Episode #85: Foundational ‘Non-Christian’ Bible Study, How The Bible Is Composed & Identity Politics With Jeffrey Kranz (OverviewBible.com), Author Of The Beginner’s Guide To the Bible

INTRODUCTION:

Jeffrey Kranz is a Bible geek who started OverviewBible, a biblical literacy website, in 2013. He uses his expertise as a writer and consultant to help people understand what the Bible is, what it’s for, and what it’s all about. In 2019, he wrote The Beginner’s Guide to the Bible, a non-preachy, jargon-free breakdown of the Protestant canon. In his free time, he loves trying bizarre amari, performing musical improvisational comedy, and working Hamilton references into his homebrew D&D campaigns. He hides from the sun at his home in Seattle, WA.

INCLUDED IN THIS EPISODE (But not limited to):

·      A Breakdown Of OverviewBible.com

·      A Review Of Jeffrey’s Book – The Beginner’s Guide To The Bible

·      How The Bible Is Composed

·      Identity Politics

·      The Struggle For Gentile Acceptance

·      What Exactly Is The ‘Hebrew’ Bible?

·      The Flexibility Of Jesus

 

 

CONNECT WITH JEFFREY:

 

Website: https://overviewbible.com

Website: https://jeffreykranz.com

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/OverviewBible/about

 

CONNECT WITH DE’VANNON:

 

Website: https://www.SexDrugsAndJesus.com

Website: https://www.DownUnderApparel.com

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sexdrugsandjesus

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3daTqCM

Facebook:   https://www.facebook.com/SexDrugsAndJesus/

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Twitter: https://twitter.com/TabooTopix

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/devannon

Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.es/SexDrugsAndJesus/_saved/

Email: DeVannon@SDJPodcast.com

 

 

DE’VANNON’S RECOMMENDATIONS:


·      Pray Away Documentary (NETFLIX)

https://www.netflix.com/title/81040370

TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk_CqGVfxEs

 

·      OverviewBible (Jeffrey Kranz)

https://overviewbible.com

https://www.youtube.com/c/OverviewBible

 

·      Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed (Documentary)

https://press.discoveryplus.com/lifestyle/discovery-announces-key-participants-featured-in-upcoming-expose-of-the-hillsong-church-controversy-hillsong-a-megachurch-exposed/

 

·      Leaving Hillsong Podcast With Tanya Levin

https://leavinghillsong.podbean.com

 

 

·      Upwork: https://www.upwork.com

·      FreeUp: https://freeup.net

 

VETERAN’S SERVICE ORGANIZATIONS

 

·      Disabled American Veterans (DAV): https://www.dav.org

·      American Legion: https://www.legion.org

 

·      What The World Needs Now (Dionne Warwick): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfHAs9cdTqg


 

INTERESTED IN PODCASTING OR BEING A GUEST?:


·      PodMatch is awesome! This application streamlines the process of finding guests for your show and also helps you find shows to be a guest on. The PodMatch Community is a part of this and that is where you can ask questions and get help from an entire network of people so that you save both money and time on your podcasting journey.

https://podmatch.com/signup/devannon

 

TRANSCRIPT:

Jeffrey Kranz

[00:00:00]

You’re listening to the sex drugs and Jesus podcast, where we discuss whatever the fuck we want to! And yes, we can put sex and drugs and Jesus all in the same bed and still be all right at the end of the day. My name is De’Vannon and I’ll be interviewing guests from every corner of this world as we dig into topics that are too risqué for the morning show, as we strive to help you understand what’s really going on in your life.

There is nothing off the table and we’ve got a lot to talk about. So let’s dive right into this episode.

De’Vannon: Hello and happy New Year. I hope your year is phenomenal, fantastic in everything you want it to be and more. Jeffrey Kranz is the Brains Behind Overview bible.com and the author of The Foundational Read, the Beginner’s Guide to the Bible, which is a non preachy, jargon-free handbook to what the Bible is, where it came from and what it’s all about.

Jeffrey is here to help us understand how to navigate the Bible, learn about God, and expand our minds in a loving and open-minded [00:01:00] way. I’ve never heard anybody coin the term non-Christian Bible study until I met Jeffrey Kranz.

And so I’m delighted to bring this interview to you so that you can learn

a little bit more how to navigate the Bible and to do so in a non-judgmental way. Lots of love to everyone. Please enjoy the show.

Well, we have us here another episode of the Sex Drugs in Jesus podcast. And I’m here with a, a beautiful redheaded man by the name of Jeffrey Kranz. And he lives up yonder in the, in Seattle I believe you’re in. That’s correct. And and and I discovered him. Trolling around, no, that’s not a cute word these days.

I around on on [00:02:00] YouTube. But finding like different videos because I’ve recently discovered that I’m more of a, like a visual learner. So I’ve been consuming documentaries and all kinds of videos. So I’ve found that it sticks in my head better than re reading. Depends on what I’m reading. And so I discovered Overview Bible’s YouTube channel and then thus the website.

And so then I reached out to Jeffrey in hopes he would reply and he replied to my message and everything like that. And so here we are. Jeffrey. How are you?

Jeffrey: I’m doing well, Devean. Thank you so much for having me. been looking forward to

De’Vannon: this. Danielle’s gonna enjoy how well spoken Jeff Jeffrey is like his, his dick’s flawless and everything like that.

And so so you are what I would consider to be. A Bible scholar, you are very, very detailed in your approach to all things that have to do with understanding this book. So the, y’all, the reason why I [00:03:00] reached out to Jeffrey as opposed to so many other people who are in various forms of media talking about the Bible is, is, is his approach.

He’s not really like trying to push Jesus on people. He’s more like trying to make information available so that people can make up their own decisions. And so his objective neutral approach to it I found to be so refreshing in light of how so much of Christianity is trying to be forced on people during this day and time.

And so his methods are very simple and easy to understand. And so it reminded me of how in the Bible, in the Hebrew Bible, it talks about how Jesus taught with simplicity. You know, he wasn’t like super dramatic and over the top and trying to make everything a big deal and, you know, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then his, his Jeffrey does a lot of drawings and they’re super colorful. And so that really made me feel like I was back in elementary school again, which just really warmed my, the boy and at least still lives inside my soul . So. [00:04:00] So Jeffrey, what would you like to tell people about you personally?

Maybe some of your background education and what got you so impassioned about this book, ?

Jeffrey: Yeah. Thank you so much for the kind words that made me feel good for, for those listen. . It’s, it’s about eight in the morning in Seattle today. And I feel like I’m starting off my day on a, on a very kind note.

So, so thank you for all that. This is gassing me up and it’s a Friday no less. So this is gonna be a very good day. Mm-hmm. . Yeah, so I would describe the overview Bible body of work as you know, you, you really, I, I think you encapsulated it pretty well when you, when you used the word neutral. I, I really like making things learnable and so I think that it’s important when you’re approaching something as large as the [00:05:00] Bible to, to have an idea of just what it is, what it’s for, and what it’s all about.

