What happens when the Bible has been used to hurt people - and can it still become good news?

Matt: Hello and welcome to another episode of Church for People Who Don't Like Church. I'm Matt Oldham.

Anthea: I'm Nancy Ratten, hello.

Matt: Hello, Anthea Ratton, and Anthea Ratton is back after a two week holiday, so great to see you back. I've got question for you.

Anthea: Good to be back. Okay.

Matt: Seeing as it is your main job to run our church, with a little bit of help from Paul, how do you feel when you're away, like on a Sunday, for example, you know church is going on back in Marlowe, how do you feel? Do you miss us, or is it just like blessed relief?

Anthea: it's a good question. And without giving offense, it's a mixture. I do miss. I miss the community. I miss the people. I don't miss the responsibility and the bottom lining of the thing. So it is in that sense of nice to be away. equally on a Sunday, I am immediately thinking, or probably we both are, I wonder how it's going. What's happening? What's going on? So yeah, I do miss people.

Matt: I think whatever your job is, it's really important to get some time away from it. Just some time with yourself or with your partner, with your family. Just not think about not think about work. So anyway, but it is great to have you back and we've got a big topic today. So the episode

Anthea: We certainly have, yeah.

Matt: title is What do we do with the Bible when it's been used to hurt people? I know I've trailed this and it is a big topic

Anthea: Hmm.

Matt: and it's gonna I think hopefully cover areas that are sensitive for people. might be quite pointed but we also felt that we needed a theologian to help us out and I know you I don't that's not me I know you

Anthea: Mm-mm. Yep.

Matt: you read the Bible a lot but I don't think you'd describe yourself as a theologian so we are going to phone a friend again which we've done successfully in our Q &A

Anthea: Mm-hmm.

Matt: and we are going to hear from Matt Hyam, well we're going to be talking to him in a little bit

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt: Matt is a great friend of both of ours and a friend of RCM and in terms of his bio for people who don't know him so he started a church at the age of 23 and he led it for 29 years which is incredible and I love this phrase that is written about him so he has a passion for theology believing that the task of theology is to dig through the crap to recover the simplicity of Christian faith which is very Matt Hyam but it's also it's very ours as well isn't it? Good.

Anthea: Yeah, there he is. That's why we love him.

Matt: Yeah, he's written three books, the most recent being There Must Be More To This, which I have right here. I have also read it you know

Anthea: Mm-hmm.

Matt: I don't read many Christian books because most of them are dull, but this is actually a really great read. I would have thoroughly recommend it. And again, it's very much in his style. So it's reimagining evangelical faith with justice at the core, which is very good. So he is a passionate guy, very passionate about social justice, which he sees to be like the core of the gospel, which is why he is currently working as a church engagement manager for MedAir, which is a Christian charity which really is getting aid to the most far-flung and hard places to reach in times of crisis. So really great character and we're looking forward to hearing from him. So shall we dine him up?

Anthea: Let's do that.

Matt: Okay. So by the magic of podcast magicry, here is Matt High and welcome to our podcast, Matt. Great to see you here.

Matt Hyam: Thank you

Anthea: Yes, welcome that. Yeah, our first guest.

Matt: Fantastic. And actually one thing I didn't say in the intro is that Matt is a massive enthusiastic water skier. I think isn't that right? That's your attempt to walk on water.

Matt Hyam: It is, yeah. It's not going well at the moment. need a boat, but I'm getting there. Yeah.

Matt: okay. Everyone has to practice. Everyone has to practice.

Anthea: no.

Matt: So Matt, before we inundate you with questions, one

Matt Hyam: Mmm.

Matt: thing we like to ask ourselves, and now you're our first guest to do this, what don't you like about church?

Matt Hyam: Okay, so I'm coming at it from the point of view of a church leader and I'm not anymore but I was. So one of things that really used to wind me up was no one would sit at the front and I'm not as guilty as anyone, I never want to sit at the front. So we tried everything, we tried removing all the back rows and

Matt: you

Matt Hyam: then waiting till people sat down and then putting them out but people just came along and put the back rows out. or we put reserved signs but everyone just assumed it was reserved for them. So there was nothing we could do to stop people sitting in the back and leaving the first fruit four rows empty. So that's one of my little bug bears.

Anthea: Love it,

Matt: Let's.

Anthea: love it.

Matt: That's a really good one. So diving straight into it, man, you know what the topic is. So get

Matt Hyam: you

Matt: to reiterate, it's about the Bible and what do we do

Matt Hyam: Yeah.

