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

Serious talk about the Sacred Book. I'm Pete Ends.

And I'm Jared Byas.

Welcome everyone to this episode of the podcast, The Topic for Today is the Bible as a weapon.

And we have with us Brian McLaren, who's a very popular author and speaker he wrote a new kind of Christian,

new kind of Christianity. We make the road by walking, which is actually a book that our congregation

used for, I think, Limp last year or two years ago and I let a book study through that with a group

of people and it was a really helpful way of walking through some biblical texts and it really

opened up a lot of conversation as we have a great one here today as well.

And I'm excited to have Brian on as well. I've admired him and I've gotten to know him a bit over

the years, but his book, A New Kind of Christian is one that sort of, I read that and I said,

oh, somebody understands me. And I've sort of been attracted to what Brian's been doing ever since,

you know, the early 2000s. But you know, his recent book, The Great Spiritual Migration,

talks a lot about the nature of the Bible and how it should be used. And I really, you know,

I like what Brian has to say. I find him to be a real, a Christian leader that I have a lot of

respect for. And I would even say, not even, but I would say that he has a prophetic voice in at

least American Christianity, Western Christianity, prophetic. I just mean he is out there envisioning

something of what the Christian faith can be here and now. And he's beckoning others to follow.

And I find that to be very alluring. He's, he's intelligent. He's well read and very, very

articulate. And I never walk away from a conversation with Brian without learning something and just

being a lot smarter than I was when I walked in. Yep. So let's get into our conversation on

the Bible as a weapon with Brian McLaren. I was taught to read the Bible like a constitution.

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