Before you start really getting into, I guess the, the musts regarding re regarding biblical study, you know, when. When I was introduced to the Bible it was very much in the context of this is, this is what you should believe about the Bible. This is, this is what the Bible means to us as a family.

This is what it means to us as a faith tradition. And so it, it came almost shrink wrapped in, in that sort of context. And, you know, I, as a child really, really got into studying it. I I really enjoyed analyzing the structure of the books. I started doing that as, as more of a teenager. And I was teaching Bible studies as a teenager and, and as, as an adult afterward.[00:06:00]

And so what what I started doing when I was in my twenties was writing, writing overviews of the individual. That of, of the Bible and trying to help people who didn’t necessarily have a lot of context to be able to approach it in a non-intimidating way. And so that’s where, that’s where the website came from.

I started doing YouTube videos a couple years thereafter to try and help more of those visual learners out there and just grow as a presenter. It was a cool way to, to grow few skills that that I wanted as well. And then the book came later.

De’Vannon: Oh, you say you did this when you were in your twenties.

you still look young. .

Jeffrey: Thank you very much. Devon . No, no, I’m I’m 33 now.

De’Vannon: Yeah, I was gonna say, I don’t know, that was like yesterday. So you started working on this maybe like in the last 10 years, this whole body?

Jeffrey: Yeah. Yeah. . Yeah. It was, [00:07:00] I, I would say, Yeah, I think 2013 was when I wrote the first page for overview bible.com.

And then I was done with the first stab at pages on every book of Bible. So if you go to overview bible.com I have an overview of each individual book of the Protestant cannon there on, on that website. And that was how the website began. Now I have more content digging into characters and themes and, you know, items from just the history of the Bible as a book.

But no, that was how it began. Just individual overviews, trying to make it a little more approachable for people in my.

De’Vannon: Let me make it more clear to people just how granular in detail your website is. So it’s like, if you’re reading one article, something [00:08:00] may be hyperlinked, is gonna take you in a further detail and then again, in a further detail.

So like he said, he has an overview of all the books, but he also has overviews of like many popular characters. Mm-hmm. the Bible too, individually. So I was reading in there this morning before we got on, like, you have a breakdown on like on each of the apostles you have a breakdown on like the different prophets, the minor prophets, the major prophets who wrote the psalm, you know, and then there’s a breakdown of like, of all of those.

So this, like the, the painstaking detail that has gone into, into your website is absolutely mind boggling. I mean, I’ve never seen a, a bi, a bi biblical website make it so it’s so much complex information. And it’s presented in like such a readable way, and it’s a lot thank you of little details in there for a lot of different people.

So like on my website, the Sex, drugs and Jesus one, I’m creating this like little [00:09:00] minicourse version that shall never be as com as complex and detailed as your website is. Because I just don’t want it to be, and my, my website’s already as extra as I am and it’s got a lot going on and so Nice. So his website is overview bible.com.

Like the namesake says overview. Jeffrey likes to use this term high level view a lot. Yes, I do . And so if you watch his YouTube videos over on his YouTube channel, which is also Overview Bible, you know, you’ll hear him say high level view. So his YouTube channel parallels. The website, and you’ll see YouTube videos embedded at various points throughout the website as well.

For those of you who want to click over to it. Mm-hmm. . So I really love the way the website is really well written. The YouTube channel compliments that, and then you provided these different mediums of learning and you’ve got everyone covered. [00:10:00] Thank you, .

Jeffrey: I’m glad someone likes it. .

De’Vannon: So you have a lot of comments on your YouTube videos though?

Like people Yeah. Really. Have some feelings. One person called you a cult. . Yeah.

Jeffrey: Yeah. That’s there’s always, there, there’s always a new and interesting opinion on on YouTube and sometimes it’s mine. But, but yeah. Yeah, it’s, YouTube is a funny place. I think that the. Ability for people to just kind of browse and say whatever’s on their mind can lead to some really interesting questions.

And I try to approach most, most questions and comments in good faith. YouTube is also just kind of a breeding ground for bad faith arguments as, as many comment sections on the internet are. So [00:11:00] yeah, I would say that I would say moving from the website, which was predominantly found via Google to to making YouTube content as well exposed me to a lot more of the, of, of, of some thoughts that people have on the sort of material that I make.

So, yeah. Yeah, the comments can be, can be pretty interesting. I feel like, and you know, Devon, maybe you deal with this too, as, as another internet creator. I feel like there’s always a balance to be struck between like engaging, interesting comments that that people throw out. And, and then also saving yourself time and energy in, in responding to things and trying to assess the utility there.

It’s a fundamental exercise anyway.

De’Vannon: So the way I’d say what Jeffrey’s saying y’all is that some people are batshit fucking [00:12:00] crazy and they’re not worth the damn time.

Jeffrey: Yeah. There are, you know, the, the, there are some comments that, that I’m just like, okay, well this is this. I don’t think there’s much more for me to say here, ,

De’Vannon: you know, you know, as, as, as, as, as the saying goes in the good book, you know, every time we go to do good there’s evil presence. And so, you know, weak-minded people are going to come onto our websites and send us nasty messages because this is, you know, the force of negativity trying to hurt us through people who are vulnerable to such influence.

And so this is why we surround ourselves with people who are positive minded and who cater to positive energy and lighted not to negativity. Not, not so much cuz we judge the people, but because, you know, negativity can reach us through them. And so,

Jeffrey: It’s, yeah, I think, yeah, that’s, that’s such an interesting, [00:13:00] it’s such an interesting part of the world, isn’t it?

Like the, I, I think that negativity wants to, it almost feeds by creating more of itself. And so positivity is almost an act defiance against that. Like, how can you, how can you continue to approach people maybe that you’ll never meet again in good faith and be, or at least for, for me, I, I, I try to, even if someone’s being mean online, it would be nice to be someone who is kind to that person.

See,

De’Vannon: now that’s it. Sunday school teaching, right there, coming out , .

Jeffrey: I mean, sometimes I’m better at it than others. I, I have responded to some comments with, and I quote, sir, this is a Wendy’s.

De’Vannon: Yeah, the, the, the, the, the, the, the redhead fire in you does come out in those comments. I would expect nothing less

And so, all right, [00:14:00] so the, his book is called The Beginner’s Guide to the Bible. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about. Just a few parts of it. It goes over a little bit of the, well, it goes over a lot of the history, you know, of the Bible and where it came from and everything like that. And then the latter half of it is like a very deep overview, but still a deep look into like, literally each of the 66 books of the Bible.

Mm-hmm. . And so tell us in your own words who this bible, who, who your book is written for.

