the Empathy List #157: Zach Lambert was kicked out of youth group.
A conversation between two leftie Christians about the reading the Bible for liberation, not authoritarianism.
Hi friends, Liz here.
I’ve been writing about the dangers of Christian nationalism for coming up on a decade by now. In that time, I’ve watched creators and authors come and go.
Zach Lambert isn’t one of those. He’s stuck around. Over and over, he’s beat the drum of liberation in Jesus—despite the trolls, the lost opportunities, and the conflict it’s brought into his life.
Case in point: Zach was kicked out of youth group in seventh grade for doubting… and encouraging others to ask the youth pastor questions he couldn’t answer. And then he and his church endured a two-year-long “trial” before his church planting network expelled them from its ranks for being fully LGBTQ+ and women affirming. So. He’s been through it.
If you can relate, you’re going to enjoy this conversation between me and Zach, two ordinary Jesus people who chose to walk the long obedience in the same direction, repenting publicly when we f— it up. (Which we both have, and will do.)
We’ve also both written books about reading the Bible from a lens of liberation rather than authoritarianism.
(And fun fact: the one and only
wrote both of our forewords!)Zach’s book is Better Ways to Read the Bible, a practical and personal guide to re-approaching your Bible after it’s been weaponized against you.
My book is Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible, a personal, wandering, artful commentary through the first 32 chapters of Genesis… which also happens to be the most difficult book to read after you’ve left behind fundamentalism.)
Zach’s a pastor and I’m a creative writer, yet we’ve come to the same place: the Bible extends empathy to all people and salvation to anyone who asks, no exceptions.
Chime in when something resonates, will ya?
Thanks for reading, my friends.
Warmly, Liz Charlotte Grant
About Zach Lambert
Zach W. Lambert is a writer, public theologian and the founding pastor of Restore Austin. He’s the co-founder of the Post-Evangelical Collective. His new book is Better Ways to Read the Bible: Transforming a Weapon of Harm into a Tool of Healing. He writes on Substack at
.About Liz Charlotte Grant
Liz Charlotte Grant is an award-winning nonfiction writer and former birth doula, whose essay about Elisabeth Elliot at the Revealer Magazine went “evangelical viral” in 2024. She’s a columnist at the Christian Century Magazine, and her first book is Knock at the Sky: Seeking God in Genesis After Losing Faith in the Bible. She writes on Substack at the Empathy List.
Zach Lambert Was Kicked Out of Youth Group…
…and Now He’s a Pastor Who Reads the Bible for Liberation, not Authoritarianism.
Liz: The first thing I want to talk about was youth group because—I don’t know how old you are, I’m 38—but I think we probably both grew up in this, like, heavy youth group culture of the 2000s.
Zach: 100%. Totally. I’m 36. I‘m with you, yeah.
Liz: I also went to Christian school.
Zach: And I got kicked out of Christian school in the fourth grade…
Liz: Well, you tried.
Zach: I tried the best I could, K through four. But the school had a rule that if you got sent to the principal’s office six times in the six weeks, then you got an automatic expulsion. And they gave me some grace. So, the eighth time, I remember I walked in and the sweet principal just goes, “Zach.”
Liz: Just shook her head.
Zach: “Zach.” She was just like, “I can’t, I can’t cover for you anymore.”
Liz: “I know you might be a pastor someday, but I, I just can’t condone this behavior.”
Zach: When I run into people from [my] childhood now—cause I still live in the same area where I grew up—a lot of them are like, “I thought you were either going to do this or end up in jail. So, I’m glad you’re a pastor.” And I am like, “Hey, fair.”(laughs)
Liz: They knew you in a past life.
Zach: Exactly. Where’d you grow up?
Liz: I grew up on the East Coast mostly, but also I lived a lot of places—Kansas and Pennsylvania and then Switzerland for a bit, and then I went to college in Illinois. And now I’m in Colorado. But, you know, sometimes online, I get DMs from people and they’ll be like, “I totally saw this coming,” or “I never knew.” (laughs)
I had one friend tell me, “Oh, yeah, you were always the rebellious woman at church.” Which was really surprising to me ‘cause, at that time, in my early twenties, I was really trying to conform! It didn’t work apparently, no one was fooled.
