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.
Carmen Imes 0:08
Yeah, let me say it this way, if you bear the name of Christ then you'll live it out in these tangible ways. So the law is the evidence that you bear the name of Christ. And so in the 10 Commandments, they were told not to carry God's name in vain. And I would think that means (that) to claim to be an Israelite, to act like you're a member of the community, and yet you live no differently than your pagan neighbors. And so that's very easy to transfer to our context. I could call myself a Christian but if nobody can tell the difference between the way I treat people and the way my non Christian neighbor treats people, and we've got a problem.
Seth Price 1:06
Hey, there, you and you. Welcome back to the show. I'm Seth, this is the podcast. And I'm glad that you're here. Here's the deal. There are no extra ad breaks. Today, you will hear one dedicated sponsor Wild Foods. And in the middle of the episode, listen to that. And I will say try their stuff. It's really good. But outside of that, supporters over at Patreon have literally stepped up to the plate, some of them have changed their pledges. And they are producing this show, this show does continue need to grow however, so if you've been on the fence, and if you are able in any way, consider becoming a producer, supporter, whatever word you want to give to that of the show. You have no idea how far even $1 or two goes. And there are other things, there are perks there as well.
A little housekeeping things. So you're going to see in the next few weeks, I'm going to bring the store offline, which is needed, because I need to do some refreshes on some of the stuff. And that's going to take some time. And so for a couple weeks, maybe a month, who knows, I'm going to take it down, I'm going to be tweaking it and editing it. And then I will bring it back and hopefully have some new content there as well when that comes back. And there's some things that I just want for myself. And so I figured I'm gonna make it for me (I) may as well make it available for you all. So look for that, in the coming weeks, months, I have no idea actually, when has going to happen. However, there we go, those two PSAs are out of the way.
Today, I brought on Carmen Imes. She is brilliant, much like many of the other guests on the show. And we talked about bearing God's name, what that means, what it means at Sinai and kind of how that theme is inter-woven throughout all of Scripture. And what that means for today, specifically about how we treat one another. I think you're going to love it. And so let's rock and roll.
Seth Price
(Through laughter) Here we go!
Alright. Doctor, right doctor?
Yes. Dr. Carmen Imes, welcome to the show. Unless you're requiring it I won't say doctor again. It’s a big deal so…
Carmen Imes 3:40
It's not required. It was hard work.
Seth Price 3:41
Yeah, absolutely. But you earned it. So I want to use that (it) was hard work, I'm sure. Welcome to the show. I'm glad you're here. And I think you might have the record for the longest it takes me to email people back and forth. Like I know, I was like emailed dropped off the face of the earth for four months and then email, that's my MO but I think I may have been the worst with you. And so I'm very, very sorry.
Carmen Imes 4:04
No worries. Here we are. It happened!
Seth Price 4:07
We did it. Um, so before we get started, who are you? What is, who is, why is Carmen? Like what would you want people to know about you?
Carmen Imes 4:19
(Laughs) That's a really broad question.
Seth Price 4:20
Right?! Go wherever you want
Carmen Imes 4:21
I am a child of God, follower of Jesus. I teach Old Testament at Prairie College in three hills, Alberta. I have a PhD from Wheaton College in Illinois masters from Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary. I've been a Bible nerd my entire life. I just love the Bible. And I think it's fascinating and relevant. And I've devoted my life to helping people connect with it and find God through the pages of Scripture.
Seth Price 4:51
What is required to be a Bible nerd. I don't know. What are the qualifications for this?
Carmen Imes 4:55
Well, when I was in second grade, I was out on the playground with my Bible starting a Bible read through club. So I think that's my qualifying activity. (We both laugh) I thought that playing on the playground…playing on the playground seemed to me to be a waste of time when we could be reading the Bible. So you can deduce from that that I was not very popular as a kid, that I had trouble, like, I was not the type that went to parties. I was never the cool one.
Seth Price 5:28
There are worse hobbies than reading biblical texts.
Carmen Imes 5:34
I agree. I agree.
Seth Price 5:37
So I wanted to talk a bit about the book that you wrote, I don't remember exactly when it came out. Because I just…time has warped and shifted.
Carmen Imes 5:44
Yes. December of 2019. So just over a year,
Seth Price 5:48
Yeah. I feel like it's been longer than that. But again, time is warping and shifting. My concept of time is…
Carmen Imes 5:54
COVID Time is just its own thing.