Jeffrey: Yeah. So when I started writing the Beginner’s Guide to the Bible it, there was a specific conversation that I had with someone I had been doing improv with for, for a couple of months. And she was talking about how she had never really grown up with any sort of religious background.

She didn’t really have any context [00:15:00] for for what the Bible was or really what Christianity was at all. But she wanted to be able to speak with her aunt about things that were important with her. And I think this conversation was in 20, I think this would’ve been 2017 20 17, 20 18. And so there was, there was a lot of discussion happening in her family around like, politics, what does it mean to be an American?

What does it mean to be a Christian? And my friend had no context for that, that third piece. And so in that conversation I had said, or she was saying, yeah, I just wish. I wish I had more context to be able to talk to my Christian aunt about these things that are important to to both of us. And I said, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been kicking around this idea of writing down just kind of like a beginner’s guide to the Bible so [00:16:00] that you had, even, even if you never went to Sunday school or if you grew up in Sunday school and never really spent much time reading the Bible, which is a lot of people who would consider who, who would, you know, say, oh yeah, I’m a Christian.

I grew up Christian, still haven’t either had the time or desire or brain space to to really read or study the Bible said. I said I would like to establish some sort of baseline with a book. And she said, if you write that book, please let me know as soon as it’s done, because that is, that is exactly what I want.

I wanna be able to have an intelligent conversation about the bible. Without necessarily needing to go to seminary or, you know, go to church or do all the work to try to to try to arrive at, at where you’re at. And I do think that that’s a very fair thing to, to ask for. So, oh, you look like you’ve got a question.

De’Vannon: No, you keep talking. [00:17:00] You’re here, Mike. Cool. Keep

Jeffrey: going. All right. All right. So that was the conversation that really sparked writing this book and when, when I finished it in 2019, felt like I had a good first edition. That would be for someone who knew that the Bible was important, but didn’t necessarily know how to talk about it with anyone that didn’t already share their beliefs.

So if you read it now you should be able to have. A good baseline for talking with a priest, a pastor, a religious relative, your bartender, an atheist, all that good stuff. All

De’Vannon: the fucking things. So I’m gonna comment on the, that the whole priest, bartender, and everything in a minute. So we said improv.

What kind of improv you mean like some sort of Ted Talk improv? Were you doing standup comedy

Jeffrey: or, [00:18:00] you know, I, I tried standup for a little bit, but I keep getting tired of my own jokes. So, no, it’s improvisational comedy, mostly musical improv. That was, that was my forte. And so, you know, just a, a bunch of adults getting up on stage and pretending and making things up for an.

De’Vannon: That sounds so much fun. I bet you there was a lot of alcohol and weed involved in perhaps other hallucinogenics, .

Jeffrey: Sometimes, sometimes there is the, the improv community is really interesting. Like you’ve got, you’ve got a full, you’ve got the full range of debauchery from like afterschool special appropriate to absolutely not

De’Vannon: I’m here for the absolutely not appropriate

So I think it’s interesting you said that, you know, your book, you know, is gonna help people be able talk with the Bible, talk about the Bible with their pastor and atheist, the bartender, or anyone that’s interested. [00:19:00] So I think this, this statement speaks your open mindedness cuz you know, when I was growing up in.

You know, they told us not to dare step foot in a bar, let alone have a conversation with a people bartender, you know, and an atheist. You know, they, they built up our egos to act like, you know, we’re so great and we’re better than everybody, you know, the heathen folk and everything like that. So, the fact that you’re mentioning these taboo people who are considered outliers, outcasts from Christianity, by so many of these churches and preachers and pastors who look down their nose at them, I think validates, you know, your open-minded approach to this.

Thank you. . I’ve been in churches where they were like, you know, don’t, if somebody doesn’t make enough money, don’t even talk to them. You know, they were like, you don’t want their, you know, brokeness bringing Oh man and stuff like that, . Oh,

Jeffrey: that sounds so healthy. ,

De’Vannon: you know, that’s, you know, that those were [00:20:00] the Pentecostals who told me that shit, you know?

And so and where I think they get this from is how in the Bible, you know, you have like the Nation of Israel and God’s telling his people to be separate from the people around them and everything like that, which has all kinds of like historical context and stuff like that, that we can go on and on for hours for.

But there was a practical reason why God told them that he did not say for everybody who, whoever believes on him to distance themself from whoever they feel like isn’t living right. You know, that’s an example of people taking the Bible and doing what the fuck they want with it. Which is super easy to do.

Yeah. It,

Jeffrey: it’s . Yeah. I’m, that’s, that’s kind of one of the reasons why, you know, in the book, what I, what I put a lot of energy toward at the beginning is talking about what it is and what it’s for. Because if you treat this [00:21:00] collection of ancient writings as something that is essentially your magical codex and then whatever, whatever meaning you can pull out of this, because you can link your thought to this magical book, then that gives it authority.

If that is, if that is your mindset, then you can wreck a lot of harm on the relationships in your life. You can wreck a lot of harm on people that you don’t even necessarily know. If you, if you bring that into the world around,

De’Vannon: That’s what I call the batt crazy, like what I mentioned earlier, because you know, the, you know that and there’s a lot of ego there, you know, for somebody to read through the Bible. Ultimately, what I believe the Bible is for is for each individual to read through it, to find out how they can improve themselves, end of story.

Like it has nothing to do with policing somebody else, you know? You know, [00:22:00] but it’s presented that way. So, so we’re talking a lot about, like, talking about the Bible. I think it’s fascinating. You know, we talk about so much stuff with our friends, you know, sex, who we’ve slept with, who we’re gonna sleep with, who were dating.

Oh my God, the travel, all the trips were taking, you know, I bought this thing, that thing, you know, and yet when it comes to like religion and Christianity, I think the furthest generally as society we’ve come is the whole universe. So people will be like, I’m gonna manifest this in the universe. That is very friendly talk that I get everywhere I go, but specific deities are like gods and stuff.

Mm-hmm. like that, not so much. And so I like, like your rhetoric and everything. Just the fact that, you know, suggesting that somebody would want to have a conversation with a pastor, an atheist, just to converse at all, rather than just saying, oops, we shouldn’t talk about that, is like a big deal. I get this from, [00:23:00] like, I remember when I was like, you know, younger in my twenties and going around all the gay bars, doing all the cocaine and all the drugs and everything, you know, and trying to be cute.

But you know, we never really had serious conversations about religion, , you know, or life. If it was, it wasn’t Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, don’t bring it up. You know what, I’m

Jeffrey: you know, you know, I think I can honestly say that I’ve never been in a situation in which, if it’s not Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan don’t bring it up, really applies to me.

But I have been in plenty of contexts in which religion did not come up myself. , I’ve, I, I guess it’s safe to say I’ve had a lot more conversations about the Bible than I have about Lindsay Lohan.