Okay, but you gotta tell me about the time you were expelled from youth group.
Zach: In the book, I used the phrase “parade of expulsions” to describe that season of my life because I was, yeah, kicked out of a Christian school in fourth grade, kicked out of youth group in seventh grade.
I open the book with that youth group story: I was at Bible study one Wednesday night around Easter time. And my youth pastor was talking about Jesus on the cross, that part of the story where Jesus says, “Father, Father, why have you forsaken me?” And the pastor says, “Well, you know, Jesus said that because Jesus had all of our sin on him and God can’t be around sin because God is holy. So, God turned his back on Jesus so Jesus would feel the full weight of all of our sin.” That was coupled with “we nailed Jesus to the cross” kind of stuff, and every time you lie, for example, you push the nail farther into his hand.
But I was just not buying it, even as a middle schooler. I raised my hand and just blurted out, “I thought you said that God was like a good father and trustworthy and loving, but God turns his back on his son in his greatest time of need? And also if God can’t be around sin, how can God be around any of us at any time? That doesn’t make any sense.” So my youth pastor said, “Go sit in the hallway.”
That’s what he always said. He never made good faith attempts to answer my questions. He just sent me to the hallway—that was a regular occurrence for me. But that night, my youth pastor talked to my parents when they picked me up. He said, “Your son is disrupting my Bible studies. He’s causing the other kids to doubt their faith. He’s letting his doubts and questions take hold of his own faith, and now his doubt is affecting other kids. And I won’t have that. I won’t have him disrupting my youth group. So, he cannot come back.” I could join for Sunday school, but not Wednesday nights, no youth group, no mission trips.
Part of me was relieved because I hated going, and my parents made me. But another part of me—a part that I would excavate much later through therapy and self-reflection—was devastated.
Here was thing—Christianity—that was the most important thing to everyone in my life, and I’d been explicitly told I couldn’t be a part of it. I couldn’t take part. That was pretty damaging as a middle schooler, you know? And it led to me trying to find identity and belonging in more harmful places.
Liz: Yeah, more harmful than “asking questions”?
Zach: Exactly, that’s what I always tell people when they’re like, “How do I respond to this question that my kid has?” I’ll just say, “Listen, the questions don’t go away. You can pretend they’re not there, you can tell them to not ask, but they’re going to go ask them somewhere—like the internet or ChatGPT or their friends or whoever. And wouldn’t you rather have the conversation with them than leave them to figure it out on their own? If you’re a pastor, wouldn’t you rather have the conversation with people than sending them to spaces that may or may not offer helpful feedback?
Liz: I think, in a sense, you’re asking, what is a pastor for?
I’ve been part of a lot of churches that I have actually, um, been invited to leave (laughs)…or have felt it was time to leave. I got good at identifying the signs. But one of the things evangelical pastors and I tended to clash over was this definition of pastoral ministry: was it about guarding doctrine or than shepherding people?
In what you’re describing, I’m just hearing that you would rather walk with the person and hear their questions. And that’s not what your youth pastor wanted to do. Your youth pastor wanted to transmit doctrine according to what the church said was right and true. And so because you were disrupting that, he couldn’t transmit it, and so therefore you couldn’t be there.
Zach: That’s a great distinction. We have an axiom at RESTORE, our church here in Austin: we say, we pastor people, we don’t policy people. My real job is to meet people exactly where they are. We should aim to meet people exactly where they are, helping them to take the next faithful step. And you don’t get to control what that step is, you don’t get to determine what it is, you just get to be present.
Authoritarian Pastoring
Zach: Assuming you grew up in similar spaces, Liz, did you run into that same type of pastoring throughout your early years?
