Latest / The Grove Church / How Should We Study Parables? Context, Culture, and Application | Q&A Pt.2

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How Should We Study Parables? Context, Culture, and Application | Q&A Pt.2 · The Grove Church

• 0:05
  Charlie Loften: The questions we wrestle with as Christians about who God is, how do we live out our faith, what is the Bible, what is the truth of the Bible, what are we supposed to believe? How are we supposed to live? There are really big deep questions that we ask each other, that we ask God, that we wrestle with ourselves. And that's why the Cultivate podcast exists, to help us go deeper in our understanding of who God is, his word, and the way that he's called us to live. Hey, everyone.
• 0:37
  Welcome to the Cultivate Podcast, The Grove Church. I'm Charlie Loften, the lead pastor there, and I'm here with podcast producer, great friend, creative person.
• 0:49
  Abigail Boone: Keep going.
• 0:50
  Charlie Loften: Mediocre dancer, Bagel Boone, or Abigail Boone for those who are feeling little more formal.
• 0:59
  Abigail Boone: Or they wanna be like Craig Boone. It's Abigail Boone.
• 1:02
  Charlie Loften: I will not I will not mock your father's southern accent here on the podcast. I'll leave that straight.
• 1:07
  Abigail Boone: I'll leave
• 1:07
  Charlie Loften: that straight.
• 1:08
  Abigail Boone: Did you know that he always calls me my first and last name? Like, no matter when I see him, it's first and last name.
• 1:15
  Charlie Loften: Well, that's how I feel about your brother, Joe. It's weird, one, that you call him Joseph. Yeah. But he's not Joe. If you said, hey.
• 1:22
  If you talk to Joe, it'd be like, Joe
• 1:24
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. I don't know who people
• 1:25
  Charlie Loften: are talking about when they say that. Joe Boone.
• 1:27
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. Joseph.
• 1:28
  Charlie Loften: Joe. Joe Boone. No. Not not Joseph either. That is one of two characters from the Bible.
• 1:33
  Anyways, we're not here to talk about Abigail's family. We're to talk about parables. We did a little intro to kind of the whole idea. Then we've covered several parables. And then as we want to do here at the Cultivate Podcast, we'll take some time and just kind of let Abigail's questions catch up with the content.
• 1:51
  And she assured me she only had one episode's worth of Q and A, and I didn't think that was true. And I knew it wasn't true when her first question was, Tell me the entire context of the Bible when Jesus was alive. So I knew that it was gonna be a full episode. So we're here now, Part two.
• 2:10
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. We'll start a little lighter this time.
• 2:12
  Charlie Loften: Well, it's not a question of it being light. It was a question of It's a wide scope. Breadth breadth
• 2:18
  Abigail Boone: of questions. Sure. Sure. This is narrow and light. Okay.
• 2:23
  Charlie Loften: So if you... Everything that... Of the parables that Jesus has said so far is super specific to their culture, very agrarian.
• 2:30
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm. If Jesus was doing parables today, what do you think his main topics would be?
• 2:40
  Charlie Loften: You know, part of me is just like... I mean, there's so many things that pastors and preachers say right now that are so cliche. Like, I just want Jesus to not be particularly cliche, but I think think I think He would have a lot of smartphone. I think He would have a lot of smartphone things to say about, everybody that'll get their face in their phone. I don't think it would necessarily be like that, but I think it would have to do with our relationship with technology, I think, would be a lot of it.
• 3:16
  Multiculturalism, travel, those sorts of things. It's a little bit like getting on a plane. It's a little bit like when you go to another state, and I think the fact that we are significantly more enveloped in technology, and we live in a much more diverse world, I think he would have pulled from that. They didn't really have any concept of things outside of... Most of them spent their whole lives and never went 10 miles away from where they were born.
• 3:52
  Right. But I think I think that would open up a a wide variety of things for him to talk about.
• 3:59
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm. Do you think he'd ever venture into, like... It's like your fantasy football league.
• 4:06
  Charlie Loften: I mean, I mean, I'm trying to think, like, how niche he would get. Right? I mean, that's a very niche.
• 4:11
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. But football is, like, one of the highest revenue things in The US.
• 4:15
  Charlie Loften: How many how many people out of a 100 play fantasy football?
