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What if your relationship with God didn’t start with how broken you are—but with how beloved you are?
This week, Juli is joined by Marty Solomon, host of the BEMA Podcast, to explore the difference between our Western desire to have all the answers and the Bible’s invitation to mystery, curiosity, and wonder. They talk about how systematic theology can both help and hinder our faith, and why being “beloved” is more foundational than being “right.”
This conversation reframes how we see our humanity in light of God’s steadfast love—not as a problem to fix, but as a relationship to steward.
Juli (00:00.11)
Hey, friend. Thanks so much for joining me for Java with Juli. I am your host, Juli Slattery, and this podcast is an outreach of Authentic Intimacy. Well, my guest today is Marty Solomon. Marty is the host of the Bema podcast. And I actually interviewed Marty, I think a couple of years ago, talking about his podcast. And we’ll link to that episode if you’d like to listen to it.
But the reason I love the work that Marty does on that podcast is he really encourages us to approach the scripture with curiosity and to ask better questions of the Bible, not feel like we have to have all the answers. And so today’s conversation, we’re gonna follow up on that and talk about a new book that he’s just written called “The Gospel of Being Human: How asking better questions of the Bible reveals who we are”, and it’s all about what it means to know God, not just intellectually, but relationally. In our conversation today, I’m gonna talk to Marty about why Western Christianity can be so focused on having the right answers, and instead what it really means to understand that we are so loved by God and just enter into that kind of relationship with a God who doesn’t use his overwhelming power to force us to love him back.
Juli
Now let me warn you in the beginning of this episode, I feel like I sort of nerded out a little bit with Marty. I asked him a lot of questions about theology, why theology is important, why theology is limited. Hang in there if that’s not really your cup of tea. We’re just laying the groundwork for the really practical things that we’re gonna get to later in the conversation. I promise you it is going to be worth it. So let’s head to the coffee shop for my conversation with Marty Solomon.
Juli
Marty, I’m so excited to have you back on Java with Juli. It’s really fun when I listen to somebody’s podcast to then have them on my podcast. So thanks for saying yes again.
Marty (02:00.086)
Yeah, it’s wonderful when universes collide like that, but I love making new friends and then I love when those new friends say, come back again. That’s always an affirming thing to experience. So it’s fun.
Juli
Yeah, it sure is. Okay. So one of my great passions in life is studying the scripture and not just as an intellectual exercise, but to know God. We had this conversation to start off a little bit last time you were on the podcast, but the way you explain scripture and journey through scripture on your Bema podcast, like opens new doors for me. It’s like, I’m on a treasure hunt and I’m like, my, I didn’t know that this was here too. That’s why I love learning from you. I’ve loved diving into your latest book and just the perspective that you bring. So thank you.
Marty
Yeah, that was very kind words, and it is not the only way. It’s probably not even the best way, but it’s one of the really fun ways. If I can open up the conversation a little bit and let it breathe, that’s part of what I love to do to the larger discourse that we all have together. So it’s fun. So those words meant a lot.
Juli
So your approach to, would say theology and to studying God and studying the scriptures, you compare sort of the traditional approach, which is like solving a puzzle. And I don’t know if it’s traditional, but it’s Western tradition that we want to look for all these clues in the scripture and in the Greek and the Hebrew, and we’re solving a puzzle. And instead, you talk about it more like chasing a mystery. Can you talk about the difference between those two perspectives?
Marty
Yeah, I did not have that when I started the project. And in my research, I ran across that metaphor. And man, it just really spoke to me, this idea of the Western world loves a puzzle, because it’s a quick payoff. Like our short little 20-minute sitcoms. Here’s a little problem, we’re going to work through a little arc and solve it. And our age of reason, our modern Western world, has loved to really explain stuff, track it down, whether it’s a puzzle or not, we love to really be able to explain how it works.
But there’s this world of the Bible that keeps going, okay, however big we understand it, it’s gotta be even bigger. It’s gotta be even better. It’s gotta be even more complex because God has to be bigger than my bucket. I can get a bigger bucket and God will still be bigger than that. So mystery becomes something that they start to assume. And it changes your posture to, am I solving a puzzle, or am I starting to swim in some mysterious waters?
Juli
Okay, so I could nerd out with you on theology and there’s a part of me that is holding myself back from doing that because not everybody appreciates that. So some of these questions up front I’m gonna tell our listeners hang in there because they’re setting the stage for more practical application that we’re gonna get into.
Juli (05:04.46)
But when you say, you know Western world is trying to solve a problem we really need to consider the fact that God is a mystery. One thing that comes to my mind is something that we call systematic theology, which is, I think, a Western thing where there’s a structure of theology based on certain assumptions that we bring to the Bible to answer the biggest questions, like what’s the purpose of humanity? What does it mean to be saved? Where are we going when we die? Can you talk about maybe the strengths and weaknesses of that kind of approach to the Bible?
