What if the best cultural translation of the concept of atonement is that of cosmic decontamination? And what if the biblical authors - Old Testament and New - wrote from the viewpoint that the world needed to be ritually prepared for contact with God? How would that change our interpretation of Jesus’ death?

One of the most common pieces of critical feedback we receive about the show is that we sound angry. The recent Statement on Social Justice and our reactions to it got Nate and Tim into an hours-long discussion on the role of anger in the podcast. Tim decided to articulate his reasoning behind preserving anger in the tone of our podcasts, even while aiming to be fair, gracious and hopeful.

Paul’s letter to the slavemaster Philemon reveals, if we let it, a window into Paul’s Christian ethics pertaining to power. To Paul, Christians wielding such social power over others must relinquish it in order to re-construe the relationship as one of equal siblings and fellow servants. To refuse is to deem one ineffective in the faith.

The opening book of the Bible works hard to establish the theme typically dubbed the “reversal of primogenitor”. It is an indictment on the cultural assumption that the firstborn deserves supreme power and status. This theme is the seedbed for the Biblical subversion of hierarchical power that leads to Jesus’ radical view that the first will be last and the last will be first.

The church gets Paul’s theology of gender wrong because it ignores his theology pertaining to power. And, the church ignores basic Christian theology of power in part because our mistaken theology of gender.