Latest / How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack / My August Reading List- I Despised one & LOVED the next.

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My August Reading List- I Despised one & LOVED the next. · How to Faith a Life Podcast with Faith Womack

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you're listening to the How to Faith a Life podcast, where we wrestle with questions on how to live a life of faith, from everything from books to Bible studies, even Bible study tips, this is your place to wrestle with the hard questions and dive deep into what scripture really says for the Christian walk.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: Make sure you've subscribed to this podcast and your favorite podcast streaming services, review this podcast so other people can find it, and share with other believers who want to ask the hard questions.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_00: Now, with all that said, let's begin.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Hi, and welcome back to the How to Faith a Life podcast.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Today we are doing something that I'm very excited about.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I am sharing with you the books that I read through the month of August.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've honestly been looking forward to filming this podcast since the last time I filmed this podcast.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm thinking I need to do more than just one dedicated podcast a month towards the books that I'm reading because I'm loving talking about the books I'm reading and my thoughts around it.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I feel like it could be I I could talk so much more about books I want to read, um, books like thoughts, authors, all the things.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: But um anyway, all that to say, I'm really excited about this podcast and really ready to dive in.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: This month was an interesting month when it comes to the list that I ended up reading.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: I started off on a really strong note, and by like my second book, I was really disappointed with my choice and kind of just discouraged and feeling like, okay, now what do I read next?
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like when you read a book that you don't super love, it's kind of discouraging, like, well, I don't want to pick a book like that again.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so on my nightstand, I have like a huge stack of books.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like as long as my torso, like it's a huge stack of books that I choose from when I'm trying to decide um what book to read next.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I just kind of sat there for a couple days just staring at it, like not knowing what to read next, and reading little portions of different books, um, and just feeling a little discouraged midway through the month.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then by the end of the month, the end of August was really emotional for, at least for me, and so I feel like I sway slow down when I'm emotionally distraught.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: I also read less.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um, reading comes from like a healthy state of mind in my life.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: So does like sewing and singing and all the things that like I don't know uh makes me a dork.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of those things come when I'm happy, and it was my sister's um anniversary after um her end of life.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to think of words that aren't going to trigger like YouTube to flag this video like it's something bad.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: But um, anyway, it just the end of the month was heavy for me.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: So, all that to say, I feel like I read a little bit less.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like if we were to calculate the page numbers, I feel like I read less than last month, and I definitely enjoyed it less than last month based on some of the books' choices, but there is one in particular that I'm so excited to recommend to you guys.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: So let's begin.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: I started off the month reading Matthew Dick's Story Worthy, and this is not a Christian book.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see how long it took me.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: It took me uh like five days.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_00: So I flew through it.
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_00: It was an easy read because he is a storyteller, so it it goes by pretty quickly, though it is like 300 plus pages, 350 maybe.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um, however, he is not a believer, and so there's a few instances where there is significant language.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, the book ends with strong language, and I was really disappointed in that.
• 3:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so, based on that alone, I don't feel confident recommending this book.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: However, my reasoning behind reading this book was because I wanted to learn about stories and why some stories are captivating and others are not.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: I've been learning a lot about storytelling because I've been thinking about how that impacts the way that I teach on the Bible.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is a story.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then also evangelism, engaging in other people's stories, their testimony, my story, and how to use story as a way to communicate the gospel or better understand the gospel.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like the Lord chose to communicate the gospel through story and through um many different stories and then stories that are interwoven, and it's a really beautiful tool that the Lord has used and in the story of his people and his message.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's something that I kind of wanted to learn more about.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not trying to be like a great storyteller or anything, um, but understanding how the human brain works and responds to story really helps me understand the Bible better.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: Why certain things are included, why certain things stick to us, like the story of David sticks out to us compared to like, I don't know, what's a story that doesn't stick out?