• 4:21
  Abigail Boone: Eight? In pure ignorance.
• 4:25
  Charlie Loften: Like, I always I always think about, would Jesus make pop culture references?
• 4:29
  Abigail Boone: But they come and go so fast.
• 4:31
  Charlie Loften: Well, I mean, he... Yeah. But he... Would he would he use movie illustrations in a sermon? Was like, I saw this movie the other day.
• 4:37
  Is Jesus going to the movie? Right?
• 4:41
  Abigail Boone: Sure.
• 4:42
  Charlie Loften: I would I would think that if He were a regular teacher, I think He would catch the wave of pop culture trends of the moment.
• 4:54
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm.
• 4:54
  Charlie Loften: But again, I think if you were trying to encapsulate something into Scripture that would last forever, they would be less trendy than that. And so that's kind of why my brain just kind of went to our breadth of experience of other people and other cultures, he would have been able to play into that. And then again, I think it would have been a lot of technology metaphors.
• 5:20
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. That is an interesting thing, though, of travel. Because they didn't have... It's like when you go to New York, right? It's like when you go to Rome, there wasn't that much of travel going on.
• 5:33
  Okay. Well, was the lightest will get probably fair. So we did talk a lot about last time of it is a theological transition period kind of and so it is super specific. A lot of Paul stuff is also super specific to the time, but a little bit easier to kind of pull out and still understand for yourself. So when people are trying to approach the parables themselves, whether they're doing it along with the ones that we're going over, just going on a plan there themselves going through the Gospels.
• 6:07
  How important would you say it is to not make a new meaning applied to our culture today? Kind of like we're talking about this the parable of the seeds and you're kind of talking about how like probably my most frequent exposure to this Parables talking about the different soils. Mhmm. But feels like once we broke down the whole parable, the most important part was the farmer, right? So like how careful should people be in that?
• 6:35
  Obviously, they're not gonna know everything about everything you just laid out last episode, but kind of balancing the two.
• 6:42
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. I mean, I think the most important question to ask when you're getting at, again, like, I I want to study the scripture. I wanna study the Scripture and understand the Scripture. And one of the things in the way that we approach Scripture has to do with what we'll call authorial intent. What did the author meant when he wrote it?
• 7:00
  Or in this instance, what did the speaker mean when he said it? Right? So it's less about... I mean, there is the question of authorial intent, like why did Luke include this parable when he, you know...
• 7:12
  Abigail Boone: We'll get there.
• 7:13
  Charlie Loften: But this is more, okay, Jesus said it, what did Jesus mean when He said it, is the meaning of the parable. There is what you think when you read it, there's how you feel when you read it, and those aren't... Those are something. It's not nothing, it's something. But if we wanna talk about what does it mean, it's like, what did Jesus mean when He said it?
• 7:37
  And a lot of that is going to come from who was He talking to and what would they have heard? Right? And so seed and soil and farmer would have meant something to them that may would not have meant to us. Leaven, you know, again, adding yeast to bread to make bread that rises, that's a good thing. They would have heard it differently.
• 8:03
  A little bit like a seed that gets so big that that birds can come sit at it. Is this an invasive weed or not? Those sorts of things matter. What would they have? What would they have heard?
• 8:16
  And how would this have? How would... Again, we'll go to one that we're going to talk about pretty soon, the prodigal son. And the prodigal son at one point is feeding pigs, which is plenty gross for us, but is next level gross for them. It was the most unclean of the animals.
• 8:41
  Feeding pigs for us is still kind of gross, but you would also eat a pig 10 out of 10 times. No. Don't make that face. You got
• 8:49
  Abigail Boone: sounds weird when you say that
• 8:50
  Charlie Loften: bacon aversion over there.
• 8:52
  Abigail Boone: No, absolutely not. Was watching the show this weekend where a guy threw a piece of bacon at a pig, and the pig ate it up. He goes, even pigs love bacon.
• 9:05
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. I mean, I mean, so so you you you need to ask those sorts of questions. Yeah. I never wanna talk about that in such a way where it feels like the Bible is inaccessible to a casual reader.
