Episode Details

A week after Easter 2024, and in response to questions from our listeners, we discuss a whole new perspective on who Jesus was, and what he gave the Jews, and the world, when he died on the cross.

Several members of our private Facebook Discussion Group asked us to explain how we’ve been able to reject so much of our Evangelical faith, and yet still hold a worldview that we can call Christian.

We first compared Evangelicalism to a crystalline figurine: well-crafted and beautiful, but brittle. Great to look at, but absolutely not up to being handled too roughly: if you test its limits by asking questions and entertaining certain “what if ….” scenarios, the crystalline figurine starts to fragment. And it seems that cracks always form in the exact same places for everyone who walks down this “slippery slope”: scientific challenges … Christian exclusivism …. inerrancy/infallibility ….. Penal Substitutionary Atonement and eternal conscious torment in Hell …. these are all the same fault lines that everyone finds.

But Christian faith doesn’t have to take that crystalline form: there are other ways to hold a Christian faith. The concept of “God” doesn’t have to look like what you were taught in Sunday school and youth group, or by your parents. Divine interaction with humans doesn’t have to look like the stories you were told: overly literal readings from ancient Jewish texts. It is possible to completely set aside a traditional Evangelical form of faith and still have a sincere Christian faith.

I gave one example: how my perspective on Easter is now completely different. My new understanding of that critical event no longer needs to be shrouded in the supernatural or superstition. The details given to us in the Gospel accounts themselves can be re-interpreted in a way that is 100% rational historically and scientifically, and yet still delivers a profoundly inspirational punch.

The Easter story is a purely Jewish event. A Jewish story. When you carefully read the story of J