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Balaam.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: You know, like it's just less so.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of the Bible points to Jesus through story.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: And so understanding the storytelling in the Bible necessitates me doing some reading on storytelling.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, I read this book.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed it because it was such an easy read and it wasn't like heavy at all.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, after reading some heavy books last month, I was really excited to read through something really light and just like if I can understand story better, then like then that's what I've accomplished.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: There was no like dog earing.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you guys were so kind to correct me in my last podcast last month on one of the books I read.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to explain how I fold down the corner of the pages of my book, and I got so many comments and emails going, it's called dog earing faith.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's called dog earing.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: How could you ever dog ear your dog your book pages?
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_00: But that is my system of I want to come back to this book and record down this exegesis or this word study or this background information that was included and record that in my Bible.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: So I will dog ear the page of the book to say I want to um record this in my Bible.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: And I obviously wasn't doing any of that kind of work here when I was reading this book.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_00: I just was wanting to understand story.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: So it's a good book if you want to understand story, but I wouldn't recommend it because the language.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I just don't feel comfortable recommending books that have strong, strong language in them like that.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's not super frequent, but the like worst word ever is used at least twice and ended using it.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just, I don't know, didn't love that aspect of it.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_00: Alright, now the next book I read was actually recommended to me by Joe and I's counselor.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she's a wonderful Christian woman and she does our marriage counseling, but it really kind of is a lot of like ministry counseling, how to process um walking through life with other people and churches and things like that.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway, so she recommended this book.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's called Try Softer by Andi Colbert, and I believe it like recently came out because she hadn't quite read it yet, and she wanted to, I said I was on a reading screen.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: She was like, hey, you could read this.
• 6:17
  SPEAKER_00: This might apply to what y'all are going through.
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a Christian, it's a Christian take on um, yeah, it came out in 2020.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: So sorry, it's a Christian take on trying softer and giving yourself grace, um without while understanding like the way that you're raised, the way that the Lord's written your story, without being super, it's not, I was afraid it was gonna be kind of like secular, like just take care of yourself, give yourself grace, and and not really like meaty, but I felt like it she did a really great job of being meaty in the scriptures.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: It says a fresh approach to move us out of anxiety, stress, and survival mode and into a life of connection and joy.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: Even though I didn't understand everything, I'm not super great with psychology.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: I really enjoyed just that those biblical reminders to listen to your body, to slow down, to pay attention, and to do it with a biblical take on everything is just really helpful.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, and I think I read through that in like two days, let's see.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: Because it wasn't just strictly like Bible stuff or hermeneutics, um, whenever I didn't understand stuff, I was like, that's okay, I don't have to, and I just kept reading.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I re I've read it in two days.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: So okay, the next book Okay, was Misquoting Jesus by Bart Erman, I think is how you're supposed to say it.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a book that had been on my reading list for forever, and it I believe it appeared on my reading list.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Like I believe I originally added it to my reading list because it was in the footnotes of a lot of other books that I was reading.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um which might be telling of those other books, I don't know.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so one important thing to do whenever you're reading Christian living books, sometimes like the frilly ones won't usually have a whole lot of footnotes or notes at the end of the book.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but one thing that I learned in Bible college and school is just like how valuable it can be to really go seek out whatever books they're referencing and going to go read those books.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that's one of my favorite ways to build up my reading list.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so I'm I'm pretty sure that's how this book appeared on my reading list was because I found it in at least like two different footnotes in different books that I was reading, and so I was like, Oh, I must go check it out.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I said I read a couple reviews and it looked good.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it was not what I expected.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I have two dog ears, and I remember dog earing them, and this is like you know, within the first 50 pages, but thinking I already don't like this book, but at least there's a little bit of something for me to add or to learn.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: So um Bart uh went to Moody and Wheaton, and then eventually went to a secular college, and he was a believer he became a believer in high school, I remember if I remember correctly, and um then went to I think it was Moody and then Wheaton and really got into textual criticism.