• 9:19
  Abigail Boone: Was
• 9:19
  Charlie Loften: gonna
• 9:19
  Abigail Boone: It
• 9:19
  Charlie Loften: is, but for next level study, I think it is important to be like, what would what would they have heard? Because that that parable was not written. It was not spoken to you.
• 9:31
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm. Well, I was thinking probably for you as a pastor, someone tells you, I'm reading the Bible. You're like, yes. But if they go further, you would challenge them. Like, if all they're doing is just reading the Bible, that's a win.
• 9:47
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. It's a huge win.
• 9:48
  Abigail Boone: But if they want to go further to ask some of those to to read it in a way that would, like, put them in the real context.
• 9:54
  Charlie Loften: Well, it's just between reading the Bible and studying the Bible. There's a devotional reading of the Bible where I read about the prodigal son, and I think, man, that's really cool. God loves me. And you're like, great. Good job.
• 10:04
  Yeah. Great job. 10 out of 10. No notes.
• 10:07
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm.
• 10:07
  Charlie Loften: No corrections. No, you know. But then there's really studying the parable and been like, what what what parts of this story would have been shocking? Good Samaritan. And then, you know, it it reads a little bit different.
• 10:21
  It's like some guy gets completely beat up and left for dead, and then a pastor walks by and avoids him and keeps on going. That means something that you may not necessarily catch when it says a Levite.
• 10:36
  Abigail Boone: I know
• 10:38
  Charlie Loften: what that is, so I just keep going. But if it had said mega church pastor, you would have
• 10:47
  Abigail Boone: Right, felt that
• 10:48
  Charlie Loften: a little bit something a little bit different. So there is a next level of study. If I really want to know what is this parable talking about. It requires a measure of understanding of the culture to which it was spoken. I'm not as bad at this as I could be, but I'm not a huge fan of, well, this is what it means to me.
• 11:14
  Yeah. I'm just not I'm not a huge fan of that. Again, this is this is how I feel like God is speaking to me as I'm reading it. Okay, say that. What the passage means to you, there is what the passage means.
• 11:28
  Abigail Boone: It's not a quote book.
• 11:29
  Charlie Loften: Yeah, mean, is what it means. This is what this passage means, and that is different than I was reading this passage, I really feel like God was speaking to me and said this, and that is only loosely connected to the idea here. Like, I wanna know what this parable means, there is a measure of study that has to be done. That's why most of us, when we're devotionally reading the Bible, usually have some sort of companion piece to go with it, where somebody else has kind of already done a little bit of that work for us.
• 11:56
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. Praise God, in my opinion. So we were also saying earlier that most people, I guess you're saying people ask like, why do we always study Paul's letters and those no matter what spectrum of studying the Bible, how deep you go into it or not, whether you're just like, I gotta find all the there fours or like whatever it is or look at the word studies. There seems kind of like easier entry point of entry to understand how to study those whether it's inductive or companion study that you're going along with it. So maybe what are like good every parable, try and ask these questions, and it would be kind of like a step towards studying it.
• 12:40
  Charlie Loften: I think trying to figure out which of those three audiences that we talked about last episode, which which of those is he primarily speaking to? Who's in the room? Who do we think he's primarily speaking to? The interested, his core people, or the outsiders? Because, okay, then that that that helps him understand.
• 13:02
  This is this is someone who is in opposition to Jesus, and so he is trying to take someone who has a Jewish slash legalistic mindset about God, and he's trying to upend that a little bit. He's taking a spiritually interested person. Maybe you have heard that you don't have access to God, and somehow God is more distant than you think that He is, but actually it's like this. Talking to His core guys, this thing that I'm calling you to is way more significant than you think. Parable of the talents.
• 13:37
  God has a stewardship for you. That's not that's not a message that he's giving to people who are opposing him or to someone who's brand new. He's like, it is it is it is actually gonna be like this. It's like a man who goes away for a while Mhmm. And then comes back.
• 13:52
  Wants to know what you've done with it. Spoiler alert. It's like you follow a guy who's here for a little while and is gonna leave and come back. Right? I mean, of course, know, they're not necessarily connecting all of those dots.
• 14:03
  Abigail Boone: But, you
• 14:04
  Charlie Loften: know, that's a... And so...
• 14:06
  Abigail Boone: So first asking who is he talking to?
