Welcome to The Spiritual Brewpub Podcast, a safe haven for ex-evangelicals or anyone restless about their faith or religion in general. On this Episode 1, the topic is: Why Understanding Good History Matters in One’s Spiritual Life – A Former Evangelical’s Discovery. Learn about the big idea that a sound study of history is critical to helping one form a spiritual worldview.
Most Christians, and I suspect most people in any religion, tend to forget or never really know their own religion’s history. As Diane Butler Bass says, we get spiritual amnesia. Only by remembering one’s history – whether that’s history of the church, the Bible, its compilation, or the history of the cultures of antiquity, can one get grounded.
By forgetting its history (or never really learning it or just having a biased or selective history), religion comes up with some really, wacky and wild ideas that need to be debunked. This podcast will focus on using good, comprehensive history to debunk some of these crazy ideas. But also show how good historical study not only leads to debunking things, but also leads to a more authentic spirituality. Grab your brew of choice and join us.
Hey Michael! Lisa and I really enjoyed the podcast. Good stuff to remember (or learn). Early on Lisa said (and I agree): His voice is great for a podcast. A question I have is: How did the Church (or at least in America) shift from heaven/hell as present day or near term and this life realities, to our post-death emphasis? It seems to me some of what Paul says is pretty clearly referencing after we die, but only a very small amount of Jesus (Sheep and the Goats being primary and maybe only?). Just look at Acts, though, and we see 100% of the sermons are concerned only with this life before we die. So, I’m curious what led to this shift in thinking and emphasis, which resulted in it being so widespread and ingrained in our thinking that now we naturally and without a second thought read heaven and hell after we die into the words of Jesus. Thanks!
Lang, good question. From what I’ve studied, it appears to have been a slow process from the time of Christ to the 4th and 5th centuries. The majority of the talk of the “new age” and “age to come” was about the here and now in most of the NT with only a few references to the afterlife by Jesus (“you will be with me in Paradise” or the rich man in the afterlife parable). Even the sheep and the goats was not about the afterlife (and certainly not heaven vs. hell) because Jesus said “aionos kolasis” (rehabilitation of the coming age) and not “aiodos tumoria” (eternal retribution).
What led to more focus on the afterlife was the erroneous teaching pitting “heaven vs. hell” that came slowly into the church (some people already believed it when they came in from paganisim). I believe certain “church fathers” like Turtullian and especially Augustine began to push it and since it could be easily used by the church to control people (scare people into good behavior), it began to stick. The book “Universalsim: The Prevailing Doctrine of the Church During Its First 500 Years” explains a lot of this. How the hell paradigm was from paganism, books like I Enoch, and was used by kingdoms before the church era to control the masses and eventually the church picked it up.