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: This book, that's what this book is about, is textual criticism and dealing specifically with textual criticism in the New Testament.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, how did our Bible get to be the Bible it is today?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: What verses were kept in, what verses were kept out, what did scribes add to the text, um, what has later been edited, has anything been changed, all of that.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I've said before here on my channel that it can be a messy topic, and I don't know, I saw from like ever new aspect of how important it is to read it from a biblical perspective to read about textual criticism.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: So, for example, this man lost his faith.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: I would say he didn't say it outright, but um, it seemed the the way that he wrote things are so cynical and so negative.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Like he would say things that I learned, like I knew, um, but say it in a way that that purposefully made the Bible look untrustworthy and completely polluted and trashed.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: I knew better than that, but if I was a believer who didn't go to college and study the Bible or didn't take any classes on textual criticism, I my world would have been shaken and I don't know if I would have walked away thinking very highly of the Bible or thinking that the Bible was trustworthy.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: I would not recommend this book.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_00: I would encourage believers to read books about textual criticism um that are from a Christian perspective.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't have a lot of recommendations because I just genuinely didn't think about it before recording this.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've mentioned a few times on my channel I really enjoyed Paul and first century letter writing to help understand how first century letters came to be and were preserved, but most of my stuff probably just came from like New Testament uh textbooks.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know of any like books just on New Testament um that I can think of right off the bat.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: But this one I did not enjoy.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, let's see, I wrote some notes on the inside.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: It makes it very clear in the intro that he doesn't believe in the inerrancy of the scriptures or really much application for our lives today, and he's very sinister.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_00: Not for those who are new to textual criticism.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and at the end of the introduction, he even says I mean, he has like cool pictures and like stuff that he just totally devalues with the way that he views scripture.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: But he says this.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: This is the closing paragraph in his introduction.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: He says, that is the kind of book this is, to my knowledge, the first of its kind.
• 11:28
  SPEAKER_00: It is written for people who know nothing about textual criticism, but who might like to learn something about how scribes were changing scripture and about how we recognize where they did so.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is written based on my 30 years of thinking about the subject and from the perspectives that I now have, having gone through such radical transformations of my own views of the Bible.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_00: It is written for anyone who might be interested in seeing how we got our New Testament, seeing how, in some instances, we don't even know what the words of the original writers were, seeing in what interesting ways these words occasionally got changed, and seeing how we might, through the application of some rather rigorous methods of analysis, reconstruct what those original words actually were in many ways.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: Then this is a very personal book for me, the end result of a long journey.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe for others, it can be a part of a journey of their own.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: It just came from that perspective continually.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: Like I went through this journey, um, or I've been on this journey for the last 30 years, and I've, you know, learned to not trust the Bible and not find it applicable for our lives, but it's an interesting cultural historical document, and I want you to view it that way too.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just very, I just constantly saw this.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like I was reading between the lines here, but like he had a hurt heart.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: Like he was hurting and sad almost with what he'd found about the Bible, and his way of dealing with that was being completely closed off and ignoring, you know, the 98% of scripture that's very reliable, and pointing out the 2% that might have been altered by scribes or misspelled by scribes or whatever, and just living in that and so I don't know, I just I wouldn't recommend this book.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I struggled through it.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Let's see how long it took me because I just was like done with it.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: The negativity just wrecked me.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I didn't record a start date.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: When did I finish the other one?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it probably took me 10 days to read through this book, which it's not incredibly long, but just the negativity would get to me and I'd have to close it.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I'm getting texts.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_00: Um but let's move on to my next book.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_00: My next book is God of All Things by Andrew Wilson.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_00: And y'all, this book was the best book.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: I told you guys that I was like overthinking what book to read after I read a book that I didn't like.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_00: And so I like read through a bunch of introductions to books and was way overthinking what book should I read next?
