the actual composition of our bodies is these things. These people who together constitute the church is defined by this new reality that is inaugurated in the resurrection. And so when you ask about the work of the Holy Spirit in the church, the work of the Holy Spirit is that of transformation and redemption, redemption and transformation, two sides of the same coin that work and people in congruence, right? There's this element to which the Holy Spirit that exists in me is the same one that will exist in you or anybody else. And when we are operating in discord, we know that is not of the Spirit, because the spirit is one of unity. It's when we join and with the work of God, right. And so, where we see the work of the Holy Spirit in the church, is where people who disagree about plenty can still agree about the character of God and about the will of God in a particular matter. Right. You will see the Holy Spirit when people who don't seem like they should be able to say Same page can find themselves on the same page about something, which is why the first time that we see the Holy Spirit in the New Testament, somebody outside of Jesus's and Pentecost, people who do not speak the same language, hear the truth of God in different languages, people who should not be on the same page find themselves on the same page, even if it sounds different. The thing about languages is that there's no one to one equivalent. And so if you hear, for instance, that I am the bread of life, in a land where people do not eat bread, then Jesus might have to be the rice of life, or the yam of life, Jesus might have to be something else, when you hear that, in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, Spanish translation of the same thing might say that in the beginning was the verb and el principio is some variable, right? something of the sort. It's communicating the same truth in different ways. We are finding out the same thing about God, even if the words used and the image presented is different, you know that the Holy Spirit is there, because God will speak in our language. And even if we experienced the world in different ways, we start moving in the same direction. Now, it was a very convoluted way to answer your question, because I'm not sure if I understood what the question was.

Randy  1:16:20

Well, you answered it better.

Kyle  1:16:21

The Holy Spirit guided your answers. Yeah.

Randy  1:16:24

There we go. Yes, yes. So I think we should do two more questions. You get your Twitter question, I get my LeBron. My,

Kyle  1:16:30

my stupid Twitter question is, how do you do it anymore? Like, I can't take it and lots of other people I know can't take it, and you seem to be sticking it out. So like, what's your experience on there? Like? And do you know of a good alternative? And I want to say

Randy  1:16:45

you better keep sticking it out. Right? We need you on Twitter.

Trey  1:16:49

I'm trying to so the main reason I was sticking it out because I had a book to promote, right? Um, that's still the case for right now. You know, and the other thing is, like, I grew up with Twitter, I've been on Twitter since I was 19 years old, I still that some of my OG friends was honored lurking a little bit. My experience has transformed a few times over since I like I've been on Twitter since longer than I've been in ministry right now being Twitter's says all these other things. And so there's a part where I was like, oh, yeah, this is just like some of what I do. But you're right, the experience has transformed quite a bit. There are times when I'm like, Oh, this isn't enjoyable. And when that happens, I find something else to do. And then other times, I pop in and I can have a little bit of fun again. But that's pretty much how I live my life. Man, I do things that bring me joy. And at the end of the day, the reason that I find my when I do find myself on Twitter, still it is because of the people that bring joy, the people that bring me some semblance of wholeness. I am, I guess a Universalist in that way, where I believe that I am not plugged in to the source unless I am connected to the people of creation. There's an interconnectedness, right, this concept of bones who I am, because we are. And one of the things that Twitter does is allow me to connect with people that I am privileged enough to connect with and wouldn't have the ability to connect with in any other way. I've made some of my best friends in life like Robin Sanford, three black men podcast, we met on Twitter. And now we'd like we'd like, be in a house. But you know, I didn't call please to link up with them and stuff. And I think that that is a privilege is a magical thing. That's a holy day, that I refuse to let the Spaceman ruin the space man.

Randy  1:18:42

X. Good. Thank you. Now, we've talked a lot about you know, potentially divisive topics and everything. But this is the biggest one that I'm nervous about Trey. You say in your book, there is no biblical rubric for settling the Jordan versus LeBron debate. But we don't need the Bible to know who's the goat, right? Like, can you please, and I'm nervous about your answer. But can you please tell us who you think is the goat?

Trey  1:19:05

Okay, so here is how I'm addressed this right. One of my favorite thinkers, it voices out right now. And it's funny if you look, if I tell you this and you listen to myself, you're like, oh my gosh, I see it now. Right? Bomani Jones is one of the most brilliant people and I don't know if you know what that is. He used to work for ESPN. He's since gone. Yeah. He has a podcast called the right time. And recently felt like either last week, or maybe even today. Maybe it's today's podcast, I can't remember. But he talks about the Jordan versus LeBron debate, and how we're gonna have to get to a point where people are just content being right. There is no convincing anybody who believes that LeBron is the greatest or better than Jordan that Jordan is better than, like the arguments already said. There is no way to convince anybody to believe that Jordan is the goat that LeBron is the best. Right? And so it does not matter how I answer you Your question,

Randy  1:20:00

it does matter.

Trey  1:20:03

It does matter. Here's what I will say. There is nothing that LeBron James can do. I like to convince you, yeah. That he is better than Jordan. At this point. There's there's nothing, there's nothing. I

Randy  1:20:20

mean, he could be better than Jordan, that would convince me.

