Being Human

Karen Swallow Prior

When much of contemporary Christianity is suffering an identity crisis, how do we engage well with cultural conversations? As followers of Jesus, we need to return to Christianity’s rich DNA and uncover the ‘why’ behind the vision for our lives and the lives of others.

We are welcoming author, professor and long-term activist Karen Swallow Prior back to the Being Human podcast! A renowned social commentator, Karen’s dedication to bridging the gaps between faith, culture and literature has left an incredible mark. With a nuanced and compassionate voice, her writing has appeared in Christianity Today, The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Gospel Coalition, to mention a few.

Join Jo and Peter in this interview as they dive into the themes of Karen’s most recent book – The Evangelical Imagination: How Stories, Images, and Metaphors Created a Culture in Crisis – and chat activism, imagination and finding Jesus in some of life’s greatest challenges.

To discover more about Karen Swallow Prior and order your copy of The Evangelical Imagination, head to: karenswallowprior.com

Part one (00:00)
02:25 – Introducing Karen’s inspiration for The Evangelical Imagination: when much of evangelical culture is more Victorian than biblical, how do we faithfully distinguish cultural values from biblical ones?
04:41 – In recent years ‘evangelical’ has become a controversial and contested term – what does it actually mean to be one?
07:48 – Why activism is in the DNA of evangelicalism.
10:44 – What is our ‘social imaginary’? Engaging with cultural conversations and uncovering the ‘why’ behind our actions and vision for our lives.

Part two (13:50)
14:18 –What do we do when cultural and biblical values are entangled? How do healthily examine and separate them?
19:36 – The ‘before and after’ storyline: exploring the cross-over in contemporary Christianity between the language of conversion and the language of self-help.
23:48 – What can metaphors teach us about spiritual realities and the character of God? Learning from Karen’s experience of being hit by a bus and the stories of abused women in the church.
28:15 – Being human is a ‘sign act’ – something that points to another, greater thing and prepares us for eternity. Therefore, as we look to Jesus who redeems all things, pain doesn’t have to be the end to somebody’s story.

Tim Mackie

How can we recognise and fall in love with the big, underlying narratives of the God Story? How do we learn to study the Bible on its own terms?

Co-founder of the BibleProject pastor, scholar and ‘life-long learner’ - Tim Mackie, is credited as one of the best Bible teachers in North America. As a multiple PhD-holder in theology, Hebrew Bible and Jewish studies, Tim first encountered Jesus in a skatepark in the middle of Portland, Oregon. Now he works with his team at the BibleProject; creating resources to help make the God Story accessible to so many.

Join Jo and Peter in our first interview episode of this season. In this fascinating conversation Tim shares how he gave his life to Jesus and how unravelling some of the big picture stories that we see woven throughout scripture can transform our view of who we are and who we have been created to be.

You can learn more about Tim Mackie and the BibleProject, including a rich library of videos, podcasts and more by visiting bibleproject.com.

00:00 (Part 1)
01:00 – Discovering a compelling and unavoidable Jesus: Tim’s journey from skateboarder and sceptic to Bible scholar and teacher.
12:14 – How do you take big ideas and boil them down to their essence? Introducing the BibleProject - connecting beautiful, visual explanations with the core ideas of scripture.

15:06 (Part 2)
15:25 - Learning to study the Bible the way it was originally constructed - as a unified story – and how the opening chapters of Genesis are like the opening minute of a symphony (where all the key ideas are introduced in the beginning).
21:38 - Transcendence, goodness, and images - some of the key melodies of the symphony introduced in Genesis 1 and 2.
24:51 - Our identity as image bearers isn’t often explicitly written about in the Bible, and yet is everywhere. Why is that and how – as readers - can we recognise the biblical hints?
27:34 - The Eden story paints Adam and Eve as our representative characters – capable of seeing what is good and helping goodness flourish, but sadly those moments are fleeting and fragile.