• 14:08
  Charlie Loften: Because then now, depending on who he's talking to, because my ability to really understand and apply a passage has a lot to do with what I have in common with the original audience. You know, so I have a lot more in common with the person who, you know, who's... I'm more of a devoted follower of Jesus than I am an opposer or a
• 14:31
  Abigail Boone: A new.
• 14:32
  Charlie Loften: A new person. And so, but now, this is for a new person. Okay? So then, like, okay, so what old idea about God is he trying to turn into a new idea? To what degree then do I still have this old...
• 14:47
  Is there some of this old idea still lingering some in me? So when I ask, Who is it for? That kind of helps me realize, all right, well, I can't... And then the ones for the Pharisees, like the Good Samaritan, I mean, I think about that all the time. There have been many times that I've driven from where I have breakfast to come to church, and I see a homeless person, a person experiencing homelessness in some sort of distress, needing of help, and I'm like...
• 15:25
  Abigail Boone: The Good Samaritan.
• 15:26
  Charlie Loften: The Good Samaritan comes to my mind. I don't wanna be, I can't stop and give this guy a ride because I gotta get to church, which is exactly what that parable is about. I have given I have probably given more people who are experiencing homelessness. I've probably given more of them rides on Sunday morning
• 15:45
  Abigail Boone: Than any
• 15:45
  Charlie Loften: other than any other time of the week because I can't be like, that's not... I gotta go to church. And so, I mean, so there there are some things, like, so what do what do I have in common? And then again, I think that one thing that's also really important for a parable is there's really one big idea that Jesus is trying to get across. And we don't study it like we do Paul's letters, right?
• 16:06
  Every word, every phrase, everything, like, really, these are stories that have one big idea. And it's not like seven different ideas, or it's like, well, this part means this, and this part means this. Really, it's kind of one... Can be a complex idea, but not try to read too much into it for, you know, just to show that you're being creative. I mean, are simple stories meant to communicate one simple idea.
• 16:35
  There's a difference between a parable and say, really high quality fiction literature. Fiction literature has got all sorts of
• 16:44
  Abigail Boone: Moving plot lines, different themes.
• 16:47
  Charlie Loften: Themes that all these different sorts of imagery and everything means something and it's moving and it's this kind of work of art. These aren't work of arts. These are like...
• 16:58
  Abigail Boone: One symbolic thing.
• 16:59
  Charlie Loften: God's kinda like this. Oh, okay.
• 17:02
  Abigail Boone: Yeah.
• 17:04
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. Full, full stop. And the study comes from once I recognize it is just this one big idea. Now I can look at this whole parable and like, what sorts of flavor do His details add to the one big idea, which is parable of the unforgiving servant. God has forgiven you a lot, you have to forgive other people.
• 17:26
  Now there's some really cool other things that Jesus is kind of adding to that, the amount that the person is forgiving, the initial servant is forgiven, is a lot. There's a reason for that. Right? And so that's not an extra point, that is just something that feeds the big idea, God has forgiven you a lot, So you should forgive people around you. So I center everything around the one big idea.
• 17:56
  Oh, you know what it could also mean? No, don't play that. This is the big idea. Now if you're gonna let it sink with... Sit with you for a little bit, think about the depth and richness that Jesus adds in this parable to enforce the one big idea.
• 18:11
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. So I think some of the ones that we've done so far go or were in multiple gospels. When that's the case, would you say it's beneficial to, like, read all of them side by side? It's pretty rare that one version
• 18:29
  Charlie Loften: of it will be vastly different than another.
• 18:31
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm.
• 18:32
  Charlie Loften: I mean, may, like the amount of money and what denomination of money it is in the parable of the talents may vary from one to another, but they're going to be essentially the same. The thing that I think that you would want to do as to when you encounter it in one gospel versus another one was, how does this, and if you're doing an overarching book study within the flow of what the big picture story Luke is telling and who he's telling it to, why would he include this parable right here in the story? Because it is unlikely that there's only one time in three years that Jesus said, The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed. I mean, I mean, maybe I'm just saying this to help myself feel better that I tell the same stories all the time. Right?