Matt: when it's been used to hurt people? Matt,

Matt Hyam: Mmm.

Matt: you're a theologian at Nanathia. Again, from your perspective, I really want to hear from you about the personal side of this, how this impacts people. But Matt, we really felt we needed a theologian to help us out with this. When you hear someone say, you the Bible has been used to hurt me, what do you hear in statement.

Matt Hyam: I mean, it's really painful to hear because we all know people who've been hurt by that. my experience, it always feels like it's people that have just picked out selective proof text that they fancy to use or people who are reading the Bible to affirm their own assumptions.

Anthea: Hmm.

Matt Hyam: And honestly, I feel like it... It so often comes from people who are reading the Bible as... Like Jesus says, the whole message of the scriptures is summed up in treat others the way you would have them treat you. And I feel like a lot of people, particularly in the Evangelical Church, if you ask them for the whole message of the Bible, that's not what they would say. And it feels like it's coming from a place other than that sort of love. And it always feels like you're picking selective text... but you're ignoring the other selective texts that might have an impact on you. it's just, it's just, it's painful to see that because whatever you think about a particular issue, whatever your belief is about that issue, it's not okay to leave people feeling hurt and, and rejected. And so it's just painful that people would use the Bible in that way.

Matt: Yeah. Anthea, have you heard that pain from people coming to you and saying, look, people have told me this, that I'm not good enough because of this thing in the Bible?

Anthea: Yes, yes and no, think not necessarily explicitly and I think there's sort of twofold. I think the people who are sort of othered or perhaps a little bit more outside a particular community and trying to make their way in may well get told, well, you need to do this now or this day because the Bible says, the Bible says, but and that's rejecting and hurtful particularly. you know, issues around human sexuality. But I think something that's more insidious is people who've grown up their whole lives in churches and haven't really realized, like Matt said, that there are different ways of thinking about things and that there are different things in the Bible. they've, and it's when they start kind of thinking about it for themselves that then the hurt sets in and it can become very difficult, very difficult to remain in a community. which then starts telling you the Bible says the Bible says. So I think it's sort of twofold depending on where you sit as a believer or non-believer.

Matt: Yeah, and we've had conversations about this, Anthony, about interpretation. But Matt, I'm keen to get your perspective on this because, yes, you can look from the side and say, well, yes, you can interpret this way. Other people would say, well, you're just interpreting that because that's what you want to feel. There are bits in the Bible that are genuinely difficult and are difficult to interpret. How do you deal with those?

Matt Hyam: Bits, bits in the box. I mean, I get that there's a real concern for people wanting to remain faithful to the scriptures and I think that's absolutely essential. I I hate the term liberal because it implies that you're not taking it seriously. And so, you know, I think it's absolutely critical that we really fully engage with the Bible. and us doing so with a willingness to be wrong. And so I think that applies on both sides. And so, yes, I've seen a lot of reactionary and emotional responses to issues. And often it comes from a genuine loving pastoral heart, which is a great place to come from. But it also often presents weak arguments, which then... undermine other people coming in with strong arguments. And so it's like, because I feel like this, then it can't be true. And so you end up with, you know, I found I've engaged with people on issues and they'd written it off because they just said, well, all the arguments are emotional arguments and it's not true. And so it is too easy to just say, I don't like this. So I'm not going to take that seriously. the... I mean that isn't healthy either. I mean we need to approach the Bible saying what does it say rather than how can I find what I want out of it to say what I want and that applies both ways and so yeah it is easy and parts of the Bible are really really hard to understand and so we really have to be willing to engage with that and discuss those things.

Matt: So one of the phrases I've just written down that you said then was you have to have a willingness to be wrong. And I think, Yiannathy, we've talked about this before that a lot of people feel excluded from church because Christianity has this thing as we are certain of everything. And you must have experienced this over the last year or so going through the discernment process of certainty and an unwillingness to be wrong in regards to what has been. taught or absorbed for like a generation prior? Is that your experience?

Anthea: Definitely, and I think it was, as Zach Lambert put it like this, that you start looking more carefully and wrestling with things that people hold very firmly and you begin to take bricks out of a wall and then people feel like everything is falling down. And the way you react to that is by firming everything up. So, no, no, no, I'm definitely right because it's too scary to maybe for there to be something else to think about.

