Note: Can I Say This at Church is produced for audio listening. If able, I strongly encourage you to listen to the audio, which has inflection, emotion, sarcasm where applicable, and emphasis for points that may not come across well in written word. This transcript is generated using a combination of my ears and software, and may contain errors. Please check the episode for clarity before quoting in print.
Brad 0:07
Did God create Satan? No, we created a phenomenon of evil that becomes bigger than us, possesses us, scoops us up. And you can use a good analogy from let's say Hitlerism where the people of Germany generate this kind of spirit, this evil spirit, that then begins to control them. And so you see it on a smaller scale in a mob mentality, right? When a mob gathers, something bigger than the sum of the parts, is generated from them. And so maybe in the old days, we would have said, well, they're evil so it called in this evil spirit. And now maybe we're saying, Well, really, the root of this is human sin. We're generating this evil spirit that takes on a life of its own and then turns on us.
Seth Price 1:24
What does it mean when we say the word the devil, insert whatever noun you want to here, when you mean that concept. I have no earthly idea. In my training and upbringing in the church, the devil for me was a mcguffin, that was used to propel the narrative of the Gospel forward. Instead of love it was fear. Instead of compassion and grace, it was hate and judgment and a really big hope that I didn't screw up, and somehow just burn for forever. Which you'll hear me reference later in the show is not what I believe anymore. Welcome to the Can I Say This At Church podcast. I as always are Seth, you are still you and I'm ready to rock and roll. But a few housekeeping things soon. Maybe today really depends on what time you're listening to this, I'm going to refresh the store, a friend of mine said we should call these things the Can We Wear this at Church type of merchandise, and I like that, I'm going to do that. So that's going to be rebranded. But I'm adding in, I realized I don't have anything for the winter or for the fall, except for some beanies, which I will say are quite warm. And if you've seen me on social media, I'm quite bald. And so those are very helpful to me. But I'm going to refresh some of the stuff, make sure that there's some long sleeved things in there. And just make sure that we're all prepared for what appears if the weather today is right is going to be really cold, at least for me. So click there. If that is something that interests you, that's another way to support the show.
Another reminder, as people are listening, so between now in the next two and a half to three weeks, every single dollar made in profit on anything bought in the store, whether that be the new justice, taken from the text of Amos shirts, or anything in there, all of that money is being combined and gathered and donated to Black Lives Matter. I've reached out to a handful of people that I trust to give me vehicles to give that money to; to hopefully try some small part to affect some form of change or to help fund that change. So consider doing that if you've been on the fence or like yeah, I want to do that. Click that button, that money is not going to the show. It is not going to me. It is literally hopefully going to do more good than that. I don't want to add any more filler here for you. So I really hope that this conversation does as much for you as it does for me on the concept of Satan, fear, tears, war, and just the Gospel with Brad Jersak.
Seth Price 4:10
Brad, I'm gonna forego the last name because I think you're like four times on the show now. And so Brad, welcome back to the show. I'm glad to welcome you back. I'm terrified for the conversation today because I know very little about it. But welcome back.
Brad 4:23
Yeah, welcome to the whole range of demonology that we know very little about and what we think we know we don't necessarily know but I'm glad to be with you and it’s good to see you again.
Seth Price 4:37
In past episodes I've asked you to go over what's new a little bit about you and again we're gonna forego all of that because people can they can just search the feed, they can go back in here all of that. Although today I got an email, or no it was tagged, that that episode that we did like three years ago on atonement still consistently happens to be, almost every week, it outperforms most of the other episodes. I don't know why.
Brad 5:00
Well the cross is important, right? It's really important. If I could say one thing. Right now, Paul Young, who wrote The Shack and I have just released a brand new little novel. It's my first work of fiction and we're excited. It's called The Pastor: A Crisis, so I did think I should make a plug about that. People can preorder it on Amazon, and it's a composite character of people I've actually known who absolutely crashed on their fundamentalism. And this guy ends up in a psych ward and ends up having to deal with his demons. So I bring the book up in the context of this story, just to say, you know, that metaphor we've used, of you know wrestling with my demons. Maybe that is a good approach to the whole topic. And so it connects in that way.
Seth Price 5:49
That's out in a few weeks, right? A few weeks. Correct? Because I haven't pre ordered but it hasn't been delivered.
Brad 6:00
Right. So there's gonna be a hard copy. There's an amazing audio book version of it with voice actors. And then of course, Kindle. So when it finally rolls out, you know, I think people will love the the audio version.
Seth Price 6:18
Are you one of the audio actors?
Brad 6:20
No, no, we had professional actors, except for my youngest son, Dominic. He stepped into one of the parts and he just nailed it. So that's the funnest part for me. And of course, co writing something with Paul Young; what a privilege.
