Reimagining God: Why the Angry God Image Keeps Us From Christ w/ Dr. Bradley Jersak

Johnny Ova: Welcome everybody to the Dig In Podcast. I'm your host, Pastor Johnny Ova of the Sound of Heaven Church, and I cannot tell you how excited I am for our guest today, Dr. Bradley Jersak. Dr. Jersak, thank you so much for joining us.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Thanks for having me. Please call me Bradley.

Johnny Ova: All right, I will call you Bradley for the rest of our conversation. I'm sure you could tell how excited I am. I must have messaged him 311 times: can't wait, can't wait, can't wait. I think this is going to help a lot of people, especially our listeners who listen to the podcast and visit our website. I'm excited to jump right in.

Dr. Brad Jersak: I'm glad to be here, Johnny. I appreciate you having me.

Johnny Ova: We're going to go over a lot of your work, and I know you have a university we're going to talk about too, where people can connect with you on a deeper level. But when you hear people say the God of the Old Testament is different from the God of the New, what's the first thing you want to correct about that statement?

Dr. Brad Jersak: I guess the first thing I want to correct is that it's the same God. However, I do understand what they mean. If they read the Old Testament through a literalist lens, they are going to see events and descriptions and commands that seem very un-Christlike. This became a problem in the early church fairly quickly. Is this the same God at all? Is Yahweh the one revealed in Christ? If so, why do they seem so different at times? The solutions to that have been threefold. One is to assume the whole Bible describes God in a variety of ways and you have to include all of them. So yes, he's loving, but he's also wrathful and genocidal and so on, and some became comfortable with that because they couldn't read Scripture differently. A second approach was a heresy called the Marcionites. They threw out the Old Testament altogether, and good parts of the New Testament. They just got rid of anything that looked icky.

Dr. Brad Jersak: And then I think the real solution the early church arrived at very quickly, including in the Gospels and epistles and then in the second century, was that it's a hermeneutical problem. That means how we interpret Scripture. What you can't do is read the wrath, anger and violence of God literally, or you'll end up with the God of the Old Testament in an ugly way. They wanted to say, no, the God who is gracious, compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in loving-kindness, who revealed himself to Abraham and Moses and David, has now come into clearest focus in the person of Jesus, in his work and his revelation. So that's a little overview of the God of the Old Testament.

Johnny Ova: I know we're going to get into more specific questions on that later. I feel like this is one of the biggest topics that needs to be discussed in the body of Christ, because as a pastor I see so many people not come to God, not want to believe in God, not even want to approach God. One, because of the way Christians represent him. But two, let's just be real: if God is doing all these works the way the Old Testament is projected, why would I ever want to bring my sin to him? Is Rambo God going to take me out too because I didn't live up to the perfect standard? I think understanding who God is and who Christ is is vitally important. That leads into my second question. Why do you think so many of us are more comfortable with the angry God than the Christlike one?

Dr. Brad Jersak: Oh boy. Some of that is familiarity, but I also think that even if you haven't been indoctrinated with that particular image of God, it resonates with some dis-ease in each of us. For example, if you're feeling that you're an awful person, then the God who sees you as an awful person makes sense. I used to think this was an error introduced by bad doctrine in particular faith traditions, but now I'm suspicious that it's right at the roots of who we are. When I meet people in addictions and we're working through to the bottom line, what's behind it, what's driving it, if I dig far enough I always end up in the same place, and it is the fear that I am not okay. Now, if you have that conviction, what kind of God will you develop?

Dr. Brad Jersak: Imagine Adam and Eve in the garden in that story. They stumble, and the very first thing they do is construct an image of God out of their shame, a God from whom they need to hide. Why? Because he's going to kill them. Oh no, now we've done it. We're bad. God's angry. He's going to kill me. I'm going to hide. He had never presented himself that way. So I think even now there will be people who've never had bad doctrinal teaching, but they instinctively have this shame that generates that kind of image of God. When they hear about that God, you're actually marketing to their need. That God resonates. And the flip side is that we want God to be like that for other people. He becomes a projection of our hopes that he would come down hard on those we don't love and don't want included.