• 19:23
  Like you're teaching every day for three years and different people come and you can be like, yeah, it's like a guy scattering seed and the apostles are like, all right, here we go. But he's like, it's for a different crowd. And so there would be a reason why at different points in the narrative, why Luke would choose to put it here. But if there are some details from one to another that are slightly different, you might would ask yourself, why would Matthew include that detail that Luke didn't?
• 19:59
  Abigail Boone: Would it also be because who they're writing to?
• 20:01
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. So that's why I asked the question. It's where it is in the story and who specifically the audience is. John has a mostly unbelieving audience. Luke has a Gentile audience.
• 20:11
  Matthew has a Jewish audience. And so you're gonna think, oh, it makes sense then why he would add that particular detail.
• 20:18
  Abigail Boone: Okay. So you teased this earlier, but now we're gonna really get into it.
• 20:22
  Charlie Loften: Okay.
• 20:22
  Abigail Boone: How did obviously all of these people are firsthand accounts? So they wrote this. I mean, I don't know how old they were when they were disciples, but within decades of these things happening. So was it just like oral tradition and then events of their like this would kind of be good to write down so they don't get forgotten and then how did they choose because I think it's in John where it's like to try and capture everything. You said there's not enough books in the world, which is like a crazy statement,
• 20:51
  Charlie Loften: Right.
• 20:52
  Abigail Boone: That's my version of it. But that seemingly, they cut out a lot of stories. So how did they kinda... Do we know anything about the way they
• 21:02
  Charlie Loften: In a culture that is not, you know, not really kind of driven by the written word or recording devices or anything, it's hard for us to imagine, it's like, how could they even remember all of that? But when that's all they do. That is how they learn, is by hearing things and remembering it, and it was a discipline that you had to have. And again, Jesus is telling these stories and teaching these sermons multiple times. But, I mean, even before the actual gospels were compiled, I mean, there are...
• 21:38
  It's pretty, pretty well established that there was somebody, and and this this is going to open up a can of worms that you can save for another thing. Like there's a document that most often referred to as Q. Oh,
• 21:52
  Abigail Boone: thought it was Q. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 21:54
  Charlie Loften: That compiles a lot of these stories and parables and things like that, that Matthew, Mark, and Luke all drew from, and it's taken word from word, and they're so, again, they're word for word the same that points to an earlier document. So even if these things were written thirty years after Jesus died, they come from a document that was written down way earlier than that. In some way, it would not surprise me that if very early on somebody was like, We should write some of this down, and then ultimately gets compiled into this document that we theoretically refer to as Q, that then ultimately then gets translated, pushed forward into these other three to these other three gospels.
• 22:44
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm. So what do you think that... Did you say John was writing to the Gentiles?
• 22:50
  Charlie Loften: John was writing to a more of a lost audience.
• 22:52
  Abigail Boone: Luke was
• 22:53
  Charlie Loften: writing to Gentiles.
• 22:54
  Abigail Boone: So do you think John was like, these would be the best stories that would help the non believing audience?
• 22:59
  Charlie Loften: John is telling stories that just you don't find other places. Mhmm. Because it was not about coming to grips with what does Jesus want from me, it's evangelistic stories. Like if all you ever to do was you record your 10 conversations with somebody that you knew that did not know Jesus at all, would be different than if you recorded 10 conversations that you had with me. They're just they're just gonna be different.
• 23:32
  And so that's what John is doing. Matthew, Mark, and Luke are more like, I want to teach people who are believers who Jesus was and what He did. And John is more like, I want people who have no idea who Jesus is and are not following Him to be compelled to follow Him. So then you see a lot of Jesus' outreach stories, like like the woman at the well, his interactions with Nicodemus. You see those stories as opposed to, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, things he taught his disciples.
• 24:06
  Yeah. Okay.
• 24:08
  Abigail Boone: That's interesting to think. They're just like wildly... So were they compiled as like letters to be sent to those people, like Paul's letters?
• 24:16
  Charlie Loften: Well, the only one that we know for sure that is like that is Luke, and then it's companion volume Acts, where there is a very specific person that Luke sent this to.
• 24:27
  Abigail Boone: Theophilus?
• 24:28
  Charlie Loften: Most excellent Theophilus.
• 24:31
  Abigail Boone: Oh, my bad.