Marty
Yeah, I like that you phrased the question that way, because I need to start with the strengths, because I get a little wound up about helping us see the possibilities. And sometimes I can miscommunicate that it’s either or, and it’s not either or. There’s something really beautiful. To go back to the first book about right and left hands, you really need both hands when you’re playing the piano to give you the full robust song as it’s written. And so it’s not that systematic theology isn’t something super useful, but it is.
Systematic theology, comes from a particular worldview that’s always fascinated with how. The word “how”, how does it work? How does it function? How am I justified? How am I saved? How do we experience, how, how, how? Which is not bad, it’s fascinating. In fact, sometimes it can be very, very useful to a theological discourse to understand how. I’m in grad work right now, really having to grapple with some assumptions I’ve made about Augustine or Aquinas, or some of these theologians that have done really great work in Western systematic theology.
The weakness is it’s always reducing, it’s always refining, it’s always getting narrow, which has its benefits, it has its strengths. But then the Hebraic, the Eastern mind, it’s like the funnel goes the opposite direction.
Marty (07:04.302)
It’s about precision where the Eastern world is about… How many legs are underneath this? Like how far can it go? How, it uses poetic language because of its ability to go places and communicate things that our reason struggles to grapple with. And so it’s kind of like it’s going in both directions. Like I think about the universe. Scientists tell us the universe is both expanding and shrinking. I don’t understand that, but I trust that somehow it’s true. It’s doing both at the same time. Well, it’s like theology. We both are looking for precision, cause there’s usefulness in that, but we’re also looking for possibility. So in the book we talk about curiosity, attention and wonder. So systematic theology does really good at precision, but oftentimes it can deflate wonder. So where does wonder take us? How much more do we not know? Is that the opposite question?
Juli
Yeah, and I guess you know, that’s the key. What do we not know? Like I think about the tension of some of the debates we have theologically about is it predestination or free will? And the systematic theologies will try to err on one side or the other. And the mystery is, well, what if it’s both?
Marty
Yeah
Juli
And in my human mind, you can’t have both. It’s one or the other, but what you’re saying is there’s an aspect of God that is so much greater than us that we have to leave room for the fact that he’s not gonna fit in our structure of thought, completely.
Marty (08:29.396)
Not completely. And those structures will be really useful, because we have to have them to have a healthy dialogue, to be able to put our feet somewhere, because we’re Westerners, whether we like it or not, and that’s okay. And so those things are helpful because they give us handles, but we begin to rely on them or put too much stock in them rather than the God that’s underneath it all.
Juli
So you said we’re Westerners. Does that mean that like Eastern believers or Jewish believers who aren’t Westernized don’t have a systematic theology and they’re okay with that?
Marty
You know, that’s a question that I wanna start diving deeper into after this current work I’m doing with my grad work. I’ve had thoughts about whether or not that very question, because I do not trust that I know what the answer to that question is. I feel like the answer is yes, they do it differently, but I can’t articulate why or how, but I would love to find out. And so I’m not there yet, but I do want to do some digging with that in the future. We’ll see what doors open.
Juli
One of the questions that I have coming out of this conversation about puzzle solving versus mystery, puzzle solving as you’re saying, the end goal is a certainty, like, I figured it out.
Marty
Yeah
Juli
And with the mystery, you stay in a posture of curiosity. And I think we want the certainty. So I guess one question I would ask, as we approach the scripture, as we approach knowing God, what are the things that we can and we should be certain about? Because I think sometimes you can say mystery and it’s like, well then everything’s up for grabs. Like, how can we be sure about anything? So what are the things that we all need to be very certain about?
Marty (10:13.492)
Yeah, I think everything in me wants to try to explain it in terms of relationship. If this God, we talk a lot about personal relationship with God, personal relationship with Jesus. We’re in this covenant relationship with. So what are the things that I would want to, sometimes when I’m puzzling through some of these questions, I think about my relationship with my wife. Like what are the things that I wanna be? Is it the things that I know? There are things I know about my wife. I know where she was born or I even know her tendencies or the things that she prefers, or I know things intellectually.
And yet the things that I really wanna ground certainty in our like, less knowledge knowing and like more experiential knowing, knowing what faithfulness has tasted like for us, how we’ve failed each other and forgiven each other. Well, I can be certain that there’s something beyond my performance on this day or how I’m going to fall short. And that’s a lot of what I want to talk about and look at in the book is being human. This book is about being human. And part of being human is knowing that we’re beloved. And I have a prayer I say every morning, every morning before I go into my office, I spend some time and I say this prayer on repeat. I say, I am not loved or valued today because of what I do and produce. And should I fail today in large or small ways, it will not affect my worth. I will still be loved and valued. I am simply beloved.