Matt: But it is complex, as Matt said, it is complex and there aren't tricky bits in it. There's big areas that we should do,

Anthea: Huge chunks, yeah.

Matt: which are very difficult for us reading it in 2026. But

Matt Hyam: Yes.

Matt: do you think that sometimes on both sides of a particular argument, we simplify the Bible and have made it into something that isn't? We haven't made it into this complex thing. We've made it, it's simple. It says this.

Anthea: Yes?

Matt Hyam: Yeah, 100%. I mean, I genuinely believe that the Bible is meant to be simple. I genuinely do. And what I love about theology is I think the task of theology is digging through the rubbish and the stuff to get to that simple message. But the problem is, I mean, so the Jewish culture referred to the disciples literally translates as uneducated idiots. So it should have to have a degree to understand the message of Jesus, but that was 2000 years ago. That was more than 2000 miles away. That was a different culture. It was a different language. was a different set of assumptions via colonialism, via all these different schisms we've seen in the church, via the reframing, all of these things. So what we have is just not the simple thing. So there is a task for theologians engage with this to recover the simple message that's underneath it otherwise it just becomes too easy and it's always when people use plain reading of scripture it's always selective it's never a plain reading about the bits that apply to them it's always a plain reading about

Anthea: Mm.

Matt Hyam: someone else and that's really dangerous

Matt: but are there times when it really does clearly say something?

Matt Hyam: Yeah, I think so. some things which are completely, obviously timeless, and there's things that, you know, don't need a cultural filter to be able to understand them, but there's other things. got to, I mean, it's the basics of evangelicalism, of theological translation is, what did it mean to them, and therefore what does it mean to us? So, hermeneutics and exegesis, well, exegesis and hermeneutics, sorry. And that, but that's the... That's the basis of all translation. so sometimes that's difficult, sometimes it's not. But things have changed, know. The culture therein is really different.

Matt: Yeah, so mean it's like, thanks to me, what are you saying now is that we are always and we have always been interpreting the Bible rather than just simply reading it?

Matt Hyam: Yeah, pretty much. think most of us have been in town.

Matt: I just said it in clearer words, I'm very proud of myself then. You used some very smart words though.

Anthea: You

Matt Hyam: But that's the problem, you even see within the scriptures themselves, you know, Jesus went to the people that the religious leaders rejected on the basis of scripture, but it wasn't on the basis of scripture, it was on the basis of their interpretation of scripture, it was on the basis of the Talmud, so the constant tension Jesus had with the religious leaders was They got this interpretation and their reasons for doing it back in the first place were really good. Let's help people to understand what to do. But actually they were wrong about things and their interpretation had become more important to them than what the scriptures actually said. And that was all attention. So you take the Sabbath and he's like you've missed the whole point. The whole point of the Sabbath is you need rest. You are a slave nation. You need rest. But they missed the point of it and they missed the point of an awful lot of stuff like that because their interpretation becomes more scripture than scripture is.

Matt: So this is where it gets into the personal bit, because if we are always interpreting it, and we always have been interpreting it, it's almost impossible for someone to say, well, I don't interpret the Bible, I just read it as it is. but how do we, how do we, what would you say to that person, Anthea, who has had that entrenched view of, well, I'm just reading it exactly as it is?

Anthea: It's really tricky, isn't it? Because we have had that and we've had people

Matt Hyam: you

Anthea: leave River Church Marlow because of that. And you you love people, you care for people, you want to continue doing life with people. And I don't have a strong answer because I'm quite literary minded myself. So the way I read is I'm able to read in a literary way. But if you've not been taught that and you've not grown up that way and you're not a reader anyway, then the only way you will know from basically early schooling is to read in a very flat literal manner. I suppose it's the job of us as leaders and teachers and people who talk in the public spaces is to constantly bring that stuff around context around what kind of genre is this? What's going on here? What's the big, bigger narrative and what's the smaller one? And maybe people can understand it if you use a different piece of literature or a different story. And you can say, well, did you believe that was true when you read that there? No, you know, but you're saying to me everything in this book is true. So maybe you can to and fro with someone, but I think if someone is completely absolutely, no, this is how I read it, then yeah, okay, it's how you read it, but it's not how everybody reads it. And it may cause so much tension people can't continue to be in your space. I hope it doesn't. And I think it's been mixed for us at River Marlowe, to be honest. Yeah, vague answer, but.

