Ep 8: Contextual Healing with Aaron Higashi

00:00(upbeat music)

00:02- And then that sort of got read back

00:03into biblical interpretation.

00:05- We're gonna get back to it, but I have to say,

00:07you keep saying this as though you can interpret the Bible

00:11when obviously that can't be right.

00:14It's the perfect word of God.

00:16- You just avoid all interpretation, am I wrong?

00:19I thought that's how it's supposed to work here.

00:21- Some people think so, some people absolutely hold that

00:24and that's often one of the biggest difficulties

00:27you encounter in trying to talk to people about the Bible.

00:30(upbeat music)

00:33- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:36- And I'm Dan Beecher.

00:38- And this is the Data Over Dogma podcast.

00:40Welcome to today's episode.

00:42We've got a great one for you today.

00:45- Indeed, we have a guest on.

00:48This is, here's an interesting thing, Dan.

00:50I discovered you when I just on TikTok

00:55when we all sort of during the pandemic dove

00:59into our phones as the last place

01:02that we could find any kind of sanity in the universe.

01:05And, you know, I found your content very interesting

01:09and there was one other guy whose biblical content

01:13I found fascinating and honest and interesting

01:18and engaging.

01:21And that is our guest today, Aaron Higashi.

01:23Aaron, welcome, hello.

01:25Thanks for coming on the show.

01:26- I thought you were gonna say somebody else after all that.

01:28(laughing)

01:29- Not this guy, but this guy is almost as good

01:32as that other guy. - We couldn't get him.

01:34- This guy is like at most fourth down on the list.

01:39- That's a great place to be in.

01:41Hi, I'm very happy to be on the show.

01:44- Well, welcome.

01:45Aaron, you are like Dan, a public facing scholar.

01:51Excuse me, can you tell us a little bit

01:53about your sort of biological, you could tell us about that,

01:57but you're biographical history.

01:58Tell us a little bit about where you're coming from,

02:02how you know so much about the Bible,

02:03all of that sort of stuff.

02:04- Oh, man.

02:05Yeah, sure, I did most of my growing up

02:08in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

02:10I took a first-- - No Christians there.

02:12- No, not a single one, actually.

02:14A voided wasteland of Christianity.

02:17Actually, I grew up like a stone throw away

02:19from a new life church, all these mega churches

02:21in Colorado Springs, non-denominational,

02:24which is like evangelical,

02:25but without any accountability to an institution

02:27or something like that.

02:29So that's the environment that I grew up in

02:31and originally attended church in and high school and stuff.

02:34I did my first take at college

02:36at Colorado State University and for Collins.

02:39I wanted to be a writer, either journalism

02:43I failed out for lack of maturity

02:43or creative writing.

02:47and move back in with my parents.

02:49- And I'm just gonna butt in and say

02:51that there's something very appealing to me

02:55about the fact that I'm the only person on this podcast

02:57who's never failed out of a college

02:59than a kid out of a college.

03:00- Well, it's a great experience, you should try it.

03:02- I'm amazed.

03:03- You're also the only person who's not failed

03:05out of a college in Northern Colorado.

03:08(laughing)

03:09- That's right, the two universities.

03:11- I went to University of Northern Colorado

03:14in Greeley, which is about 30 minutes away

03:16from CSU over in Fort Collins.

03:19I used to go to parties in Fort Collins at CSU.

03:22- They're the best parties or the worst

03:24depending on what you're looking for.

03:27Less cows, more and more alcohol, I think.

03:29- Yeah, it doesn't smell as bad in Fort Collins.

03:33- Differently bad, differently bad.

03:35So after I failed out of there,

03:38I moved in with my parents

03:39and started going to community college.

03:41And I happened across a philosophy class

03:44I took at a community college.

03:45And I just, I fell in love with philosophy.

03:48Also, it was the only thing that I was any good at

03:50because a lot of it's just arguing

03:52and writing, which I love to do.

03:55So I changed my major to philosophy.

03:57I went to the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs,

03:59which has a beautiful campus seated in the mountains there

04:02and central Colorado Springs.

04:03And I took a minor in religious studies

04:08and took the only religion classes they had on offer,

04:10which is like an introduction to New Testament

04:12and introduction to Old Testament.

04:14And that's where I encountered academic biblical studies

04:17for the first time.

04:18I read my first Bart Ehrman book,

04:20which I still own to this day is still marked up

04:23in all my notes.

04:24And I just, it just blew my mind

04:26that you could think about this stuff

04:29from an academic perspective.

04:31I had grown up in this environment

04:32sort of in and out of different churches,

04:34pretty unsatisfied with that experience.

04:37And it just opened like every door in my mind

04:40to, you could do this.

04:42You could spend your life studying this

04:44in a different sort of way.

04:45And so I graduated from there

04:47and I was either gonna go to an applied ethics program

04:50at Oregon State or is gonna go to a biblical studies program

04:53at Providence College in Rhode Island.

04:55Those two things probably seem very different

04:57from each other.

04:58But the underlying goal was the same.

05:00I wanted to figure out how people were interpreting the Bible

05:03and then applying it,

05:04especially in like a social and political context.

05:07'Cause this is back and I'm old.

05:09So maybe not as old as everybody else,

05:12but older than most of my TikTok followers probably.

05:15So this is back in like,

05:17I mean, I went to college in 2004,

05:19started with a graduate in 2008.

05:20So a while ago,

05:21but this is in the middle of the Bush administration.

05:23We have a lot of Bible believe in folks

05:25using lots of Bible as a justification

05:28for this or that political policy

05:30or this or that war on terror

05:31or this or that, you know, funding proposal and stuff.

05:34And I wanted to know what that process was like.

05:36How do we get politics and ethics out of the Bible?

05:40So I was either gonna attack that from either end ethics

05:42or biblical studies.

05:44My then girlfriend now wife got into her dream program

05:47at Brown doing public health.

05:48So we went up to Providence college.

05:51I got a master's in biblical studies

05:53and then because you can't do anything

05:54with a master's in biblical studies,

05:56I applied to PhD programs and didn't get into like any,

05:59but I did get an offer to do a second master's

06:03at Chicago Theological Seminary

06:05with sort of the implication that, you know,

06:08if you take a second master's here,

06:09then maybe we will let you into our PhD program

06:12the following year.

06:13So I did a one year master's there.

06:15- So I'm gonna interrupt real quick

06:17because Dan, you're also the only one here

06:19who has not had to do a second master's

06:21'cause they couldn't get into a PhD program.

06:24- Let's see, it's a rite of passage though.

06:27- It's amazing.

06:27You guys are basically the same person.

06:31- Well, Dan, I'm kicking you off.

06:32Aaron, you're in, I'm tagging him out.

06:35- And for me it was, I had been accepted

06:39to go to Claremont's PhD right after my bachelor's.

06:42But I also got accepted to this master's program at Oxford.

06:45And I was like, no offense Claremont,

06:47but you're not making it worth my while here.

06:52So I'm gonna go to Oxford.

06:53I'm gonna defer 'cause it's a one year master's program.

06:56I was like, I will defer for a year.