Marty
And I came up with that prayer with my therapist. It’s like this grounding reminder of what it means to be beloved of God, and that’s where my feet have to be planted. And those are things that I think we’re gonna throw certainty of intellectual things or theological things, but if my theology is not facilitating a faithful groundedness in the grace and salvation and love of God in my walk with Christ, I wanna be certain of that.
Marty (12:12.364)
I wanna be certain that if my theology fails me or my brain can’t comprehend whatever, the floor falls out, theological floor falls out, Jesus and the Bible will be there to catch me. It’s bigger than whatever I understand it to be. So those are things I would want to put my certainty in. And I’m fine being convicted of lots of, I don’t want to be wishy washy about everything, because I could be wrong about anything. I want to have convictions. I want to have theological beliefs. I don’t have to get rid of those, but.
Juli
What do you think are those theological certainties and beliefs that ground the Christian faith? Like I think there are secondary issues and beliefs that we might have some disagreement about, but based on the scripture and the history of the scripture, what are the certainties that it means to be a lover of God, a follower of Jesus?
Marty
Yeah, and I think when I answer that question, it will often probably be frustrating because that question is usually coming with a bunch of Western systematic theological assumptions. So we go to that list of those belief statements, most of which I would affirm. I would affirm all those beliefs. But I would rather start the list with the place of God as creator and all of creation. And I’m gonna try to think like my Hebraic ancestors, like I’m gonna try to think, because they wouldn’t have come up with the same list that evangelicals would often come up with. It’s not right or wrong, it’s just I think that way. And they would say, well who is God, who are we, what is God up to in the world, and how am I gonna participate in it? And again, I think we think of belief, theological belief statements, so who is God? He’s creator, he’s sovereign, he’s above all.
We could say worthy of worship. I’m talking like a Westerner, because it’s the only language I have to talk like. Who are we? We’re beloved. We’re also not God. I would still affirm our sinfulness, our brokenness. And my language is gonna start to sound very similar to a belief statement you’ll see on 90 % of websites of churches and organizations that we have. But I think the list I typically start with in that world isn’t nearly as helpful in me becoming who God wants me to be as wondering what a different list might look like.
Marty (14:18.216)
So would I affirm all those beliefs? Yeah, probably, I probably would affirm. Do I affirm who God is in the Trinity, in the Triune Orthodox? Yeah, absolutely, I affirm creedal orthodox faith. Do I affirm the saving work of Jesus on the cross? Absolutely. Like I affirm all those things, but I’m like, is there a better way, another way of starting that conversation that gets me where God wants me to go in maybe more effective or expedient ways? It’s a good question. I have not been asked these questions, Juli, in any interview I’ve done yet. It’s good question.
Juli
Well, I, like you, am curious. For a while. We really could. Yeah. So what I hear you saying is like the creeds that we believe, like those are important and essential. You can believe all those things and not have a thriving relationship with God and not be growing in love and in partnership with him. And we see that.
Juli (15:21.26)
Unfortunately, we see that just like we would look at the Hebrew and the Israelite leaders in the Old Testament that they knew the law, but their hearts were far from God. There are a lot of people who know all the theology, but they don’t know what it is to be beloved and they don’t know what it is to partner with God in his work.
Marty
Yeah, and I think your point is great. No matter where we’ve been in history, Eastern or Western, Jewish or Christian, our theologies have not been a guarantee of facilitating flourishing life with God and Christ. And they can also be very helpful. They’re also not antithetical to flourishing life with Christ. And so always taking it and as the Jews would say, turning the gem a little bit, taking a look at it in a different angle, seeing what else comes through as the light shines through it. Always re-examining it. think this is the conversation everybody has about deconstruction. What are we doing in that process? I think that’s all a part of what it means to be alive and theologically developing, growing, evolving.
Juli
And you know, it sort of goes without saying, but I think it is important to say that curiosity without some of those certainties is also dangerous.
Marty
Oh, sure.
Juli
That there are people who are on a spiritual quest to have an experience with God and they’re untethered from any of the biblical, historic certainties that really define us and define God for who He is. So we can’t just walk away from those things.
Marty
Yeah, absolutely. think there’s part of our job as theologians, teachers, whatever we want to call ourselves, content creators, I don’t know what the list is today. But whatever our job is, you can channel curiosity in a million directions. We think the most compelling way to do this is to point it towards Jesus, to point it towards God, to point it towards the world of the Bible and say, think there’s more here than we gave it credit for. Let’s dig in this direction. Because you can dig in 30 other directions and not end up in a helpful place. Absolutely.