Johnny Ova: Jesus' teachings are so simple yet so hard. Love your enemies. I don't want to love my enemy. But they're the foundational core of what makes Christians, or should make Christians, Christian.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Sure. Think about forgiveness. I was just reading a book by Tolstoy, who went through a big deconstruction and writes about it in a book called My Religion. He'd turned away even from orthodox faith to what he called the religion of Jesus, and he goes into the Sermon on the Mount and says, yes, the Jesus way is hard. Forgiveness is very hard. But it's not as hard as living a lifelong torment of resentment. So there are the difficulties of the Jesus way. Love your enemies? I can't do that. Well, we know that's hard. That's like a little crucifixion. But it's not like the living hell of a lifetime of red-hot fury at all the enemies you're afraid of. One is a death and one is a hell. Choose your poison. Because in the case of resurrection… sorry, go ahead.

Johnny Ova: I was going to say, on that, what do you think the cost is, emotionally, relationally and spiritually, of believing in a violent God like this? What impact have you seen it have?

Dr. Brad Jersak: That's a great question. I just supervised an MA thesis by a woman who asked that same question, and here's what she discovered. She was working in a halfway house for women who'd gone through domestic violence. They'd had to run away from their spouses and were in hiding, and she was doing group therapy with them. What she saw was that the very same PTSD symptoms these women were exhibiting from the violence of their husbands or partners, she was discovering in those who've internalized the retributive God, the punishing God. So in her thesis she took three examples of the retributive God: Old Testament violence, penal substitutionary atonement and eternal conscious torment. Then she looked for the fruit of internalizing those beliefs, and it matched what the women were going through. So what she said was, on the doctrine of God, the nature of God, if it's not Christlike, we don't even need to have a biblical or theological debate. Jesus said, test by the fruit. And I'm telling you what the fruit is, and it's religious trauma rooted in those beliefs. That's the cost.

Johnny Ova: It's funny, because some of the things we project onto our relationship with God, we would never project onto a healthy relationship on earth. We're going to get into hell later, but we believe in this God who says believe in me or else I will burn you for eternity, while you're conscious of it, by the way. This loving father. Yet if I told everybody in my congregation, hey, listen, my wife Rachel is only with me because I told her that if she ever left me, I would burn her for the rest of her life and torture her family, nobody would look at me and say, man, he loves her so much. So why do we project these crazy, insane, multiple-personality tendencies onto God, knowing we'd call that unhealthy in every earthly relationship we'd ever have? Why do we justify those things? Is it that we really fear God, or maybe we fear letting go of the angry God we've come to think we need?

Dr. Brad Jersak: I think there could be a few answers to that. One is that we really believe God is like that, and so we think, I just don't want to burn. I even said this once in my twenties: even if God is evil, I would still follow him, because I don't want to be tortured forever in hell. So one way is that you may actually believe that stuff. The other is that we may have a disconnect and suspend our judgment about it and have a cartoonish idea of that God. Deep down, would you really believe that? Of course not, but I've compartmentalized my doctrine to say I believe it. So I may not believe it, but I believe that I believe it. You may relate to this. It would be a lot like the way I believe in a professional wrestler's character. I know he's not really like that, but this is the show, and I'm going to go with the story because I believe in the story and I have to believe in the story.

Dr. Brad Jersak: And then maybe I'll say something more positive. However they picked up this image of God, there is an authentic effort to be faithful at any cost. The cost is having a psychotic deity that you're obeying, and unfortunately that trickles down and you become his agent in some kind of way too. But if I can at least start with the presumption that they're making an effort to be faithful, then we can have a conversation: I'm making an effort to be faithful too, and I want to show you how that works. Then perhaps there can be a meeting of our intentions, even if our doctrines are opposite.

Johnny Ova: I'm going to present something we could go down a million avenues with, because we're getting into the crux of this. I know some great God-fearing, God-loving Christians out there, and it's almost like they worship the Bible more than the one the Bible points to, Jesus. I know that's a dangerous, for some heretical, approach, but I think it's what's causing mass confusion in the body of Christ, where we believe everything written in the Bible is God-dictated, God said it, and he's prescribing it. The way I teach it is that there are descriptions and prescriptions. God prescribes that we love our enemies. But God is describing David sleeping with Bathsheba. He's not ordaining that event, saying, David, I want you to kill your friend and sleep with his wife. That is a description. And I think what really rocks people is Hebrews 1, where it says Jesus is the exact imprint of God's nature. So what does that really mean for how we read the whole Bible? How does it shift how we read some of these Old Testament stories and how we view God?