• 24:31
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. Just refer to him as just Theophilus, because he is is the most excellent Theophilus.
• 24:37
  Abigail Boone: Right. And so they would... John was like, I want these to go to the nonbelieving people.
• 24:42
  Charlie Loften: He basically says, I could have put I could have put a whole lot of things in here, but I've but I've I've included what I did so that the people could hear it would have eternal life.
• 24:51
  Abigail Boone: Oh, yes. I remember that part.
• 24:53
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. He gives his own thesis statement.
• 24:56
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. Okay.
• 24:59
  Charlie Loften: Let me see what we got through.
• 25:00
  Abigail Boone: Good ones.
• 25:02
  Charlie Loften: Make make it a make it a banger because we are we are running we're running at the end here. Okay.
• 25:11
  Abigail Boone: With the multiple parables in in the one parable in different iterations in the different gospels, Since you're saying they would be written to a different audience, would it be good to reask those questions of, like, who is he talking to? What's the big idea? Or could you be like, this same parable is told in Luke. It's the same exact thing in Mark.
• 25:40
  Charlie Loften: The meaning of the parable in both of those gospels is going to be the same.
• 25:45
  Abigail Boone: Okay.
• 25:47
  Charlie Loften: There is a extra benefit of why at this point in the story of Jesus does Luke put that idea there.
• 25:54
  Abigail Boone: So they're not chronological?
• 25:58
  Charlie Loften: Again, what I'm trying to... Not exactly the way that you would think. But again, if Jesus makes the same sermon, gives the same sermon three times, and even if you wanted it to be strictly chronological
• 26:13
  Abigail Boone: Mhmm. It then would be repeating.
• 26:15
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. Okay. And there's a lot of people that believe, like, what we call the Sermon on the Mount, and then it's just a big long... That is probably not, and He sat down at one moment and said all of that and only that. It really is probably more just a compilation of things that Jesus said all the time, and this is kind of an encapsulation of this is what Jesus taught.
• 26:43
  When He just sat down to teach,
• 26:45
  Abigail Boone: this is what taught. On the mount.
• 26:47
  Charlie Loften: And so it's, you know, it's... And so it... The Gospels aren't telling the story of Jesus the way that you would right now if you wrote a biography.
• 27:00
  Abigail Boone: Okay.
• 27:01
  Charlie Loften: If you wrote a biography, it would really matter a lot that this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. And then it would not be where I put it, it would be what did I choose to put in, what did I choose to
• 27:16
  Abigail Boone: exclude.
• 27:18
  Charlie Loften: In these, there is more of a narrative flow of, I'm taking you on a spiritual theological journey, which is why I put this here, put this here, put this here. I put these this cluster of parables together all at once. So I'm I'm trying I'm trying to get you from where you are theologically to someplace different. I'm trying to get you I'm taking you on a spiritual and theological journey, and that's why I'm putting these things in the order that I do. It's like, immediately after the Pharisee said this, I'm telling this story.
• 27:56
  Abigail Boone: Yeah. And this just, like, is overemphasizing in my mind how funny it is to think that Paul's letters and the gospels are in any way, shape, or form comparable. Of, like, people being like, well, why do we study Paul's letters all the time? It's like, well, they could not be in further different genres.
• 28:17
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. There is a genre that we as Americans are more comfortable with, which is straightforward teaching Yeah. Which is not what Jesus was doing. Yeah. What we would call, I'm just gonna...
• 28:27
  I'm gonna... I'm I'm going to now tell you something in a very straightforward way.
• 28:34
  Abigail Boone: A letter.
• 28:35
  Charlie Loften: Right? That is the way that we think. That is a very, it is a very Western way of thinking, and that Paul did, which great, great. It makes more sense to us. Secondly, what we've talked about, it is talking about what it means to follow Jesus in a post resurrection world.
• 28:53
  That's important. The third thing is one of the easiest ways for us to apply scripture is based on how much do we have in common with the original audience, and we have a lot more in common with first century Gentiles than we do first century Jews.
• 29:11
  Abigail Boone: Right.