Seth Price 6:39
He's great. Yeah, yeah, his work has been; I've really enjoyed his work. So I wanted to bring you on to talk about demons, Satan, the Satan, I don't know why I putting the word “the” in front of Satan (matters). But apparently, from what I put on Facebook today doing that changes everything. And let me just be honest about my ignorance on the record here. So growing up in the church, Satan, for me was the demonic fallen angel version of Elf on the Shelf, for lack of a better metaphor that was just going to be like a cosmic snitch, and possibly keep me from getting to heaven. It was used as like a fear tactic like a, you know, don't give in to Satan or the devil. And I never did anything else with that, like, we didn't talk about it ever. It was just used as a blunt force object to correct behavior. So can we just start at a really basically low level, like when we say like, are those even all the same things? demon, Satan? The Satan? The devil?
Brad 7:35
Yeah, let's begin with what we had learned traditionally, right. And this was the dominant view for much of church history that Satan is what we call the fallen angel Lucifer, who is the you know, the prince of the angels who defied God and fell out of heaven. We typically then also identified Satan with the term the devil, and also the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
Satan is a character that appears in in various stories like at the prologue of the book of Job where he appears before God somehow, and he sets up this test of whether Job will pass the test, and God bets on Job right. And then he appears again, later in the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness. And then Christ says some odd things about Satan,
I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven,
He says to Peter,
Get behind Me, Satan!
which is a scary thing to have Jesus call you Satan. And then really, it all comes to convergence, because up to then we might have said, Satan, the devil, and the serpent are all different things. But there is a verse in the Book of Revelation, where it kind of conflates all of those stories.
So we grew up with that. And the idea was, in Satan's rebellion, one third of the angels fell with them, and then they become the demons. Which, by the way, is not the origin story of the demons in Jewish literature. So, so starting from there then I also became very involved in what we call deliverance ministry in the early 90s. And so then we learned, well you know, we've got to identify demons, confront them and cast them out. And so we did deliverance ministry in that way. Which was sometimes effective even if, as a spiritual authority, I'm imposing that model on someone. And then they respond to the model.
And I can see elements of that model now at work in the secular realm with psychologists who are externalizing evil in child predators. So it's very interesting that we're kind of coming around to that model again. The question is, is that what the Bible is even talking about?
Seth Price 10:15
Yeah, you know, when you say imposing a model, you mean imposing a demon on to a person or imposing Satan into a person, like, what do you mean when you say imposing a model?
Brad 10:25
No, what I'm saying is that when we look at somebody who is desperate for help, and are struggling in their lives with let's say, anxiety, or obsessive thoughts, or whatever, we bring a worldview to that moment. We bring a model to that moment. And so imposing the model might be saying, “Oh, I'm going to identify what's wrong with you as a demon”, because I'm a spiritual authority, and they are a desperate person, they're going to accept that analysis. And then I can proceed with trying to cast that demon out.
The weird thing is, sometimes it works! And so is it working because that's really what's happening or is it working because people in need are responsive to whatever model I bring it's just which model is the most effective? So the very same person, maybe I would come to them and I'd say, “Oh, no, these aren't demons, these are dissociative parts of you”. And and we need to deal with it that way. Or maybe I'd come with another model like Jungian psychology and say, “Well, no, this is really your shadow side, and you need to embrace it.” Or maybe I would come and do a Gestalt theory and have them sit on two chairs, and take turns switching chairs to talk to themselves. And all of these are models and desperate people respond to model, it's just sometimes the demon model actually kind of helps. And sometimes it's super traumatic and destructive. And I feel like I'm always wanting to find the best way forward.
So I believe the Lord brought me out of it because of the damage I was potentially doing. Brought me out of a deliverance model into inner healing model and the 12 step model. And so on the same issues those seem more effective, much more effective, and there's less risk of damaging the client so called.
Seth Price 12:25
Yeah, one of the questions actually deals with that. When the first question is asked was with your experience in kind of the inner healing in your previous stuff, you know, with with exorcisms or whatever you want to call that. The question was, how has your eschatology changed in the way that you view the spiritual realm as the way that you've kind of switched models to more of an inner healing 12 step type process?
Brad 12:50
The eschatology like, endtimes stuff?
Seth Price 12:54
His question not mine.
Brad 12:55
Yeah, I wouldn't normally see them as directly connected. But since he asked, I have also gone from sort of that old style dispensational, rapture, Great Tribulation, Armageddon, that kind of model, to I'm now in the Eastern Orthodox Church, where where our vision of the second, the glorious Second Coming, we still believe in a second coming. We just don't know what it looks like. But our vision of it is derived not from the book of Revelation, but from the Mount of Transfiguration. And so on the Mount of Transfiguration, we see Elijah and Moses glorified, so they kind of represent those who've departed already. And we see Peter, James, and John and they're hitting the deck because the glory is so intense. But Christ comess and glory, but it's not like this destructive thing where he's lopping heads off with a sword out of his mouth and all of that. So that's the vision of it, the Mount of Transfiguration.