Seth Price 5:56
Yeah, I leave the house. But I feel like all I do is leave the house to come back to sleep to leave the house. But there's very little outside of that. But you wrote a blog post, I want to say around Christmas. And I think that you referenced a different blog post prior, but maybe not. It's like a liturgical calendar for people that need help. And unless that's the post that you're referencing, that was so popular. That's the one I want to talk about. So in that poll, like where are we at in the liturgical calendar, you know, recording, we're a few weeks away from Lent beginning, you know, a couple of days or so, yeah. But where are we at, for the liturgical calendar, you know, based on, you know, the way that we should be handling church right now?
Carmen Imes 6:33
So some people would, would still call this epiphany. For some people epiphany lasts from like, January is at 6th all the way until the start of Lent. And for other people, epiphany is just a day. So, so some people would call this epiphany, some people would call it Ordinary Time. I, myself, do not attend a liturgical church, and I never have. So I'm just an interloper. I just sort of lurk on Twitter and figure out which season we're in.
Seth Price 7:05
No no no. You're going real specific. I meant like you wrote a fantastic post about, I know, here. Yeah, here it is. I pulled it up a foolproof guide to the Evangelical Church calendar, you know, somewhere around lent.
Carmen Imes 7:16
You want to know, you want to know the Evangelical Church? Yeah I think we're approaching Superbowl Sunday.
Seth Price 7:25
So is this a high holy day in the church calendar for the church, or?
Carmen Imes 7:29
Well let me put it this way. When I was a kid, we never missed a service like we never did. Even on Super Bowl Sunday, we would go to church in the morning, and in the evening. And it was a big deal. Because when we went it was a really small service, and even other very devout families were not there. Because they were home watching the Superbowl. And so I felt a certain sense of superiority.
Seth Price 8:00
(Laughs)
Yeah, I read through that. I sent it to a couple friends that were pastors and then many more friends that are not pastors, and we were all this is the correct amount of passive aggressiveness that I need in my life right now.
Carmen Imes 8:12
It was my first attempt at satire on my blog, I think, and I was nervous, because here's why I was nervous. I know that this has been a super hard year for pastors, like COVID has been, some pastor friends are telling me the hardest season of ministry they've ever had to endure. So I did not want to heap abuse on pastors who are already carrying a really heavy load, and having to think. But I was also, I've just also, been increasingly struck by how the North American church is shaped around consumerism, rather than around church traditions, or biblical festivals and feasts, either. I mean, I didn't talk about this in the blog post, but we also don't know when Jewish festivals are for the most part in the church. We are, as I said in the post, if you want to know what season it is, check the entry to your local Walmart and you'll you'll get a sense for like, which high Holy Day is coming up.
Seth Price 9:14
Yeah, we are in the “heart chocolate season mixed with hot wings.” That's where we're at.
Carmen Imes 9:17
That's true. And one thing I left out of the post, which I if I was writing it over, I would add in and that's the third Sunday in January, depending on your church tradition is either Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, where you're going to talk about social justice, racial justice and reconciliation, in church, or you're going to talk about sanctity of human life, but probably not both. So that's something that I would add if I was writing it over.
Seth Price 9:51
Yeah, probably not both. Yeah, absolutely.
Carmen Imes 9:54
Yeah. I mean, I grew up hearing about sanctity of human life's Sunday, but we didn't do anything with MLK Jr. at church. And then one of my first black friends was talking to me about how hard it is for her to attend white churches, in part because they're completely ignoring one of the greatest heroes of the faith for her. And to not even acknowledge that it's Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend just seemed to her to be completely missing such an important piece of church history. Seems like you either get one or another. I did a little informal poll on Twitter, asking people whether their pastors mentioned one or the other, or neither or both. And it was interesting, but I don't think I have enough followers to know if it was a very accurate sample size.
Seth Price 10:47
I mean, it's probably 50/50. Actually, it's probably not it's probably 50 “we talked about one of those” and the other 50 “We talked about whatever we were going to talk about anyway”.
Carmen Imes 10:58
Yeah, that's I think about how it worked out on Twitter.
Seth Price 11:00
Yeah, yeah. I think there's a weird dichotomy for pastors of they probably want to, hopefully, they want to say some things about that. But they're terrified that it will already exacerbate the bleeding that COVID has caused to the coffers and their lights. Yes, payroll and salaries and staff and yeah, a business to run, which is a different topic altogether. The business of church. But yeah, churches is a business sadly. Anyway, that makes me sad. So let's not do that. Let's talk about bearing God's name. So that's not a word that we use, at least for me, because you're up in Canada, and you weren't raised in Canada, right? Like you're not…
Carmen Imes 11:37
Nope, I grew up in Colorado.
Seth Price 11:38
Perfect. So bearing here is only for bearing arms. And I don't want to have a gun conversation, really. But at least when I hear the word bearing, that's literally all that I think of is bearing or ball bearings in a car. Maybe, maybe
Carmen Imes 11:50
You are the first person to say that to me. I never even thought about the possibility of sort of militaristic reading of the title.