Liz: It’s funny, actually, in my early years I experienced the least authoritarian pastoring, because my church was very East Coast, white, and wealthy. It was Bill Hybels-lite, like seeker sensitive. It was consumer Christianity, Big Box store Christianity, like they were trying to create a franchise and bring in the most people possible. So, with that goal in mind, you just don’t preach controversial things, and you don’t preach deep theology either. I remember thinking, “Why does no one want to mentor me?” And now I get it, cause no discipleship was happening in that church. It wasn’t personal. (laughs)
I had the opportunity the other day to chat about one of my work experiences I loved the most was getting to volunteer with younger students in the youth group. So I was like [your wife] Amy in the youth group, except that nobody cared at all what I did. And so I just got to do whatever I wanted, which was basically mentor younger women. Mike Yaconelli’s book about relational discipleship was my guide. So, I was a high schooler mentoring middle school students, and then I was a college student mentoring high school students. After that, it became like I’m mentoring young moms.
In fact, I was a birth doula for a while, and that was just such a natural expression of this shepherding that’s part of my own nature. Um, but you can imagine how that conflicted with many evangelical male pastors.
For example, I was a part of an Acts 29 church as a 30-something-year-old intern. And decided that I was a peer of the pastors and I refused to [acknowledge the hierarchy]. I remember thinking, “I’m not gonna treat you like you’re better. Sorry.” [Laughs] So, uh, we had lots of… heated discussions, and I did a lot of, um, poking and prodding, which was not their favorite thing.
But I was also performing lay ministry among people on the edges of the congregation. Acts 29 had their own recovery program that they wrote—basically AA, but adapted to reformed, complementarian theology. And my husband and I led those groups together, and then we led kind of small groups with those same people. And I met with women one-on-one and prayed with them and talked with them as a lay counselor. It was just really special.
However, in that setting, it was not the important work. Over and over, that’s what I heard: “The work that you’re doing isn’t actually that important to us. We won’t prioritize it.”(laughs) So, of course, they didn’t pay me for it either.
Of course, they did hire me to do marketing things.
Zach: Right.
Liz: But they wouldn’t hire me to do pastoral care.
Zach: ...they wouldn’t hire you to do the thing you had all the experience doing—mentoring and caring and disciple-making.
We [as evangelicals have] sideline[d] all of these folks who are incredibly gifted, and then we wonder why these areas are underdeveloped. “Why is there no mentoring and discipleship happening?” Yeah, well, because you’ve basically said that only certain types of people can actually do this [men, cis-gendered, white, seminary educated]. We are grasping water in our fists. But the more we try to control the work of the spirit of God and the movement of the church, the less effective we are, right?
Resisting Hierarchy at Church
Liz: That’s one of the things I like in your book, Better Ways to Read the Bible. You and I have some overlap here, where we are actively resisting authoritarianism and hierarchy in church. Can you talk about what that looks like for you?
Zach: I frame the book around discussion of harmful lenses for interpreting scripture and then offer healthier alternatives. One of the four harmful lenses I outline is this lens of hierarchy. And it’s hard to say which of the four lenses is the worst, but [historically] I would certainly say the hierarchy has a [historical] case.
If we really peel the layers back on the hierarchy theology that was used to sideline you as a woman in an Acts 29 church [or that] is used to exclude LGBTQ+ people, that theological framework is the exact same one that was used in [support of] Jim Crow, chattel slavery, Native American displacement and genocide. That same lens appeared in Nazi Germany, saying that a certain type of Germanic Lutheran was actually God’s preferred person, and everybody else was supposed to serve to them, and if someone couldn’t accept that, they were killed. It’s hard to overstate how damaging this scriptural lens really is.
Most of us in modern society would have said, “Okay, well,... Chattel slavery, Nazi Germany, that, that stuff is all in the past.” But it’s not all in the past. We’re experiencing authoritarianism and Christofascism at unprecedented scale in our country right now. And we’ve perhaps changed some of the expressions of supremacy, but we actually haven’t changed the theological underpinnings.
Which I think is something you do so well in your book, Knock at the Sky, by the way.