And the theology of it is more focused on 1 Corinthians 15, where at the end of this age, we pass through a judgment but finally into the end of the ages where God is all in all in Christ is victorious and eradicates all evil in the universe, including Satan; apparently. There is a time coming when there will be no evil. And so what does that mean, right.
Seth Price 14:23
Yeah. So is Satan, a thing of being, a deity, an ethereal presence, is it something I'm creating? Like, what what is that because like for Peter to be Satan is a snake Satan, and Revelation, I think it's like 7 or 12 or maybe it's 12 seven or one of those like, Satan's a dragon and then a snake, like, what the heck is Satan? Because again, for me, Satan is that Dante's Inferno pitchfork thing, which is not also probably accurate in any way, shape, or form.
Brad 14:58
Yeah, well, we might even have to say that the idea of Satan develops right within the scriptures. So it's not a uniform image or vision or function. So I want to start out by saying that in the Bible, our whole idea that Satan is the fallen Angel Lucifer, who then leads the armies of the kingdom of darkness. That vision is very thin Biblically, like there's not actual, we read so much into some of these passages. So we've got an Isaiah passage, which is not actually addressing Satan, it's talking about a king. It's talking about an emperor who's raised himself up and he's like this bright morning star is going to crash. Nowhere in there, does it say that it’s a fallen angel or anything like that. It's a judgment of a particular King. So to in Ezekiel I think it's the king of Tyre is mentioned. And we've applied that to Satan. And we're like, well, this is about Satan. Nowhere does it say that.
And so then suddenly, you're like, wait a minute, where do we get an ontology of Satan from the Bible? And there's just not a lot going on there. Ontology means “being”. In the early church, they began to resist the idea that this is even that “being” is quite the right being or entity is quite the right way to refer to Satan. Satan is a function, literally “the accuser”. And so it seems to be that this accuser is given voice, is given persona, in the Bible. Like let's say, when Satan is tempting Jesus, in the wilderness, or through Peter, what's going on there? Oh, it's it's not just an accuser, but it's an opponent and opposing voice, the accusing voice. It's real. But what does real mean? Does real mean a real being or…so I like how Brian Zahnd, he's the guy you should be talking to about this, because but we've we've worked this out together a lot. And he would say it this way, that the Satan, we just say the Satan, because it's given the, you know, there's an article in the Greek but it's same with God, you know, it just it the article in the Greek makes it a name sometimes.
But he would say
that the Satan is less than a person and more than a principal.
So he wouldn't see Satan having personality, like an actual Angel, or a human would, or some sentient being. It's not that but it's more than just personification of evil or principle of evil. He would say it's a real phenomenon in this world that functions on a global scale to manifest the sins of humankind. In other words, if you think about, like, did God create Satan? No, we created a phenomenon of evil that becomes bigger than us, possesses us, scoops us up. And you can use a good analogy from let's say Hitlerism where the people of Germany generate this kind of spirit, this evil spirit, that then begins to control them. And so you see it on a smaller scale in a mob mentality, right? When a mob gathers, something bigger than the sum of the parts, is generated from them. And so maybe in the old days, we would have said, well, they're evil so it called in this evil spirit. And now maybe we're saying, well, really, the root of this is human sin. We're generating this evil spirit that takes on a life of its own and then turns on us.
And that's how my son when he was nine described what he was seeing in terms of demons. So let's say you're an addict and out of your addiction, or out of greed, or out of fear, you generate this spirit that then really begins to rule you and hold you in bondage. In that sense, does it matter? So what I don't want people to hear is that I don't believe in Satan or demons. Of course I do! I've dealt with them all my life! I'm just questioning our narrative for their backstory. And I'm saying the Biblical narrative does not support the mythology we've generated largely. And why does it matter? It matters because there are ways of helping people become free, that are abusive, and don't really free them. And there are ways of helping people that can actually nurture them and not re traumatize them.
So that's why I'm saying, yeah, while I believe my 12 step step brothers and sisters, they're right when they're say they're wrestling with their demons, but how are they doing it? Oh, they're doing it through surrender to the care of a loving God. We're not having exorcisms. They are doing their fearless moral inventory and confessing their sins and they're in community. And that actually is working to set them free in ways that we had hoped we could just cast out. I think that was the big problem. We thought if we can just identify this thing and yell at it, and then then it'll leave and they won't be under this obsession, or oppression, anymore. And frankly, that's pretty rare.
Seth Price 20:43
Yeah, your son's definition and I'll find the quote and I'll like put it in the beginning I won't you set it on multiple places. And it's, it's, it's worth the effort for someone else to try to find I won't, I won't make you rehash it here.
Brad 20:55
I can say the one sentence and he said,
demons are created by humans out of the ashes of war, the tears of those who are afraid, and the stuff people want that doesn't belong to them, then they take on a life of their own and turn on you and torment you.
Seth 21:12
Hmm.