Seth Price 11:57
I'm from Texas. So for me, it's all guns and football. It's guns, football, and oil. So that's, that's it. But yeah, that's probably me. That's, that's some eisegesis there and the title of your book, so that's okay. But what is that? So bearing God's name? What does that whole concept mean? Because honestly, as I read through the book, and then I read pieces afterwards, like the whole concept of your book was a little bit foreign to me in the way that I was raised in the church. What I expected when it was when I was asked to read it by a few friends, is not what I gathered at the end. I was like, Huh, Mm hmm. Which is great. Yeah, so what is this concept?
Carmen Imes 12:38
Yeah, so my basic thesis is that when Israel meets God at Sinai, he places his name on them. He gives them like this invisible tattoo claiming them as his own by putting his name on them. And that he is then commissioning them as his representatives among the nations.
So my work stems from Exodus 20:7; the command not to take the Lord's name in vain, which is a bad way to translate it, the word “take” isn't in there in the Hebrew. Most of us have understood that command as a prohibition of saying God's name in a certain way, like, using it as a swear word or in an oath that we don't intend to keep or something like that. And as I look at the Hebrew, it says, “You shall not lift up or carry the name of YHWH, your God in vain”. And so the word I've chosen for that is “bear”, but you could just as easily say, carry, you could say carrying God's name. Yeah. So that's the, the basic idea it’s not that God's telling them not to say his name, but he's telling them not to misrepresent him among the nations.
Seth Price 13:49
Okay. And so for you and I listening, I think that word misrepresent is huge, because representation of the Divine is a massive thing. And depending on who you ask or poll on Twitter, or church you attend on Sunday, that's going to vastly wildly differ, I think.
Carmen Imes 14:10
Yes, yes.
Seth Price 14:11
So where do we get that? Like, what should we be looking for and measuring against as we're looking to bear? Also, I'm very curious, can I take the Lord's name in vain in the way that I was taught using it like is that can I use a swear word? Like, is that even a thing? Or is that really just me butchering that text?
Carmen Imes 14:27
So I would say that, that what the command is actually saying is a bigger umbrella that encompasses within it, or underneath it, some of the narrower ways that the church has tended to read it. So, no, I don't think it's a good idea to use God's name as a swear word. And no, I don't think you should take an oath in God's name and then break it. Those would be very specific ways of misrepresenting him; by not honoring his name, you know, His spoken name or by not living in such a way that is, you know, if you're a person who keeps your word, then you're like YHWH. But if you're just making flippant promises and then breaking them, that's not like YHWH. So it falls under the umbrella of misrepresentation if you do that, but I think the command is much broader.
Seth Price 15:23
Yeah. And then as far as the representation of God, or YHWH, so how do we measure that because I can turn on the TV, I can turn on the iTunes top 100 sermons in the category that I happen to be in, which means that I'm buried behind 400 Super pastors. Which, if you're listening Apple, it should be a separate category for sermons. But anyway, that PSA aside, what is that? How do we reconcile that? What are we looking for? Because I don't think many Christians agree on what that should look like.
Carmen Imes 15:59
Yeah, sure. So in an ancient Israelite context, it looks like obedience to the rest of the commands. So we have this command following shortly after “you shall not worship other gods”. So I would call these the first two commands of the 10 commandments. No other gods, don't misrepresent me. And those two sort of set the agenda for “I will be your God, you will be my people”. And then all the rest of the laws in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, are fleshing out what that would look like in an ancient Israelite context. It actually affects every area of your life, the way you do agriculture, who you marry, and who you have sexual intimacy with, what you eat, what you wear, how you treat people in business, all these categories are covered by the laws. And these laws are not there to tell people how to earn salvation, or how to earn their way to God. They're there as a matter of mission.
God's already rescued them from Egypt. He's commissioned them to represent him. And now he's showing them here's how you can demonstrate my character to a watching world. So, this is a long answer to your question, in our cultural context, it's going to work its way out differently than it was in ancient Israel. Even if we have farmer Christians who want to honor God with the way that they farm, it's not going to look exactly like the farming laws in the Torah, because we're in a different cultural context. You can't just leave the edges of your field on harvested so that the foreigner and the widow will be able to eat because no one is going to come glean in your fields. That's not how it works. So we have to find other ways of demonstrating generosity and care for the vulnerable. But I think the Old Testament law helps us by giving us the categories and by sparking our imaginations.