Trey  1:20:24

Right? But what would that look like for you? It would look

Randy  1:20:26

like him being cold blooded. And playing every game like it's a game seven, and not passing in the last minute of a game seven and all sorts of things.

Trey  1:20:35

All of that stuff. Makes sense. All of it makes sense, right? But then you can also construct an argument about the fact that Jordan Lee had no left hand that Jordan didn't have, like,

Randy  1:20:44

you don't need her left hand when you got a right hand like that. You're

Trey  1:20:47

right. Right. And it makes perfect sense. Here's the I've regularly I've been getting in. Okay, so so when you asked me who I think the code is recency bias, like, typically, I tend to land on LeBron James side. But part of that is because I am 33 years old, right? Like, my recollection of Jordan is from really young. I didn't see Jordan play to the same extent that I remember watching Jordan play, but I grew up with Lebron James. Right. And so that that is true in the same sense that like, right now, me and my friends be having this. Patrick mahomes versus Tom Brady debate, okay. In my mind, there is no art like Patrick mahomes. We've never seen anything like this in our entire life. Yeah. Well, somebody else is saying is that like, oh, but Tom Brady's resume, and I'm like, Yeah, but if, if Patrick mahomes would have vanished on earth today, and you start your resumes up? Like it's not even a question at this point. Patrick mahomes is literally never not been in a in a conference championship game. It's crazy. But a lot of that is because oh, I'm watching this in real time. And I was there for all Brady's run. But I've seen what Brady looks like average, I have not seen what Patrick mahomes was like average. Yes. I've seen what Michael Jordan and LeBron James look like average, and LeBron James just happened to do it for a lot longer than

Randy  1:22:01

That's true. That's true. Longevity, for sure. LeBron has guidance?

Trey  1:22:06

Yes. Yes. But like, obviously, the heights of Jordan is great. Lebron James. They never had no no, no stretch, like Jordan did in the mid 90s. He went to the conference finals a straight times. But he only won what? Three of them? Yeah,

Randy  1:22:20

Jordan. Yeah. No, it's, I appreciate you going there with me. Again, I'm not going to convince you I can't I don't understand why I can't convince you that Michael Jordan is better than LeBron. Here's the

Kyle  1:22:32

theological takeaway. People like me can get on board with depending on your framework that you're starting with your it doesn't matter what the evidence is. Yeah,

Trey  1:22:42

this was what it goes down to. Right.

Randy  1:22:44

I mean, I'd like to thank people who are about my age, who saw both of them play in their primes are a little bit more authority, authoritative to say I'm, and yes, I am claiming to be more authoritative on this topic than you are true. Isn't? Because I'm 46 years old.

Trey  1:23:00

That makes sense. But like, you're you're, you're appealing to the fact you Oh, yes. So even if you write you're still old, and I'm gonna go to bed knowing like, hey, like, maybe I'm wrong, but like he Oh. All right. So given wisdom, is wisdom and what Bomani Jones is saying like you need to learn to be content with being right. Because the alternative is we just talked about how old you are. Yeah.

Randy  1:23:27

We can do that. As long as we can say Michael Jordan is the best. But that's Trey, this has been a delight. Thank you so much for spending some time with us this evening. The book is theologizing bigger Homily is on living freely and loving holy. Can you tell people tell our listeners where to find you. You have a couple podcasts. You're a prolific guy. tell our listeners where to find you.

Trey  1:23:48

Wow, you call me prolific man. I like this part. I'm gonna come back here. Please do. Yeah. So the best place to find me is past the trail. five.com That's pastor trade t r e y zero five.com. On there you can find all of my social media handles wherever I'm at will be traced there if you want to sign up, or subscribe to my newsletter on such that you can do that and pass the trail five.com If you want to listen to three black men with Rob Monson, Sam gay and myself, you can do that at past trail. five.com If you want to listen to the New Living Translation, you can do that at past trail. five.com If you want to know where all the places you could buy theologizing bigger or where the deals are at any given point in time you can find out a past trail five.com that's the place to get plugged in.

Randy  1:24:31

Pastor Trey Oh five.com I got it. Yes, Trey. This has been really seriously Wonderful. Thank you for joining us.

Trey  1:24:38

Nah, man, I love this so much. If you're not too scared, I'll be back.

Randy  1:24:41

All right. All right. And we will continue to LeBron versus Jordan. Right. All right. Seriously, Trey, thank you so much. This is great. Really fun. Appreciate your book. Appreciate you. Totally.

Trey  1:24:54

Yeah, and I appreciate y'all having me this this. This was dope man. I know. Kyle we talked about earlier. He's like, Oh, this is one of the good ones. This is this is one. This is one of the good ones. Good, good. Good. All right, enjoy this.

Randy  1:25:05

Awesome. All right, Trey have great night. Thank you so much.

Trey  1:25:08

Thank you.

Kyle  1:25:08

Thanks, man. See you

Randy  1:25:23

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Kyle  1:25:39

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Randy  1:25:46

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Kyle  1:25:54

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Randy  1:26:03

See you next time. 

Kyle  1:26:04

Cheers!