Brad 21:12
Yeah, that was his exact word.
Seth Price 21:13
Is that how he usually speaks?
Brad 21:14
No.
Seth Price 21:15
Because that's just the part that blew me away. Like when I heard you say that…I'm like, I have an 11 year old it doesn't talk like that.
Brad 21:21
No, he was nine at the time. And that's absolutely not how he talks. It was out of the blue. Like, who told you that? And he said, “Jesus”, and I'm like “when” (and he says) “just now”.
So it flowed. He wasn't like composing something he was playing with Lego or something.
Seth Price 21:39
Just absently speaking.
Brad 21:42
Yeah, well, yeah, and then when I presented that to people like Brian Zahnd and Michael Hardin, who are kind of experts on this, I mean, their hair just stood up on end. Because they're like, "we've never heard what we believe already articulated so clearly, by anybody. And there's a Girardian element to it. For those who study René Girard. There's, you know, all of that stuff. So it was a moment, right, where it shifted my thinking and made more sense what we were already being led to do, which was inner healing work.
Seth Price 22:13
One of these questions. I'm not real good on the verse of, you know, second temple literature, you know, first and like, I'm just not there. One of the questions, though, does intrigued me. So the question is, how do we factor in views of demons and their origins like in reference to second temple literature? And I'm not even really sure what that question means, either. But a lot of people seem to think it was an applicable question. I just don't even know what it means.
Brad 22:39
Okay, I can tell you fairly simply. I have studied enough to be able to reduce it.
First of all, what we mean by second temple is Herod's temple and Second Temple Judaism would be the teachings of rabbis during the time of Herod's temple, which is the one Jesus was in. One of the problems with that very statement is it assumes “a” Second Temple Judaism, when in fact, don't you remember, there was Pharisees, there were Sadducees, there were zealots, there were Essenes, all of that. And we're not talking about one generation, we're talking over a period of time. So there isn't a single second temple position on this.
Second, we should not assume that Jesus adopt(ed) Second Temple Judaism. He come to overthrow it. And he's very subversive in many ways when he's addressing the other rabbis.
That said, I'll give you one example. When we talk Second Temple Judaism, sometimes we're referring to mythologies that were adopted in the intertestamental period, in books like Enoch, and Esdras and others. And so within those books, you start getting, and they were, I mean, Enoch was not a Bible book. It was not what we even now call apocryphal. But it was a very popular book during that time. And people were reading it, and Jude even refers to it, although Paul refers to the Hymn to Zeus twice, so don't take too much from that. But in some of that literature, you have different mythologies. I'm going to amalgamate them into one story for you very quickly and then we'll ask ourselves, really? We want to adopt all of that, and on what basis are we adopting part of it?
So in this story, you have anywhere from two, up to six, Satan's. And at least one of them begins to tempt a brand of angels that is mentioned once in Daniel called the watchers, and is in that Noah movie with Russell Crowe; the watchers. So these watchers are in heaven, and Satan, or some Satan's, tempt them to come down to earth and to have sex with women; human women. So some of the watchers come down, and they procreate with women and these become the Nephilim . And so then we have the Nephilim and these are like giants in the earth and their superpowers and all of that. And in this mythology, where the Bible says “human violence ruined the earth”, and that's why we had the flood in this myth mythology, it's actually the naphthalene who ruin the earth. And so Noah comes along, and he's praying to God, “Lord, deliver us from the destruction of the world by these Nephilim”. So in the Bible, God is doing a recreation of a ruined world. But in this mythology he's not. What he's doing is he needs to drown the Nephilim. And he ends up drowning everyone. So then the Nephilim drown, all of them. So I don't know why people are still looking for them in Hillary Clinton or something that's unbelievable! Can I just say that there's no Nephilim around! Read your Bible!
Seth Price 26:05
So emphatic!
Brad 26:06
And certainly not in one of your American political parties, like come on! So the Nephilim drown but what happens is when they drown their spirits appeal to God not to send them to Tartarus, which was where the Greek gods like Zeus and those guys, when they defeated the Titans, they bound them up in Tartarus.
Alright, so now we've got these spirits of the drowned naphthalene begging God not to be sent to Tartarus, which Peter mentioned once he's borrowing their mythology. So now we're in a big mess. So these spirits beg God, please don't send us to Tartarus! So God has mercy on 1/10th of them. He says 90% of them to Tartarus and he sends 10% of them to the earth, and that's the demons. Okay. All right. So I'm gonna go with my son on this one. That what he described seems a lot more like even what we would see in the Bible.
So does Jesus casting out demons verify a literalist view that says these are fallen angels, or the Second Temple view that these are 10% of the spirits of the drought Nephilim? No! It just means in the worldview of people in the first century, they identified certain maladies and addictions and so on, with demonic spirits. Now, even then, I'm okay to call them demonic spirits. I just don't know what that means. I don't believe it's a disembodied angel taking over you and controlling you. But somehow an unclean spirit, what would be an unclean spirit? It would be my compulsion to act out in addictive behavior. I think that'd be fair to call it an unclean spirit.