Seth Price 18:00
Yeah, so you're gonna see my face brightened up quite a bit, because I read your book digitally. So all of my notes are also on my computer. So there's a part in your book and so you just use references of law and infer the 10 commandments. But there's a part in here, where you talk about the law as a gift. And I feel like it's chapter two, but I didn't write that down. But my understanding of the law and my upbringing are, these are the 10 things we don't do. And oddly enough, we don't really talk about Matthew 25, which arguably, I find more “lawful” in the way that I should live and have praxis. But yeah, so the context of me in the law, like these are the 10 commandments, don't do these and compound in the fact that two of them seem to be the same thing. Don't slander against other people. And I'm paraphrasing that and then also don't lie about other people and they don't, or bear false witness your neighbor for whatever it is. I'm not sure. I’m not the best at memorizing scripture. The way that we view the law appears to be different than the way in the way that you've written that ancient Near East and the Israelites would have viewed the law. So what is kind of that dichotomy for us today?
Carmen Imes 19:03
Yeah, I think we tend to think of law legislatively, that seems obvious to us. But in an ancient context, law was a demonstration of wisdom. So if I want to show you, if I'm a ruler of an ancient Near Eastern nation, and I want to show you what a wise ruler I am, I'm going to produce a list of laws that show what an ordered society would look like. And so that's what we have in Exodus is YHWH as the true king of this new nation of Israelites is demonstrating his wisdom and is showing us how to cultivate wisdom.
But I think really the key for me in correctly understanding the law is by paying attention to where it appears. And I already mentioned this, but Moses does not show up at the border of Egypt with stone tablets and say, “Hey, guys, I can get you out of here just agree, you know, sign on the dotted line agree that you will live by these 10 things, and then I'll rescue you”. It's not a prerequisite to salvation. God saves them first. And then he gives them the law. And and I think if we get that right, then it really helps us make sense of how Christians today should be related to the law. Because so many Christians have said, I don't need to worry about the law because Jesus saved me by grace. But that's a misdiagnosis of the law, because God had saved them by grace too! The law was a way of living out their mission as the people who belong to Him.
And I think what I see in the New Testament, (if) you look at any of Paul's letters, his letters typically break down to half and half exposition / exhortation. The first half is telling us, here's what's true about you, and God and the world. And the second half is typically saying, “Now, here's how you should live”. So Paul is not trying to do away with law, he's giving instructions that are contextualized, for his environment to say, "here's what it looks like to be a follower of Jesus in this context, here's how it's gonna affect your family relationships, your relationships at church, the order of worship, you know, he is continually trying to show people how to live faithfully as followers of Jesus. And we put a different label on that in the Old Testament, we call it “law”, which is so misleading because we immediately think of legislation and like civil law, when actually it's a calling the church to faithfulness, just like the New Testament.
Seth Price 21:42
So, and this again, pardon my ignorance. So would it be more fair to say that the law is the fruits of faithful living? Take what you're taking from Paul, like, the law that I am living out should be evident by the, by the name that I bear…or am I taking that and hearing it and twisting it.
Carmen Imes 22:02
Yeah, let me say it this way, if you bear the name of Christ, then you'll live it out in these tangible ways. So the law is the evidence that you bear the name of Christ. And so in the 10 commandments, they were told not to carry God's name in vain. And I would think that that means to claim to be an Israelite, to act like you're a member of the community, and yet you live no differently than your pagan neighbors. And so that's very easy to transfer to our context. I could call myself a Christian but if nobody can tell the difference between the way I treat people and the way my non-Christian neighbor treats people, then we've got a problem.
Seth Price 22:46
Give me just a second, we're coming right back.
Seth Price 24:15
So Sinai…I've never read so many pages about a mountain, or mount, a hill, whatever you want to call it. (Carmen laughs)
So my question is, I actually have two questions, one of them predicates from prior but I'd like to ask question on Sinai. So what is the significance of Sinai? So Sinai for me, has always been more of a middle ground between here's where we were in Egypt—Sinai is where we pivoted to live differently. So like a metaphor for change. And so, like a redemption story or like a literal, physical, testimony.
Carmen Imes 24:53
Sure.
Seth Price 24:56
Am I wrong and in that, or am I stripping that metaphor too far too far? Like what is the the significance for Sinai for an entire faith community like, why Sinai? Why is that so pivotal?