Juli
Okay. So your passion, particularly expressed in your new book, the gospel of being human. Did I get it right? I got it right here. The gospel of being human is essentially for us to know our place with God. And you start in Genesis really at creation, but a passage that you pick up on and whenever you teach a passage, Marty, you always throw a wrench that I didn’t see coming.
So you pick up on Psalm 139, which is one of my favorite Psalms. It’s a Psalm of intimate knowing that David wrote, and it’ll be very familiar to our listeners. You have searched me and you know me, God. You know when I rise. You all of that, that yada. We talk about the yada here. You probably say it with a better Hebrew accent than I do.
Marty
No you nailed it.
Juli
I did, yay, okay. But we don’t know what to do with the last few verses. So some people don’t even know what the last few verses of Psalm 139 are. Do you have that memorized or do you have that in front of you?
Marty
I do not have it memorized and that chapter, which I love, was written by Reed and Reed and I have wrestled with that chapter in a couple sermons that we’ve done together and I have loved his content there, but that’s even a chapter that I didn’t even pen, but I know exactly what you’re talking about.
Juli (18:41.336)
Can you just read the last few verses?
Marty
Yeah, if I started in verse 19, if only you God would slay the wicked, away from me you who are bloodthirsty. They speak of you with evil intent, your adversaries misuse your name. I do not hate those who hate you, Lord, and abhor those who are in rebellion against you. I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies. Search me God and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way of everlasting.
Juli
Okay, so I actually, think a few weeks ago recommended that somebody memorize Psalm 139 and I qualified like just these verses, you know, go ahead and just skip, don’t memorize the ones that you just recited, because we’re very uncomfortable with that, and sort of the tension between David talking about this beautiful intimacy with God and knowledge with God, and then all of a sudden, why does he turn with this anger and this hatred towards his enemies and God’s enemies? So I’d love for you to talk a little bit about what that Psalm tells us about being human.
Marty
Yeah, well what Reed does in that chapter is he holds this up against some, I believe it’s Psalm 51, which follows this Psalm almost concept for concept and states the opposite. And part of what Reed’s point is, is if you take any one of these Psalms and hold them in a vacuum, it doesn’t give you the full picture of what it means to be human. Here David’s talking about that, I love how you phrased it, this intimate knowing of God.
Marty (20:14.158)
He’s speaking from this place of I am in relationship with God. I know what it is to be delivered, to be saved, to be close to him. I know what it is to want what he wants, to hate what he hates. And those verses there, “Do I not hate those who hate you? I have nothing but hatred for them”. Then later on in his life, he ends up realizing I’ve become that very thing. In this Psalm 139, he asks that God would save him from bloodthirsty men. In Psalm 51, he says, I’ve been the bloodshedder. I’ve shed the blood. And this idea of what it means to be human is to realize, and I think Reed quotes that famous line about the line between good and evil runs straight through the heart of every human being. That part of being human is we’re so capable of such dangerous, destructive, sinful rebellion. We’re also created in the image of and beloved by God. And being human is a tricky, complex work.
And when I learn that about me, it’s incredibly valuable. Eventually, the psalm, I think the journey through the psalms really invites us to start to turn that outwards and go, wait, if that’s true about me, it’s also true about them. So that means it’s also true about my enemy. It’s my therapist reminding me that I have been harmed, I have also done harm. And that’s true for each and every one of us at different levels and different experiences. But we have both been the one who has harmed and also been the one who has experienced it. And that complexity is a part of the human experience and no one is, there’s not good guys and bad guys, there’s just human beings and we’ve stewarded those moments in different ways to the betterment or destruction of God’s good world.
Juli
There is this concept in therapy or in psychology, you’re referencing your therapist might have talked about this, but it’s called splitting. And naturally we wanna split the good and bad. Kids do this because they don’t have the capacity to understand that good and bad live within the same person. So that’s why you have in kids movies, the hero and the villain. And the hero is all good and the villain is all bad.
Juli (22:26.99)
In immaturity we split. And so this is why a lot of people can’t own fault because if I own some fault that means I’m all bad and maturing and not just psychologically but theologically is what you’re saying being able to hold together that I contain the seed of everything good and the seed of everything bad and so does my neighbors, so does my enemy. Why do you think that’s so central to a relationship with God, to be able to accept that complexity?