Seth Price 28:05
Yeah.
Brad 28:06
And then the question is, but when Jesus drives them out like is he even doing what the exorcists do? It seems to me he's just speaking to people. And I love the story of Legion because I think what Jesus says to the gathering of demons, what's your name? And he's not asking the demon to identify himself. He's asking the guy what his name is. He's humanizing this fellow. And but then this voice pops out and is like “we are legion” blah, blah, blah. And like, the human psyche is amazing, it's giving voice to something there that may even have been now bigger than that guy. And I don't entirely get it.
Seth Price 29:10
Would it be fair to call chemical imbalancesn the same thing as demons if we were to rewrite things today? Like, would you put those two in the same categories?
Brad 29:19
I don’t think always but maybe sometimes, you know, like, I just wouldn't I've been bit by labeling too easily. Right. And so, but I do want to give you an example of where modern psychology is, has explored this.
So I was talking to a counselor who works with everything from sex addicts to children who are showing signs of being predatorial. And so I said, like, so what happens when you get like a six year old that's starting to molest other children, does anything work on that? And she said, “Well, one thing seems to. And that is when you personify the impulse”.
So let's say a little child has an impulse to molest his sister. And you personify that impulse and you say, let's give that impulse a name. So we'll call it you know, “nasty” or something. Okay, so when “nasty” comes, you feel like you need to do something to your sister? Yeah, I do. Okay. Can you feel when nasty is coming? Yes. Oh! So even before you're doing something, you can feel nasty coming? Yes. Okay. So let's see how you're externalizing the evil and then she says, “Now what are some of the weapons we could use to protect you from nasty?”
This is like secular psychology, doing spiritual warfare. And what we would maybe say from our old Christian point of view is “Oh, she's discovering the reality of demons”. And the reality of spiritual weapons. It's like, well, no, she's using a metaphor. And so as Jesus, and so as Paul. And we know this, because in Ephesiansm 6, he identifies what the weapons are. It's like truth. You know, you don't have an invisible sword. You have your truth. So that an interesting approach.
Seth Price 31:18
(my dog barking in the background)
So one of the things that I've always struggled with in demons, and one of the Scriptures I was come back is so Jesus cast out demons into like the pigs, the pigs run off the cliff. And that makes no sense if we're personifying something that I'm personally struggling with. Like something inside me. So what the heck is leaving me and going into the animals? Can animals even be demon possessed? Is that even a conversation that is a real one? Does that make any sense at all? I hope so.
Brad 31:45
Yeah. Yeah, I've little idea of what what's going on in that story and why it's told that way, except that we know that the gathering area was occupied by Roman soldiers. So the idea of Legion seems to be there's a centralizing of a regional evil into this man. And when it's released from him where does that evil go? And it seems to go into pigs, which Jews had no business raising. You know, like, so I don't know if these are these Gentiles raising the pigs as a Jews raising the pigs for the Roman legions? And so this gets really murky in the sense that you could have an individual who is demonized by their own stuff. But let's say it's a kind of Imperial chaos and violence that's happening and that it's not just him that it's, you know. So this chaos is released from this guy, and then it like enters the pigs.
I think anyone who knows for sure what that means is lying. (Seth laughs) You know, like, I think let's be humble. And I think this is a good approach is, let's go to the gospel stories that become problematic. And we don't have answers we have more questions. So a good one is, who is talking to Jesus when he's being tempted in the wilderness? Are these ideas are these global ideas of domination and glory that die want to divert him from the cross and he tells his disciple, the temptations he had faced. And he said, those temptations, that impulse to bypass the cross-and the way of the cross-in order to attain my kingdom, that's the satan. That doesn't mean that the guy in the red suit came. It could be ideas that are presented, Michael Hardin says, maybe we could even call it Jesus potential shadow side. That is, when Christ becomes human, he actually assumes human flesh, fallen human flesh, in order to overcome it. So in the incarnation of Christ, the potential for him to disobey his father presents itself. The temptation for him to abandon the way of the cross presents itself. And he overcomes that and eradicates it. So that'd be one possibility.
So that's an issue. The pigs are an issue. And other issues like what's the deal with him calling Peter Satan? And then is this same Satan, the Prince of the World, that Jesus says, he drove out on Good Friday? Now the Prince of this World is driven out. What’s that mean? Driven out of where…the world? So then what are we worried about now? And yet, you've got Peter in his Epistles saying, well, “Satan's prowling around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
So on the one hand, you have two different theologies there. John is saying that the cross drove out the Prince of this World, Peter’s saying he's still prowling around. Are they even talking about the same thing? So what I'm trying to do right now is I am problematizing our harmonizing of all these passages into one into one division, they just don't harmonize so easily.