De’Vannon: The thing is man in, in the gay community and just in general [00:24:00] society, we talk so much more about the things we want to acquire in life, our successes or, or the experiences we want to have, be it drugs or traveling or going fishing.

But we barely ever talk about spirituality. Hmm. And then usually when people mention the universe, it’s about something they’re trying to get from it, you know? Yeah. I don’t really hear people who subscribe to the universe as their higher power is talking about like spiritual growth a lot. You know, self-help and self-development is separate from the speak of the universe.

Like when the secret first came out and everything like that, you know, I watched that video and it was very much about, I’m gonna put this picture of this house on the wall, I’m gonna get it right. You know, it was all about like, what can I get? You know? I’m not throwing shade at it, I’m just saying it just is very grabby

Jeffrey: It’s, it’s really interesting and I think that, In some ways, like it’s an unfortunate [00:25:00]side of human nature to approach something good and then say, how can I exploit this? Like, how can I get, how, how can I use this for all it’s worth for me? And I think that that really gets to I guess what I, I shouldn’t say what religion is good for, but like the, I, I think conversations around spirituality with the people in our lives are a really good opportunity to, to check that.

Like, that’s, that’s one of the reasons why I like discussing spirituality with folks because it feels like an opportunity to identify ways in which, you know, maybe we’re, maybe we could be thinking about ways to be good to the universe in return and what can we. , what can we contribute to, to the cosmos around us as opposed to what can we extract for, for ourselves right now?

Obviously we need to get, we need to get good [00:26:00] stuff too. But I think having, having an attitude of generosity for the universe is also really helpful in spiritual conversations. Can help Facilit facilitate that.

De’Vannon: It’s balance, man. This is what I’m saying. This is, there was nothing wrong with us doing all the cocaine and talking about Lindsay Loja and Paris Hilton, but we should have talked about something spiritual too, you know?

So, yeah. So get, get all you want, but give too. So what I. What I hate is when I have friends who I’ve known forever and talk to all the time, who never talk about anything spiritual. And then like when something happens to like one of their kids or something bad happens and they take the social media wanting all this prayer, and suddenly everything is Jesus in my faith.

And I’m all like, bitch, I didn’t know this about you, . Wait. Oh man, where’d this come from? .

Jeffrey: And that’s, that’s really interesting. Like, I think that one [00:27:00] of the, one of the really interesting things that or, or an interesting topic that I find myself discussing with like new friends is like, what, what is spirituality even for, like, what’s, what’s the utility in being a spiritual person or things like that.

And, and I feel like what, what you’re describing is, is something that a lot of people. we’re told religion was for right. Like this is, this is your channel to go to someone or something that’s more powerful than you because they can do things that you cannot. Mm-hmm. . So once, once you like, reach a spot in which you realize that you can’t, you don’t have the control that you want you don’t have the resources or the talents or you know, the, the scope in order to realize what you want, then what do you go to?

You go to your, your religion to try and see, okay, well is there anything [00:28:00] here that can help me? Now that I’ve exhausted everything

De’Vannon: that I can do,

I want people to stop looking at God as a means to an end though, because none of us want some, want some food coming around just when they want some shit from us. Like nobody wants that. And so, God lets us abuse him like that , you know, because he’s really nice. But ,

Jeffrey: I think it’s, I think it’s really interesting, like, because a lot of, a lot of the thought around like asking, asking God for things doesn’t seem to take into account like where that thing is going to come from.

So, you know, I, I think, I think we’re all familiar with like this idea of two people fraying that their sports team wins the same match. Well, okay. It’s, I think it’s pretty clear to see like where the interests are aligned there. Or we’re [00:29:00] not aligned there. Like that’s, that’s pretty, that’s pretty base level.

But then even in the Bible, you’ve got the, the problem of job in that, oh, job loses everything, has no idea why he’s lost it. and ends up, ends up saying, you know, I, I want to file a complaint with God. Essentially asks like if God had a manager job, would’ve asked to see him or demanded to speak with him.

And you know, at the, at the end of it, we see God just saying to Job, look, you don’t even understand why the ocean stops at the beach. Like you don’t, you don’t know how any of this works and you want to file a complaint with, with me and how, and how it works. Like this is just beyond your understanding.

The system is so complex. And, and I think that, you know, like that that human desire for there to be someone making things right in the [00:30:00] end has been part of, that’s been part of us for as long as we’ve been a species as far as, as far as I can tell. And. Like when to, to, to bring it back to like asking God for things or just like demanding things.

I think I think that as, as far as the picture of God has been painted in like the Hebrew Bible and, and the New Testament, this God seems to understand and, you know, not really begrudge humans of of asking him for things. But there’s, there’s something bigger. There’s always something bigger at play than, than what we want.

And you know, the Apostle James says that if, if anyone lacks then they can ask for wisdom and God you know, God’s not going to begrudge them that. And [00:31:00] so I think like asking, asking for things like wisdom that don’t need to come from somewhere else, like, that’s not going to disrupt any other part of the system.

The way asking for rain or asking for money or asking for, you know, a child or things like that might, I think asking to have more of that divine perspective I think, I think God will, God will make it rain on that front, right? Yes. But, yeah. Yeah. But, but no, I, I don’t, I don’t think God gets annoyed by, by us asking things.

And I, I, I agree with you. Like he is, he puts up with a lot of our bullshit because he is nice. But I think he’s also wise and he knows that we’re just children and we’re doing the best we

De’Vannon: can. I know he’s not angry. I’m angry on his behalf. I’m like, I want y’all to see that he’s a person, he’s like a human without flesh, whatever personalities we have.

What, you know, he’s that. The more, because we’re [00:32:00] made in his image, you know, we’re just like little versions of him. So his feelings to get hurt and stuff like that, though he possesses the capacity could be completely objective in spite of his feelings being hurt. So I just want people to see like the humanity in God.

Mm-hmm. , even though he’s totally divine, and yeah, we can ask for everything, but still, he’s like a person and you know, you know, he, he has feelings. Yeah. ,

Jeffrey: that was, and if you read the, the Old Testament prophets, you’ll see that.

De’Vannon: See just best feelings. You know what, I don’t. , you know, so we’re not gonna be on this earth forever, and eventually we’re gonna look at God in the face.

You know, our relationship with him cannot just have been transactional the whole time. You know, at what point are we gonna just get close to him for who he is and just talk, just, you know, know him. Mm-hmm. , you know, and I get off my soapbox on that. I wanna comment on something that you had mentioned earlier about your, like your, your family, friends, relatives, associates, saying like, they don’t, they’re trying to figure [00:33:00] out what it means to be American and to be Christian.