Matt: Yeah, I think it's one of the things that we aren't taught that the Bible is not, you know, even the Bible isn't one book, the Bible is a library, I think you've said it before, Antje. But also we've never been taught that it is something that is interpreted and has been interpreted over time. It is often, you know, tablets of stone almost in itself. mean, so do we need to be more upfront about what the Bible is in terms of its relation to interpretation.

Anthea: Absolutely. And I think we are trying to be more like that. But certainly I grew up not being taught like that at all. And so you just do the best you can, don't you, with what you're given to read. And for me, think I was reflecting on this earlier, I was thinking, well, I kind of grew up, kind of grew into my faith. My mom was Christian. She gave me Every Day with Jesus Bible reading notes to read, which I read faithfully for years. And they really are one line of proof-texty stuff until... until I stopped reading them, until I didn't, when I was a student, it didn't make sense to me anymore. I'm like, this is so simplistic. The world isn't like this and this is telling me this. so I stopped reading those then. But it is, yeah, I think it's how we continue to have a love of the Bible, even though it is very difficult to read it.

Matt: Yeah,

Anthea: So question for Matt.

Matt: I'd love to get your views on that as well, Matt.

Matt Hyam: Yeah, I mean, I... I think, so my first study was at Spurgeon's Bible College going back 25 more years ago. No, 30 years ago. that, so that's a totally evangelical, totally straight down the middle college. And I came out of the first term going, I don't know what I believe anymore because so much of what I'd been taught was Christian dogma just isn't in the Bible. And this is coming from a really, really, you know, this is not a radical Bible colleagues by any stretch of the imagination, but so much of it was mythology, was Greek, it was Greek philosophy, wasn't, it was Gnosticism, that not that they were teaching, that just, that kind of stuff I grew up with. And so I remember going through a moment there of going, I, either I walk away or I recognise that my faith is based on Jesus. not on my interpretation of scripture and that is a very freeing thing because being based on Jesus, you talked about the brick wall, I've heard that before, that like you take one brick out the whole thing falls down. Well that's really problematic isn't it? That's the attitude of the Pharisees that we have to defend this dogma because if you challenge our dogma everything falls apart, mean they have agendas at play as well but But it's that, okay, my faith is in Jesus, so actually I'm wrong about loads of things. I don't know all

Matt: Hmm.

Matt Hyam: the things I'm wrong about, and I'm probably not wrong about everything, but I have to be willing to recognize that we're all wrong. And I believe 100 % in objective truth. You show me someone who's got an objective view of that. Everybody has a different view of it and the fact is we are going to spend the rest of our lives learning more about Jesus. We should do because if we've got it all sorted out by definition we are no longer a disciple because the disciple means a student. So if you already

Anthea: Hmm.

Matt Hyam: know everything you're not a disciple anymore and that's a worry. I mean even things like learning all the time so even like I was looking a few things up so the Cumberland scrolls were only found between 1947 and 1956. See, that was after... the first modern English translations were written. And they gave us a whole load of insight into life at that time, which enabled a change of some of the views to be changed. right, we got that wrong about that. The Enumeralish was only discovered in 1849, and that was a Babylonian scroll creation story, which then enabled us to see, look at all of the parallels between the Genesis one. know, all these things are being discovered. We are learning. about stuff we didn't know, which actually probably for the original writers at the time was all really obvious. But for us, 2000 years on, 2000 miles away, it isn't obvious. So we've got to be prepared. We are wrong. And if you don't think you're wrong about anything, you're in a very dangerous position.

Matt: I love what you said then about your, and you made it personal to yourself which is great, about your faith is in Jesus.

Matt Hyam: Hmm.

Matt: I think what you didn't describe is often people have faith in a set of biblical truths that they've become comfortable with which is different.

Matt Hyam: that is different. And that's I going say, one of the things that Anthea said, that most evangelical statements face describe the Bible as, what's the word? I mean, the scriptures call it inspired, God's breath. But inerrant is the word,

Anthea: Hmm, inherent.

Matt Hyam: inerrant. Now, the only thing that early Christians would call inerrant is God. And that's really, really significant.

Anthea: Hmm.

Matt Hyam: because that really betrays you've put the scriptures at a level equal to God and that is really scary because

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt Hyam: actually what you're saying is my interpretation of the scriptures is inerrant

Matt: So this really gets us into the arena of human conflict around the Bible. And we can't escape the fact that you can have two sincere, intelligent Christians, both passionate about Jesus, both study the Bible seriously, take it seriously, read, and they could read exactly the same passage and reach a completely different conclusion. What do you do with that?

