You're listening to the Bible for Normal People, the only God ordained podcast on the internet.

I'm Pete N's.

And I'm Jared Baez.

Hey, folks, welcome back.

The podcast.

It's been a while.

This is such a special episode for us because today we're kicking off season 10. You heard that right, of the Bible for normal people.

Yeah, I mean, when we started this podcast, Beyonce's Lemonade album had just come out. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jill. You can ignore this part.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were just getting the first season of Stranger Things had just come out. Pete was in his 50s. Yeah, I was. I remember that. My kids were in elementary school and now one's graduated high school and we're over 300 episodes in. We're ready to rock and roll. We're not slowing down. I know. And we couldn't think of a better way to start the season than with one of the OGs of making biblical studies accessible

to everyday people, N.T. Wright. Tom is the former Bishop of Durham and Senior Research Fellow at

Wycliffe Hall, Oxford University. He's written so many influential and prominent books, but

as the most recent is on the topic of our conversation

today, the book of Ephesians. He's written, The Vision of Ephesians, the Task of the Church,

and the Glory of God. So if you find this conversation interesting, check it out.

Now, one just a slight comment we want to make here to this side issue, so people aren't

confused. You know, a lot of you might be familiar with controversies or disagreements,

academic disagreements about who wrote Ephesians, and there are various views on that.

And we're just going to use the word Paul all throughout, even though, I mean, I have some

thoughts about maybe Paul didn't write it, and a lot of people would agree, others would disagree. But we're just going to say Paul and don't read any more into that just because that's the guy who keeps coming up. It's easier than saying, you know, the alleged author or whoever wrote it or, you know, one of Paul's followers or something like that. It's just not worth it. Right. All right. Well, thanks for being with us as we enter our preteen years here at the Bible for normal people. Let's get into the episode. If Paul was to come back today, what would he be most surprised by? And I would say he would be most surprised not just by the fact that we are not united, but by the fact that we don't care.

We ought to be reading Paul not to tell us how to get to heaven,

but to tell us how important it is that we signal the coming together of heaven and earth

by our unity across traditional boundary markers.

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