Also I was just looking at this when I pulled it out your book for this conversation—this Barbara Brown Taylor quote on the cover—“It’s wonderful to read someone who knows what language can do when it’s let off the leash”? That is badass. You know, like, Barbara Brown Taylor said that about you and your work.
Liz: She’s very kind. (Laughs)
Zach: Anyway, one of the reasons this hierarchical lens is so powerful is that it removes responsibility from the individual and places it onto God. So, let me give you an example. Like, if I walked up to you, Liz, on the street, and I was said, “Hey, you’re actually supposed to do whatever I tell you, because I’m a man and you’re a woman, and you should be obey me.” You’d be like, “You’re a sexist and a misogynist, and get away from me.”
Liz: I’d be like, “Hi, John Piper.” (Laughs)
Zach: You look good, John. (Laughs)
But you could walk into many American evangelical churches today led by male pastors who would tell you, “Hey, God’s design is that you[, woman in my church,] are submissive and subject to your pastor, your husband, other men in your life, and that’s God’s opinion. It’s not my opinion. I’m not sexist. I’m not a misogynist. That’s God’s design for the world, the way that God set it up.” Adding “God said” to sexism gives a level of credence to those beliefs, even if they’re false.
I just finished A Well-Trained Wife, Tia Levings’ book. And, oh my gosh, it’s just this horrific picture of what that looks like when complementarianism is carried to its logical conclusion. Certainly, there are complementarians who are rightly horrified by what she went through. But my point is, her account illustrates the logical conclusion of the subjugation of women. Which is why I think Jesus was so clear about equity and equality, and I think why the trajectory of scripture is toward equity and equality. Reading hierarchy into the Bible is wildly harmful.
Christian Authoritarianism in the Government (Yes, we went there 🫣)
Liz: Related to that, let’s talk about Christian authoritarianism, which seems to be everywhere right now, especially in our government. You know, you have Pete Hegseth suggesting that maybe women maybe shouldn’t vote, like, maybe we should repeal the 19th Amendment. There’s a lot of overlap here where they say, “Okay, maybe women shouldn’t do this, do that.” …shouldn’t be in the military, shouldn’t be leading, shouldn’t be voting. They have to meet certain fitness or weight standards.
And that’s ultimately about control. [I say this as a happy fat lady!]
That’s the part of complementarianism that I always chafed against. I just never was that submissive in church spaces, despite trying. I always felt, “I don’t actually fit here.” And I’m not the only one, right? I’m not the only woman, I’m not the only marginalized person at church. So, as one of these people, you go, “Okay, if there’s actually only one right type of person, there’s actually only one right type of body.”
And that ultimately arises from having one right type of way to think about the scripture—because there's only one right way, right person, right gender, right body, right race and ethnicity.
It’s not just about interpretation. It’s about defining what it means to be human.
Especially when I think about interpretations of image-bearing. In those early chapters of Genesis, is woman made in God’s image? This is a real question that women bring to the text because we are told by men that that we aren’t God’s image, not really. We are an aberration. Even more so if you’re gay, if you are intersex, and the question becomes even more urgent then because of the active discrimination happening.
But I think as a woman in the church, I grew up believing I was wrong in some way because the original human form is Adam. And male is what God’s like.
Zach: Yes, that’s the origin of complementarian theology.
…Complementarianism is basically the idea that women and men are equal before God, but different in their “role[s],” or what they’re allowed to inside of “God’s divine plan.”
Complementarianism is 35 years old. So it’s super young. What [came before that] was, women are ontologically inferior to men. Basically, women are malformed males. That was what every church father believed and taught.
That belief became so societally unacceptable… that in the ‘70s and ‘80s, evangelicals and fundamentalists were like, “Okay, we can’t keep hawking the “ontologically inferior” argument anymore. So we gotta re-package it.” And they created “complementarianism” in its current form. It is [evangelicalism] repackaging the full subjugation of women and ontological inferiority of women.
So, the natural conclusion for somebody like Pete Hegseth is, “Well, if women shouldn’t be leading men in any capacity [as the Christian church says], then they shouldn’t be voting, especially if they’re [voting on] a male candidate. How dare a woman!”