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: Because I don't want another book like Miss Quoting Jesus.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I came across God of All Things by Andrew Wilson, and this is something I picked up at the Bible outlet store, um, which is a local like South Carolina discount Bible store.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's got like three different locations in South Carolina.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: So if you're near the Carolinas, you might want to check it out if you're ever on a road trip through South Carolina.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_00: But I got this for five bucks there, and the only reason why I picked it up was because there was a foreword by Jen Wilken.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_00: I had no idea who Andrew Wilson is, which might be to my ignorance.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: I saw Jen Wilkin's name and I love everything that Jen Wilken does.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she does a lot, like her specialty is a lot of what we talk about here on my channel, like hermeneutics, application, and exegesis of scriptures and Bible studying.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_00: Like she's very much like, get out your pens and your highlighters and let's go deep.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_00: And I recommend a lot of her Bible studies, but um, because she did the forward, that's literally the only reason why I picked up this book.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And it's written by Andrew Wilson.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_00: He is, let's read the back.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: It says he's a teaching pastor at King's Church London and has theology degrees from Cambridge, London School of Theology, and King College London.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's a columnist for Christianity Today and has written several books, including The Echoes of Exodus and Spirit and Sacrament.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: And just some of those schools, my previous professors at Covenant and Um Seminary have gone to those schools, and so it's like, okay, cool, you know.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I loved this book.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: The I dog-eared almost every single page.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually hard to find pages that weren't dog-eared.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: I would be like, oh, I need to do a dog ear.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it's already dog eared for something else.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: But what he does is the book is split in two.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: You got Old Testament and New Testament, and let's see, there's 15 for the Old Testament and another 15 for the New Testament.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there's 15 things that he chooses to trace all throughout scripture.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_00: So let's pick um honey.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: He goes from Old Testament to New Testament, but especially in the Old Testament, and he talks about honey and how honey in the scriptures points to Jesus and the beautiful metaphor that it is all throughout the scriptures.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Then he goes and talks about donkeys or the sun or what's some other ones?
• 15:37
  SPEAKER_00: Wind, water, bread, trees, trumpets, pots.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I this is gonna be like one of my new favorite recommendations.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: And in fact, I went on Amazon and I added all of his other books to my cart.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: My Amazon cart is my reading list, or books to order to add to my reading list.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so I like I am I loved the way he wrote.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_00: The chapters were like four pages each, um, and each chapter was a different topic.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: So here's chapter 29 is on light, and it's one, two, six.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, it's six, basically like five pages when you don't count the half pages, and it is it's just brief but to the point, but also analogies to life and science and things like that.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_00: I love the way his brain works and his writing.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it just really resonated with me.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So he's probably my new favorite Christian living author, and I'm really excited to go crazy on all of his other books.
• 16:27
  SPEAKER_00: Hopefully, next month.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: I need to order them, but I'm excited to start that.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: And then my final book for the month is Unveiling Paul's Women.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I cannot remember if someone recommended this to me, um, or if it was the recommended Amazon list, whatever that is.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but it's just a short little thing.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's making sense of 1 Corinthians 11, 2 through 16.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: So it's like 80 pages, if I remember correctly, and it's on 14 verses.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: It took me like two days.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_00: But um, I found this to be really helpful for 1 Corinthians 11, 2 through 16.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it's a it's a really interesting text to look at um because Paul says one minute, you know, women need to be silent, and then the next minute he says, when women are prophesying and praying, they need to wear their head covers.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, what is he talking about here?
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: And she talks all about that.