Marty
I love everything you just articulated. And I’m not a therapist, so I won’t play one. But as a theologian, I think why that is so important is we want to reduce things into those clean categories because I’m either the saved or the lost. I’m in or I’m out, I’m on the team or I’m off the team. But the reason why it’s important is not to throw all of that and like, no, I don’t know where I stand, but instead to realize it’s important that every day I wake up with this dynamic commitment to partner with God. Because at any moment, I had a great day yesterday. Today, I could destroy lives if I don’t choose to do the thing that God wants me to do. I had a horrible day yesterday. I some huge mistakes. That day is either gonna define me for the next 30 years or I can realize I can pursue reconciliation, I can try to put the world back together. I can do what’s right today.
But knowing that that complexity is always at work, I’m not one or the other. I’m not all light or all darkness, but I have to steward my life and my spiritual formation and my obedience at any given moment. I think that’s why that’s so important to me.
Juli (24:11.822)
You know there’s a piece Marty of living every day with what do I do with my sin? What do I do with the evil intent in my heart? What do I do with the image of God in my heart? There’s that application but there’s also the application and this is a question that we don’t just ask today we saw people ask it in the Gospels. What must I do to be saved? And there’s an element to which in the scripture, it’s almost like when you read the Bible, you see it dividing into two kinds of people. Like Paul, for example, when he’s writing in Ephesians says, you know, you were once in darkness, you know, you were once enslaved to the ruler of the kingdom of the air, but now you’ve been made alive in Christ, you who are dead in sin. And so there’s a sense that there are two categories, those who are dead in their sin and those who are alive in Christ.
So, how do we reconcile that and not have an us versus them kind of mentality of the good guys and the bad guys?
Marty
Yeah, no, that’s a great question. It’s an example of why some of these structures and theology can be really helpful handles, because it enables Paul to have a really constructive conversation. But to your question about how do we make sure that we don’t just do an us versus them, I think it would be to remember all the other verses where Paul’s talking to the saved going, like, could you really get your act together, please?
Because I think of the Galatians. And Paul’s like, holy cow, like how have you, how far off have, okay, so wait a minute, which crowd are they a part of? Are they a part of the enlightened ones or a part of the, like Paul’s so angry, says, I wish you’d just go cut yourself off from community. I wish you would, Paul’s using these categories because he’s wanting to talk about the realities of light and darkness, the realities of disobedience and righteousness. Is he wanting us to use those categories to define people and put them in? And do you get to stay there?
Marty (26:12.672)
Or are these categories that Paul’s saying, yeah, you are saved because you have surrendered your life to Jesus. You are also working out your salvation with fear and trembling. And it’s not either or. And that’s where our theological traditions try to go, okay, which one do we lean into? And Paul would say, yes. Paul would just say yes. And I think that’s part of the mystery. Yeah, the mystery enables us to say, I probably need one of those in this moment or today. I need to hear the truth of one of the sides of those coins. Yeah.
Juli
Yeah, and it’s one thing to consider how Paul would see me, but it’s a more important question to consider how does God see me? And I think that’s where most people live today. Like, I think you even write this in the book, most of us live like God is always mad at us. And we have a fear of that. So that is a core message that you really want to get through.
How do you deal with that sense that we have? Like I was just meeting with some women this morning, one of them asked, you know, is God disappointed in us? Is God disappointed in me when I don’t have the courage to share my love of Jesus with my coworkers? Is he continually disappointed with me? How do we reconcile that question?
Marty (27:28.982)
Yeah, well, I’m gonna do the same trick I did a while ago. I’m thinking about my wife or my kids. am I disappointed when my kids don’t live up to their full potential? I guess we would use kind of language like that. I guess there’s a place where like, man, but does it make me go, do I just love them? Oh gosh, yeah. Does it affect the way that I, to connect this to our last question, I think the reason that we us and them people, we do the whole othering us and them is because we start with God’s mad, and I became a part of the group of people that God’s no longer mad at. Versus we’re just all beloved and we’re either saying yes to the thing that God’s doing in the world or we’re saying no to it. And that matters, the saying yes or no matters, but it’s not God was mad and then decided not to be mad with us. It’s that God loves us all and is saying, I want you to be my kids. I want you to be my full potential, experiencing, image of God bearing, like let’s just go live in freedom and be a part of goodness. And it matters if you don’t choose the goodness. It matters if you say, no thanks, I’ll do it this other way. That destruction can be really destructive. But I think, do I start from that belovedness or do I start with where your friend was and is God mad, disappointed? Is that where He starts from?
And we talk about in the book, a thousand to three. It’s not a thousand to zero. It’s not, know, God says, I show love to a thousand generations of those that love me and I repave them to a third generation of those that hate me. It’s not a thousand to zero, but it’s a thousand to three. So which one is the grounding reality? God’s belovedness or God’s wrath? And it’s not either or, but I do think there’s a foundational and I could be wrong and some people may read the book and be like, I don’t know. And that’s good, that’s healthy. That’s all that’s healthy. But I’m wanting to come from a different perspective than the one that shaped me and say, I wonder if maybe foundationally it’s flip-flopped. It’s not a thousand to zero, but I was told it was 500, 500. And I wonder if it’s actually a thousand to three, like God says, but yeah.