Dr. Brad Jersak: That's loaded, isn't it? I think you're right. Let's start with the Bible. If you've been taught that faithfulness to God means reading the Bible a particular way, you will even be willing to throw God under the bus to stay faithful to that reading. For example, in 1 Samuel 15 the narrator says that God told Samuel to tell Saul, go kill the Amalekites, slaughter them all, kill the babies, everything. What kind of God would you have to believe in, and how far is that from Christ, if you take that literally? But if your faithfulness requires you to, you'll bend over backwards to say yes, God wants a genocide and commands you to do it, and even if it's evil, because it's God it's good and we have to go with it. I say, what if I just don't see God that way? What if I reinterpret that scripture? No, you can't mess with Scripture. But you just messed with God. So which is your God, ultimately?

Dr. Brad Jersak: I think you're right to go to Hebrews, and I'd say John 1 as well: no one has ever seen God at any time, but the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has made him known. Wait a minute. Are you saying Abraham, Moses and David never experienced God? Are you saying the Bible isn't telling us exactly how God is? No. Jesus is telling us how God is. My mentor, Archbishop Lazar Puhalo, and this is no card-carrying liberal going off the deep end, this is an Orthodox Christian monk who looks like Gandalf, says it this way: any scripture that claims to be a revelation of God must bow to the living God when he came in the flesh. The Scriptures bow to Jesus. I think that's what Hebrews 1 is getting at. He is the exact representation of God's likeness, and anything that deviates from that, we're going to have to find a different way to read.

Dr. Brad Jersak: I don't say cut it out of the Bible. Paul gives an example in 1 Corinthians 10. In the first paragraph there he gives a whole bunch of examples showing that Scripture has cautionary tales. I would include in that not just, don't go sleep with people, David, but a cautionary tale of a misreading of God himself in the text. That's tricky and it's risky, but it's not as risky as making God into a monster, and I don't understand our willingness to do that. It must be deeply rooted in this: I don't actually know God, but I know this book, so the book has replaced him.

Johnny Ova: For me, in my journey, it was realizing the humanity in Scripture. I almost felt like I committed the unpardonable sin when I said that. The Word of God is really Jesus. Jesus is the Word. But what we're taught is that these books are the Word of God and everything here is God. When I came to that conclusion, it was like, wow, there are things they thought were God. You can even look at Nathan. Nathan telling David to build the temple was clearly not of God. He did it without even consulting God, and it caused a stumbling block for David. You can see the error. So the way I appreciate and respect the Old Covenant and the Old Testament is, man, these are flawed men and women just like me, and some of these guys messed up so bad, just like me, and God still worked through them the best he could. That was encouraging, and coming to that realization really opened my eyes to who this was. So was the God we see crucified on the cross changing, or was it us finally seeing him clearly?

Dr. Brad Jersak: Right. Some of the open theologians and process theologians think maybe God was changing. I just don't see it that way. I think the Scriptures make it clear that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever, and that the same Jesus is the God revealed through the Scriptures. But you need to read that God through Jesus. So you have to really focus on how Jesus read these stories about himself. He'll even tell you, Moses was writing about me. How? I don't know if you want to do some hermeneutics now or later, but the early church came to some really clear and helpful conclusions about how to read the Jesus way, or the Emmaus way.

Johnny Ova: Let's go right into it. If I have other questions, I'll come back to them later.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Okay. You've got apostles like John and Paul, and in their writing they are sharing the gospel according to the Scriptures, and for them that's our Old Testament. That's how they're preaching. Then in the second century you get disciples of John, or grand-disciples of John. Irenaeus is one, and Melito of Sardis is one. What they did was show you how to read the Old Testament in a way that prefigures Jesus. That's a good word for it, prefigures. It's like a movie trailer. In Melito's sermon On Pascha he says that every story, every character, every event in some way prefigures Christ. This is what Jesus says on the Emmaus road: the law and the prophets, and he'll also say all the writings, all the Scriptures, and in the upper room he adds the Psalms. They're all pointing to him. But how? If I distill Melito, he gives three ways all the Scriptures point to Jesus. So you get beyond the historical lessons into gospel preaching from the Old Testament.