Carmen Imes 25:06
Yeah, no, I like your your language of “pivot” because I do think that the people pivot at Sinai. What I think we often miss because we tend to think of Sinai as the place the 10 commandments happened; and then there's all this other stuff. What we miss is that the bulk of the Torah occurs at Sinai. So starting in Exodus 19, stretching all the way through Leviticus into Numbers 10 they are at Sinai, that's a lot of chapters devoted to what happens, you know, 20 chapters of Exodus 27, I think in Leviticus and 10 of numbers. It's the heart of what God's doing in this story of his people. And I think the significance is that, like you said, God has taken them out of Egypt, they're not going to live in that context anymore. But he needs time to remake them as a people; or they need time to embrace their new identity as the nation. A nation under God's rulership. And I say in the book that the wilderness is God's workshop, it's the place where he can remake us. It's a place he remade them. And so I think the length of time they spend at Sinai is indicative of how much reshaping needs to happen. And so when they go into the promised land they're not the same people who left Egypt they've been transformed at Sinai.
Seth Price 26:31
So I've wrestled with that wilderness metaphor for a while. Do you think that a person of faith is almost required to walk somewhat solitude-aly through a wilderness type thing, a place of desolation where there's very little there of comfort to have a pivotable point? If that, does that make any sense at all? Because so many people, I think, especially now as they watch the church implode?
Carmen Imes 26:57
Yeah that's a fair question. Yeah, I'm not sure if I would want to keep the word required, that a Christian is required to go through the wilderness. But I do see this as a pattern in the way God works. When God wants to reshape us, he often takes us through seasons of stripping down, emptying our hands of the things we've been clinging to. And in a really powerful sense, I think COVID is doing this for the church and for the world. The entire world is in this wilderness space, where the routines that we took totally for granted, the jobs we took for granted, the relationships we took for granted, are now all constantly in question being renegotiated or figuring out new rules all the time. And this feels like a tremendous loss. And we grieve that appropriately. But I am actually really excited about what God will do in and through the church.
Because in what other period of history, have we been so stripped down to the basics? Have we've been so forced to collectively, globally, rethink what does it mean to be the church? What do we need? What's the bare minimum that we need to still be church, and we're having to rethink all the programs, all the services, all the activities, and think more intentionally about how to be the church in a very different kind of scenario. And I think this is God's gift. I'm not saying he planned COVID so that this would happen, but God is certainly not going to waste it.
Seth Price 28:39
Yeah, yeah. No, I Yeah, I was gonna make that caveat as well. And if you didn't, yeah, I was Yeah, I'm not hopefully, nobody here that I don't think that that's how I don't think that that's how the world works.
Carmen Imes 28:51
I don't interpret COVID as God's judgment on the church or God's judgment on the world or God’s like, divine plan to, you know, whatever, but he he will use it. And he is using it in so many ways already.
Seth Price 29:06
So you like all of the Old Testament from what I've read about you on the internet? So what is God's name? Because it appears like when I read like, Amos is one of my favorite books of the Bible. And if there's been a book of the pandemic, for me, it's been Amos, specifically Amos 5, as I watch all these rallies, and the Let Us Worship, you know, rallies around like, what are people doing? And that's, again, some of my politics bleeding out. But Amos has been like, my, like my jam, which is weird, because it never used to be. But in Amos, I think it's like what 9, there are people that don't appear to be Israelites, that bear God's name. And I don't is bearing God's name something that you don't have to ask to do? Do you even and you know, what, whom whatever the God is, is that just something that you do because you happen to bear God's image, which is an entirely different thing. Also altogether, like how anyway, I can't so...
Carmen Imes 30:01
Yeah. Yeah, great, great question. There's a few different pieces in there to respond to. So first, let me say that I don't think that being God's image and bearing God's name are the same thing. They are similar in that being God's image is also a representative role. But they're different because every human being is the image of God and only covenant members bear God's name. And you're right that throughout the Old Testament, it's the nation of Israel, that is identified as the covenant member, the covenant partner, of God, the people who bear God's name. But there is a difference in Amos 9. It's a really remarkable passage, I'll just read from, from verse 11.
In that day, I will restore David's fallen shelter,
probably a reference to the Davidic dynasty,
I will repair its broken walls and restore its ruins and will rebuild it as it used to be so that they may possess the remnant of Edom and all the nations that bear my name.
So what to clarify here is that he's not saying that there are people out there who bear my name without even knowing it. He's looking ahead to a future day when God is going to restore the Davidic dynasty. And he's going to gather the nations that bear his name. So it's looking ahead to a time when Gentiles are going to be allowed into the covenant. It's not his own day, it's still off in the future. And we see that in verse 11, “in that day”. So the days are coming, declares the Lord, when these things will happen.