Juli (29:43.534)
Would you say you were raised in more of that Western Church tradition then? 100%. of this is of your journey? Uh huh.
Marty
Absolutely. I was raised in what I would call evangelical fundamentalism. I don’t hate it. It gave me a lot of things that I absolutely love and I’m deeply indebted to. I love their passion for Jesus and the Bible shaped me, continues to shape me. Don’t ever want to get rid of it, but that is definitely the theology that you are wretched. That’s where we start. God is angry unless you fix God’s anger.
And I realize that’s a very complicated theological suggestion, because there’s a whole theological world that starts with that premise.
Juli
Yeah, and you’re saying let’s start the world in Genesis 3, let’s start in Genesis 1.
Marty
That’s Bema language. That’s it.
Juli (30:30.382)
I’m starting to get it, Marty. I’m starting to get it, yeah. Okay, so we’re gonna go a little bit of a different direction for a while here. Okay, I love it. Yeah, so the whole kind of focus of the work that we do at Authentic Intimacy is helping people make sense of God and sexuality. And a big part of the reframe that our listeners here are gonna be really used to is not, starting with the rules of sexuality, like thou shall not, but really looking at the story of why did God create us as sexual people, and really the narrative from Genesis to Revelation of what God is revealing through sexuality, through His covenants with His people. So you are the expert on that in terms of explaining God’s relationship with His covenant people, particularly with the Old Testament covenant.
And I would love to spend some time just learning from you about how we see that covenantal language that is marital and sexual in the Old Testament. Yeah, I mean, I just kind of dip my toe in the waters of that, because I’m not a Hebrew theologian, but you are.
Marty
Yeah, I’ll start answering the question. You can tell me if I’m going in the right direction or ask follow-ups. But one of the things that you started saying when you asked this question that I, you know, I got a chance to read your books when you sent them to me, I think two years ago. One of the things I love about how I think you and I share this is what you said at the beginning. It’s not about an abstract behavioral code. It’s about identity and it’s about relationship and it’s about who we are in relationship with God.
And I particularly like that framework because the Western world really wants to treat holiness codes as a behavior. And so when I think about, well, your question in light of even the things we’re talking about with the book, what it means to be human, like healthy anything, healthy sexuality included, healthy relationships, healthy vocation, healthy, but healthy sexuality would certainly be on that list. It’s about what does it mean to flourish as the people that God created us to be?
Marty (32:44.098)
What does it mean to be everything that God wanted us to be? Just like, again, I’m gonna go to my wife and my kids. I want my wife and my kids to flourish. I don’t want them to cut themselves short or be anything less than everything they could be, especially if they’re getting to choose. Don’t sell yourself short. Make sure we’re engaging in relationships of all kinds. It’s not just husband-wife sexuality of how we relate to other human beings.
What is this thing that God’s done by making them male and female and only together in this human, do we get the full image of God? Which was a scandalous part of the Hebrew story because it was, well, men were carrying the image of God. Women were a part of what came along for the ride. And this Genesis story goes, no, no, no, no. God took man and he split him into male and female. And now only together do they end up giving you the full image of who God is and what God’s doing in the world. So I think that idea of human flourishing and us being everything that we’re created to be, and I know you use so much of that same language when you talk about it when you write about it. And I just love the way you frame it that way, yeah.
Juli
Well, thanks. I appreciate that. So what does it mean to flourish? That’s the key question is what does it mean to flourish? Knowing that part of the definition of the fullness of life that Jesus gives us is not living just for here and now, you know, like lose your life so that you can find it. And, you know, I don’t know if you would agree with this, but one of the things that has been central to my thinking on this is that our sexuality is revealing not just what’s inside of us but who God is. That he is a God of intimacy, that he is a God of covenant, he is a God of faithfulness. He is a God within our relationship with him that calls us to passionately celebrate love with him. So again, I would love to hear your perspective on that, particularly given your knowledge of the covenantal language and the marital language that God uses to describe his relationship with Israel.
Marty
Yeah, well I heard you say a few things that stand out to me when I think about covenant. One of them being fidelity. Like fidelity for us just feels and looks totally different. A, we don’t value it in our culture, secular culture today. B, we don’t have the same relationship to covenants. We have like contractual relationship to covenants. So just the concept of fidelity.