Dr. Brad Jersak: First of all, he says it's like a model. If you're going to make a 90-foot golden statue of a horse, you start with a nine-inch clay model. Or if you're doing an architectural model of, let's say, a temple made of granite, you start with a little model, and you go, what is this, a school for ants? No, it'll be bigger and greater. That's what the model is doing in the Old Testament. Then the three ways. He says every time you see the people of God suffer in any way, whether it's an individual like Joseph being thrown in a pit, or the people of God going into exile, any defeat at the hands of their enemies, these prefigure the much greater suffering of Jesus on the cross, when he bears the sins and sorrows of all of history, every man, woman, child and culture, in himself. So the suffering of God's people in the Old Testament, Isaiah 53, prefigures the cross and the passion of the Christ.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Second, every victory you see in the Old Testament, however ugly, however dubious, even the genocides or the conquest of Canaan, prefigures the far greater, more beautiful victory of Christ, where he makes everything right without having to kill even one person. The victories anticipate his victory, but his is far greater, far more beautiful, far more impacting, with none of the ugliness of death-dealing. Third, every time you see a sin or a betrayal in the Old Testament, all the critiques the prophets make of the people of Israel and the kings of Israel and Judah, they're identifying the horrible ways God's own people have betrayed him. That prefigures the much greater betrayal, the conspiracy between the state governor, the religious leadership and the mob when they crucified Jesus. So instead of looking for individual little prophecies about Jesus, you read every story and every character that way, so you don't end up seeing God as just the agent of death-dealing.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Let me add one thing. I teach this to eight- and nine-year-olds all the time, and here's the angle I come at it with. First, let's memorize John 10:10: the thief steals, kills and destroys, but I, Jesus, that is God, have come to give you life more abundantly. Then, when the kids read the Old Testament, they're looking for death-dealing and life-giving. Then they'll ask, why does it say this? And we use Pete Enns' phrase: because God let his children tell the story, and they didn't know Jesus yet. Third, now let's find Jesus in the story, and he's not where you think he is. He's not in the sword of Joshua. He's in the veins of Rahab. He's not in the conquest of Jerusalem, the siege of Babylon. He's in the tears of Jeremiah. These are the kinds of things the kids are discovering themselves. So that's what I do with them.

Johnny Ova: That's great. It sets up that framework right off the bat when they're young.

Dr. Brad Jersak: And then they're unrattled when they see it. They know just what to do.

Johnny Ova: That's powerful. In your writing you made this statement: wrath is what happens when we defy love. Can you explain that for us?

Dr. Brad Jersak: I see different layers of uses of wrath in the Scriptures, but in that context, what I'm saying is this. When I'm presented with perfect love and I turn away from it, I defy it, I create a shadow, a shadow of consequences, harm done to others and to myself. What happens in that shadow we would call wrath. Note that it's a shadow because God is still there behind us. He never turns from us. He continues to shine on us. St. Anthony the Great once said God no more turns from the sinner than the sun ceases to shine for the blind man. So the sun of God's love is still shining on us, but as we turn away, you can just see consequences unrolling. It's not the wages of God. It's the wages of sin. Sin is its own punishment in that sense. The second layer is that God consents to our defiance. Otherwise, what's he going to do, handcuff me to my bed and give me a lobotomy? This is the shadow side of creating free agents who are able to love: it means I can also turn from love, and that turn from love is what the Bible describes as wrath.

Johnny Ova: So you would see wrath more as divine permission, for lack of a better term, versus divine punishment.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Right. The word I like to use is consent, because it's intrinsic to love. Love must be consensual. It can't be a smoking gun to your head. It consents even to my turning, and it becomes God's wrath in this way: when I experience those consequences and he gives me the dignity of facing them, like the younger son getting hungry in the prodigal son story, then I will willingly turn toward him and begin to come home. In addictions recovery we talk about that as bottoming out. The amazing thing is that the folks I know who really recovered will say, I can even thank God for my addiction, because it's what ended my self-will and I finally came home to find him. So in that sense he consents to that process, which ultimately ends with me returning to his open arms of love, hopefully without too much collateral damage. And yet that goes with the territory, and it's an awful thing when the consequences actually cost other people. Lord have mercy.

Johnny Ova: I like the word consent, because it reflects the love of God, this covenant of God. If there's force or manipulation or control, there can't be love. And if God is love, based on what we were talking about before, God can't then change. It doesn't say God became love. God is love.

Dr. Brad Jersak: That's exactly right.

Johnny Ova: I agree. God's the same yesterday, today and forever. You see all these scriptures saying God never changes. So God can't be a homicidal maniac one second, getting upset and emotional when people don't obey him or worship him or serve him, and on the other hand be telling us to love our enemies. God is telling us to love our enemies while he kills his? It seems so contradictory if that's the way we read it.

Dr. Brad Jersak: It really is contradictory. And I'll add a footnote. Sometimes at this point in the conversation someone will jump in and say, yes, he's love, but he's also just, he's also holy, he's also righteous. And I'll say, no, you've just set those attributes of God against his nature, as if there is a righteousness, holiness and justice that is not love. No. The righteousness, holiness and justice that is not love crucified the Son of God. Those things can only ever be attributes of his love, descriptions of his love. He is just love. He's holy love. He is righteous love. He's unfailing love. Love is the diamond, and everything else must be a facet of it, or it's foreign to love and it's not love at all.