So I just wanna say that to be an American is like a blank slate. You know, this country doesn’t have its own language. We don’t have a national religion. Like you can’t speak American, like you can’t write American , you know, this country. It’s just like, oh, somebody says just like a white, well, they took a, like a, a, a dry race board, such as you have behind you , and, and there was a bunch of indigenous people on it, and then they like, kind of wiped the majority of those out.

And then they, they just took, you know, when we went down to African and snatched people and threw them in there and, you know, and just like pieced it together, you know? So to be an American is what I, I don’t really know. It’s like this, whatever do you make of it, you know? Allegedly, it’s supposed to be a whole lot of freedoms here, but that’s not the case.

But there’s no like, say, like, you know, Italian, you know, culture, you know, rooted in us and stuff like that. You know, there’s [00:34:00] no, Americans have pasta, you know, there’s no, you know, the French have their crepes, you know, you know, there’s no like American. You know, so it’s whatevs.

Jeffrey: I mean, we got serving sizes, right?

we got we got, we got the supersize, we got the drive through . We got

De’Vannon: things that the world laughs us about. So we have the golden arches. McDonald’s. Yeah. Fast food capital. We’re the fast food capital of the world. Arah,

And what does it mean to be Christian? Well, you know, that’s also very, very, very, very vague because you have many different denominations, you know, that are all supposed to be following, you know, the same God. But it seems like we can’t get on the same page. So I think what it means to be both of these things, American and Christian, is very individualized.

And I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. I think it’s a beautiful thing because it requires each of us to get to know [00:35:00] who God is for ourselves to see what exactly Christianity is gonna look like for us. Go ahead.

Jeffrey: It’s, it’s interesting how much of religion comes down to identity politics. Like so much of, so much of what it means to be a Christian comes down to what that individual means by Christian.

Cuz you can talk to a thousand different people who would say I’m a Christian, and then ask, okay, well what, what about you makes you a Christian? Or, or what, what does that mean for, for you? How does that make your life different from what it would be otherwise? And you can get a thousand different responses.

And so, you know, granted, like many of them will say, oh, well I [00:36:00] believe in the Niacine creed. I believe in the Apostles Creed. You know, I, I subscribe to this, or, or, or that. But ultimately I think the reasons why, We take on labels is because we want to, we want to know where we fit into the world. And identity politics is a really big part of that.

But the

De’Vannon: danger there is letting how another group of people define themselves define you, or how a certain group of people want to define you. Define you. And so then, so you’re trusting that they’re right and that, and you’re believing that you’re wrong. And which is how I entered into Christianity, believing the guy up in the pool pit knew better than me.

And so then I would bend my mind. Yeah. Whether I dis whether I agree with what he was saying or not, I would change my mind by force to go with what the guy on the stage was saying. Now, I would never do that again because I, I need, I see the falling in that. So you know this, that sort of person you’re describing is what we would call.

[00:37:00] Maybe somebody who’s not super experienced in their faith yet. Maybe it’s somebody new. Cuz as you grow in God, eventually you’ll get the point that you actually don’t need a preacher , you know, or a whole group of people to . Yeah. It’s, yeah,

Jeffrey: you don’t need it. But I don’t think I, I mean, it, it sounds like we’re touching on maybe one of the darker sides of like Bible study and I guess the way people approach this sort of topic in that we, we like having rubrics and we like having scorecards.

And, and so like when, when we’re dealing with topics of like morality or, or identity, then. It becomes like, I, I think humans have this this natural [00:38:00] gravitation to say, okay, well we know that there is good and bad in the world, and therefore, how do I make sure that I can identify what’s bad and how do I make sure that nobody thinks I’m bad?

Like, that’s, that’s something that I think a lot of people immediately try to figure out. And so that’s where the rules come in. And that’s, that’s where like the, okay, well I’ll, I’ll just bend my mind to believe what what I believe to believe what I believe. The people who tell me what to believe, believe

And I promise if you play that sentence back, it makes sense, . But that’s, that’s what we end up doing because we want to fit in. with a group of people that, that are going to affirm this idea that we’re good and that we’re, and that we’re doing, we’re doing what’s right. [00:39:00] And I think that when you get to know the teachings of Jesus, and if you, if you can approach if you can approach this God with who you know, like John says, God is love, like if you can approach someone who could be described as as love personified then I think, I think you start to understand that it’s not so much about checking boxes or, or meeting a rubric or criteria and signaling that you’re good so much as it is just changing from within.

And like all your core drives becoming more and more aligned to acting out of love for. For people around you, for people in general and for the world,

De’Vannon: for the whole wide world. Mm-hmm. , let’s spread some love. [00:40:00] So you, indeed, you make a point to say that this is not a Christian book, like right at the top of it.

So what, why, like, explain why. Like, I, I, I believe that I know why mm-hmm. , so, but I’d like to hear you say it.

Jeffrey: Sure. Well, it’s not a Christian book because it’s not trying, like in, in my discussion of the Bible, I’m. Really not trying to influence what you believe about God or what you believe about the person of Jesus.

Like that’s, that’s not what you’re going to, to find in there. And in fact, I try to be I try to not even say things like, you know, God says this without saying, [00:41:00] the ancient Israelites believed their God. Sid said this, like, I want, I want to keep the, the discussion focused on what the Bible is and what it says.

As opposed to trying to say because we have these shared beliefs, then we can agree that this is what it says. I think that that’s dangerous because it gates the, it gates the meaning of the Bible behind some sort of creed. And that’s just, I don’t think that’s a helpful way of approaching or understanding such an old set of documents.

You know, people appeal to the Bible when they’re making legislation. People appeal to the Bible when they’re making decisions as to who they’re going to date or marry. They appeal to the Bible when it comes to how they conduct themselves in society. And these are things that [00:42:00] affect so many people who aren’t Christian and, you know, don’t necessarily have any reason to, to have the Bible in their homes.

I think that it’s only fair that there should be resources that help everyone understand what this book that everyone’s appealing to says without them necessarily needing to either adopt beliefs that they don’t have or pretend. To adopt those beliefs in order to, to get the education. Like I think that this is something that a lot of people appeal to when making decisions that affect other people and those other people should have as much as, as much as possible and unbiased means of understanding what these people are appealing to.

De’Vannon: I’m gonna read two excerpts from your book that I feel like has to do with this right here, what we’re talking about. And we were talking about [00:43:00] what does it even mean to be a Christian? And you were saying from the book it says, with so many Christians joining the faith from different backgrounds, there was a lot of confusion as to what it was they were actually supposed to believe and do.

How did you theologians former prostitutes, wealthy merchants, illiterate slaves and other diverse people live their lives together, the follower of Jesus. And the other question posed in the book was, what should they do about the Jewish law? Then you say, if churches are a mix of Jewish and non-Jewish people, Jewish being of the bloodline of Abraham, non-Jewish, not of the bloodline of Abraham, as I understand it.