The concept of God saying in Hosea, using wedding marital imagery, I will betroth you to myself forever. I will betroth you to myself in righteousness and in justice and in love and in compassion. I will betroth you to myself in faithfulness and you will know the Lord. Like God, in the biblical culture, he’s the party with all the power. He’s the one that could be making demands. And yet God says, you’re going to learn who I am because of the fidelity I’m gonna show you. I’m going to betroth you to myself and you’re gonna see things like justice, you’re gonna see things like compassion. You’re gonna see things like faith. But because of my faithfulness, because I do not give up on this covenant, because there is a fidelity that’s going to transcend your betrayal and your failure of me. And so I think fidelity is this thing that has so much more legs than we ever talk about in our culture. I think we learn things like that. You talked about service at one point, this idea. And this is where I love to point out like, it transcends just marriage.
Juli
Right.
Marty (36:24.622)
Because if the only place we can experience this is in marriage, well then what do I have to say to the single person, the celibate person, the person who’s called to… this is about how we relate to each other, whether it’s in a marital context or not in a marital context. I know what it means to take on the mind of Christ, who though was in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be held onto, but became obedient to death, even death on a cross. This is what relationship is. Experienced in our marital context, that’s covenant. But both of these things are different than the covenant that the Hebraic world was used to. Because the person with all the power, they get to benefit from the covenant. See, in their world, the God is the one who gets to demand the fidelity. And if you screw up the fidelity, I cut you off, I destroy you. But this God says, I will show you faithfulness, and because of my fidelity, he turns it on its head where he goes, I’m going to selflessly give of myself and beautifully usurp power dynamics so that you can flourish. These are things that I think I learned from covenant within the marital relationship that I would, when I think of Hebrew covenants and I think of ancient covenant with God and his people and what he models for us, because Paul will call back to it in Ephesians. He’ll say, this is the mystery of Christ and his church. He’s talking about marriage, but then he says, but this is actually the mystery of Christ and his church.
So we’re learning in marriage between husbands and wives how to relate to each other because of how God went first.
Juli
Yeah
Marty
Like God showed us what all that looked like through a Hebraic covenant, which I think he goes with us. And I think that’s true of Greco-Roman covenants that they were used to in Paul’s day. I think it’s true of the covenants that we’re used to today. I think that’s also true. But I think he would spin it on its head and go, the things that you think you’re owed, serve. The things that you think you’re give and those are things that I think I like to pull away from or reframe from what we’re so used to.
Juli (38:29.55)
Yeah, so in the Hebrew covenants and Hebrew marriages, even within the Israelites, I’m assuming what I’ve read in scripture and what you’re saying, there was still a real power differential.
Marty
There, yeah, there could be.
Juli
Yeah, was that what God wanted for marriage?
Marty
No, that’s why I think there could be, because they could be abused in that way. And yet what God seems to be trying to set up through Torah, a lot of theologians will talk about this redemptive arc, like God’s meeting the world where it’s at, and it’s pointing them in a direction and saying, I need you to learn how to do this in a better, you’re used to women not even being human. You’re used to women being property, I’m gonna make them human, which I think is the conversation that Jesus is having with the Pharisees. When they come to him and they say, when can we send our wives away? Which is literally what they say. They use the phrase for divorce of like, when are we allowed as men to write a certificate of divorce and just send them away?
We think it’s about the ethical nature of divorce. Jesus is going back to the nature of humanity. He’s going, you can’t treat her that way. She’s a human being. She’s not a piece of property you can just send away. What God joined together as male and female, you can’t treat as any less human than you are.
Marty (39:49.1)
And so there’s this beautiful like, He calls them back to, because they wanna go like, well, Moses let us get divorced. And she’s like, yeah, Moses let you get divorced, but Moses was trying to introduce you to a system that would redeem the place of women in society. And so yes, it could be, it could be abused, a power differential there. It also just as equally could be redemptive and restorative to pull things together and bring more equity, more equality, more mutuality in marriage.
And so that was the test of the human soul. What will you do with this covenant? Will you use it to squash people underneath you or will you do what God has done and will you come down and lift them up? So that power differential is real, but how you use it is everything in the Hebraic.
Juli
So God’s interaction with Israel and how it’s recorded in the prophets, was he trying to teach them about marriage or was he using marriage to teach them about him or both?
Marty
I’d love to just be poetic and say yes. I think my gut, and this might just be my brainy, Western theologian, my gut says he’s using marriage as the metaphor they understand to talk about his relationship. But I also think it just as quickly, immediately teaches us about relationships and marriage, absolutely. And so not that that was his original intent, but because he uses it that way, we get to go, goodness, I’m not sure I do.
Marty (41:18.53)
You think about the book Hosea, I’m not sure that that depicts my relationship with my wife. Hmm, what do I do about that? If that’s who God is, who does he want me to be? And what does it mean to be made in his image? So, yeah, I love that. It’s kind of full circle.