Matt Hyam: Well, mean, top theologians disagree. I was reading, so when I started Patristics, one of the things I was amazed to believe here was the worst sin for the early church was schism, to split the church. Irenaeus, I found this quote, he said, spiritual man who judged those who give rise to schisms, are destitute of the love of God and who look to their own special advantage rather than to the unity of the church and who for trifling reasons or any kind of reason which occurs to them cut in pieces and divide the great and glorious body of Christ. So the idea that because we disagree therefore we will split away is abhorrent and you can find patristics after patristics all saying the same thing that Arius was a bishop in the church he was universally accepted to be a heretic he did not believe that Jesus was God the whole Nicene Creed was because of him he was still a bishop in the church So, you know, there's a measure. If you can be that far in disagreement with everyone, that your fundamentals of your faith are so different, and yet you are still embraced as part of the church. So we are together, we disagree, because this is the body of Christ. It's okay to disagree.

Matt: But Anthony, I know you've experienced this personally recently over the last year, so I don't want dig that up, but we aren't good at disagreeing in society at the moment. We aren't good outside the church, if it's politically, we are polemicised or becoming much more adversarial. How are you dealing with this over the last period of time when we've gone through change, we've gone through robust discussion. How are you finding yourself in that?

Anthea: It's very painful. It's very, very painful. And it can also leave you feeling very, very disappointed and sad and grief and loss and all the things that happen when things split apart, I suppose, because it isn't your heart, it isn't what you want. So, know, in River Church tomorrow, we've always led with wanting unity, but wanting to stand in in, as Matt said, are in our love of Jesus and other things will sit further away around that and be secondary less important and you're not going to die on those things. The important thing is following Jesus and loving Jesus. And usually you can find unity there, but it's when you start discussing all this other stuff that kind of gets in, which has probably got a name, doctrine, dogma, I get confused, things start splitting out. I'll give you a story. Years ago, where I learned this, as I was a young person, I was in the Tese community in France. And I was part of a ICTHIS Christian fellowship in London at that time. But just randomly, not deliberately, I just happened to that was the church I'd chosen. And I was with a friend and we were sitting in this international Bible study, loads of different people from all over the world. We're talking, we're having a really good time thinking, reflecting on whatever we were reflecting on, something in the gospel. We sort of drifted off into talking about our churches. And at that point, when I said the sort of church I was in, I then got people being really weird and off with me, which really surprised me. I'm like, what's going on? Because I kind of like was a bit clueless then about anything. you know, it was because I was an evangelical and they had hated on Catholics. probably was probably some Catholic people I was with or some people from not my tradition, which my tradition had hated on. The minute we left sort of centering space of Jesus, it began to get more tumultuous. So I don't have an answer.

Matt: Yeah, it's like what Matt said about schisms and also shows how spot on the life of Brian was.

Anthea: You

Matt Hyam: Yeah. I mean, like I said, the early church schism was the worst sin. Since the Reformation, have been two to three new denominations a week. A week. You know, and

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt Hyam: so if someone, someone, one of the early saints turned up today, here we go, why are you talking about all this stuff? Look at the fragmentation of the body of Christ. That's

Anthea: Hmm.

Matt Hyam: the issue needs addressing.

Matt: I think your story, then, Anthea as well, about... disagreement and different views. Maybe a more extreme view on that, and this is I need advice for myself, how I feel in relation to this. When you see and hear Christian nationalism in the States saying things that from my perspective are the opposite of what Jesus would say, I think I struggle not to get angry and almost see those people as idiots. as opposed to something I should see them as. I think that's quite an extreme because for example recently James Tallarico, the second-in-senate candidate for Texas who is a Christian, the Christian nationalist pastor that Pete Hegseth Church goes to said it would be really good if he was dead. is, that's an extreme view.

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt: I struggle to have any good thoughts about those people and often the disagreements aren't that extreme. How do we deal with that human conflict better?

Matt Hyam: Hmm. I think there's lots and lots and lots of room for disagreement. But for me, the line is that the message of the scriptures is treat others how you haven't treated you. And so when you move over

Anthea: .