06:58If I don't get into a better program,

06:59I've still got Claremont.

07:01- That's a nice backup time.

07:03- Well, it was for a minute,

07:06but I didn't get into a better program.

07:08And then I was like, okay, well, I still got Claremont.

07:10And then they emailed me and they were like,

07:12turns out we're gonna take this year

07:14and just retool the whole program.

07:17So we're not accepting students.

07:19So find something else to do.

07:22And yeah, so then I--

07:24- Occupying time.

07:25- Basically.

07:25And so I had been accepted the previous year

07:28to Trinity Western University's master's degree

07:31in biblical studies.

07:31So like hurriedly emailed them.

07:34And I was like, is your application window still open?

07:37And it was.

07:38And so I was able to get into that most master's program.

07:42So I know exactly where you're coming from.

07:45- Basically the two of you are just bumbling

07:47your way through degrees.

07:48- Yeah, that's kind of how it works, man.

07:50That's how you end up piling them up.

07:52Otherwise it would have been a straight shot, right?

07:54- Yeah, yeah.

07:55- Such is not the case.

07:56I really liked Chicago Theological Seminary's program.

08:01It was the only program,

08:02I remember googling around trying to find one.

08:04And it was the only program that had hermeneutics

08:07in the title.

08:07And that was really what I was interested

08:08at the interpretive process.

08:11- I'm glad you brought that up

08:12because I don't know what that word means.

08:14So if you'll just help me out with that.

08:17- It's really just an obnoxiously fancy word

08:19for interpretation.

08:21But it also sort of came to be used

08:24to describe a field of philosophy

08:27in the continental tradition in particular

08:30that focuses on how we interpret texts in general.

08:34And then that sort of got read back into biblical interpretation

08:37and became a word that interpreters broadly use

08:41to talk about biblical interpretation in particular.

08:43- We're gonna get back to it, but I have to say,

08:46you keep saying this as though you can interpret the Bible

08:50when obviously that can't be right.

08:52It's the perfect word of God.

08:54- You just worried about interpretation, am I wrong?

08:57I thought that's how it's supposed to work here.

08:59- Some people think so, some people absolutely hold that.

09:02And that's often one of the biggest difficulties

09:06you encounter in trying to talk to people about the Bible.

09:11- So I really wanted a program that focused on that.

09:13And Chicago Theological Seminary had a program

09:16called Bible, Culture, and Hermeneutics.

09:18And that's what I signed up for and got into

09:20and really fell in love with.

09:22And that's what my PhD is in today.

09:25So that's how I know at least a couple of things

09:28about the Bible.

09:29I specialize in Hebrew Bible.

09:32You gotta pick something and only really like nerds

09:35and saints do New Testament.

09:36So I wanna do a fun stuff in Hebrew Bible.

09:40- Yeah, nothing nerdy at all about Hebrew Bible.

09:42- That's much cooler, that's much cooler.

09:45- Let me ask you this.

09:47In terms of, you mentioned earlier that when you first started,

09:52when you first realized that this was a study,

09:54an academic study, you compared the academic perspective

10:00to what you had been raised with.

10:01Can you talk a little bit about the difference

10:05between sort of a lay person, a lay believer's study

10:10of the Bible and what you experienced in academia?

10:15- Yeah, lay people tend through no folder.

10:18They're on tend to read the Bible

10:20as a repository of dogma and sort of crystallized

10:25in like a more pure form.

10:27And their job is just to go to the text

10:30and then to derive, sort of re-derive over and over again,

10:33dogmatic beliefs that they're already committed to.

10:36So they believe that God is good.

10:38So they find passages in the Bible

10:40that seem to correspond to the idea that God is good.

10:42They think that Jesus raised us as risen from the dead.

10:45So they find passage in the Bible.

10:47Jesus rises from the dead.

10:48And so the Bible is just a resource to sort of affirm things

10:53that they've already come to believe

10:55as a result of tradition and church practice.

10:57And that's not inherently bad,

11:02but there's a lot more ways that you can interpret the Bible.

11:04And so academics just bring a lot more tools to the table

11:08to be able to engage with the Bible.

11:10So there's historical tools to be able to set the text

11:13in its original context.

11:14There are linguistic tools to be able to get a better grasp

11:17with the original languages.

11:19There's literary tools to be able to parse apart

11:22the different sections of the text

11:23and to speculate about its origins

11:25and its different kinds of theories of composition.

11:29There are more fancy philosophical and ideological tools

11:32to be able to analyze the rhetoric of different authors

11:35and expectations of different audiences.

11:39So it's just, it's an entire bag of lenses or tools

11:44to bring to the text that allow you to ask

11:47more sophisticated questions.

11:49What is this authors, who is the author?

11:52At what point in history might they be situated?

11:55To whom are they speaking?

11:57What are their immediate, spiritual, ideological,

12:00communal needs?

12:02How does this text help serve those spiritual,

12:05ideological, communal needs?

12:07And then asking those sorts of questions

12:09in a variety of different ways over time.

12:12And that's a lot of what biblical scholarship is,

12:15is trying to probe the text with these tools.

12:17And it felt very empowering to me

12:19because before you're not really doing anything,

12:22the work has already been done,

12:23the dogma has already been laid out.

12:25It's a very circular and sort of insular process.

12:28You go to the book for the dogma

12:29that you already had to begin with

12:31and vice and over and over again.

12:33But now you can discover things

12:35or at least put forward new hypotheses

12:37about why the stuff in the text is working

12:40and the way it is using these tools.

12:42And it puts you in charge of the process

12:45of biblical interpretation.

12:47And so for people, I think in particular,

12:50who felt like they had been hurt by the Bible in some way

12:54or by Christian faith or dogma in some way,

12:57the ability to go back and undo some of that

13:00with these tools and to think differently about the text

13:04is an enormous relief and I think can be very healing as well.

13:09- I think that's fascinating.

13:11One of the things that I wonder about,

13:15I love that you're coming at it from that angle,

13:18from the angle of this being a healing process

13:22or this being an empowering process.

13:25I do wonder however, you know,

13:27one of the things that our show has done for me

13:30and that both of your content on TikTok,

13:32you and Dan, your content on TikTok has done

13:36is to expose me to viewpoints about the Bible

13:41that are true, but were I a believer

13:47would be very challenging to a lot of those dogmas

13:49that you were talking about before.

13:52Did you encounter challenge in your academic career

13:56that either made things, made your beliefs?

14:01I don't know, difficult or that rocked you

14:09in some sort of way that you weren't prepared for?

14:12- It's been like a slow,

14:14it's a gradual process over time,

14:16but yeah, it's a, I mean,

14:20what I sort of end up doing is you go to the biblical texts

14:25without, you know, from a different perspective

14:27rather than a dogmatic perspective

14:29and you encounter their morally problematic stories,

14:34you encounter there a God that defies many of your expectations

14:37about what you think God is supposed to be like.

14:40And then you have to do something with that

14:42and that process can be challenging

14:44on a number of a personal professional psychological,

14:47it can be challenging on a number of levels.