• 29:12
  Charlie Loften: We we we just do, and so I think it's not because we like Paul more than Jesus, or Christians don't Christians don't even like teaching at Jesus because, you know, Christians are so conservative, Jesus is a liberal. I'm like, oh, this is kind of stuff that people say. I mean, if if there's an indictment against Christians about focusing on Paul over Jesus, is that it is easier to study Paul. It requires significantly less effort to read a very instruction based letter to an audience I have more in common with than, you know...
• 29:50
  Abigail Boone: I meditate on one meaning.
• 29:53
  Charlie Loften: Yeah. Then then then then a story, a made up story in a field, in a context that I don't understand to people that I have almost nothing in common with. It's not that you can't get there, but it is it is more difficult to get there, and it is just easier. Let's just go through Philippians. They're going through a hard...
• 30:12
  They're they they are they are people who are trying to follow Jesus, They're Gentiles, and they're going through a hard time and they're fighting with each other, and Paul's trying to get them to have joy instead. Oh, I don't know. How can I relate to that? I mean, you're you're you're you're you're right there already.
• 30:29
  Abigail Boone: Right.
• 30:30
  Charlie Loften: And so I think, I think, again, when I say that, I don't mean it as an indictment when I say we study Paul more. When you hear it, it is usually somebody trying to
• 30:40
  Abigail Boone: Call out or
• 30:41
  Charlie Loften: Criticize Christian. But as with with most kind of generic criticisms like that, they're not just they're just not very thoughtful.
• 30:48
  Abigail Boone: Right. Because they're just so different.
• 30:51
  Charlie Loften: They're so different. And there's just one that is just easier to understand and is more easily applied.
• 30:56
  Abigail Boone: But,
• 30:57
  Charlie Loften: I mean, I I think there is a depth and richness to Jesus' spoken words more than Paul. Right? But, you know, But then again, that's no no shade at Paul. I mean, and again, it's obviously Jesus, Son of God, but it's it's it's more than just that. I mean, he was just a very...
• 31:20
  I I would think that for you, I think you probably be more drawn to the Gospels
• 31:24
  Abigail Boone: Oh, a 100% I am.
• 31:25
  Charlie Loften: Because it's it's closer to art than it is to. I think an artist would probably be more drawn to the teachings of Jesus where a math major is probably gonna be more drawn towards, okay, this is very forward.
• 31:39
  Abigail Boone: Well, I was thinking that Paul's more like your football coach who gets in your face, and Jesus is more like your English teacher. Yeah. Yeah. That is that
• 31:48
  Charlie Loften: is that is exactly it. And so for people like me who are more interested in, I want to understand and learn the meaning, what what does he... What did he really mean when he said it? Then then there's extra work that needs to be done. But for someone, all due respect, who's catching vibes, Jesus is gonna be much Paul Paul's vibes are almost always negative.
• 32:08
  Abigail Boone: Right. Yeah.
• 32:10
  Charlie Loften: Jesus got all... I mean, there's there's a depth and richness to Jesus' life and teaching that you don't find other places, which is why we're gonna spend half a year working through these parables because they're actually... I mean, like you think that was just two random verses, but it was like, how did he say all that in 25 words?
• 32:28
  Abigail Boone: Economy of words, man. He really did it.
• 32:30
  Charlie Loften: Yep. Yep. Abigail, as always, thank you. And you had a piece of paper that also had a highlighter attached to it. It's like, man, this
• 32:37
  Abigail Boone: is... I had to narrow down which ones we're really going to hit on.
• 32:40
  Charlie Loften: I appreciate it. And thank you for joining us as well, and we'd love to help you get connected at the church. You're not coming to the church right now, you can find us at thegrowthchurch.org/connect. There's a form you could fill out, let us know that you're coming, who you are. We would love to hear from you, help you any way that we can.
• 32:57
  We'd love to see you on a Sunday. You can stream on live, Stream online. Everything you need for there, you can find. And again, Abigail, thank you for joining us. Thank you.
• 33:05
  And we'll see you next time.
• 33:10
  Abigail Boone: Thank you
• 33:11
  Charlie Loften: for listening to the Cultivate Podcast. Our hope is that you are taking steps to go deeper in your faith, that you are asking big questions, and you're looking for answers. We hope that we can be a resource for you through our podcast and any other way that we can help you. You can find all our episodes anywhere that you can find podcasts, including YouTube. And, again, thank you so much for joining us.