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's actually kind of um like a summary, bottled down or broken down version of a larger book that she wrote, which is called I don't know, I was playing with the idea of ordering that one too.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: Women in Worship at Corinth, Paul's Rhetorical Arguments in First Corinthians.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: It's a kind of boiled-down summary, simpler, easier read than that.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_00: And Scott McKnight from The Blue Parakeet did a foreword on it.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: So I enjoyed it.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: I did a good amount of dog earing throughout the book, probably like every other page was dog eared, and it brought a lot of clarity.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if I bought her entire argument just because I've literally never heard it before, but it definitely made sense of the passage for me.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so if that's something that you're interested in in dealing with the passages on women in the Bible, and in particular passages like from 1 Corinthians, because she really does uh, for the large part, deal with all the other passages in 1 Corinthians, not just these 14 verses.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: If you're interested in reading something, this is like it's very understandable, easy read, super short, and it just kind of takes you through here's one way of wrestling through the text.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she actually argues that um because 1 Corinthians has so many quotes throughout it, that's one of the things that kind of makes it a tough read, is like, you know, Paul will sit there and like quote something from the modern day wisdom, and also it's like the third letter in between him and the Church of Corinth.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so because there's no quotation marks in the Greek, we don't know when he's quoting unless it's like an obvious quote.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so she argues that there are points where he's quoting back to them stuff that they said in their letter to him previously.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: So it's an interesting read.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: I know I probably didn't just pitch her argument well, but I feel like she does it well.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: And this, these are the kind of conversations that we wrestled with in um seminary and bio college, and so I really loved wrestling with this um and finding such an easily accessible conversation to step into and to read about.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just I geek out on the hermeneutics of it all, and I love um wrestling through those questions of like what exactly did this passage mean?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: Why does he seem to contradict himself there?
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and how might we be reading ourselves, eisegesis, reading what we want to find into the text there without just reading it as the original author intended and the original audience would have understood.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: And so um, y'all know those are like the two most important things that I always try and hammer down when we're looking at the biblical passages to better understand them and not take them out of context.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: And so I feel like she does her, I feel like she does a good job of doing what she can, her part in doing that.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: And again, I'm not saying that like I'm fully convinced, but I will probably never read 1 Corinthians 11 the exact same way.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'll probably hold it a little bit looser and um have the freedom to ask questions because she's given me that freedom where previously in those kind of passages, people just didn't even want to acknowledge the fact that, like, let's be honest, Paul was kind of contradicting himself there if we're gonna read it like we traditionally read it.
• 20:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just loved that she created the freedom to kind of wrestle with some things and and proposed some like like what if he is just responding or quoting back something.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: He does that all throughout the rest of the book.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like, what if it seems like this would make sense?
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And she does make better sense of the passage.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: So again, do without what you want.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: But I would say that there was something that she did that I really loved.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she, what she did was she took the 14 verses and she had them just like printed with room all around them for us to annotate and write our questions.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: So this is something that I typically do in my Bible, but I'm hesitant to write a question or a what or a but I thought because it's my Bible, right?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_00: And that just feels like sacrilegious to write.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_00: But wait, God, I thought that it feels sacrilegious to write that in your Bible.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so what she does is she prints the text early on in the book.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_00: She just prints it with a lot of room around it so that you can do that.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: She's like, be honest with yourself and with God and write down all of your questions that you might have reading throughout these 14 verses.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And let me just, I'm gonna be like super vulnerable with you guys and I'll read y'all the questions.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_00: If you're watching this on video form, you can actually see my annotations that I made of the text and the questions.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_00: But um, some of my questions were, why?
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Or um, what traditions are you talking about?
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, or but I thought they were equal because he talks about man and woman.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: I ask, What is this cultural understanding?
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: I ask, oh, he talks about the glory of God.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Well, isn't the woman too?
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I write, what about singles?
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then I have a lot of what's and whys.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: And it was so freeing to do that.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like I cannot.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: It you listening to this, you probably don't believe me, and you probably think I'm just being dramatic, but like it was so much more helpful than I can ever put to words to just be able to have the freedom to say, like, I have no idea, and I have all the room, all the time right now to just stop and be like, what the heck is going on with this text, Lord?
• 22:17
  SPEAKER_00: And that broke down all the walls to try and pretend like I have things figured out and rather just approach them for like what they say and throw aside my preconceived ideas of what the text says, throw aside my preconceived ideas of like this is what a good exegesis looks like of this passage, or this is how I was taught to read this passage, and let's just like genuinely look at it for what it says and ask like the obvious questions here.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: You say one thing and then two verses later you say another thing, and you quote, you know, Genesis 1 and 2 wrong.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: So, like, what does that mean?