Seth Price 35:06
So on my list of people that I want to talk to one of these days is Michael Heiser, because of his work that he's done on like the divine Council. I remember the first time I read that I was like…what, just all of that doesn't make any sense! But where does a concept of Satan fit into a divine council? Or would it be fair to say that, in that culture and in that context, it's in the divine council, or no?
Brad 35:29
Yeah, you know, I think that's all coming just from the story of Job and it's a story. And, you know, would we say literally, that the “Fallen Angel, Satan”, who apparently walks in and out of the presence of God sits on the Council of God gets a challenge God like that and make bets with Him? And it's like, no! If we literalize that I think we're in back into silly territory. But the function of the Satan in that story is to say, Where does the accuser show up?
Well, in the mythology he shows up in the presence of God to accuse Job (but) in actuality he shows up in the friends who begin to accuse him. And in his wife, and in Job, who begin to accuse God Himself.
Yeah, the thing is, I'm not averse to mythology. I think it delivers truth in ways that just always speaking in concrete terms cannot do. However, the problem is they didn't literalize this stuff back, then we did it! You know, we became literalistic, in modern times. So it's a modernist problem of reading these stories so literally.
I don't even believe Dante thought literally. Dante is not the problem. He's writing a poem to apply cosmic imagery to real world politics. And then we come along, hundreds of years later, and literalize it and then blame Dante, right‽ And so Dante would probably go like, “What the hell are you doing with my poem! Have you completely missed the point!”
As would the author of Job right. And so I think about that, and I think myth can help us. So myth, if we understand what myth is about, myth tells us how things came to be. The myth of Genesis One is not about a science lesson it is the truth of how the world came to be. It came to be through a loving God who creates a place for us to live.
How does evil come to be? Well, Paul, reflects on Genesis 2&3, Paul's reflection is that it's through one man that sin entered the world, not through the serpent, and not through the woman. So that's interesting. And so it's about how sin came to be how death came to be, and all of these things. And so we just have to learn how to read these according to the Spirit rather than the letter. And fundamentalism got hung up on the letter, just like the Pharisees.
Seth Price 38:12
I want to ask two questions, one of which is just way out of left field. And if it's not a good question, you tell me and I'll pivot to something else. But before I get there, now, I'll just ask that question. So what is it when we have someone worshipping Satan? So if Satan is something that is like an accusatory spirit, something that I'm able to manifest, you know, a bad part of a part of me, that's me that I need to learn how to claim and you know, surrender, give to God, you know, get healing with. What is it when people are literally setting up churches that worship Satan? Like, what are they worshiping? And how does that relate to the Satan of the Bible, or those two entirely separate things?
Brad 38:52
Yeah, I mean, it's entirely separate things.
My friend Ken the satanist, who became Ken the Christian Satanist, who then found Satan to be redundant. He said, you need to understand that at least the Satan worship he was into had nothing to do with the Satan of evangelical Biblicism. For them, Satanism was about the autonomy of the self, basically saying, I am God. And in that sense, very Biblical. What is the Satan doing in the story of the fall?Iit is Adam asserting autonomy, so that he can be godlike, without reference to surrender to the living God. I am God in that model. And that's what modern Satanism generally purports to be. And basically says, we reject this idea of surrendering to God, because I am God. And so it's an assertion of absolute autonomy. Now you might have dabblers who are playing around making up their own little thing and you know, but that's not authentic Satanism today.
Seth Price 40:02
The correlation to Satan, Beelzebub, whatever word you want to use, and hell, or Gehenna, or Hades, or Sheol, or whatever we want to give it, do those two belong together the way that many fundamentalists have put them together? Where one is in control of that, because, and the reason I ask is my view of hell, I'm certain is heretical. And maybe it's not. Like, I think that hell is something that I'm actively creating, when I choose to volitiously make actions that break shalom. And that I'm generating hell. Yeah, that's what I think. Not that I'm going somewhere, but that I'm creating something that you and I are both experiencing, and it's hellish.
Or I could do the opposite, which would be the Kingdom of Heaven. And with the way that I view Hell, I really struggle to figure out how Satan has anything to do with that outside of my action. So I'm curious, Biblically, what does Satan, or any of those other words you want to put on Satan or demonic influence have to do with hell?
Brad 41:03
Yeah, well, even within the Bible, the word Gehenna that we typically translate into “Hell” is not used uniformly. So for example, perhaps so the Valley of the Sons of Hinnom was outside of Jerusalem. And so Hinnom, or Gehenna, in Jeremiah's time represented the destruction of Jerusalem by foreign armies. That's Gehenna, that's hell.
Jerusalem under siege, on fire, eating their own babies, because they're starving to death. That's hell, and they had generated it in that sense, through rebellion. And then in the intertestamental period, they begin to adopt an idea that hell is like the afterlife, and it's the fiery inferno. And that's in Judaism, but they're borrowing heavily from, let's say, from Greek mythology, the Greek mythology of Hades there. And in that sense, Hades is both the place of the dead in the underworld, but it's also the ruler of the underworld.