Matt Hyam: into a state where you are valuing another human being as less, or you are treating a human being in a degrading or a in a violent way, if you are treating people other than the image of God, then we've drifted away from disagreement and we've drifted into something much more sinister than that. We've drifted into something that is actually now we're talking about this isn't following Jesus anymore. This isn't a disagreement about doctrine. This is a disagreement about the fundamental nature of who Jesus is. And that That's scary. We can disagree as much as you want as long as we agree that fundamentally everyone is the image of God and we're called to love God and love other humans. The rest is details according to Jesus. So we're not talking about disagreeing about the details anymore. We're talking about disagreeing about the fundamentals. so I don't

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt Hyam: know how we work with that, that's like, I mean, I'm sorry, but I don't actually see how that's Christianity.

Matt: No,

Anthea: Mm.

Matt: we talk often at R.C.M. about reading the Bible through Jesus. people on the outside of that look at that and say, well, you're reading it through Jesus, are you just ignoring the passages you don't like?

Matt Hyam: Yes, they could and maybe we are, but you know maybe they are. If Jesus is the telos, if he is the culmination of everything, if he is the perfect reflection of the Father, which is what Hebrews tells us, if when we look at him we see the Father, is what he tells us in John, if those things are true then he has to be the lens through which we see everything. He has to be, because we do not have a better revelation of who God is than through Jesus. And so if we start looking at other bits of the Bible and go, well, hang on, this doesn't fit with what we know about Jesus. So we're not discarding that. We're going, OK, so must be something else going on here. If this is who Jesus is and this is about what we've got to learn from him, maybe this is about God's people misunderstanding him, or something like this, but we can't... If Jesus is the perfect revelation of the Father, then something that contradicts that, either there's something else going on that we need to learn, or we've got a problem.

Matt: That's great.

Anthea: And do you think that happens when people are reading the Bible in a sort of linear way, know, start at the beginning, finish at the end? That what you're saying is it's okay to start with Jesus and read back in with a Jesus filter, because if you read it in a more linear way, you'll get stuck in Leviticus or somewhere anyway, you don't get very far, but my story. But you come across a lot of judgment and smiting and war and... and violence and stuff that is not compatible with Jesus, but people attribute that to God. then people, say people, nationalists in particular, but it's hard to get, drop this idea of a very judging God.

Matt Hyam: Yeah, I mean, there was a quote, Mark Driscoll, and he said, he said, Jesus in Revelation is a tattooed prizefighter who kicks butt. That's kind of God I can follow. I can't, I don't like the Jesus in the gospels, the hippie Jesus in the gospels, because I can't worship someone I could beat up. Well, that is formally heresy, because not only did we beat up Jesus, we killed him. And so that is like, whoa, that is so, that is formally heresy. You're just saying I cannot worship the Jesus who God reveals himself through in the Bible.

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt Hyam: That is a really terrifying statement. And so that's just pick and choosing. want Jesus who's gonna affirm what I think I wanna be like, which is affirming my cultural expectations. Very, very dangerous thing to do.

Matt: How did Jesus view Scripture? mean, obviously there's the scene, you want to know the better word, of him as a child, arguing with the rabbis at the

Matt Hyam: Yeah.

Matt: temple. mean, what was his view of the conventional interpretations of Scriptures?

Matt Hyam: Well, he certainly got into a lot of arguments with them about it, didn't he? So, I mean, he turned over the money tables and he threw out all the people. He basically shut down the world's largest bank for a whole day. because he was so angry about how they were behaving because the way they were basically making it impossible for Gentiles to know more. He absolutely laid into them about the Sabbath. You've missed the point of the Sabbath. You've missed the whole point of this. You've missed the point of tithing. you know, the widow's mite. It's so often taught like, isn't it wonderful she gave everything? Well, you read the passage before that, what Jesus is saying is about how the religious leaders oppressed the widows and the orphans. So the whole point of the tithing system was to make sure everybody was looked after. And here they are taxing people who have absolutely nothing and they're sticking to the law, they're sticking to it and he's going, you have missed the whole point. You've missed the whole point. So he Again, their interpretation of scriptures was wrong according to him. And so he very much was about, you've got this wrong. You've missed the whole message of the prophets. You've missed everything that's talked about me coming. I'm standing here right in front of you and you've missed it because you've already decided what it's going to look like. And what it's going to look like is a nationalistic warrior. They talked... They really wanted that they learned for the time of Solomon. They saw that as that, you know, when all of the people of Israel had their own fig tree and it was all of this wealth, but I mean, Solomon built his wealth on dealing in arms, buying and selling in chariots. He built everything using slaves. He never dug in his own pocket. He taxed the people. And when he died, his son said, well, you think he was bad? Look how much worse I'm going to be. But the people of Israel, that's the golden age we're looking back for. You read Jeremiah 2. says, I long for the days of your youth when we wandered in the wilderness. So the golden age for God was the wilderness. where they just debate him. So they've got these preconceived ideas of what it's going to look like, the Messiah, and Jesus just burst all of them.