14:49I think for me it was still exciting though

14:52because I got to be the one who decided

14:55how to reconcile those things.

14:57It wasn't somebody telling me,

14:58you know, maybe God seems evil here,

15:00but it's really, you know,

15:03it's actually all works out for the good

15:05or it's actually justified that these babies are dying

15:07or that these people are being enslaved

15:09or this genocide is being done or something like that.

15:11I got to be the one who decides

15:14maybe this just isn't God.

15:16Maybe this is just rhetoric.

15:17Maybe this is just ideology.

15:19Maybe this is just something that felt right for them there

15:24at that time or is rhetorically useful for them there

15:27at the time, but no longer has any use for me.

15:30Maybe it did genuinely facilitate some personal, you know,

15:34religious conviction at the time, but now it doesn't.

15:38And so it's, it's, you sort of feel like a monkey

15:42swinging through trees, you're letting grow of one branch

15:45as you are grasping onto another,

15:48but now at least you get to be the one who decides

15:50which branches you are grasping onto

15:52and which you're letting go of.

15:53- And I think that's a big part of a lot of the public

15:57discourse about how we approach the Bible

16:00is who gets to decide.

16:01It seems like a lot of the reasons that the Bible

16:05is not very dynamic, that we already know everything

16:07that it is allowed to say, everything that it says is,

16:11because it's being used primarily

16:13to structure values and power.

16:15It's serving the interests of people largely

16:17in positions of power, whether it is on a national level,

16:21a state level, a congregational level,

16:23even within a family, the Bible can be used

16:28to structure powers and value.

16:30And to say, well, I'm gonna look at it this way

16:33and suddenly that power structure just collapses

16:36as a threat to a lot of that tradition

16:41that has spent so long constructing this approach

16:45to the Bible, this hermeneutic, to protect itself.

16:49And I appreciate a video that you published

16:53a little bit ago where you addressed some

16:55of the different theologies that people bring to the text

16:59and how a lot of these different theologies,

17:01the one that I'm most familiar with

17:03is probably liberation theology is an approach

17:06to the Bible that developed a bit ago,

17:10particularly outside of the United States

17:12as a way to kind of irrigate some power

17:15to the readers and reread the text

17:18in a way that served the interest of the underdog,

17:21which historically has not been the person,

17:24the group in charge of interpretation.

17:27And you said that all these other approaches

17:31to theology, womanist theology, feminist theology,

17:34black theology, queer theology, they all get qualified.

17:38They have these adjectives that are attached to them.

17:42And then you say we presume that white male theology

17:44is the defaults.

17:46And one of your points there was that all theology

17:49is contextual.

17:50It's not like we have decontextualized theology

17:53and then all these other junior theologies

17:57that are developing.

17:58Do you think you could talk a bit about how important it is?

18:02Well, basically what you're saying there

18:06and then how important that is to you

18:07that people understand that there is no objective.

18:11Nobody can stand outside of all these power structures

18:15and all of these lenses and say,

18:16well, no, I'm doing it purely objectively.

18:20- And also in the process,

18:22if you wouldn't mind defining

18:23some of these different theologies,

18:25that would be awesome too.

18:26- Yeah, there are so many different kinds of theology

18:30and so many different ways to parse out

18:33the different kinds of theology.

18:34So most people are familiar with just theology,

18:37at least in principle.

18:38And theology is just God talk or in academics,

18:42it's usually the study of the nature of God.

18:45But that's still very, very broad

18:48and can be broken down in a number of ways.

18:50Some people might be familiar with systematic theology,

18:53which is an attempt to be very comprehensive

18:56and internally consistent,

18:57saying as many things as we can possibly say

19:00about the nature of God and our relationship to God,

19:04using as much data as possible.

19:06So that's systematic theology.

19:08But alternatively to systematic theology

19:11is contextual theology and contextual theology

19:14does not aspire to be either comprehensive

19:17or coherent with other kinds of contextual theology.

19:22It just attempts to speak to the theological imagination

19:26of individual communities,

19:28often with their experience, their historical experience

19:31as sort of the catalyst for doing that theology.

19:35So black theology is going to reflect the community

19:38and experience and spiritual needs of black communities

19:42and feminist theology is going to reflect

19:43the unique experience and spiritual needs of women,

19:46et cetera, et cetera,

19:47through these different kinds of contextual theology.

19:50So there's no aspiration there that they're going to say

19:52everything that can or ought to be said about God

19:55and there's no aspiration there that whatever they have to say

19:59is going to match with what other kinds of contextual.

20:02So black theologians aren't concerned

20:03that what they're saying is going to match up

20:05with feminist theology

20:06if feminist theologians aren't concerned

20:08what they're going to say is going to match up

20:09with Asian American theologians or something like that.

20:13So that's a big division between systematic theology

20:16and contextual theology that you can make.

20:18If you pick up a textbook on contextual theology,

20:22the categories are often given as in black,

20:26Asian, Asian American, Native American,

20:29they are related to ethnic groups

20:31and then to gender and issues of gender and sexuality.

20:34So sometimes you'll see gay and lesbian theology

20:37or queer theology, feminist theology.

20:39And then some that are combinations of these things

20:42like womanist theology, which is both black and feminist

20:47for black women's experience in particular,

20:50but what you will never find in those categories

20:53of contextual theology is white theology or male theology.

20:58And part of that is--

21:02- I think that's what Twitter is, isn't it?

21:04(laughing)

21:06- That's what a lot of things are.

21:08- So I think that's what church is, isn't it, for most people?

21:12- In the United States in a context

21:14where a lot of theology is white evangelical theology,

21:17yeah, that is.

21:18And so that's part of the way that you can claim

21:23the center of discourse is by not disclosing the context

21:28in which you are doing theology.

21:30So it is an attempt to depersonalize or decontextualize.

21:34You're saying my theology is not coming from my experience.

21:37It's not particular to me or the needs of my community.

21:39I am just doing theology, right?

21:42Everybody else is particular.

21:45Everybody else is dependent on the real kind

21:48that I'm doing.

21:49And it is that failure of disclosure

21:53that I was trying to call out in that video.

21:56There's nothing wrong with being a white male theologian

22:00or doing theology from that perspective.

22:03It would be nice if such theologians disclosed.

22:06This is the perspective that I am doing it from.

22:09These are the kinds of personal experience

22:10that I am drawing upon.

22:12These are the communities that I am trying to serve

22:14and who's rhetorical and ideological interests

22:16I have most in mind.

22:18That's all you have to do.

22:19You don't have to be like every time you speak,

22:21I am a white male speaking and doing theology.

22:24Just somewhere in your project at some point,

22:26this is where I'm coming from.

22:28And that's all that really that black theology

22:31and feminist theology

22:32and all these other kinds of contextual theology you're doing.

22:34They're just saying, this is who I am

22:36and this is where I'm coming from

22:37and this is the community that I'm speaking to.

22:39And it seems to me a lot of the folks, a lot of the white male,

22:43folks who are engaged in theology,

22:44obviously I'm one of them as well.