I think it’s helpful to remove all of our modern gentility, trying to dress this up as something palatable and say, [this discussion about equality] really is a binary. Either all sexualities, genders, expressions are fully equal before God and in society, or they’re not. And if they’re not, that is incredibly problematic, because then it opens the door for all kinds of subjugation to exist in the world.
Church Trials and Tribulations
Liz: I want to ask you about your experience around the inclusion stuff. Can you talk about planting your church with a particular network, and how that went for you all?
Zach: I was naïve, Liz, you know?
Liz: Oh, I get it.(laughs) I mean, I decided to be an intern at an Acts 29 church as thirty-year-old and I assumed I was going to be an equal to the dudes I served with. I get naïveté.
Zach: I was 24 when I met the guy who led that church planting network, he was probably seventy at the time. When I had my first conversation with him and talked about being a place of egalitarian leadership between sexes, a place of inclusion for LGBTQ+ people, wanting to do racial justice stuff... I think what he heard was, “Everybody’s welcome.” You want to plant a church where everyone’s welcome.
That’s on every evangelical website in America, you know? “No perfect people allowed. Everyone’s welcome.”
Then when we launched the church and we started doing kid dedications and baptisms and installing elders, and among those were women and queer people and historically marginalized populations as leaders and full participants in everything, then he was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.”
So, I had to explain, “No, that’s not what I said. I said we’re gonna be equal.”
And I was just naïve. At the beginning, I thought, “Yeah, we’ll probably be on the progressive end of this movement, but isn’t it great to have a ‘big tent’ ecumenical movement? Isn’t that what we all need?” I just didn’t realize that that was not gonna be a long-term possibility.
The church planting network we were part of put us “under investigation.” At that time, they did actually not have an anti-LGBTQ+ policy in writing, so we spent two years “on probation” so that they could write a policy, pass a policy with their board, and then kick us out of the network.
Liz: What a waste of time. Zach, I’m so sorry. And what a waste of money!
Zach: I don’t think I shared this in the book but one of the really wild parts [of this ordeal] was related to a family emergency. When we moved to Austin [in 2015], my son who’s now 11 was eight months old, and he started having seizures. (He’s doing great now, by the way. He was diagnosed with febrile seizures, which are basically fever-induced seizures when you’re little and your nervous system can’t handle it. We got him all worked out.)
But regardless, we had no idea what it was at first. He stopped breathing a few times, and it was terrifying. [We] spent weeks with him in the hospital, and these leaders from this network came to the hospital [to support us], laid hands on my son, prayed over him, laid hands on me and my wife Amy, prayed over us, said, “We will always be here. If the church fails, it doesn’t matter. We will always be here to support you and your family and your son, no matter what.”
And less than a year later, I’m getting emails saying, “You’re a heretic and an apostate, and we have to expel you from the brotherhood [and the network].” It was such whiplash.
I’d experienced [that] as a kid, but I [assumed,] “Well, that’s just these really fundamentalist places…” But it’s so much more prevalent than [I] realized.
Liz: Yeah, I myself had a health issue in the year before I did this internship [at the Acts 29 church]. Literally, I had a pastor give us a car for $5.00 [to support us during that time]. I think about the level of care that I felt from the congregants in that church, and yet the rejection that I [later] felt. Those two realities are both true, which is very confusing for a nervous system. (laughs) I belonged, and then I didn’t because I changed how I think about women’s roles at church.
That’s a very common experience for folks to be like, “On the one hand, I feel very loved. On the other hand, you don’t want me anymore. So, either I did something wrong or something about me is wrong.”
So, how did your church metabolize [the “discipline” and trial]? How did you?
Zach: Whether it was getting kicked out of youth group in seventh grade or this expulsion and defrocking that I experienced [Zach also had his ordination revoked], what I realized was that I was being pushed aside… because of something that I believed.
But I began to connect the dots when considering those within my congregation: people all around me were being pushed out, cast aside, and marginalized for who they were. I could choose. I could’ve lied about what I believed. I could’ve changed my belief to fit in. But others can’t. Like, my queer friends can’t change their queerness.