How would Christians handle the culture clashes? The Jews had methods and traditions of food, worship, work, sex. The other cultures had their own approaches to these. How would they start out? Cultural differences in a new mixed community? Mm-hmm. in the book of Acts, which I think is a titillating read now that I’m, you know, older and I know how to go now that I’m able to look through it myself.[00:44:00]

Mm-hmm. , one part that they never preached to me in the book of Acts growing up and all of them in their churches was about just how much the Jews hated the Gentiles. And they didn’t give a damn about what Jesus said about all y’all kissing makeup and get together , they. It really had a heart. The Jew, the Gentiles being people were not naturally the bloodline of Abraham, people who were outside of the culture of the nation of Israel, who God said when he rolled out that, that vision to Peter, he’s like, I want everybody, I cleansed everybody.

Everyone can now come. Those people were not trying to have none of this. You know? They were like, we don’t want them still. And so the book of Acts, a lot of it’s about, yeah, the Holy Ghost coming and speaking in tongues, but a lot of it’s also about, just hear what I just said. And what Jeffrey talks about in his book is, how the fuck do we infuse, you know, us together?

Because up until the time of Jesus, God had told them, be separate. You’re, you’re, you’re gonna be [00:45:00] holy and different than all these nations. And now all of a sudden he’s saying, nevermind everybody play nice together. And so they had a meeting in the book of, And when they came out of this meeting, they were like, okay, if you’re not of the bloodline of Abraham, then don’t like eat chit strangled meat, strangled to idols, or some shit like that.

It was like three tenets that all had to do with idol ideology or some shit like that.

Jeffrey: It was, yeah, don’t, don’t eat things that were strangled, don’t eat food sacrifice to idols, I believe. And I think it was abstain from sexual immorality. And then in in Galatians Paul, Paul says that like the, the main stipulation was care for the poor.

So like, I, I think in terms of acts, those first three were, were the things that James just kind of said, okay, all right, all right. Like, we’re, we’re not gonna hold everyone to, to keep the whole Torah. But, [00:46:00] but we, we do wanna make sure that, that we’re aligned on these three things. Is that the, is that the, the conversation that you’re referencing when, like Paul and Barnabas come down from, from Antioch and they, they have this whole discussion as to whether or not Gentile Christians need to abide by the, the Jewish law.

Right. It

De’Vannon: was a whole scene. It was a whole scene, yeah. And so whenever I reference the Bible, I try to call it the Hebrew Bible to remind people that we’re talking about a, a Middle Eastern book, you know, from all those years ago.

Jeffrey: And just, and, and just for, for your reference, the Hebrew Bible in the Bible are kind of two separate things.

So the Hebrew Bible refers to the Old Testament and like there’s today a, a lot of folks call it the TaNaK, long time ago, I think it was called like Miska or Mik. You can, you can tell I’m not a Hebrew scholar. But, [00:47:00] but yeah, the he, the Hebrew Bible. Refers to the books that we now preserve in the Christian Bible that were written in Hebrew.

So Old Testament books ranged in a different way for the Hebrew Bible, but that’s, that’s the Hebrew Bible. New Testament was written in Greek. And so like the Bible, you’re right, was written in a different part of the world. The Hebrew Bible is, is really in reference to, to the Old Testament.

Anything with acts would be, that would not be included in what most people refer to as the Hebrew Bible. Just, just so you know.

De’Vannon: Thank you for the education. You got it

And so it sounds to me like what they decided was that people can keep their own culture and like you said, agree on those things. And so, I think a reason why a lot of people are unhappy or they don’t make it very far with Christianity and following Christ is because they’re trying [00:48:00] to do too much. You know, God is not asking you to act like his people did over 2000 years ago.

He’s not. He’s asking you to not put anything else before him. And he said to basically treat everyone else nice and to get serious, you know about God. So when Jesus says the love, the Lord your God with all your heart and all your mind and the love of your neighbor as yourself, he says, basically everything boils down to those two things.

And so that’s why I’m a big proponent of people getting past, just asking God for stuff and actually getting to know him. You know, because you got to, any relationship we have with anybody cannot just be based on getting stuff from them. We have to go beyond that. Yeah. And so and so I think that we have more freedoms in Christ than what the church tries to let us know.

So this, so I don’t know. I don’t, I mean, I don’t think he could get any clearer than this. You know, God himself has said, do your culture, but just worship me first. You [00:49:00] know? I don’t,

Jeffrey: yeah. And, and I think, you know, to, if we were to, to bring all of this around to what you had originally brought up like what the early church was dealing with, like this this desire to remain faithful to this to these traditions which we, we still have these, these documents preserved today in the Old Testament but also wanting to, you know, wanting to welcome in people that did not have any of that context and in fact had very, very different contexts.

And this is, this is where I think that that command to love one another. Really starts showing what, what I maybe like most [00:50:00] or en or enjoy most about early Christian teaching which is you, you can’t necessarily know what the long range ripple effects of anything you do are gonna be you know, to, to someone in the first century.

I don’t know how much they, how, how, how much they would’ve known about the nutritional or scientific benefits of abstaining from non-kosher foods. You know, like to today, today there’s a lot of, there, there’s a lot of talk about like, going back and like trying to find the science to make these ancient commands make sense.

But that’s not necessarily what people were, were dealing with back then. Like they, they just had these traditions. They wanted to acknowledge And, and I think that what Jesus did was gave us this opportunity to say, [00:51:00] well, what if we instead of tried to check the right boxes? And what if instead of trying to see you know, who is, who is necessarily winning this game?

Or are we playing this game? Well what if instead we made it about acting out of love for, for those around us? Cuz while you can’t know the long range ripple effects of anything that you do you can know for sure whether or not you’re acting out of love for someone else. Like that’s something that you can always, you can always check.

And in many ways it’s kind of like the only thing that you can know when you’re doing something. So, like when I, I think that that’s a, a harder rule because it deals with. Becoming, you know, a transformed person. But it’s a simpler rule and I think that’s, that’s something that, that Jesus did. And I think that’s what, [00:52:00] that’s what gave the early church so much, so much appeal.

De’Vannon: So in other words, Jesus was like, way more chill, ,

Jeffrey: and in other ways, way not like I like. Yeah. The, this idea that this idea that you can, that you can come in from anywhere like this this kingdom of God is, is something completely different from the empire of. And, and this this faith tradition doesn’t rely on you being from a certain nation and then converting from, from one, you know, ethnic tradition to another.

It’s instead focused on you bringing yourself and and just using who [00:53:00] you are on behalf of, of those around you. Whether, you know, that’s, that looks like giving giving of your, your resources giving of your services just being compassionate to, to the poorer around you. Like that’s, that’s what we see in in the early church.