22:46So the degree that I engage in theology,

22:48which I don't really call myself a theologian,

22:51but a lot of is that in our training,

22:54we've never been told that we're engaging it

22:58through these lenses and we're aimed at serving

23:00these communities and these goals

23:03because we've always been kind of the dominant identity

23:08within the field and so we just kind of plot along

23:11as if the whole world is our playground

23:16and we see others saying, well,

23:19I'm doing this from this perspective

23:22and I am engaging my community and doing that

23:25and we think, oh, well, you're limiting yourself.

23:28We on the other hand are addressing this more broadly

23:32because it's usually we don't get training

23:35where we are shown that we are trying to serve certain

23:40structures of power or certain communities.

23:43And I think that's a big shortcoming,

23:45but to do so is then to acknowledge our positionality

23:50and to some degree limits the applicability

23:55and limit our ability to structure power over

23:58and against others who may be operating

23:59in a different field.

24:01So unfortunately, that needs to be called out

24:06a lot more frequently or the field is just going

24:09to continue to train its new scholars

24:11to do the exact same thing.

24:13- Yeah, there's a great book by Angela Parker

24:17who also graduated from Chicago Theological Seminary

24:20called If God Still Breathes Why Can't I?

24:23And it's about how so many theological schools

24:28and schools of religious study effectively train

24:31their students regardless of their race or gender,

24:34how to do white male theology.

24:36So even people of color who come from other backgrounds

24:41are still trained to perpetuate and to speak

24:44as like they are doing white male theology.

24:47So yeah, it's very infrequently that people get access

24:51to these kinds of resources or get taught to think

24:54or speak differently about their,

24:56the kind of work that they're doing.

24:58- Is there a sense that, I read in sort of greater feminism

25:03or in other circles, people talk about intersectionality

25:11and the need for that?

25:14When you spoke about black theology,

25:17not necessarily concerning itself with what's going on

25:20in feminist or womanist theology, that sort of thing.

25:26Where does intersectionality come into it?

25:29- Yeah, well, that's a fun way to ask that question.

25:34Womanist theology emerges out of black theology,

25:37specifically because of black theology's lack of attentiveness

25:41to intersectional issues.

25:42So intersectionality is a way of thinking about

25:47various elements of social identity, gender, race, class,

25:52as though they mutually construct each other.

25:55So you can't look at gender alone, but gender,

25:58the way we think about gender is affected by class.

26:00And you can't just think about race alone,

26:02the way we think about race is affected by class.

26:05And so people sort of lie at the intersections

26:09of their different elements of social identity.

26:12And it was really a number of black women's dissatisfaction

26:17with what was happening in black liberation theology

26:20that led them to then create womanist theology,

26:23which is a much more straightforward attempt

26:26to be intersectional bringing together gender, race,

26:29and class in the doing of other theological work.

26:33- So when a straight, someone who is afflicted

26:37with straight whiteness and maleness,

26:40the way Dan is, for example, or myself,

26:44and they're out there trying to study theology,

26:50how do you recommend that person approach it?

26:54When, as you say, sort of the structures

26:56even in current academia are still pretty geared

27:01toward that straight white male perspective.

27:05- Yeah, fortunately today, I mean,

27:07and we've only been able to say this recently,

27:08but fortunately today, we do have a fair number

27:11of women and people of color and people

27:13from the third world who are actively involved

27:14in the academy, and now they're still minority voices,

27:17but they are present, and so you can go to them directly

27:20and purchase their books and read their material.

27:24And I don't think it takes much.

27:26It's more of the willingness to do a little bit

27:29of that reading that's the difficult part,

27:32but then once you get over that

27:33and you can engage with some of this material,

27:35I think you'll very quickly be able to do the adjustments

27:38or at least the bulk of the,

27:39I mean, it'll probably take the rest of your life

27:41to do all the adjustments.

27:42It's an ongoing, you know, existential process

27:46as it is for so many other things,

27:47but the bulk of the adjustments that need to be made

27:50in a pretty short span of time.

27:52You can pick up a couple books,

27:53learn from a couple black theologians,

27:55feminist theologians, queer theologians,

27:57in a relatively short span of time,

28:00and I think greatly benefit for that.

28:02A book I frequently recommend is called

28:04Liberation Theologies in the United States,

28:07edited by Stacey Floyd Thomas and Anthony Pin,

28:11and it has, you know, 20 page chapter length introductions

28:14to most of the kinds of contextual theology at play today.

28:18You make it through that one book, right?

28:20Just a couple hundred pages and that's already,

28:22you know, you are multiplying your knowledge

28:24of the diversity of theology a hundredfold

28:27in a pretty short span of time.

28:29- I wonder if you could give us some examples of,

28:33you know, different contextual theologies

28:37and how they differ from each other.

28:40Just, it's something that, you know,

28:42we've been talking in the abstract about this thing,

28:44and I wonder if we could, you know,

28:46concretize it in some way.

28:48- Sure, so you can think about, I mean,

28:50a big part of black theology, for example,

28:55is trying to think through, again,

29:00some elements of Christology

29:04that white folks sort of just took for granted,

29:06but are actually quite problematic

29:08for a black community and for a black experience.

29:11So thinking of Jesus as a entirely passive servant figure

29:16for people who have in their historical background,

29:21slavery and household servitude can be a bit problematic.

29:25That's not something worth valorizing.

29:29But if your primary problem is pride and privilege,

29:33then sort of humbling yourself in the image

29:35of this humble Jesus might be some moral progress for you.

29:40But if you've already been consigned

29:41to this place in society, that's not uplifting, right?

29:45That's not something to aspire to.

29:47That's not something as valuable about Jesus.

29:50And so you see a lot of black theologians

29:52sort of reconfiguring the significance

29:54of the incarnation, thinking about it

29:57in terms of Jesus' power to confront authorities in the day,

30:01or Jesus' power to heal the poor,

30:05or Jesus' simple ability to feed large numbers of people.

30:09And they find more value in these stories

30:12as opposed to Jesus' humility or his suffering.

30:17There are a number of feminist theologians

30:18who find Jesus' substitutional sacrifice to be unjust.

30:23They find the idea of God sacrificing a son to be abhorrent

30:28because they cannot conceptualize,

30:31thinking that it's a good idea for a child

30:36to be ordered to their death by a parent,

30:39drawing upon a more immediate and visceral relationship

30:44that women have through pregnancy with their children.

30:47It just clashes too much with their experience.

30:50And so now we gotta rethink some of the significance

30:53of whatever work Jesus is doing in his death on the cross.

30:57So it's often something about the theology they've been fed

31:01does not jive with their experience.

31:04So back to the drawing board to find a way

31:06of thinking about Jesus, or God, or other stories in the Bible

31:12that are gonna work better for their community's aspirations.

31:17- And I think that raises an interesting point.

31:19A lot of communities that's someone

31:23who is used to being in a position of power

31:27might neglect a lot of their experiences,

31:30might not see what they see in the text,

31:32but it's gonna be there.

31:34There are a number of different ways

31:35that the Bible speaks to the oppressed,

31:38the downtrodden, the marginalized.

31:40And that's obviously one of the blind spots

31:44in the majority theology,

31:45is that it's not seeing things from that perspective,

31:49which means it is woefully incomplete.