30:50 (Part 3)  
31:01 – Jesus arrives on the scene as the first real human – a new Adam and Eve. How does the climax of the God Story retell the story of Eden and Israel, and what does this mean for us today?
35:46 – When different Christian traditions vary in theology, how do we reconcile the fact that we might get it wrong? Can we choose pathways of humility and life-long learning to hear scripture on its own terms?
38:56 - The Lord’s Prayer: the invitation to encounter the Imago Dei and Missio Dei as two sides of the same coin.

 

What is the Being Human lens?

We know that the stories we live in can affect us and our world, but how? And how can we see clearly what’s good and what’s not in terms of who we are and how we live? Let us introduce you to the Being Human lens – a new tool to help us recognise the cultural stories of our day and help build confidence in how the God story enables us to live truly fully human lives. 

We all have lenses (figuratively speaking!). We all view the world, and one another, through something. The best kind of lenses help us to bring new things into focus and to recognise things previously obscured. 

The Being Human lens bring an innovative focus to the stories of who we are and how we live by identifying four core themes that bubble up throughout our cultural conversations. These are: significance, connection, presence and participation. As we dig into these four aspects, we can start to see how the richness of the God story enables us to truly discover what it is to be human and respond to Jesus’ invitation into a new humanity. 

Listen along to the conversation today. 

Interested in taking the lens further? Jo and Peter’s new book Being Human: A new lens for our cultural conversations, is out 12 October 2023. To find out more and pre-order your copy today, click here. 

Part one (00:00) 
03:02 – Welcome to the Being Human lens – a new tool to help see how stories affect who we are and how we live in terms of our significance, connection, presence and participation. 
07:20 – We look to Jesus as the ultimate, truly fully human being, who invites us to find our humanity in and through Him. 
08:50 – Significance – We matter, but who can we trust to tell us that we matter, and why? Do we earn significance, give ourselves significance, or receive it from God? 

Part two (12:30) 
12:35 – The secular stories of uncertainty, contestability and fragility, in which believers are tempted to doubt and doubters are tempted to believe. Who know us in an age of unknowing? 
16:32 – Connection – We matter to each other. How can AI help us consider our connection and relationship towards each other?  How is Jesus both the model and means for transforming relationships? 

Part three (20:50) 
20:55 Presence – Being here, now, matters. Despite the tendency to deconstruct and doubt, to be human is to be present, in a time, a place and a body. 
26:52 Participation – The difference we make matters. Amidst ongoing permacrisis, how can we partner with an active God to bring light to the darkness and order to the chaos? 
33:10 The invitation is to take notice of the storylines we are encountering, to recognise how they are shaping our humanity and consider the good, true and beautiful vision of being human found in the God story.

We’re back, what’s changed?

The Being Human podcast is back! Jo Frost and Peter Lynas return with another season full of insights, humour, cultural commentary and biblical truth. Episode one recaps what's been happening since we last sat in front of a microphone...

We live in a fast-paced, rapidly changing and increasingly exhausting culture. We are still being bombarded with stories and narratives every day telling us what’s real or fake, what’s gone wrong and who’s calling it out, where there’s injustice and who’s going to fix it. That much hasn’t changed. Nor has the importance of the fundamental yet highly contested question – what does it mean to be human? But plenty is new – so let’s catch up!

Part one (00:00)
00:51 What does it mean to be human? Recapping on the question and story that is everywhere.
02:23 The permacrisis melting pot: war and disinformation, political and economic turmoil, AI and the confusion of language.

Part two (11:37)
11:42 Why do our cultural stories – both big and small – feel so complex, fragile and fragmented?
12:56 The Jenga tower of secularism, expressive individualism and post-modernism.
20:34 Our cultural stories hold glimmers of goodness, but without a shared foundation, they tell a flawed story of humanity.

Part three (22:22)
22:22 How do we begin re-housing some of these stories back into the good, true and beautiful God-story?
26:50 Upcoming podcast guests, the Being Human lens and everything else you can expect from this new season.

 

Sarah Williams

This pandemic has compounded the acceleration of change, disorientation, and in many ways, hopelessness. However, is there something rooted in our history that can give us hope for the possibility of change in the present day?

With a diverse and impressive career, historian, Sarah Williams, continues to grapple with the very heart of what it means to be human. As a teacher of the history of Christianity to international postgraduates at Regent College, Sarah’s research interests lie more recently in the relationship between Christianity and perceptions of gender, sexuality and the spirituality of time.