And yes, there, there was concern about, you know, there, there, there was concern about traditions and there was concern about teachings. But the. The general narrative that you’re seeing there in Acts is one more of opening up than than closing off. I love

De’Vannon: how Jesus broke. His own rules. So, you know, like when he was going through the cornfield and eating you know, on the Sabbath day and you know, and look back how and when he referenced how when David went into the temple, you know, and ate the holy show bread and stuff like that, you know, Jesus is like, yeah, the [00:54:00] rules are here, but if it comes down to it, you put people before rules.

Because I think he said something like, rules were made for people, not people for rules.

Jeffrey: The Sabbath was for man and not man for the Sabbath. Yeah,

De’Vannon: yeah. You know, and so. and the love part comes in when you go, yes, it’s AAB today, but I’m gonna heal this motherfucker anyway because he needs it. The rules be damned.

Yeah. You know, so a version of that today would be like, we’re gonna show love to this woman and let her get, get whatever abortion she needs if she wants it. We’re not going to be like, well, these are the rules, you know? So 10 year old girl, have the baby anyway, even though you just got weight. So,

Jeffrey: oh man. The, now I am, I am someone who enjoys petant or Petry a good deal. But no, the, define

De’Vannon: what that word is. .

Jeffrey: Petry. Okay. So I, [00:55:00] I am the guy who’s super fun at parties because I will, I will show up and be like, I, I am kind of like the All right. Well actually it was this, or, you know, like I’m, I’m, I’m very much like a social nit picker when it comes to like answering trivia games and, and things like that.

So respectfully annoying might be one way of putting it. So, so I do, I do enjoy picking, picking through the rules and lawyering around life. I’m not a lawyer, but that can be fun. However reducing someone’s life to this academic exercise of whether or not something is, is right or wrong according to the rules, I think is just, it’s dehumanizing.

It would be, yeah. It, and, and I think that’s a huge problem that that people, that [00:56:00] people in Christian circles, Are dealing with today when we, when we elevate this idea of being, of having a purity of creed but not, or, but elevating purity of creed over the way we actually treat other people. I think that, that, I think we could all do do a lot better on that

De’Vannon: front.

I’ll just say amen on that . But there’s, yeah, there’s just, there’s just so many rabbit holes can go down there. Yeah.

Jeffrey: Yeah. It’s, and, and it’s, it’s super frustrating. I mean, like, I, I grew up very much encouraged to, to look out for false doctrine and, you know, watch out for, for people that that might be trying to lead me astray and, and you know, just like be, be very play defensive when it came to [00:57:00]When it came to identifying with other people, and, you know, to, to some degree, I still, I still have a, a lot of that baggage today.

But I think that if you are, if you gate yourself and if you gate the ability to commune with other people behind making sure that you agree on things, then you just, not only, not only does that result in just less love shared in the world, which I think is a negative, but you also just cut yourself off from so many connections that you cut otherwise have.

And, and yeah, like that’s this, this idea of trying to make sure that someone is clear before, before being able to relate to them or before being able to think of them compassionately, I think is it’s a pretty big problem. Mm.

De’Vannon: [00:58:00] What he said, y’all exactly how he said it. So, so in your book till you get very clear about detailing, like where the Bible came from, what it is, and like you said, what it’s for mm-hmm.

and you say in there that the Bible didn’t, and I’ll paraphrase here, like basically magically fall out of heaven. No. So growing up, and this is a good thing because your book really does that high level view because in there you talk about how it’s important you compare the Bible to like a big 600,000 piece jigsaw puzzle.

Cause apparently many words are in the Bible. And so you’re driving the point home is that you have to get, you have to step very far. To get clear on the full scope of the Bible, what it is historically, how it’s organized in your book. You know, you talk about who really wrote the Bible, you know, there’s so many books we don’t know the authors, you know.

Yeah. From this time, you know, just cause someone’s name on the book doesn’t mean they, it doesn’t mean that they wrote it. So, growing up in church, [00:59:00] you know, I used to think, you know, they always say the words divinely inspired. So, and this, it just made it seem like the book was always there. So, so what can you tell us about like, how the bible, how it’s composed and it’s, you know?

Sure,

Jeffrey: sure. That is a, that is a huge question. Let me, let me try and, and distill this real quick. How the Bible’s composed. I think that in order, in order for us to talk about that, like the, the Bible. That we referenced today. And let’s, let’s just say, say it’s the Protestant Bible. For, for the purpose of this conversation you have the, the Old Testament, which that’s the first like three quarters of the Bible.

That is that is a collection of texts [01:00:00] that the Israelites preserved that in order to show their relationship with their God. New Testament was composed and preserved to help Christians and churches understand the teachings of Jesus and what to do about them. How were, how was, how those two works were composed is kind of different.

So let’s start with, let’s start with the Old Testament. Old Testament. You’ve got oral traditions. That, that people were just sharing, you know parents to, to children. Eventually these oral traditions become written traditions these written traditions get compiled into these literary documents of, of various types.

[01:01:00] Then these documents came together as part of larger literary works until eventually we have the tark which is, you know, the, the Hebrew Bible the, the books of the Old Testament. And so you have these who have these works of writing that fit together as a larger literary masterpiece. And so when we’re talking about the Old Testament, like how is it composed?

A lot of these works are older than the documents that we have today, because like they, they’ve just been preserved and and edited and, and I don’t say edited in a way that n necessarily means, like they were, they were, it’s, it’s not like you edit a document before you, you send it off [01:02:00] to, to a client or, or your teacher or something like that.

Like these are, these are just works that were in the works for, for a very long time. The writers had their rhetorical agendas and then they, they joined this larger library for the New Testament. It’s, that happened over a quicker period of. Followers of Jesus wrote down things that Jesus had said and then also wrote down things that Jesus followers said and did.

And so these documents got passed around a lot by early groups of Jesus followers called churches. Eventually, a couple hundred years later, by about the, the fourth century in the common era, most like every, every book that we have in the New Testament today was relatively known and used by [01:03:00] churches.

It wasn’t until over a thousand years later that we actually got this definitive cannon of what books belong in what we call the New Testament today. So long, long answer to that question. Old Testament oral traditions People speaking out on, on behalf of Israel’s God. People preserving that in order to tell that story of Israel and their God.

New Testament got this person called Jesus. People write down what he wrote. People write down what his followers did. And eventually the useful documents or the ones that a lot of people found useful got preserved today.

De’Vannon: Thank you for that breakdown. I think you did an incredible and spectacular outstanding job.

And so thank you . Woo. And so, absolutely. And so there’s a video on your YouTube channel called [01:04:00] 12 Non-Trivial Facts about the Bible, and I feel like as you said in that video, you wish you had known these facts before you got started reading it. Yeah, I think that that’s a very good video as well.

You know, I’m driving all these points home to make the point that when people are reading the Bible, either before they start or if they never thought of it like this before. So really take a step back and take that high level view, you know, and see historically how did this all come together? You know, you know what’s what.