Johnny Ova: Going back to what we just talked about, I think of Romans 1, where it says God gives them over. So that would be that consent: if you're going to keep doing this, God is going to allow you to, with the hope that you'll return home.

Dr. Brad Jersak: That's exactly right. I think that language starts somewhere in the prophets. Initially they say God is going to destroy Jerusalem. Then, well, actually God is sending Babylon to destroy Jerusalem. Then, well, actually your sin is bringing Babylon to destroy you, and God will give you over to that, and you'll go into exile, and he will go with you and redeem you and restore you. But he consents. And the giving over, I think it's mentioned three times in Romans 1, becomes really the phrase used for consent.

Johnny Ova: I know we could talk about the sacrificial system of the Old Testament and go down a million rabbit holes on all the controversial stuff there, but I want to pull it all into the main sacrifice, and I also want to get into Gehenna and hell. If the cross isn't about satisfying God's wrath with this final sacrifice, explain to us what was happening on that hill. What actually took place with the crucifixion and resurrection?

Dr. Brad Jersak: That's a great question. I like to put it this way. If there is a God, and that's not a doubt statement, it's a faith statement, then God is love, and that love comes into clear focus in the incarnation of Jesus, and you dial it right in to the crucifixion. What's happening there, if he's not appeasing God's wrath to satisfy justice in some way? Two things, I think. One is that it is God's definitive revelation of himself in the context of our wickedness and evil. When we did the very worst thing we could conceive of doing, murdering the Son of God, he reveals himself as self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love. The sacrifice is in the self-giving. It's not the sacrifice of appeasement to manipulate an outcome from God. It's the sacrifice of a first responder running into the Twin Towers to rescue people even if it's going to kill them.

Dr. Brad Jersak: So it's a definitive revelation of God, and this is the miracle of all things. You'd think, with all the images of God in history, all the weird ways of seeing God, especially the all-powerful kind of God, and yet now the cross on my neck is actually the dominant image of God in human history. Isn't that amazing? But is it an image of appeasement and violence? No. It's self-giving, radically forgiving even while they're doing it, and co-suffering. It's his solidarity with every human who has experienced oppression. Then, in addition to the definitive self-revelation, I would also say it is a decisive victory. In the Orthodox Church we chant at Pascha: Christ is risen from the dead, trampling down death by death, and upon those in the tombs bestowing life.

Dr. Brad Jersak: So on the cross, Jesus says in John, the prince of this world is driven out. All your sins are removed, and death is completely defeated. You simply can't die anymore, if that means a full stop into non-being. So this is a decisive victory. He's not just showing us something. He actually did something so powerful that the entire universe and all of history begin revolving around the cross, retroactively, prospectively, you name it. It's a totalizing victory. That's how the early church preached about it. We see God as love, and we see what love has done for us.

Johnny Ova: Love it. All right, let's jump right into the hot pan. I need to ask you about hell, Gehenna and all of this. One thing that alarmed me when thinking about this topic is that we preach a gospel of love him or else, and I never see that taught or preached one time in the New Testament the way we do it. I never see, guys, listen, believe in Jesus or else. It's always pulling identity out of people. Do you know who you are? Let me reveal to you who you are. It's the unveiling of the sons of God, the unveiling of who they were created to be. It's never this thing or else. It's almost like our human nature, over time, feels like we can't get our way with love. It's like a kid's temper tantrum: to get my way, I'm going to threaten them to get their response. So how do we understand hell? How do we understand Gehenna? And what are we missing if we still preach eternal conscious punishment or torment?