And this is precisely the passage that James picks up on in Acts 15. When the early church is meeting together to decide what do we do about Gentiles? There's like Gentiles who want to follow Jesus. And how's that supposed to work? Because Jesus is a Jewish Messiah. And up until now, it's Jews who've been following Jesus as Messiah. So if a Gentile wants to follow Jesus, do they have to become a Jew first or could they follow the Messiah as a Gentile? And so the early church leaders meet to duke it out, you know, they're trying to discern what, what's the right way forward. And there's two main testimonies that are given at this meeting. The first one is Peter, who gets up and tells the story of how we preach the gospel among the Gentiles, and the Holy Spirit fell on them. And in the Old Testament, this giving of this Spirit is consistently a sign of Covenant renewal.
And so Peters like wait, I was thinking the next step after I preached, if they wanted to follow Jesus was we'd circumcise all the men, and they would bring them into the synagogue, they'd become Jews, and then they could follow Jesus. But he's watching the Spirit fall on them. And he's realizing, (that) God apparently is not distinguishing between them and us. Like he apparently it's okay to be a Gentile covenant member. So Peter shares from his experience. And then James stands up, and he reads this passage from Amos 9. He says in verse 13, this is Acts 15:13.
“Brothers,” he said, “listen to me. Simon[a] has described to us how God first intervened to choose a people for his name from the Gentiles.
And that's what Peter's just described with the giving of the Spirit. And then he says,
the words of the prophets are in agreement with this as it is written,
and he quotes Amos 9
even all the Gentiles who bear my name.
So he says, “No, we they don't need to become Jews first. We don't need to circumcise them, etc”. So I don't think it's possible to accidentally be a named bear. I just think here they're talking about a Gentile who wants to follow Jesus doesn't need to go through that ethnic conversion process first.
Seth Price 33:57
Yeah, and the reason I asked that question, and again, I like to take things and rip them apart in ways that are probably inappropriate, which is why I titled the podcast the way that it is, because…it's also why I don't frame any questions ahead of time, because it allows me to as close as possible. I have no idea if you drink but grab a beer, electronically, with the continent and be like, but what about? Yeah so…
Carmen Imes 34:17
I'll grab an iced tea.
Seth Price 34:20
Whatever works for you. So let me pull up my watch. So can you talk a bit about the image of God and bearing the name of God? Because for some reason, I can't let go of that. And, the reason, there's a lot of reasons for that, but or could you just possibly write a second, third, fourth, book about that? But that's a different thing.
Carmen Imes 34:42
No, I'm actually writing it right now.
Seth Price 34:44
Oh fantastic!
Carmen Imes 34:46
Yes, I'm writing a prequel to Bearing God's Name. It's going to be called being God's Image Why Creation Still Matters, because I realized like Sinai is great and all but like there's other things we need to know from scripture about what does it mean to be human before we enter into a covenant.
Seth Price 35:00
The reason I say that is the image of God is what comes up when people talk about the sanctity of human life, war, oppression, etc, etc. But many people do the things that destroy God's image in the name of what they think God is calling them to do. And those two don't seem to jive with me. Like that's an oxymoron. A massive one. More clearly what is the name of God? Because there's many in Scripture, and then what is the image of God outside of humanity to juxtapose those two?
Carmen Imes 35:34
Okay, so I would argue, actually, that there's only one name for God in the Old Testament, and that's YHWH, and that all the other designations for God are titles rather than names.
Seth Price 35:45
Okay.
Carmen Imes 35:46
So my name is Carmen, that's my only name. You could call me professor, author, mother, wife, friend, you know, I have lots of…there's lots of things you can…Bible nerd, who can give me lots of designations. But I still only have one unique identifier, and that's Carmen Imes. Like that's how you can tell you're talking about me and not someone else. So I would say YHWH is God's personal name. It distinguishes him from any would be rival gods that might try to get people's allegiance. And so that's how God reveals himself to Moses at Sinai in Exodus chapter three, and four.
And you asked about the significance of Sinai earlier and what I didn't say was God first rescues Moses from Pharaoh in Egypt, he goes through the wilderness, meets God at Sinai, experiences his presence and gets commissioned to go back and bring the people out. Then he brings the people out from oppression under Pharaoh, through the water across the wilderness, to the same mountain Mount Sinai and then he Commission's them. So God reveals himself in all his glory, both to Moses and to the people. And he, in both cases, he Commissions. He Commission's Moses to go back to Egypt he Commission's the people to represent him among the nations. So that's why Sinai is a big deal.