Juli
Yeah, how has that challenged you personally over the years?
Marty
Oh goodness. I can remember seven years into my marriage going to, we’ve mentioned therapy a couple of times in our episode today. And I can remember going to my first therapy session seven years into my marriage and realizing how much narcissistic tendencies I had and what it was doing to relationships that I found to be the most important to me. And ever since then, I’ve just been on a journey of, I am not there. I am not there, Juli. But if I can be more like, God and more like Jesus with every passing year. We just celebrated last week our 22nd anniversary. I can, every year if I can look back and go, I look a little bit more like Jesus. And our marriage looks a little bit more like God and his people. If it’s both the example to me and if our marriage reflects back what God would want between he and his people, it’s a win. And I do see the spirit at work there. But golly, so much work to still be done. But that’s kind of when you know you’re beloved and not scared to death that God’s mad at you, that’s kind of the fun of the journey together when you get to look at each other and go, all right, another year, let’s do it, let’s do it again, let’s get a little bit better.
Juli (42:47.03)
Yeah, that’s a great perspective. Well, as we start to wrap things up, we’ve covered a lot of ground, but I think that there’s one theme that kind of threads through some of the things that you’ve already shared that I think you bring out in the book that’s important to hit on. And it’s the theme of power and our understanding of what power is and how God’s power is a different kind of power than we think of. So I’d love for you to explain that.
Marty
Yeah, that was another Reed chapter. You like the chapters from Reed. I love that.
Juli
I like Reed as much as I like you.
Marty
Yeah, absolutely. Should have gotten him in here. He wrote this chapter, and I remember him talking to me about this years ago, before the book was ever a project. And he had this idea from Robert Farrar Capin about right and left handed power. And the metaphor that he used is, I can’t remember if he used this in the book, I think he did, where he said, I can demand that my kids come out of their room and come to the dining room for dinner or whatever. Or I can just bake cookies and watch them come to the kitchen.
There’s a power in both of them, but one is a power of its right-handed power. It’s a power of you’ll do it because I said so, you’ll do it because you have to. And the other one is this left-handed power of attractive, you’ll do it because it’s too powerful to say no to. Like you’ve got to say yes to this beautiful thing that’s happening. And God is definitely, I don’t know if I would say completely, but God definitely leans towards this. He models for us, He calls us towards this left-handed power.
Marty (44:21.644)
And I do love that. There’s a couple different places where you could talk about that, both Old and New Testament, but I really love that image of right and left-handed power.
Juli
Yeah, I love that image too. And I think it’s a real reframe of how God does have all authority. And there is a time, there will be a day where he will lean into that. But, he is wooing us. He is wooing us with his goodness. Taste and see that I am good.
Marty
Yeah.
Juli
And I don’t know if this was read to, if this was you, but the way you guys wrote about the story of Elijah, I saw stuff in Elijah I never saw before. Yeah. Yeah. So.
Marty
I think he wrote that chapter too, but that one was a conversation that I feel like I probably started and he ended up writing that one. And we really enjoyed that chapter a lot.
Juli
Yeah. Well, I’m going to commend people to your book and to always the Bema podcast. You incite our curiosity and our passion to know God. And that’s what I love. And you do it with a humble heart and calling us to be humble of again, let’s curiously pursue them together. And so I’m just thankful for you and thanks for sharing with our audience today.
Marty (45:37.806)
Absolutely, feelings mutual, Juli. I appreciate being back.
Juli
Well, as we wrap up, what stood out to me in this conversation is that Marty has really encouraged us to loosen our grip on feeling the pressure to have all the right answers and instead really focus on deepening our trust and our relationship with God. Now, I wanna make sure you don’t misunderstand. This isn’t about having fewer convictions. It’s not about getting rid of theology. That is so essential.
But it’s about having a more honest and grounded faith that still allows for curiosity and wonder, knowing that God is so much bigger than our questions and our answers. Marty’s upcoming book is called “The Gospel of Being Human: How Asking Better Questions of the Bible Reveals Who We Are”, and that book will release on April 7th, but you can pre-order it today. I recommend also that you hop over, and check out the Bema podcast, which I mentioned at the beginning of our episode. And if you start listening to the Bema podcast, let me encourage you to start with season one, because Marty really starts to get into his approach to the scripture. And it’s just fascinating to hear how he pulls out some of the things that we’re often not taught of the stories in Genesis and what they really reveal about God.
Juli
We’re gonna link to both of those in our show notes and as always, you can hop over to authenticintimacy.com to find more resources that we’re creating. Thanks so much for listening and I look forward to having coffee with you next time for more Java with Juli.