31:52It is not able to reach everyone.

31:55And I think one of your dissertation,

32:00which you wrote as part of your doctoral degree,

32:04was on Ezra, and we have the,

32:09where Ezra is reading out the law to everybody,

32:11basically letting him know from here on out,

32:14here how things are going to be.

32:16Oh, and by the way, if you married women

32:19from these people groups or these identities,

32:21you have to divorce them and send them away,

32:24which is a remarkably ethnocentric kind of act

32:32that we generally like to gloss over

32:35when we talk about that in Sunday school.

32:37But I wonder if you wouldn't mind-

32:40- Well, one could say that there are those out there

32:43who would love to not gloss over that

32:45and hold solidly to it, even in today's, in now.

32:50- Yeah, again, there's me defaulting to my own experience

32:55with a specific religious community.

32:58But I wonder if you wouldn't mind talking about

33:00how you approached the question of inter-ethnic marriage

33:05and what Ezra was doing in structuring power.

33:10I think you were looking at Ezra 10, is that correct?

33:13- Yeah, Ezra 10 is where it's called

33:15the inter-marriage crisis is discussed.

33:18Ezra is in a very transformational and volatile time

33:23in ancient now Judea, and not really Israelite

33:27anymore history, we're talking about post-exile now,

33:29the middle of the fifth century BCE.

33:33He has the unenviable task of having to reconstitute

33:36the identity of his people in terms that make more sense

33:39to them, and that is primarily to re-think of themselves

33:44as a people whose primary touchstone experience

33:48is coming back from exile and resettling in Jerusalem.

33:52Prior to this, it had been the Exodus.

33:54The Exodus was the defining experience

33:57of ancient Israelite collective conscience and ethnicity.

34:01And now this other thing is coming back from another place.

34:04And part of the way he does that is to draw these very firm

34:09but at the same time, indeterminate lines on the ground

34:15about who gets to marry who, what ethnicity

34:18is really gonna count as this emerging Jewish ethnicity.

34:23We can finally start to sort of use this word Jewish

34:26as opposed to Israelite.

34:28What's gonna be this Judean ethnicity in this time period?

34:31In order to accomplish that, he draws on,

34:33but at that point, several centuries old laws

34:36from various legal material in the Pentateuch

34:40to say that the people groups that surround you today

34:44are similar enough to, although we know

34:47not in literal fact cannot be identical to,

34:51the groups that were existed back then a long time ago

34:54and God said a long time ago, you cannot intermarry with them.

34:57So God is saying now, obviously it must be the case

35:00that you cannot intermarry with these people as well.

35:02You have to get divorced.

35:04This is the only narrative description of divorce

35:07anywhere in the Hebrew Bible.

35:09It's a divorce it's very rarely spoken about.

35:12Even in legal material, there are like couple references

35:14to it here and there and I don't think

35:16there are any other narrative examples of it.

35:18So it's here and it's a mass divorce

35:20and it's a mass divorce that's coerced, right?

35:23Ezra has all the people in the entire region

35:27gather in the temple courtyard under pain of confiscation

35:30and exile from the community.

35:32They are forced to go through this proceeding

35:35in order to determine which marriages are legitimate

35:38and which are not and everyone who's found illegitimate

35:40is compelled to get divorced.

35:42And in the end, about a hundred families are broken up

35:46as a result of Ezra's decree.

35:49So it's a very dramatic moment in the Hebrew Bible.

35:51Again, like Dan said, we gloss over this a lot.

35:53It's not read hardly at all.

35:56I have the ancient Christian commentary series

35:58that has a bunch of commentary

35:59from like the first seven centuries of the church.

36:01Nobody except for bead, the venerable bead

36:06or whatever you say is named.

36:07He was the only person for like the first seven centuries

36:10of the church that comment on this.

36:11And even today we don't continue to read this text.

36:13So it's under red and not reflected on often.

36:18For the past 70 years or so,

36:20biblical scholars and theologians have been trying

36:22to justify what Ezra did.

36:25As we sort of become increasingly conscious

36:27of how bad this kind of ethnocentrism is,

36:30scholars have put in a lot of work to try to vindicate

36:33Ezra's decision to force these people to get divorced

36:36because it's terrible, especially for the children involved

36:38who go off to fates unknown.

36:41We have no idea what happens to the children

36:43of these marriages or to the wise involved.

36:47They could be an immediate threat of death

36:50depending on the circumstances.

36:53So scholars have put a lot of time and energy

36:54into trying to say, you know, no, Ezra did the right thing

36:57and they give various justifications for that.

36:59- Has it generally agreed that this is historical?

37:01- Yeah, I think so.

37:04Or at least that it reflects something

37:07that happened in sort of smaller measures periodically

37:10over the course of a long period of time.

37:13But I haven't seen a lot of attempts to challenge

37:15outright the historicity of the event.

37:19It's sort of an embarrassing thing to admit to.

37:22And it keeps coming up.

37:25Some of these issues return again in Nehemiah,

37:28which many scholars take to be a bit later.

37:30So it seems to be a recurring problem.

37:33It's not just a one-off sort of event.

37:36So what my dissertation did is try to find a different way

37:39to read it without valorizing Ezra,

37:42without finding the meaning of the passage in Ezra.

37:45And instead try to find some moral significance

37:48in what the gathered people do.

37:51And there's this cultural anthropologist named James Scott

37:55who spent some time in Malaysia

37:56studying how peasant communities resist oppression

38:00in these very subtle sorts of ways.

38:02And so I took his work and I applied it to this passage

38:04and I said, look, the people in this scenario

38:07resist Ezra and his demand for divorce

38:11in some of those same ways.

38:13They foot drag, that is to say they take a long time to do it.

38:17They sort of appropriate some aspects of the process.

38:20They demand to have their own native judges involved

38:24in the divorce proceedings.

38:25They do all these very subtle little things

38:27that are easy to gloss over.

38:29But the end result is that only 100 families get divorced,

38:32which is like less than 1% of the population of the community.

38:35And they're almost all priestly families.

38:37So it's sort of backfired.

38:39The second tempo community is like,

38:40you guys out there, you are an existential threat

38:43to our community.

38:44You're gonna ruin the whole thing.

38:45God's gonna destroy us all.

38:46If you out there in these rural villages don't shape up

38:50and at the end of it all, almost all the marriages

38:53or the rule of villages are held intact.

38:55And it's just really the priests who are most on board

38:58with this ideology who end up sort of breaking apart

39:01their own families.

39:02And I attribute that to sort of the cleverness

39:05of the assembly.

39:06- Wow.

39:07I know that there's a long history of,

39:11well, I don't know how long the history is,

39:12but this resistance, I think,

39:15has been discussed in a lot of scholarship.

39:19I know I've worked in Bible translation for a while

39:23and there's an example from a while ago about,

39:27and now I'm gonna forget the language that it was,

39:30but there's a,

39:31oh, it's in Southern Africa.

39:35One of the Bontu languages,

39:38I think there's the translation of the New Testament.

