repelled by job what comes to mind to me when i hear that is bob dylan's highway 61 where he talks about abe and god you know where do you want this killing done out on highway 61 because people are also repelled by the story of abraham yeah and isaac from the bible but but job as well so why why are they repelled by it

well the the way the story is set up is that Job, who is a great man and a good man, as I saw in your notes, the finest man and the most respected man in his world, as the narrative sets him up, as God describes him.

And part of what God is doing is describing this wonderful person to a member of the heavenly court that is called the Satan.

And the Satan, Ha-Satan, says, well, no wonder he's so good.

You've given him everything.

If you were he's the most he's rich, he's whatever.

If you were to take his blessings away, he would curse you to your face.

So yeah, there's maybe something going on here.

What kind of faith produces someone capable of resisting evil? And what kind of faith produces people who are comfortable with evil? And so I, My question for you to kick us off, David, is what have you learned over the course of your career, starting with that book to now, about how Christianity has become captured by toxic ideology? And what are the lessons that we can learn from those who helped then now?

Nazism was an ultra-nationalist, racist, xenophobic movement that also...

Knotted in the direction of.

Restoring.

Christianity.

And fighting back secularism and liberalism and quote unquote the Jews.

So.

Tell us why you wrote Changing Our Mind and tell us also what happened to you after it was published.

Why in the world is this book in the Bible?

Right.

Okay.

Um, go to college, took a Judaism class and job is back, took a wisdom literature class.

Job is job is there.

I went to seminary, started to study the Holocaust.

It turned out that job is very important in Holocaust theology for the Jewish community.

What did it take for you to see it from the other side, from the other

Why do you think, in your opinion, why do you think the church is is so hell-bent on this topic as being the big one, as opposed to like all the others got you some criticism, but this one got you the biggest, and it seems to be the biggest struggle that we face.

Well, it does help to contextualise a little bit.

When...

As you say, the level of passion that an issue arouses is often highly contextual to the moment.

But it's really hard, for example, to remember this moment.

After 9-11, when the U.S. was attacked, we freaked out.

So we went to war, not only in Afghanistan against the Taliban, but in Iraq.

Is that sort of what your take is, like what you were just saying, or is there more to that thought process?

So I'm wondering how similar that is or different it is for you?

I describe my calling as having three stages that build on each other.

As a 16 year old, I felt called to be a Christian.

I had an evangelical born-again experience.

As a 17 year old, I felt called to be a pastor.

So we have pastor in common.

And my high school yearbook says I was going to be a Southern Baptist pastor.

um you must have thought about it do i do i write about something or i'm just always having to struggle with these people uh and in some kind of a fight or having to explain myself or do i find a subject and here you know ethics could do this where we've all got ethical issues in you know in common we're all dealing with the same world ethically regardless of where we're coming up from theologically or ecclesiologically or whatever it is um that maybe helped you find that subject uh while you were here although that also means that some of your some of your issues you've got to deal with with pertaining to the evangelical world that you are in are a little bit on delay right you're gonna put that off till later

[laughs]

... um, it turned out a whole youth weekend was, was all planned and was starting in a couple of hours, and four days later I was a convert.

So I was a Southern Baptist born again late '70s convert.

Um, and it was a pretty narrow fit, but it, it kinda worked for me at the time.

Um, and I became a loyal Southern Baptist.

Now, Southern Baptists at that point had more range and more flexibility than the real rigid Southern Baptists that we've known since the '90s, and I lived through that story.

But I felt called to be a Christian.

Mm-hmm.