Dr. Brad Jersak: First, to affirm what you just said: I have my students go through every sermon in Acts, whether it's one-on-one evangelism or speaking to a large crowd, to Jewish people or to Gentiles, and make an outline of the gospel that's preached. You're exactly right. Not once in any sermon in the whole book of Acts do you get a hell-or-else message. There's one occasion where Paul talks about a coming judgment, that you will face the meaning of your life, but there's no eternal conscious torment threat in it at all. It's just, wake up, your life really matters. What are you going to do with it? Here's what you could do: turn from the ways you're wasting it and become your truest self in this God who came and showed you himself in his passion and resurrection.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Then I'd say we have a lot of passages that are thrown at us and used to talk about hell. If we use those passages to say, what's awaiting you is eternal conscious torment or life forever with God in paradise, choose this day, and if you choose wrong you're in for it, reading them that way negates dozens and dozens of other passages about how it all ends. So here's what I would do. I'd start with the passages about how it all ends. Jesus said, if I am lifted up, I will draw all people to myself. I think he's right. He can't be right if we use that other kind of hellfire gospel. Paul, looking at the end, says here's how it's going to end. Ephesians 1: the summing up of all things and all people in Jesus Christ. That's been the plan from the beginning, and it's a foreordained ending. Philippians 2: at the end, every knee will bow and every tongue confess, and it's the joyful confession of belief that leads every knee in heaven, on earth and under the earth to confess that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Dr. Brad Jersak: And 1 Corinthians 15: every enemy is going to be brought under Jesus' feet, including death itself, and then the whole thing is his, and he's going to hand that kingdom over to God his Father, and God will be all in all. I've mentioned three examples. There are dozens of them. Will we negate those with our hellfire message? In fact, we have. Or we've deliberately twisted them. He has reconciled all people through his blood becomes, we inserted, he's reconciled all the elect. Okay, now we don't actually care about the Bible anymore, do we, if we're doing that kind of thing? So is there a way to read those universalist passages, if you want to call them that, in a way that doesn't negate the judgment passages? You've got pop universalists who don't like that stuff and just get rid of all of Jesus' scary parables. I don't need to, because I know how it ends.

Dr. Brad Jersak: All I have to do is say that all the judgment passages are penultimate. That means second to last. Whatever judgment passages we see, the dire warnings don't need to be erased. We just read them in the context of being a means to that end. So they can't be retributive. They have to be restorative. The refiner's fire brings out the gold, silver and precious stones of your true self, and it consumes only the wood, hay and stubble of my attachments, my addictions, my false identities. All of that does get consumed, not to punish me but to restore me to who I really am. I've been thinking about how to preach hell better, if you're going to preach it. One of my teachers, Father John Behr, would say that the imagery of a fiery hell in Scripture is a dramatic telling of how hard it is for us to let go. The things we can't take into the kingdom of God with us need to be consumed. But it's a pretty dramatic retelling, at times pretty intense, and more intense when it's addressed to religious leadership, let's put it that way.

Johnny Ova: Do you believe in a final judgment? If so, what does justice look like in the hands of a Christlike God?

Dr. Brad Jersak: I do think there's going to be a final judgment. I imagine it through the lens of Maximus the Confessor and St. Macrina the Younger, or Isaac of Syria, looking at how the early church read this before we got so literalistic with it. They would say there are a few angles. One is that when I meet Christ, justice will look like me having to face what I've done, to be healed of the things in me that harmed myself and others. You could see it as a healing. You could see it as the fire of love consuming those things. I don't think we get to skip the letting-go process. So, what about Hitler? Yes, Hitler will need to see what he's done without being able to numb it, flee from it or hide it. He will need to face the fires of restorative judgment, which may include six million Jews assisting in his forgiveness, because they've been so healed, so resurrected, that they're able to.

Dr. Brad Jersak: So in that sense I see it like restorative justice here in the world. The First Nations people in Canada are really good at this. They'll do a victim impact statement followed by truth and reconciliation. Jesus says we're all going to pass through this fire. So I may do some weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth about my regrets, the harms I've caused, the things I've neglected, and then he will wipe every tear from our eyes. That's how I conceive of final judgment: a truth and reconciliation commission, not to torment us but to free us, not to punish us but to heal us, because my regrets can't enter the kingdom of God with me. Side note, Archbishop Lazar again says it this way: the presiding judge will actually be your conscience. Your conscience is the judge you cannot bribe, but your conscience itself will need to hear the good news of Jesus Christ. That's what I do in confession. I don't go to confession because I have to make things right with God. He's fine. He's forgiven me. But I need to reconcile with my conscience, and that happens as I'm reminded that he's forgiven me, loves me and welcomes me. That's why confessing your sins heals you.

Johnny Ova: Wow. Do you have time for a couple more questions? Awesome. I definitely have a couple more, and I want to hear about what you're doing and give you a chance to share about your university. I'm thoroughly enjoying our conversation today. It's such a blessing.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Totally. Likewise.

Johnny Ova: You've said that the gospel is not about escaping punishment but entering into relationship. How would you preach that gospel to someone who only knows fear? It's so hard for people who see God as a God to be feared to enter into a relationship. I also believe that's why, when people sin, they don't go to church or run to God. They run away. If I make a mistake, it's like, forget it, I'm going all in on this until I'm broken and can't go anymore, and hopefully God sends somebody or reveals himself to draw me back in. So how would you do that?