39:43It was initially, for demons,

39:46the translators decided to use this word

39:50that referred to ancestral deities from the local community

39:55as a way to try to kind of influence the locals

39:59into thinking of these ancestral deities as wrong,

40:02as demonic, and so to try to kind of push them away

40:07from continuing to appeal to these ancestral deities

40:11for guidance and for blessings and things like that.

40:13And it kind of had the opposite effect

40:15where they appropriated that translation choice

40:20and began to appeal even more to these ancestral deities

40:26and use the Bible as kind of an icon

40:30as a piece of cultic media

40:33in the petitions, in the interactions with these deities,

40:38and so they had to, the folks from Europe

40:43who were colonizing this area had to come in

40:47and retranslate the Bible so that they kind of cut out

40:52that resistance from underneath the locals

40:56who had basically taken what they had done

40:59as an act of kind of oppression

41:02and subverted that, and I find it so fascinating

41:07when we see examples of that kind of thing,

41:09and I've never noticed that in Ezra,

41:12but that is kind of, they kind of shut themselves

41:15in the foot there and forced themselves to abandon

41:18some families just because they were the ones pushing it,

41:22and I guess they had to go through with it

41:24if they were making a big deal about it.

41:27- Yeah, that's exactly right.

41:29- It is, and that's one of the reasons why I think

41:33contextual theology is so valuable,

41:34these, there's an entire energy for theology

41:39that can only be found amongst oppressed peoples,

41:42that is such an inspiration for the doing of theology.

41:45Privileged, relaxed, comfortable people

41:49can do theology certainly, but there's less of an impetus,

41:53there's less of a need to do it, I think,

41:55and so when you put people in these really desperate situations,

41:59they become very theologically creative very quickly,

42:03and you get to see the product of that creativity

42:06in these contextual theology, so yeah,

42:08they will take translations, they will play with words,

42:12they will subvert expectations left and right,

42:14and they will do everything they can

42:15in order to ensure the survival of their community,

42:18and you get in touch with a little bit of that

42:21through this contextual theology.

42:23One of the things that I wonder about,

42:27because it's very clear, because I loved the examples

42:31that you gave of how to use contextual theology,

42:34and how people use their context

42:38to sort of reimagine the stories of the Bible,

42:44I wonder at what point, are there points at which

42:48it's not a useful exercise

42:53to look at it theologically, and it just needs,

42:57and there are certain stories or certain ideas

42:59from the Bible that you just jettison altogether,

43:04as opposed to looking for ways to recontextualize,

43:07to make it okay, or to find something good in it.

43:11Like at what point are you stretching beyond the bounds

43:16of where that book can actually take you?

43:18- That's an interesting question.

43:20I think there's at least two questions there.

43:23One is, at what point do you stop trying to make it okay?

43:27And the second question is, at what point

43:28do you stop sort of working with it theologically?

43:31And I think the answer to that first part

43:33comes way before the second part.

43:35So I think when we stop making it okay

43:38is a point that we're gonna reach first,

43:40but just because it's no longer okay,

43:42it doesn't mean that you still can't work with it

43:44theologically, it can be used for other things

43:47as an indictment on the original author and audience.

43:51So yeah, I think there are plenty of stories

43:54in the Bible that have no moral value,

43:57or that I just outright don't think personally

44:00God had anything to do with.

44:01I mean, I'm a religious person.

44:03I think there's just, there's no God here at all.

44:06Do you think of like the genocide

44:09or the Midianites in numbers?

44:11I mean, this is presented as a direct command from God.

44:14I don't think you can fix that.

44:16I don't think you can fancy theology your way out of that.

44:20That doesn't mean that you don't say

44:21anything theologically about it,

44:23but it would instead be an example of religious extremism.

44:27Look how bad things can get.

44:30Look how twisted our imagination can get.

44:32Look at how malicious we can become

44:35when we are trying to demonize these other communities,

44:40when we are trying to polemicize against other people,

44:44look at how God can be employed in that harmful work.

44:49So it's not that we stop thinking about it,

44:50but yeah, there are plenty of places

44:52where you just go, that has nothing to do with

44:55any God that I'm worshiping or thinking about

44:57or that's involved in any way in my life.

45:00- And the project of trying to accommodate

45:05those things theologically is going to continue

45:08among those groups of folks who can't accept

45:12that God is not in those passages.

45:14And so I think we need to stay informed about them as well

45:17in order to be able to push back against attempts

45:20to rehabilitate things like the Midianite genocide.

45:25I did one--

45:26- When was that guy that wrote that book length review

45:28of Paul Copens?

45:30- Oh, Tom Stark.

45:31- Yeah, it was like a 250 page review of--

45:33- Yeah, that's exactly what I was talking about.

45:37- So Copan's book is got a moral monster

45:40and Stark's response, which is freely available online,

45:43you can go find in a revised and updated edition.

45:46It's called "Is God a Moral Compromizer?"

45:48And I think it's a wonderful,

45:51it's a wonderful discussion of the problems

45:54with Copan's attempt to rehabilitate this perspective

45:58about God where these are oppressed peoples

46:02who have, they're under the boot of this empire

46:06and the only way they can make themselves feel better

46:09is kind of fantasizing about being on the other side.

46:12And once you get out from under that boot,

46:15those fantasies should not be operationalized any further.

46:19And this is something we talked about

46:21with Bart Erman as with revelation,

46:25people need to find themselves in revelation

46:27to make it relevant, which means finding oppressors

46:31around us.

46:32And for a lot of the folks who are most concerned

46:34about this, they are the ones in the position

46:38of the oppressor.

46:39And so they've got to look for others

46:42who can be vilified.

46:45But I did want to share, I looked up real quick,

46:48the language, it was the Setsuana Bible translation,

46:51the Wookie Bible, which is an old,

46:54very, very classic translation.

46:55But the word for "dimonios," they rendered as "bademo,"

46:59which is a word that refers to these ancestral spirits.

47:01And there's a paper by Musa W. Dubey.

47:05- Oh yeah, what's Dubey?

47:06- Okay, Dubey, excuse me.

47:07I know a Dubey, but it's Dubey there, okay.

47:11And the paper is entitled Consuming a Colonial Cultural Bomb,

47:15Translating Bademo into Demons in the Setsuana Bible

47:18from a Journal for the Study of the New Testament back in '99.

47:21But that was a great discussion.

47:22- Yeah.

47:23- Sorry, I just wanted to make sure.

47:25- No, that's a good context, yeah.

47:27Musa Dubey is a great post-colonial theologian.

47:31She does a lot of great stuff,

47:33especially in that sort of African context.

47:36And you bring out post-colonialism,

47:38which is another framework that can be another--

47:41- Yeah, post-colonial theologian, yeah.

47:44- I wanted to ask a bit about your experience on TikTok

47:47and engaging in public scholarship.

47:49I know you kind of framed this as kind of forced upon us

47:54by the pandemic and being trapped inside.

47:59But now that you have become an advocate

48:05for public scholarship,

48:07have you learned anything about engaging the public

48:09and trying to help them grapple with the Bible

48:14in a more productive, more informed way?