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: You know, just all the things.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: I loved the freedom she created, and I would love to embrace her take.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: I would, however, want to read her a critic of hers, critique her take before I just like embraced her take on it.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it just she made a lot of good sense of it.
• 23:02
  SPEAKER_00: She answered questions better than I'd seen anybody answer questions on the those 14 verses.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so I, if you guys know of anybody that criticizes her take on the text, I would love to read about it.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: I need to honestly just look in like the ATLA resources and see people's critiques of it.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: But those are my five books that I've read this month.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: I've already started today's the last day of August.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so you'll hear this tomorrow, the first day of September.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I've already started reading.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: Ooh, what is it called?
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, you know what?
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: It won't be a surprise.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: I'll keep it a secret.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: Uh if you guys get anything from this random babbly podcast, please go order Andrew Wilson's God of All Things.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: It is an easy read, it is a fast read.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: You could read one chapter a day because it's literally just four or five pages.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: I'll have the affiliate links for all of these down in my description box.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but I really, really encourage you definitely go get God of All Things because um I really loved the way that he broke down the metaphors and carried them all throughout scripture.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: I am Andrew Wilson's new fan.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: Go order his book and we can geek out over Andrew Wilson together.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: Like it's so good.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: My top book recommendation here on my channel is the Bible.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: The second one is how to read the Bible for all it's worth.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: And the third one is now Andrew Wilson's God of all things.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: So if that tells you anything, it it is go order it.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: Guys, thank you so much for joining me for another podcast.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so grateful for just hanging out.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: I just love this community that we've created around the podcast and the casual atmosphere of like, let's just sit down and talk and be real.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I really, really am loving talking about the books that I'm reading.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: Right now, I'm just doing one podcast a month on the books that I read for that month, but I might have to do more than that because I'm loving booktube.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_00: If you guys don't know, like that's a whole niche on YouTube is booktubers, people talking about the books that they're reading and reviewing them.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I've been getting into that even though I don't read any of the books that they're reading.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Just I love thinking about um how a book can transform your life and challenge the way that you think about everything and growing.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh just the other day, I am I'll tell you guys this because you guys are the inner inner circle.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am so sad right now.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_00: My book my book, my Bible is being rebound.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know, but like so exciting, but that means I don't have my Bible with me.
• 25:20
  SPEAKER_00: And so right before I mailed it off to get rebound, I was going through it and trying to add some notes in from previous books that I read last month in July.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I was going through those books and I was reading some of the things that I had underlined or said, wow, and I was like, wait, what?
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: That was new information to me just in July because that like has completely transformed my life.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_00: I would have guessed I learned that two years ago, but that was only you know, like that's how much I feel like I'm consuming and growing.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_00: And not that seminary and Bible college didn't teach me a lot of things, but it's amazing how just immersing yourself in a book for a couple days and reading and learning and growing your brain had like how positive it can be.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just I think I'm gonna be sharing more about my books because I'm really loving an excuse to read and to share about the books and to just read even more.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's one thing to read for myself.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, like I've been getting up early just to have like an hour in the mornings to read and to wake up before my boys start screaming.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I've been loving that, and that's like one thing to do for myself, but it's a whole nother level to be like, hey, I have an extra excuse to do this, not only for myself, but because like technically I need something to talk about in my podcast, right?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: So um, all that to say, I hope you guys enjoy this as much as I do, and that this inspires you to read.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I hope that you don't make bad book choices like I did with Miss Quoting Jesus.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_00: I think I think there's like good things that some people could have gotten from it.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you're a textual criticism nerd, then maybe, but like again, I would not recommend.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that's okay.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: God of all things, everyone go order it.
• 26:53
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'll see you guys in the next podcast.