So, I began to realize, this is happening on a much broader scale, and my eyes weren’t open to it because of my level of privilege as a straight white guy.
That realization felt like a calling from God to double down on what we were doing at RESTORE [his church], to really be this place of mutuality and flourishing for all people, and especially those who’ve been marginalized by the Church in the past.
So, I remember when we [Zach and the elders] went to the church members and told them, “Hey, you guys, this is official, we’re kicked out.” And people applauded. People said, “Hell yeah, we did.” They understood that it meant we had stood by them.
Trumpism is Forcing a Crucible
Liz: So much about this season with Trumpism is revealing the guts of Christianity in America. This administration has forced Christians to clarify, what do we really believe? Why are we still doing this? What is the point of our faith practices, you know? And that’s become more and more important personally to discern for myself, and even for whatever communities and relationships I have, what is it that we’re actually about?
Zach: I think you do that really well in your book, but those other places where you write or speak or belong, what does that call for clarity look like in a moment like this?
Liz: Well, I’m working on my second book, which is protest stories—of American women and women in the Bible. But another thing is, as I’ve attended “No Kings” protests, as a part of my preparation for that, I thought about, what if I get arrested? I started thinking through, what am I willing to sacrifice to speak the truth? And if detention or arrest is a possibility, how can I prepare for the sake of my family—my husband, my kids?
I’ve been more direct in what I’ve been writing lately—more political commentary, which is not my normal “beat,” but feels important right now. I’m going to speak as loudly as I can, even putting my body in the way of those who are vulnerable, if I get the chance.
For me, right now, living faith looks like excising fear and encouraging folks in my life toward the same. To say to them, listen, we actually need to have these hard conversations. We can’t skirt around this [white supremacy, greed within capitalism, Trump, harmful theology] anymore. We have to be direct. And we have to be willing to bear the consequences of that directness, too.
I want to create opportunities for myself to actually live out my faith as a weirdo, white, progressive, post-evangelical Christian socialist, you know?(laughs)
I do hope that this political moment will become a crucible for some Christians, where they can define how their faith interacts with real life (i.e. politics). And I am hopeful that questioning like that would lead to growth, in us as individuals and as a church community.
Bonhoeffer and the Confessing Church
Liz: I’ve been relating this moment, in my own mind, to Bonhoeffer’s time. It’s humbling to realize that most Christians just did not take a stand in Germany.
Zach: Right, before [anyone] became the “Confessing Church” or the “Third Reich Church,” they were just The Church in Germany, ...and you didn’t know what was underneath. And the politics clarified it. As a German Christian, you were forced to say, “I’m either like pro-Nazi, or I’m anti-Nazi.”
[Read more about the Confessing Church vs. the Third Reich Church]
And the same sorting is happening right now. There have been a million “purple” evangelical churches that have just skated by on “We’re apolitical, we are not engaged in social things, we’re not controversial, it’s just fun for your kids and we’re gonna also talk about how Ruth was a great mom…”
Liz: …run from famine, I guess? Is that what mother Ruth teaches us? (Laughs)
Zach: …Seduce the guy in the barn… (Laughs) It gets real tricky.
But I appreciate what you just said about how like it’s okay that this time is a crucible, it’s okay that this time is clarifying. It’s scary, absolutely, and the consequences can be tremendous. We are not just skating through some soft “nothing is required of me version of faith.”
This moment confronts this kind of mile-wide inch-deep faith that doesn’t really require anything of you. We’re facing exposure as Christians, and that’s okay.