But you're right, that image of God is a really big deal. And I've been sitting with this now for about nine months working on the next book. And I'm convinced that if we could really grab a hold of what it means to be the image of God, we would have to treat one another better than we do now. Because there are no qualifications for humans being the image of God. There's no certain ability or morality that is presupposed. It's just if you're human you are God's image. And what's striking to me, what's really jumped out at me as I've looked at this, is that when God creates the first humans, they are male and female, in the image of God. Women are not sort of an afterthought in Genesis 1, that like, Man is the image of God and women's along for the ride. No, it says, male and female he created them. In chapter one, verse 27, in God's image And the implication of being God's image, so our identity is to be God's image. But the implication is that we will rule over
the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and every living creature that moves on the ground,
that rulership has a very noticeable thing that's missing. It never says rule over each other. It only says rule over creation. And it's a benevolent kind of rule. It's a rule that encourages flourishing, and makes sure that animals have enough to eat, and waterways are clean, and the ground is not polluted. Like there's such a strong message of creation care that comes through in Genesis one and two, but there is no command to dominate each other. And if we could just grab hold of that we would be we would be different.
Seth Price 39:05
Oddly enough, that might be the Kingdom of Heaven. But again, different…different podcasts, different sermon, different everything. So I want to springboard on to Jesus. So how do we get…what in the Old Testament…because it's not lost on me that Jesus is praying in God's name in the Lord's Prayer. “Hallowed be thy name.” But when we pray often, when we’re praying to God, we would just say the word Jesus, and so I'm fine with that as well. But we're not saying YHWH. So yeah, what pivots are what hinges Jesus in Christ to YHWH as it relates to Sinai, and specifically in that prayer?
Carmen Imes 39:47
Yeah, it's such a great question. So once you see this theme of bearing God's name in the Old Testament, you'll see it everywhere, like through every Old Testament book just about, there's references to it, hints of it. And then we turn the pages to the new testament and it's like, what just happened‽ Because suddenly we're not talking about YHWH. And there's a language reason for that. In Greek, it's like impossible to say YHWH. So YHWH has four consonants in Hebrew YHWH? and Greek has no h and no W, and no y. So there's not an easy way to say it, or to pronounce it. And by that time in history, faithful Jews had stopped pronouncing the name of God, at least outside the synagogue or outside the temple, because they were trying really hard not to break the command, not to misuse it. So there was already a tradition of not saying it. Plus, it's really hard to say in Greek. So those are two factors.
But there's clear references throughout the Gospels to the name of God. And Jesus in his prayer, prays “hallowed be your name”. I feel like as a kid, I thought that was odd. That isn't God's name already holy? Like why would it need to be made holy? But if you understand the theme that the gods put his name on his people, and their job is to represent him to the nations so that the nations will know what he's like? Then it makes sense. If the Israelites did not live faithfully to the covenant, they actually profaned God's name. They brought it into disrepute. And I'm not making this up. Ezekiel is all over this, especially chapter 36.
He says, when you were dragged into exile, that profaned God's name,
because everybody's looking at you. And they're like, oh, YHWH must not be very powerful. Because look, these are his people. And yet they had to go out of his land. So there's a clear sense coming into the New Testament that God has a PR problem. The people have not represented him well. And so his name has been…the word I want to say is besmirched. I never hear that anywhere. But that's the word that comes to mind. His name has been sullied or dirtied in some way is he's people are not seeing him for who he is.
So when Jesus prays, hallowed be your name. He's praying for the restoration of God's right reputation among the nations. And I think Jesus well understands how this works in the Old Testament. So he is, in fact, committing himself to living faithfully to the covenant so that God's name would be honored again, and made holy again. So Jesus never tells his disciples, maybe I shouldn't say it in those terms, because I'd have to check and see, Jesus doesn't exalt his own name during his ministry. He's consistently pointing to the Father, pointing to the father as the one we're supposed to worship. And I think it's because he comes as the ideal Israelite name bearer and he wants to show us how this is supposed to be done. Not that he isn't God, but that he's demonstrating for us what faithfulness would look like, what bearing God's name would look like.
And then, very quickly, after Jesus’ death and resurrection the early church pivots again. And as they're thinking about Jesus, and as they're putting all this together, they're somehow in the words of Richard Bauckham. “They are including Jesus within the divine identity”. So you have in Acts, chapters 2 & 3 and three the story of Pentecost and then Peter’s explanation of what's just happened with the giving of the Spirit. He quotes Joel 2. And so this is Acts 2, he says,
No, this thing that just happened, the giving of the Spirit was what Joel talked about, in the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
And it goes on to quote the last verse of that, verse 21,
and everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.