So in the early church they've got arguments between Hades and Beelzebub about whether it'll let Jesus into Hades. Because if he goes there, he might rescue everyone. Right? So you got that. But then you got the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus talking about Gehenna, and there it's like, hard to tell what he's talking about. It could be to do with a final judgment or something like that. But then in James, and this connects-you're using it more like James does-instead of thinking of Ghana as a future afterlife, destiny of punishment, James is talking about it as a kingdom. And he says, when slander comes out of your mouth your tongue is set on fire by the flames of Gehenna.
In other words, when I slander somebody, I am participating in the kingdom of darkness, the kingdom of Gehenna, and what Paul calls the kingdom of darkness in Colossians 1.
So that's quite different then right? So you got a whole range from Jerusalem burning, to an afterlife judgment, to the kingdom of darkness active in me today as I participate in evil. If you go with that James model, which I could also then call a Seth model.
Seth Price 43:19
I didn't know there was a James model. I feel good about this. You have no idea how. I'm gonna go back and read James.
Brad 43:26
Yeah, So you instinctively had it right. So connect James’ use of Gehenna with Colossians use of Kingdom of Darkness, and then say, Okay, if we're going to use Gehenna, or hell, as a metaphor for the kingdom of darkness, which I participate in and generate through my sin, then we can also use one of those models of Satan as Satan is the phenomenon of evil in the kingdom that I generate through my sin. I and we, because there's this corporate element to it that's huge, right? Which we might call principalities or okay, let's say nationalism as a principality is a kingdom in competition with Christ, and the way of Christ. And in that sense, nationalism then becomes an example of both The Satan and of the Kingdom of Hell. And we generate that and we participate in it. And then we are tormented and bound up by that. And Christ come to expose that to drive it out and set us free from it.
To me, then, the mythological languages into threat, you just have to know what you're kind of talking about.
Seth Price 44:37
How prescient is that as a depiction of the planet that we live on today? Yeah, yeah. Just last four sentences that you said there. Yeah, gracious.
Let me pivot a bit. So at the beginning, the word I wrote down that you said is with your book, because again, haven't read it, you said “it's dealing with a pastor and ‘his demons’”. So I want to spend a bit of time just in the next 10-15 minutes that I’ve got you. What are you getting at with that? Like, pastors and their demons? Because again, I'm 100% ignorance here, like, yeah, where are you going with it? Like what's kind of the narrative without giving the book away?
Brad 45:11
So, I can give this much away that when I say that he's dealing with his demons, and that he has to pass through hell to do so, now we're using mythological language. But in the context of the novel, which is really drawn from real life suffering of people I love, by demons. In his case, it would be (that) the demons are memories of harm that he has caused, and harm that's been done to him that is rooted into his heart as shame. And he's tried to cope with his actions, and even the ways he's been victimized. His way of coping with that is through self will, which only makes it worse, because that's actually the root of our whole problem. Self will got us into this problem in the first place. And in that sense, it is Satan as self will, you see, and so his demons are like shame, but they manifest to him in certain ways through visitations of those from his past.
And so in that sense, it's a little bit like my son, Dominic, he said that this novel, it's sort of like an F’d up version of the Christmas Carol by Dickinson. And so he's got a face, his fears, and his shame and all of that, that's what I mean by wrestling with his demons. So in the context of a novel, you can personify that a little bit, although it's not like a Dante sort of personification it's connected with people.
And so there's a heavy element to this, the idea that passing through hell means the fire of the love of God that cleanses us of those demons. The love of God feels like hell to those who must pass through it to face who they been, what they've done, what they've experienced. And the way out is through surrender and letting go and forgiveness. The question is, can this guy do it? And who will oppose it, who will help him and all of that?
Seth Price 47:07
Yeah, when you say the love of God that way and I'm gonna borrow from CS Lewis. So I've been reading the books with my daughter, my youngest daughter. And so we're reading the original one like The Magician's Nephew, I think, where the kids are still going in and out (of the world). And there's a part in there. And the way you describe the love of God really reminds me of the part where Aslan is singing creation into being. I don't know if you remember those books or not, but it's just, we just read the chapter a few nights ago. And for everyone else though they are like this is the worst song I've ever heard like nails on a chalkboard, and to all the kids, and people that are partaking in the splendor, they are like this is the best song I've ever heard! And then the result is they can hear things, they have ears to hear. And the other people that that are going through hell just don't have any ears to hear. But when I hear you describing the love of God, the fire of hell there for some reason that draws up for me.
Brad 47:52
That's exactly right. And it's sort of like, our orientation towards the love of God determines whether we experience His love his warmth, and protection and comfort or fiery torment and darkness and storm. Sort of like the difference between the Egyptians and the Israelites in the wilderness in their orientation toward the pillar of fire. It's the same pillar but they're having a different experience of it. And, yeah, and Lewis picks up on that really beautifully.