Dr. Brad Jersak: I think I would name it first. Let's say they start telling me their story. Usually all it takes for me to have permission is that they start unloading on me. I may explore that and ask, can you tell me your greatest fear? My friend Jamie Winship does this with people, say white supremacists or the Taliban. He'll say, tell me your greatest fear. And he says the one who is willing to tell you their fear, it's game over. He can now proceed. That's your man of peace, he would call them. So when they start talking about that fear, I can contrast it. Here's one way to see it: if I do this, God's going to pound me, God's going to be angry. Here's another way to see it. I can tell them stories from the Scriptures where, instead of punishing them, instead of them needing to hide, God pursues those people and loves them over and over. That's the story of Adam and Eve, of Cain and Abel, even of Abraham, Moses, David and the prophets.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Then you come to Jesus, and you see all these people confronted by Jesus. So I may tell them the Jesus story and ask, does he seem like someone you need to hide from or be afraid of? Or is he the one who is always in pursuit? Then I might give examples I've watched over and over, where even the predator encounters Jesus and, instead of being tormented, is actually released from their torment. I've done a thing called the gospel in chairs that people might be interested in seeing, where I show that contrast. It's in the More Christlike God book as well, chapter 14 or so, but there's a video of it if you Google Jersak chairs Denver. I did it in Denver with two cameras, and it's 30 minutes. You can see: here's how I used to see God, the one who turns from me when I sin, and here's how I see God now, the one who never turns from me and is with me until I turn back. That's one way we might talk about it.

Johnny Ova: Can love and accountability coexist without punishment?

Dr. Brad Jersak: Remember, sin is its own punishment. I'm a big fan of 12-step recovery. I've been part of it for decades. The only requirement to participate in 12-step recovery is a desire to be free. You don't even have to be free. You're probably not, which is why you're there. What they encounter there is no punishment at all. Sin was its own punishment, or, sin is even a harsh word for it, self-medicating in dysfunctional ways is its own punishment. They come to a 12-step meeting, and what they discover is people who welcome them. When they relapse, there's never a punishment. When they're ready to come back, they are well received. The members embody the non-judgmental welcome of God, and they're shocked, because some of them are looking for punishment. Some will act out in their addiction until it ends in a punishment. I get drunk enough to be beaten, because that's what I expected from my father, and that's what I expect from God. Well, you're going to see something different here. You're going to be welcomed in love and hear stories of redemption, and you're going to be swept up into that same redemption. Many of them begin to transform and get freed even before they completely embrace God. Just showing up gave God enough room to begin healing them. That desire is all the faith he needs to begin that redemption.

Johnny Ova: You must be prophetic, Bradley, because you just answered my next question. I was going to ask if you've seen signs of a Christlike God breaking through in places outside of Christianity, and I think your example was a beautiful one.

Dr. Brad Jersak: I'll give you one quick example from there. There's one guy who started out an atheist, but he came because he was desperate, and then he became an agnostic. He would always tell us, I don't have a God, but I'm a miracle, because I couldn't go a week without acting out and now I'm three years sober. Then one day he said, I don't know if I can say I don't believe in God anymore, because I don't believe he's an old man in the sky. I said, amen. And he said, what if God is love? And he just goes off, and the Christians in the room, about half the group are Christians or ex-Christians, are like, amen, kind of teasing him for being a good preacher. It was so precious. Eventually he said, I've been thinking about this, and he's never gone to a church ever, if God is love, that would mean he's sort of like my father, and that would mean Jesus is like my brother, and what if these people who talk about the Holy Spirit are talking about love? What if that's love? He became a Trinitarian, and I'm thinking, flesh and blood did not reveal this to you.

Dr. Brad Jersak: I don't know where he'll end up, but I know he's a great answer to your question. Do I see this all the time? In fact, I've just started writing a book called A Feast for All: Jesus' All-Embracing Gospel, and I'm going to have a lot of stories like this in it, where I see the grace of the Holy Spirit transforming people outside the Christian brand. I need to give a Christian accounting for that. I'm not just a pluralist. I believe in Jesus. Okay, then explain this. Well, I'm going to explore it, even if I can't explain it.

Johnny Ova: Dropping tidbits of the work that's coming up. That's great.

Dr. Brad Jersak: You'll see that in 2027, probably. So be patient.

Johnny Ova: Patience is a virtue. For somebody listening who is terrified of God or who thinks God is mad at them, what would you say to them right now?