Now he's speaking in Greek here, or it's recorded for us in Greek here in the New Testament, and that would be the name of the Kýrios, the name of the Lord will be saved. Kýrios means like, master, it's generic, you know, it's like, you could use it as our earthly master or heavenly master. He's using this generic Kýrios. But he's quoting Joel. And Joel, chapter two. It's clearly YHWH everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved. So Joe's quoting that, but then in the very next chapter, he clarifies that Jesus is the only name under heaven by which we can be saved. And so somehow he's making this transition from YHWH to Jesus via Kýrios which is how the Greek Translation of the Old Testament renders YHWY. So YHWH equals Kýrios in the Old Testament. So he can say Kýrios and we've been calling Jesus Korea. So here he goes, there's Jesus. And he's not unseating YHWH. He's not dissing the father, but somehow, he's, he's including Jesus within that divine identity. And so from that point on the the apostles are speaking of the name-when they speak of the name-they're speaking of the name of Jesus.
Seth Price 45:31
Okay. Yeah, I like that.
Carmen Imes 45:33
So I do pray in the name of Jesus, I don't pray, you know, in YHWH’s name, I pray in the name of Jesus. But recognizing that Jesus came to us to show us how to bear YHWH’s name. And there's a vision in Revelation, john sees Jesus, and he sees believers who have the name written on their forehead, and it specifically says, “the name of Jesus and the name of his father on their foreheads”. And one way of translating that would be as a hindieties, which is to say, the name of Jesus, that is the name of the Father, like they're the same thing, two ways of saying the same thing. So it might not be that there's two names, but they've got the name Jesus, which is the equivalent of saying YHWH.
Seth Price 46:21
Yeah, I wish we had 40 more minutes, because the chapter before that in Revelation, I think it says the number of his name as it talks about like a mark of a beast or whatever, but we have to go get my kids from school in a minute. So we can't do that.
Carmen Imes 46:36
Okay.
Seth Price 46:38
Maybe next time, maybe next time. Um, so I've asked this question of everyone. And so I'm curious your answer, and you can answer however you like. So, when you try to explain to people, you know, for me, Carmen, when I say God, here's what I mean. What is that?
Carmen Imes 46:55
I, when I explain God, it would be God is the one who is the most powerful, the most benevolent being, the one who created the earth. The one who has a plan to redeem all things. So he created a good world. The plan is for Him to redeem that good world. He made humans and he gave us a job to do to participate in his creative work bringing order to creation. And because we fell off the rails, he's raised up the family of Abraham. And now the church has been included in that vision in order to restore the rest of humanity back to God to participate in that work of restoration.
Seth Price 47:44
Now we're going to go back to Dr. Imes where do you want people to go like, they hear this, they listen, they're like, I want to…I don't because honestly, when I read your book, I was like, I never…none of this has ever been in my churches that I've attended. And if it has been it was probably on a Sunday in a 15 minute homily that I heard 13 minutes of and it was a two minutes I didn't hear. So where do you want people to go to do whatever it is that they should be doing?
Carmen Imes 48:07
Sure. Well, you can find my book on Amazon or any bookseller, that's a great place to start. There's, in the back there are discussion questions, if you want to read through it with a small group. There's QR codes that link to Bible Project videos that go with each chapter, so that can help with small groups. And there's also a video curriculum that goes with it on Seminary Now. I have a YouTube channel. I release videos every Tuesday called Torah Tuesday. I'm working right now through a series on the image of God so you can get a preview of what's going to be in my next book. And tomorrow, I'm launching a new podcast with my 15 year old daughter called the Take Two podcast where we're talking about deep questions that she has about Christianity and the Bible in a way that works for teenagers.
Seth Price 48:54
That's a need. I like that. Yeah, I like that.
Carmen Imes 48:58
I'm on Facebook. I'm on Twitter. People can find me there. If you want to see what I'm reading. I'm on Goodreads. And you can see, you can lurk.
Seth Price 49:05
Those are some of my favorite posts. I lurk on your post or like, What are you reading and people are posting all these things.
Carmen Imes 49:10
Yeah! I have a lot of like crazy smart friends.
Seth Price 49:13
Yeah, I wish I could post mine. But most of them are digital copies because I can hide my obsession from my wife that way.
Carmen Imes 49:20
I see, the truth comes out?
Seth Price 49:23
Yeah. Well, I mean, this is a public podcast, which I'm sure she knows. But yeah, the library is large because I had to stop with the box there literally.
Carmen Imes 49:31
Yeah, you don't have to dust books on Kindle.
Seth Price 49:51
I don't remember the words exactly because it's been too many weeks since I edited the episode however I do remember Dr. Imes talking about if we could learn to recognize the image of God in each of us, and I know the episode was on bearing the name of God, but I can distinctly remember that we would just be better humans, like if we could learn to recognize that and so I'm leaning on that that is my thing for this year. I trying so hard to be a bit better than I was last year. And most days I fail at it, spectacularly. But that's okay. Because I'm still trying. I'm still trying.
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