Matt: So you've clearly been

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt: studying the Bible for a long time.

Matt Hyam: I hope.

Matt: Yeah, I mean we mentioned before, I mean you sat up at church when you were 23,

Anthea: Mmm.

Matt: which is incredible. So, but that was some time, with respect, that was a while ago.

Matt Hyam: It's a little bit.

Matt: How is your, have you changed in how you're looking at the Bible, reading the Bible, seeing the Bible now?

Matt Hyam: completely. I I shudder when I think of some of the things I said and some of the things I did. Most of it was just these are the preconceived ideas. This is what it's about. There's no question. There's no questioning at all. This is just what it is. And I mean, as I say, I went to Spurgeon's College and One of my lecturers was guy called Stuart Murray Williams who taught on Christendom and he talked about what the church was like before Constantine and when it became imperial and the changes that took place. And I remember there was a moment there where I was basically seeing so much of my assumptions just untangled but it was a moment where I went, that's why it didn't make sense. So it wasn't, it didn't feel like a brick coming out the wall and the wall tumbling down. It felt like I had ignored the questions. I had ignored the things that made me uncomfortable and now this has given me some explanation for what that is about. And so that set me on a trajectory that totally destroyed my career and everything really. And it was all going nicely before then. You can't unsee it. You can't unsee it. You can try or you can pretend you didn't see it and carry it but not. And it's a painful journey. So it caused me to start changing how I read the scriptures and I did a master's ten years ago and that again just changed my views again I really influenced by my Patristics lecturer who was my supervisor for my thesis and who's part of the Orthodox Church and it really made me sort of open much more up to Orthodox teaching which is always that if we've got a question we go back to the earliest fathers and mothers. because they spoke the language, they lived in the culture. So it's totally changed how I read the scriptures. And so now it's really hard to... You talk about everyday for Jesus. I can't sit down and just read the Bible anymore. I've got the Logos app on my phone and I start reading it I'm like, what does that word actually mean? right, that's interesting. And then

Anthea: You

Matt Hyam: I'm like, what is it? What's the context of this? so I can't ever just sit down and read it. because I've got to ask questions, I'm asking questions all the time. Because so much of my assumptions didn't stand up to scrutiny. So the more I've, but the thing is that what I would

Matt: Alright, bye.

Matt Hyam: say is the more I've studied, the more I think I have begun to see that God is actually like you would always thought he was until people told you differently.

Matt: What about you, Anthony? Is there anything you, like you say, you can't unsee, anything you had to unlearn?

Anthea: Yeah, almost, I mean, absolutely agree with Matt there. There's this sort of your deep knowledge of God, that you've, your deep meeting with God was always, in a sense, true in that sense, but stuff layered up on top of it, depending on where you were hanging out and what church you were in. And very similarly for me, really, it's, I haven't done any theological study, but my husband has, Paul has, and it's really opened my eyes in loads and loads of ways. it's okay to question things. It's okay to read it and think, don't like that. Because sometimes you read about it you feel like throwing it across the room. You think, I don't like that. I don't like that story. Especially as a woman. There's a whole load to talk about as a woman approaching the scriptures because they are written by... men and the way we're treated isn't good, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. It's quite hard to find your space and voice in there, except nobody ever told you it was okay to feel like that either. So you can end up feeling quite angry about a whole load of stuff. And like Matt, I do like to the Bible and I was somewhere recently in a talk and a wise person said, let's not be post-Bible Christians. And that phrase really struck me because I thought, it's easy to become that. because the Bible has become difficult. But I do struggle to read it, not because of it, just because like you, I'm like, why is it saying this? Where's that coming from? What's that about? Where's the context there? it's hard, but it comes alive a lot more when you wrestle in that way. So yeah, I've learned a lot.

Matt: Well, let's just reflect on that, you as well, Matt. Some practical advice. So let's imagine someone listening hasn't got a theological degree. They open the Bible, find a passage that troubles them, and think, I don't know what to do with this. What should they do? Are there three or four even questions that they should ask when they encounter a difficult passage?