I’ve been in this navigating this political moment in the church since we started a pre-launch church planting process in 2015 for our church. Then, we were coming off the heels of Trayvon and Ferguson, and then you had the 2015 Republican primary, right? So, for a decade people have been coming to me for advice. It is difficult, and I’m sorry for that. But also, this revealing is a gift. It’s a gift to be able to know that you can’t live out an inch-deep faith anymore. That’s a liberation.1
Nonsense Theology from our Pastor/Politicians vs. Healthy Ways of Reading the Bible
Liz: You and I both have big thoughts/feelings about the negative ways to approach the Bible. And I believe one of the gifts (and curses?) of this time is that the Bible is being used in all sorts of insane, nonsensical ways. Like, DHS (Department of Homeland Security) is posting Bible verses on its twitter, and so is the Department of War.
There are worship services happening at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, where the President happens to be the keynote speaker/preacher. It’s just such a wild time to be Christian… and to have any biblical literacy whatsoever. …Which I’m not convinced that most of them do. (Laughs)
Zach: For sure no.
Liz: So, what are some positive ways that we can approach the Bible, and particularly the story of Jesus? I mean, I have questions about the Old Testament because I’m completely obsessed with the Old Testament.(laughs) But that might be beyond the scope of this conversation, so do with that what you will, Zach.
Zach: In the book, I outline these four healthier lenses [through which to read the Bible]: a “Jesus” lens, a contextual lens, a flourishing lens, and a fruitfulness lens. I’ll focus on the last one, the fruitfulness one, which is the most pastoral. It addresses that old question: how do I know if I’m doing the right thing right now? That’s a harder question than ever to answer, because there’s so much to be done. How do I know if I’m doing enough? How do I know if I’m doing it the right way?
Whether we’re talking about our Bible interpretations or our beliefs or our behaviors, I suggest we should be running them through the filter of fruitfulness—are they producing more love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, in us and in the world around us?
If you can answer yes, then that is the fruit of the Spirit of God. Jesus said, “You will know my followers by their fruit.” We can use this question as a filter, a barometer, as a check. Because, referring to what you just alluded to, so much of our modern Bible interpretations and modern expressions of Christianity are producing hate not love, right? They’re producing cruelty, not kindness. They are producing sorrow and pain instead of joy.
Jesus gives us this one sentence mission statement: “I came to bring life and life to the full,” which is everybody experiencing fullness and flourishing.
When we juxtapose that phrase with the first part of that sentence, where Jesus says, “The thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy,” we see that the reality is that some of our Bible interpretations and our expressions of Christianity have led to what Jesus said the thief, the enemy is trying to do—death and destruction and theft. That should arrest us. It should cause Christians internal turmoil and pain and struggle to see our faith weaponized in this harmful way.
The Department of Homeland Security putting out videos with verses from Isaiah saying, “Here I am, send me” [to recruit ICE agents,] and then [those] agents terrorizing immigrants? That’s the enemy, not Jesus. That’s stealing and killing and destroying, right? That’s not life and life to the full. That’s not flourishing.
And we should be able to stand up—we have to stand up—and say, “This is not of Jesus.” In fact, this is anti-Jesus, and if we are ever wielding the Bible in ways that harm our neighbors, then we’ve got a tremendous problem.
Liz: Well, and what’s at the root of using the Bible like that? What does DHS intend when they use the Bible like that? We can presume that they do intend harm. They intend to control, to make people afraid. They intend authoritarianism. They intend to raise up one group of people above another.
That’s another picture of the hierarchical lens [that you mention in your book], which is the opposite of this flourishing lens. We must ask ourselves, what is the egalitarianism of the Bible? It is that we each get to flourish because of the mercy of God, because of the generosity of our Father who made us.
So, if every one of us is God’s image, there isn’t a hierarchy, right? In fact, we get to raise up each other in mutuality and generosity. And that’s different than what we’re seeing in the social medias at the moment… from our pastor-politicians. (laughs)
Zach: Amen. Amen.
But what about hell?
Liz: I’d be very curious to hear you talk about hell and judgment, because you write that people have said to you, “Okay, you’re leading you, your family and your church into judgment.” That could turn you away from the idea of “judgment” altogether. Yet “liberation” as a doctrine also comes with a side of justice, meaning judgment.
That challenges these progressive Christian ideals that say, “Listen, we’re all welcome. We’re all accepted.” But even these wackos using the Bible to nab immigrants? Even them?