48:16Or are you just decided none of this

48:19is gonna work out in the end?

48:21- Man, it depends on the day.

48:25I definitely found it worthwhile.

48:29I wouldn't continue to do it if it's not worthwhile

48:31because it is difficult, and for me, at least,

48:35it cannot be very time consuming.

48:36I don't know how long it takes you to make TikTok videos,

48:38but it takes me a long time to make even really simple ones.

48:42So it's time consuming and it's emotionally intensive.

48:47I do get, I mean, people will write to me

48:50and they'll say, I never knew any of this before.

48:54This has been so liberating for me.

48:56This has been so helpful for me.

48:58Even up to, I'm considering going back to the church,

49:02sure, I'm considering Christianity

49:03for the first time in my life.

49:05And those things keep me going.

49:08Even one or two of those every few months

49:13is enough fuel to keep me going through all the nonsense

49:17that I put up with on a daily basis.

49:20So I definitely found it to be worthwhile.

49:23It has been very interesting from a learning perspective.

49:27You really have to, it's not,

49:30I think, simplify sort of undersell.

49:33You have to find something in whatever you're gonna say

49:36that's immediately going to be desirable to somebody

49:39who otherwise doesn't know anything about this material.

49:42And trying to do that is difficult.

49:47But you also sort of get to see a new side

49:50of the material that you're looking at.

49:51Like, what is the thing about all this

49:53in this 25 page article or in this 250 page book?

49:57What is the one thing

49:59that somebody completely outside the field

50:02is gonna latch onto and valuable?

50:04And what I've learned is one,

50:05there is almost always something there

50:09and two, it takes a while to sort of boil it down to that.

50:13And that's also been an optimistic thing for me.

50:15I mean, no matter how ivory tower this stuff can be,

50:18there's almost always something there

50:19that could really spark somebody to

50:24to rethink Bible or Christianity

50:27or whatever it is in a new way.

50:29- So would you say that all biblical scholars

50:31should take a few reps on TikTok

50:34and kind of work out that muscle of learning

50:38to distill these complex discussions

50:40down to those aspects, kind of the essence of it,

50:44but also in a way that is going to be

50:49of some kind of interest to the general public.

50:52Do you think that makes you a better Bible scholar,

50:54a better teacher in the classroom?

50:56Or do you think it just makes you a better TikToker?

50:59- That's a good question.

51:01I definitely think more should.

51:02I don't know if all should, but more should.

51:05- I think of some who should not.

51:07- Yeah, some immediately come to mind for the no.

51:11But others, I mean, it is its own thing.

51:14So I wouldn't like shame a biblical scholar

51:17for their unwillingness to come on.

51:19It is its own skill set, it is its own time

51:22and sort of dedication to trying to figure out how to do.

51:25I definitely think more should.

51:27More importantly, I think,

51:29I don't know how you would change this,

51:30but I think it'd be really helpful if the culture

51:32and the Academy shifted in such a way

51:34that this work was just seen as more valuable.

51:36Like, oh, such and such is making content for over there.

51:39Oh, that's a great thing, you know?

51:41Let's get excited about that.

51:43You could go to SBL and have a section on it.

51:45You could do a presentation, you know,

51:47this worked for me, this didn't work for me.

51:49I would love to see more enthusiasm in the Academy in general,

51:52even if people don't participate in mass,

51:54just to have it be wider and more widely accepted.

51:57- I think being able to see it as a part of the Academy

52:00would be wonderful because, you know,

52:03it remains that ivory tower and we're, you know,

52:07pushing the ladders away from the building

52:09of the people who want in to want to see what's going on

52:12and say, no, this isn't for you when we treat this

52:15as something, as a hobby that someone does on the side.

52:18And I think increasingly, this is going to be the way

52:20that a lot of folks who are not able to get

52:24the tenure-track positions and things like that

52:27are going to, one, see their,

52:32what they're producing be consumed,

52:33but two, if they have any hope to make any money,

52:38continuing in something that they obviously have passion for,

52:41I think you're gonna see a lot more people moving

52:43in that direction.

52:45So I, and I think there are folks out there who are doing that,

52:48who are trying to bring it into the mainstream.

52:51And, you know, 15 years ago, there was biblioblogging.

52:55I don't know if you ever saw any of that or got into any of that.

52:59- I don't really know.

53:00- There were a handful of bibliobloggers,

53:03so I was a part of that for a little bit

53:05where we just had blogs and tried to do what I think

53:09we're doing a little more successfully now on TikTok,

53:11but on blogs, which was not incredibly helpful.

53:14It was, again, just us talking to each other.

53:16- Well, Aaron, I wanna jump into this part of the conversation

53:21because I know that it's not all peaches and roses

53:26turning academic study of the Bible public facing.

53:31I'm guessing that, especially since most people

53:35are used to hearing discussion of the Bible

53:37from their church, from the pulpit,

53:39and they're not used to hearing it

53:43from, I mean, in your case, a believer,

53:46but who still, who nevertheless is going to bring

53:49some very challenging ideas into this public space.

53:53Can you talk a little bit about pushback that you've gotten

53:56or if you've received any sort of like,

54:00there must be a little bit,

54:02there must be some blowback to that.

54:04- Yeah, there's a lot.

54:05There's fortunately, I guess I'm lucky

54:11that the kind of pushback that would really bother me

54:14would be, like an all right,

54:18let's see it, you've got actually something wrong

54:20in your video, that would be the kind that I would be like,

54:23man, I really need to fix something here.

54:25That would be the kind that I would really take to heart.

54:28And I don't get virtually any of that.

54:30I don't get like, EVH Bible debunked thing.

54:34People don't interact with it.

54:35Maybe it's just because I'm not that well-known,

54:37but I don't get a lot of that very straightforward

54:40kind of pushback.

54:42I get a lot of the angry TikTok atheists being like,

54:46where's your evidence for God's existence?

54:48I'm like, this is about source criticism,

54:50not about, it's a completely unrelated topic.

54:53And I get a lot of angry fundamentalists

54:55who are like, you're going to hell

54:58or they ask weird religious questions

55:01in the middle of your stuff.

55:03So that's mainly what I get.

55:05And at this point, that sort of weirded me out initially,

55:08but I'm like two years into this.

55:10So I usually either just play with them or ignore them

55:15and it pretty much goes away.

55:17That's been the vast majority of the pushback

55:22that I've gotten.

55:23I do get, I don't know if it's pushback,

55:25but I do get encouraged to talk more about this

55:28or have you considered this?

55:30And sometimes people do ask me questions

55:32about personal faith things.

55:34And I am very, I dull that out in very small amounts.

55:39I don't, I'm about entirely hands off with it,

55:42but I am very guarded about the kinds of things

55:45that I share in that.

55:46I just don't, I don't like the conversations

55:48that start once you start talking about

55:51personal faith issues, that there's no good way

55:53to have that conversation with semi-anonymous

55:56or anonymous strangers online.

55:58It could only be bad.

56:00And so, but I do occasionally sort of encourage/remind

56:04my viewers that, you know, I am a Christian.

56:07I'm doing this from a Christian perspective

56:08at the end of the day.