In this interview, hear Sarah share powerfully from her own story, as well as drawing on her work that are seeks to empower the church through history, language and prayer, that we may learn to wonderfully articulate the beautiful gospel to a culture that is suspicious of it.

Israel Olofinjana

In a time of fragility around us and within us, from the climate to our identity, how can we live a life with Christ that is both holistic and justice-focused?

In this episode, Jo and Peter chatted with theologian, former church leader, and director of the One People Commission, Rev Dr Israel Olofinjana.

Originally from Nigeria, Rev Israel moved to the UK to pursue a calling to be a reverse missionary and has since become a leading figure in the UK church on unity and ethnic diversity. In this interview, hear him draw powerfully from his own story and journey with cultural identity, as well as his current position on climate justice, mental health and creating intercultural safe spaces to tackle racial injustice.

How can we effectively care for each other and our planet as a unified church? Listen to this essential and timely interview today.

Want to discover more about Rev Israel, and the work of the Evangelical Alliance’s One People Commission? Visit the website today.

Carl Trueman

“Apologetics today is more about explaining to the church what is going on in the world than explaining to the world what the church teaches.”

This is a view held by author, theologian and ecclesiastical historian Carl Trueman. In his latest book The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self (2020), he investigates the foundations and developments of the current secular age and sexual revolution as symptoms, rather than the causes, of the human search for identity.

In this latest interview, Peter and Jo peel back some of the underlying ideologies of the day, and ask Carl how the church can navigate the opportunities and challenges of this ‘cultural climate change’ in which we are immersed.

Interested in reading The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self? Purchase it from SPCK here.   

Hannah Thomas

Do we fully appreciate the power of art and creativity in reconciliation processes? When considering conflict, both global and local, how can understanding the imago dei (image of God) influence advocacy?

Peter and Jo chatted with artist and activist Hannah Thomas. Hannah was selected for Forbes 30 under 30 in 2019, and nominated for a UN Women UK Award in 2020, and her art projects have been exhibited in Buckingham Palace, the Scottish Parliament and the Saatchi Gallery. Through portrait painting and participant-led workshops, she seeks to bring the stories of those who have faced displacement and conflict-related sexual violence into places of influence in the Global North.

Particularly amid an ongoing pandemic, how can we learn from Hannah’s experiences in post-conflict settings and seek to engage in our own communities in need of restoration? Listen along to the conversation today.

You can also discover more about Hannah’s work, including examples of her art projects, on her website here.

David Bennett

In a culture that idolises desire, but lacks real intimacy, can we tell a better story? And is this possible when some mainstream theology has perpetuated unhelpful conceptions of desire, and its potential for knowing God?    

Originally from Sydney, Australia, David Bennett is an author, communicator, and scholar currently completing a doctorate in theology at Oxford university. His first book, A War of Loves (2018) describes his own story from atheistic gay activism to becoming a follower of Jesus. 

David chatted with Peter and Jo about the opportunity for our theology and conversations around faith, sexuality, and desire to be transformed for good. As someone who is passionate about the potential for people to live and flourish through Jesus’ teaching, listen to David uncover his thinking around the most fundamental part of what makes us human. 

Want to learn more about David Bennett and his work? Visit his website at https://www.dacbennett.com/  

Karen Swallow Prior

In an age characterised by information overload and difference of belief, it can be challenging to learn how to engage well in discourses swirling round in our headlines, Twitter feeds and churches. As followers of Jesus, our engagement can start with learning how to read well and listen attentively.

Nobody understands this better than reader, writer and academic Karen Swallow Prior. As a professor of English and Christianity at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in North Carolina, she draws on her love of literature to transform our understanding of culture, the Bible and each other. With a history of activism within the pro-life movement, and more recent campaigns in the Southern Baptist Convention surrounding gender-based violence and anti-racism, her nuanced and compassionate voice speaks volumes into debates concerning the value of human life.

Join Peter and Jo in our first episode of this interview season as they cover a range of topics with a commentator who defies the boxes that society tries to place her in.