It's also the gospel itself. So Paul will say the same thing sort of as Lewis does, while Lewis is drawing from Paul I think, when he said that the gospel, to some, it's a fragrant aroma, and to others, it's the stench of death. So same idea, right? Two orientations to the same truth, but you experience it as salvation or as condemnation in our minds. When in reality this is the love of God. And I'm very hopeful that the love of God is effective in transforming even the hardest part.
Seth Price 48:55
Hmm, I want to ask you one last question. I've asked it of everyone this year, I think so if you were to try to wrap words around the divine, the concept of the Divine, and explain that to someone, what would you say?
Brad 49:07
Yeah, the way I say it. This is typically how I share the gospel, I would say if there's a God. And I say, if, not as a doubt statement but as a faith statement, because I don't prove these things in a courtroom or a laboratory. So if there is a God, that God is infinite love. And I might add today, a mercy that endures forever for my Muslim friends, the All Merciful One. And then I would say and if you want to know what that love looks like, instead of just infusing your own broken notions of love. If you want to know the reality of what that love looks like, we look at the person of Christ who embodied it perfectly. And we watch how it comes into clearest focus at the cross, where Christ reveals the divine to be self giving radically forgiving, co-suffering love. And then that comes with an invitation, we're invited to experience that, and to experience that is eternal life.
It's not heaven when you die someday, although that could be an extension of it. But right now in this life, the most broken people I know, although we're not broken, your shirt says. Those who struggle on a daily basis just to get out of bed and live another day with their demons they know eternal life when they experienced that love, and its transformative character just verifies the reality of the Divine for them.
Seth Price 50:47
For those that can't see the video that aren't subscribers on Patreon, the shirt that Brad's referencing is that you're not broken shirt that I have. So this is specifically because I don't know if you can see the rainbow or not on there. Like when people tell people that are gay that they're broken or they're unreconcilable. Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, that's, that's entirely a lie. That's entirely a lie.
Brad 51:07
I get that. Yeah!
Seth Price 51:09
Yeah, though I do have it in not in a rainbow doesn't matter. Um, so plug the places. So you have a you have like, you've had like 17 books come out this year. And that's an exaggeration. But that's what it feels like. So where do you want people to go? What do you want them to get? Click on read, listen to where would you send people to Brad?
Brad 51:25
Right now I'd send them to Amazon to pick up The Pastor: A Crisis with Paul. They can also find my other books on Amazon. But they should search Bradley Jersak not Brad necessarily. Because it didn't merge those two very well. I've written a recent book called IN: Incarnation & Inclusion, Abba & Lamb that doesn't have the traction I'd like to see considering it's, I think important work on inclusion. That says we don't need to minimize or ditch Christ in order to see that the love of God is wider, higher, longer, and deeper than we ever could grasp. So that's the two I plug right now mainly on Amazon. Or you can visit me at Bradjersak.com. Or I'm on Facebook and Instagram and Twitter, all the places as Brad Jersak, yeah.
Seth Price 52:18
Yeah. There's only Bradley on Amazon. Yeah. Perfect. Well, thanks again for sharing your Saturday afternoon with me, literally at the drop of a hat. I appreciate it so so much.
Brad 52:28
Yeah, my pleasure. It was fun.
Seth Price 52:45
Upon further listening to this, as I edited it, my heart is so warmed. When Brad kind of connected my views on hell in a way that I hadn't considered probably because of the books that I read. That I've connected James to some other parts of the gospel. And I've been digging into that. And I can't tell you how excited I am to talk to you all at a later date about that. But I would be remiss if I didn't thank the patrons of the show, for actually producing the show, this show was recorded and edited in my basement, but produced and paid for by the patrons of the show, I would love to count you among them. Whether you have edited your pledge recently, which many of you have, or if you're new to the community. Thank you so very much! It means more than you know, and continues to make this thing be a thing, consider supporting the show through the merchandise as that money again is being donated. A very special thanks to Young Oceans, for giving me permission to use your music in the show. Guys, I want to reset some contexts there. So you can follow the Spotify playlist for all of the music used in these shows. And I believe someone has actually converted that also into an apple music playlist, though I don't know how to find that. But a lot of these artists, so I don't pay for these, they are giving this because they believe their music matters. And I think hopefully they also agree that the conversations here matter, but I need you to consider supporting them. So stream their music, like they get paid small amounts for that. But maybe also track them down, anyone that's been on the show prior and engage with their music, tell some friends about it, support them, because really in these times that we're in right now, they're not doing what they normally would do. They're not touring, and all that stuff. And that really affects them. So consider supporting not only Young Oceans, but anyone that's been on the show pass if you're like man, that music that hit me that music was something.
I'll talk to you next week. I hope that you understand how amazingly beloved you are. Be blessed.