56:09I teach at a Christian school.

56:11I can't say that I have a pastoral heart

56:14because I think that that's more than I have.

56:18But I am not insensitive to, or insensitive to,

56:22the needs of laypeople sitting in the pews.

56:25And as much as I can, I try to speak to that.

56:28So I have been encouraged/gently given pushback

56:31on do more of that.

56:32And I try to do that where I can.

56:36But on the whole, it's a lot of nonsense

56:40that I've learned to ignore,

56:42as far as pushback is concerned.

56:44- Would you say that your TikTok experience on the whole

56:46has been largely positive?

56:48Or has the pushback been enough to make it a mishmash?

56:53- No, the pushback hasn't really had an effect on it.

56:57I think overall it's been a net positive.

56:59Trying to build a follower bait.

57:03I mean, the most difficult part is just like

57:04the logistics of it, and it can't be kind of demoralizing

57:07to not have anything go viral and to have a very slow,

57:12fall or growth over time.

57:16But that doesn't have anything really to do with pushback

57:21or anything.

57:22That's just TikTok and whatever TikTok is doing

57:24behind the scenes without algorithms and stuff.

57:27- That's the real God, is the other.

57:31(laughing)

57:33So whenever I get depressed and throw out my hands

57:35and I'm like, I'm never gonna do this again.

57:36It's not because somebody said something mean,

57:39it's just like, is this still, am I reaching new people?

57:43Are new people being invited to the table?

57:45That's the only thing that sort of gets me down.

57:49But on the whole, it's been a positive experience.

57:52Both for me and I think for many of the people

57:54who have been watching.

57:56- Well, it's been a positive experience for me.

57:58I'm an atheist and I'm out there.

58:02I don't consume a lot of biblical

58:05or religious themed content,

58:07but I really enjoy what you bring to the table.

58:10I think that your perspective

58:13and your sort of gentle,

58:16but you have this wonderful subversive thing

58:19where your voice is so soothing

58:22and your approach is gentle and kind.

58:27And yet you don't shy away from very difficult topics

58:32and controversial topics.

58:35I find your content very engaging and I really appreciate it.

58:39- No, I'm very glad to hear that.

58:40- And he's not just saying that when I messaged him

58:43and was like, yeah, I think we should have Aaron Agashian.

58:45He was like, oh, is he that guy?

58:46Yeah, that would be great.

58:48- So what Dan's not realizing is that earlier I said,

58:52hey, should we have this guy on?

58:54And Dan was like, yeah, maybe sometime.

58:55And then like weeks later, he was like,

58:58I'm working to get Aaron Agashian.

58:59- I'm working to get Aaron Agashian.

59:00- I have a serious scholarship.

59:01- I've never missed a representative of that.

59:03(laughing)

59:04- You have to get the advisor on first

59:05so that you can pay homage to the people that formed.

59:10Do you gotta do that first?

59:12- And my favorite videos of yours are

59:13the subtly sarcastic ones.

59:17Like when you're complimenting me

59:19and I'm like, see you being sarcastic, I can't--

59:22(laughing)

59:23- No, nothing but compliments.

59:26I wouldn't, I mean, that's, earnestly,

59:29I would not be doing this at all

59:31had it not been for seeing the success of your channel.

59:34I mean, truly, I mean, it would be very easy

59:36for anybody who's interested in doing this to get on.

59:38And if your channel did not exist,

59:40to be like, there's just no appetite for this, right?

59:42There's no interest in this at all.

59:44And so it is very helpful to see somebody do this seriously

59:48and have it been successful.

59:50It's bad in the sense that then I go,

59:52well, it's not successful.

59:55So I can't blame the people out there anymore.

59:58But I mean, the fact that you have been able to do this

60:02means that there are people who have a genuine interest.

60:05And that helps a lot.

60:06So no, no shade at all.

60:09- Well, I appreciate that.

60:11And no one was more surprised about that than me.

60:14I remember when I got on, when I reached 1,000 followers,

60:17I did a book giveaway, but not just one book.

60:20I gave away five books.

60:21I was like, this is a big deal.

60:23And I remember somebody saying in no time,

60:26you'll have a hundred thousand followers.

60:28And I was like, you've lost it.

60:31That would be bonkers to think about.

60:34And that, it didn't happen overnight,

60:38but it happened a lot more quickly

60:39than I thought it would have.

60:40And nobody's more surprised about that than me.

60:44But I understand exactly what you're saying

60:47about the people messaging you, making it all worth it.

60:51I get messages every day from all ends of the spectrum

60:56of love and hate.

60:58So I think you always, I figure that if I'm getting hate

61:03from all sides, then I'm probably right in the sweet spot.

61:07I'm doing something right.

61:10And that does make it all worth it every now

61:12and then I'll find one that will be particularly touching

61:15and like share it with my wife or something like that.

61:18But yeah, that does make it feel like I'm not just out here

61:21and entertaining myself.

61:23I am doing that, but at the same time,

61:25it just seems like it is being helpful for other people.

61:27And if it is helpful for other scholars

61:30who want to break into this kind of activity,

61:34then I will be here as long as I need to.

61:36'Cause that is even more as meaningful

61:40as all the other stuff is to be respected by colleagues

61:44for doing something that I'm really doing

61:46because I could not get into full-time teaching

61:51is something that means an awful lot to me.

61:54So I'm glad to see you're here.

61:57I have no doubt that you're gonna, that you're successful.

62:01We'll multiply and increase exponentially in the future

62:06as long as you keep with it.

62:08- So speaking of this, Aaron Higashi,

62:11how can people find you?

62:13Where are your channels where people now are desperate

62:16for your content?

62:17They're clamoring, clamoring, I say.

62:20- I don't know if we have the authority to say that

62:24is the effect of coming to our podcast yet.

62:27- I'm clamoring.

62:28How do people find you?

62:31- You can find me on TikTok at ABHBible.

62:34You can find me on Instagram at ABHBible.

62:36You can find me on YouTube.

62:39You can search ABHBible and I will come up

62:41or the actual name of the channel is Bible of color.

62:44And a lot of that is the same content,

62:47although I do hope to be producing some content,

62:49standalone content, a little bit longer form for YouTube

62:53over the course of the summer

62:54after things that my kids get out of school

62:57and things settle down a little bit.

63:00I'm still, I'm finishing up final grades

63:02for this last semester at school.

63:03So still a little bit busy right now, but yeah.

63:08And then I don't know, I sort of have thinking about

63:11some future projects, but.

63:12- Well, keep us up to date and let us know

63:16when you have something new that you wanna pitch

63:18and we'll have you back on.

63:19And thank you so much for joining us today.

63:24- I'm very happy to be here.

63:25Thank you very much.

63:26- Well, that's it for today's show.

63:29If you'd like to reach out to us,

63:31you can reach us at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com

63:36or if you'd like to become a patron of the show,

63:40check out our Patreon page, patreon.com/dataoverdogmap.

63:45Thanks everybody for joining us.

63:47We'll talk to you again next week.

63:48- Have a wonderful day.

63:49(upbeat music)