And so the last thing that we’re gonna talk about is we begin to wrap up here. You know, in your book, a part that I felt like was very special was how you talked about like the covenants. Mm-hmm. you know, you talked about the covenant of Abraham with Israel, Moses, you know, with David and how we have our covenant in Jesus Christ.

And so, you know, this, this beckons back to the whole point of God trying to reach out and communicate with us, get on our level. The fact that he was willing to even come down in the whirlwind and [01:05:00] talk to Job, read him for filth basically, you know, and then turn around and bless him the way he did. You know, God is Big O God.

He doesn’t have to, to to talk to us. You know, like he’s our equal, you know, if he doesn’t want to, but he’s been trying to just have a relationship with us, you know, the whole time. You know? And so I appreciate it, the fact that you highlighted all the different covenants in what they mean.

Jeffrey: I’m glad, I’m glad that was helpful.

And, you know, for, for those listening, this is, this is one of the things that I do in the book to try and make this enormous collection of documents, the Bible a little bit easier to, to grasp. If you think of, you know, this 600,000 piece jigsaw puzzle I pull out four, four parts of the Bible that can almost be used as the corner pieces.

And that can kind of frame [01:06:00] the way the way the Bible fits together in your mind in, in a pretty, in a pretty straightforward fashion. So those, those four covenants are the, and, and a, and a covenant kind of using antiquated language here. But the Bible’s an old book, so deal with it, I guess.

De’Vannon: deal with it. .

Jeffrey: Yeah. So so you’ve, you’ve got these, these old like solemn agreements that that God makes with with a handful of figures in Israel’s history. And, you know, Devana, and obviously you’ve already read this, but these, these all relate to God’s presence in the world and God’s blessing for the people of the world.

[01:07:00] And so understanding these four high points between God and Abraham, Between God and Moses and the nation of Israel, between God and David and Jerusalem. And then also between God and Christ and and the whole world. Understanding those points in the relationship really bring the rest of the Bible into focus.

De’Vannon: Yeah. Yo, this book is practical. It doesn’t have to be this overly spiritual woo woo thing, you know, it’s practical. I wrote a blog on my website called The Common Sense of the 10 Commandments to break down how practical God thinks, you know, when he tells us to do something. It’s for like a practical, physical reason.

It’s not just like, For fuck sakes or for rules sake, you know, or just to, you know, just to like have shit. So I’m gonna throw a little bit of shade at, at the Catholic church before I give you the floor for the last word. I feel like so much shit about all, you know, most organized [01:08:00] religions and especially the Catholic church, is just so extra for no purpose that I can articulate, you know, what the fuck are all the flowy robes and the, the goddamn processes, the protocols, all the pump, all the circumstance.

You know, I, I think all of that is to just like, mind fuck you and to put you in a, a state of suggestibility so that you can’t, you’re focusing on so much shit. You can’t really be critical of them. I just, I think that they’re just like so over the top. And for me of all people to say something over the top, that is a big damn deal because I am an extra bitch , you know, all day long.

I am a Sagittarius and I don’t know when to quit. And so for me to say, you know, I got four felonies to prove that. And so for me to, so for me to say the Catholic church has gone too far, That that’s a big deal. So I just wanted to throw a little bit of shade at them for not being simple. And practical and easy to understand like Jesus is

Jeffrey: Turns out [01:09:00] turns out running an empire is a little bit more complex than preaching a sermon sometimes.

De’Vannon: Oh my God, when, when you say that, I’m getting parallels between the Galactic empire and Emperor Palpetine and the Pope. I think they’re the same people. I know it .

Jeffrey: It’s Palpetine, not papain. Which sounds like some sort of only milks chocolate milk mixed chocolate milk drink.

De’Vannon: Do the Pope is the Sy Lord. He is the Sy Lord. this whole time . Well,

Jeffrey: no. Well, no. Hold on. I’m Pope Francis. Has gotta be the nicest sy Lord in the universe though, if that’s, if that’s the case. I mean like, he seems like a pretty nice guy.

De’Vannon: That’s until he executes order 66. It’s[01:10:00]

Jeffrey: It’s, it’s funny like the, you know, I, I can appreciate, I, I appreciate tradition. I think tradition has so much, has, so, like, there, there’s, there’s so much of what’s cool about being human bound up in tradition gating understanding behind, behind behind regalia or, or behind I guess an ordeal.

Can I, I don’t think that’s as good.

De’Vannon: Okay, so tradition’s cute, but I see too much sacrifice of people on behalf of the traditions, you know, is my thing. And then I [01:11:00] don’t get where it comes from. So did God tell them to write out all these prayers and all of these things that you have to do before you qualify to be baptized or before you qualify?

I heard the word say, as long as you have faith you can believe, not that you have to attend a catechism class. You know? So,

Jeffrey: yeah. And that, and that kind of gets, that gets back to what we were talking about earlier, right? Like using rubrics to show that you’re good instead of, instead of what’s within, like how, how do we, how do we get people to behave sort of love for each other and for

De’Vannon: the world?

I say, take all the robes off and just put on fucking clothes and sit down and say what you got to say, . I’m done with it. There we go. But with that, Jeffrey, I thank you. You heard it

Jeffrey: here first, folks, .

De’Vannon: So Jeffrey, thank you for your time. I want you to again, his website is overview bible.com. His YouTube channel [01:12:00] is the same.

The book is The Beginner’s Guide on How to Read the Bible, A non preachy, jargon-free handbook to what the Bible is, where it came from, and what it’s all about. The last word, anything you wanna say to all these beautiful bitches in the world? .

Jeffrey: Hello? . No, no. The last word. The, the last word should not be.

Hello. No. Thank you so much, Devon, for, for having me here. I, I absolutely love talking about this. And you know, if this, if you’re listening and this makes you curious about, about this book, I just want you to know this is. The Bible isn’t going anywhere. It’s been around for a long time. And it’s something that you can know just as well as anyone who believes it.

And you, you don’t necessarily need to, you don’t need to change anything about yourself in order to understand what, what this is. It’s [01:13:00] at the end of the day, this is information. This is something that is important to a lot of people and you, you don’t need to adopt what someone else says about this information in order for you to know it.

It’s very knowable.

De’Vannon: Hallelujah tabernacle and praise .

Thank you all so much for taking time to listen to the Sex Drugs and Jesus podcast. It really means everything to me. Look, if you love the show, you can find more information and resources at SexDrugsAndJesus.com or wherever you listen to your podcast. Feel free to reach out to me directly at DeVannon@SexDrugsAndJesus.com and on Twitter and Facebook as well.

My name is De’Vannon, and it’s been wonderful being your host today. And just remember that everything is [01:14:00] gonna be all right.

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