I know we agree that God loves every single one of us, but also there’s this justice piece, so what do we do with that? Like, what kind of justice, and for whom, and for how long? How does it work? (laughs)
Zach: That is a doozy. I do not believe that progressive sentiment of, “hell is all fake and it’s just made up to control you”… You have to erase large swaths of scripture and large swaths of history [to make that case]. And then you have to deal with the fact that hell is almost always connected to God’s justice in scripture.
By denying hell, you’re neutering God’s justice when you just dismiss it out of hand like that. On the flip side, there are very few theologies more damaging than eternal conscious torment in hell.
So, I do believe hell is real, but I believe that it’s temporary and purifying. I have a very George McDonald/C.S. Lewis view on it, that God offers a perpetual invitation. Revelation 21 says that the gates of the new heaven and new Earth will never be shut, and the Spirit of God says, “Come. Anyone who is thirsty, come.” There’s this beckoning all the time. And we still have to deal with the sin, the pain, the harming of others, things we handed ourselves over to.
That same passage, Revelation 21, references murderers standing outside of the gates of the new heaven and new Earth. And, my take on that is, they’re outside because they have yet to leave behind their harmful ways of living.
But there is a constant invitation to leave behind the hell we’ve created and to enter heaven as a person committed to mutuality and flourishing. I think that invitation is forever.
And I think that that kind of version of hell outside of the gates is purifying, inevitably bringing people to a place where every person will eventually say, “I have to lay this down. It’s too harmful to me, and I can’t do it anymore.”
Liz: I think I’ve settled in The Great Divorce camp myself. But I feel heartened by the idea of a constant invitation, even after death.
Jesus stands at the door and knocks, and the invitation does not end.
When my husband and I most recently talked about this, he asked me, “Yeah, but will Jesus chase them down in the far corners of hell, and what about…?” I said, “I don’t know.”(laughs) I just don’t know how to make sense of the afterlife and God’s justice, but I know that goodness includes some version of justice, and I can’t separate them. It has to. How else do you make sense of this entire life, including the parts that include ICE? But it’s challenging to hold out for unity, like, “You know what? Everybody can come. And also, what you did is serious and it matters.” And repentance really is real. And, and there are real consequences. How do we judge that? I don’t know, but I don’t feel like I have to make that decision. (laughs)
Zach: Thank God. (laughs)
A Word to the “Dones”
Liz: One last question for you: What would you say to folks who are done—like, “Ugh, I don’t wanna have to deal with the Bible right now. Because it just feels like such a weapon.” What would you say to them?
Zach: You’re the person I wrote the book for. And I’m not trying to trick you into reading my book so that you’ll become a Bible person again. It’s okay if you’re at a place where you just can’t pick it up, you can’t engage with it, there’s too much trauma, there’s too much pain. I’m so sorry that happened to you.
But the ways that scripture inflicted that trauma and pain was not how scripture was ever intended to be read, and it’s certainly not how Jesus wants us to apply the Bible. I believe there are better ways.
And Better Ways to Read the Bible is one piece of a larger prophetic witness that includes you, Liz, and a lot of our other mutual friends who are doing really great work—whether it’s related to expounding upon the liberation within the Bible or, whether it’s advocacy or activism, this work matters. I do think it is making a difference because there is a confessing church, so to speak, right? The one that’s been around longest is the Black Church, but there’s also a growing movement of us saying, if it’s not a Christianity centered on Jesus and justice and inclusion, then it’s not a Christianity that Christ would have anything to do with. And that rising response to these Christofascist movements is encouraging to me.
Liz: And we’re not done yet.
Zach: No way.
P.S. Don’t forget to check out Zach and Liz’s books!
By the way, both Zach and I acknowledge that we’re both privileged in this moment because we’re not under direct threat by the Trump administration as white American citizens. (At least we’re not under threat right now!) But there is a gift in being able to live into a weighty Christianity in a moment like ours, one of tremendous change and challenge. He and I are both the sort of folks who like to take on a challenge. ;-)
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