Matt Hyam: I've written down four questions I would ask. the first one is, you would ask the question, what's going on around this passage? So Tom Wright, N.T. Wright once said that a lot of people approach the scriptures like they're a jumbled up every day for Jesus. And I think that's really, you this is a whole selection of proof texts that have been put together in a really inconvenient order. But actually it's not like that. what's going on around this passage? Read the letters like they're letters, because they're letters. And so that's first question. What's going on around this passage? The second one is, how does this fit with Jesus? How does this, does this sound like Jesus? How does this fit against the plumb line of treat others the way I would, treat others the way you'd have them treat you? You know, ask that question of all of the texts, because what's going on in here? third one is some as context i i really was you know as a result of this i cannot recommend the bible project i think they're incredible and they actually i think they they certainly have all the new testament i think they've got every book in the scriptures they've got a video on one of those and we and we we watched some of those in in my masters lectures because they will provide, here's an overview of the background of this book and the structure of it. It might be a 10 minute video just to give you some better idea on how to read it. So getting some context, but Bible Project, brilliant resource. And then the fourth thing is, am I prepared to be wrong? Am I prepared to open this and it challenges what I think and me go, I'm going to have to reassess what I think. So there are the four questions I would ask.

Matt: Do you want to answer that?

Anthea: No, I think it's fine, perhaps fine, don't do it on your own. Find somebody like Matt who can give you those four questions and talk you through them. that might

Matt: Phone a friend.

Anthea: phone a friend. Or if you're a reader, there are some pretty good books out there. I see Matt's written one. Zach Lambert's written a really good one on how to read the Bible. That one.

Matt: including that there must be more to this by Mount Hykeman's elf which is a very good breed.

Anthea: Exactly.

Matt Hyam: I wrote that book because too many people I knew couldn't make evangelical theology work anymore. And because they had been so ensconced in the idea that evangelical faith is the only true faith, they're like, I can't make this work anymore, I have to walk away from Jesus. And I really wanted people to able to see, do you know what? No one believed this for the first 1500 years, and 80 % of the church don't believe this now. It's okay to have those

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt Hyam: questions. It's okay.

Matt: Well that leaves me with a question to sort of wrap this up, which is really following on from that, which is, what would you say to someone who has a genuine thirst, curiosity for Jesus, but has sort of become frightened or put off or hurt because of either what they've read in the Bible or what's been thrown at them from the Bible by someone else?

Matt Hyam: Sorry. That would be a start. I think we have a lot of repairing to do. I worked for a humanitarian organization. We were in New Wine this year and we ran these prayer meetings and we had different NGOs come and one of them was Open Doors and someone from Iran was talking about the persecution there and I was chatting to the guy afterwards and going, the thing is, it's not... because of Jesus is it? It's because of colonialism and it's because of the misrepresentation of Jesus that there is so much fear and anger against it and he goes yeah completely and it feels as though that you know we're not in the same situation as a Muslim country or a post-colonial country that's been oppressed by us but we've got some work to do to undo a very un-Christ-like view of of following Jesus. So we just have to love people. Our story is

Anthea: Hmm.

Matt Hyam: a good start.

Matt: Matt, I think you said two things that a lot of Christians never say. One of them, I might be wrong, and two is sorry. Yeah,

Anthea: Yeah.

Matt: Anthea, have you got anything to add to that as well?

Anthea: Not really, as we always say here, come as you are, come as you are, don't need all your ducks in a row to walk through, walk through the door here, just come, ask your questions, just be, you know, and it, yeah. And we have to get better at that as well, accepting people for who they are, not trying to make them into who we are. It's so easy to do that. Yeah.

Matt Hyam: And Jesus was pretty clear, you that if people see the way you love one another, and that comes back to the whole thing about that we've got to be able to disagree and still love one another. Because Jesus said

Anthea: Absolutely.

Matt Hyam: that's why people come in, because they'll see how we love one another.

Matt: Let's, not because I wouldn't want to carry on talking to you all day Matt and Anthea, but that's a great place to stop. Let's just love each other, accept people's differences, accept that we might be wrong, say sorry and the world will be a better place. Matt's been an absolute pleasure having you on. We would definitely love to have you back again as a guest. So lots of love to you. Thanks guys. Speak soon.

Anthea: Absolutely brilliant. Thank you, Matt.

Matt Hyam: Thank you. It's been great. you. Thank you. All right.

Anthea: Thank you,

Matt Hyam: Bye.

Anthea: soon.