Dr. Brad Jersak: Well, I don't know. No, he's not.

Johnny Ova: That's going to be the quote of this podcast. No.

Dr. Brad Jersak: I've come to experience a God who is not angry at me. If you want examples, see the story of the woman at the well. See the story of the woman caught in adultery. See the story of Jesus walking down the beach with Peter after Peter denied him three times. You're going to see someone who comes with no retribution. Now, there may be other ideas of God that are angry, and you'll even run into them in churches, but if God is like Jesus, which is the Christian claim, then you don't need to worry about that. What you see in him is a redeemer and restorer of people. Someday you can explain to him how the book of Revelation isn't a contradiction of that. It's a cosmic retelling of the good news of Jesus at the cross.

Johnny Ova: Amen. I've got two questions left for you. The first is on power. What does the character of Jesus teach us about power, especially in a world that's addicted to control?

Dr. Brad Jersak: That's really good. There's a Greek word, kenosis, that has become an English word now, from Philippians 2. He emptied himself, not as a disguise of being God, but as a revelation of the nature of God. If God is love, then love is manifest as consent rather than power over. Jesus even said that in his kingdom there is no lording it over others. He even says you won't exercise authority over one another, which is a mind-blower, especially for pastors. How do you exercise servanthood rather than power over? We see the nature of God when Jesus kneels at his disciples' feet and begins washing them. We see the nature of God when he is willingly dragged to Golgotha and crucified. So our addiction to power is very, very suspect, especially when you see the three temptations Jesus faces. They're all about power and being impressive and being magical. That's just not how God works. He works in love.

Dr. Brad Jersak: So how does power manifest itself in love? It does as faithfulness, enduring love, faithful love, sacrificial love. That takes a lot of strength, but I don't think power is even a great word for it. Jesus seems to avoid it, and he will use authority when he needs to, authority to heal, for example. But again, that's only an adjective of love, a facet of that one diamond.

Johnny Ova: Relating it to relationships again: if I found out my wife was being paid to love me, how genuine is that love? If she only loved me because I threatened her, like in the analogy I used before, how genuine is that love? But if I gave my wife total freedom, gave her the opportunity to walk away and do whatever she wants, and yet she chooses every day to love me, how powerful is that love? I think that's the perfect reflection of God's love. He's not looking to control you, but his love is so good and so powerful that you're drawn to it. You choose it.

Dr. Brad Jersak: Yes, and that has to happen not only at the individual level but culturally too. There is this lust for political power among religious folks, whether it's Christians in America or Muslims in Pakistan or wherever, and you just ask, what's the fruit of that? It looks nothing like Jesus. The actual power is in the gospel itself. That's what transformed the Roman Empire without once picking up a sword.

Johnny Ova: Amen. Last question. We're going to play a projection game. If the entire church truly believed that God looks like Jesus, what would change within the body of Christ?

Dr. Brad Jersak: Within the body of Christ? Wow. I mean, we'd stop being abusive.

Johnny Ova: That's a good start, I guess.

Dr. Brad Jersak: You might get a foretaste of it at the end of Acts 2, where it describes the community there. This was a community of joy and worship where no one was in need, because everyone was taking care of each other. Then it begins to expand, until it became alarming to the empire that Christians were now taking care of people who weren't Christians. We know this is what Jesus wants, because in Matthew 25, the parable of the sheep and the goats, he actually describes what it looks like: you're visiting the sick, visiting the prisoners, bringing them food, feeding and clothing the poor. Those are the things that actually come up at the final judgment as the values of this community who believes in a Christlike God. I think it would be a marvel to see that, and you do see pockets of it here and there that show it's possible.

Johnny Ova: It's a beautiful picture that hopefully we can reach on a bigger scale as the body of Christ as we draw closer to him. Bradley Jersak, thank you so much for this time today. The conversation was so rich. I know people are going to be challenged, stretched and blessed by it. Please tell everybody how they can contact you, and talk about the university and whatever else you're doing.

Dr. Brad Jersak: You can follow me on social media as Bradley Jersak on Substack, Facebook or Instagram. But the better thing would be to come study with me, and you don't have to leave your job or your family or move, because I'm at St. Stephen's University. It's ssu.ca, not .com. The CA is for Canada. We do hybrid learning. You can take our Master of Arts or Master of Ministry in theology and culture, or in peace and justice, or reconciliation studies. You do that through a combination of recorded online lessons, live Zoom, and, for those who can make it, a one-week intensive in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, once per semester. With that combination, people get a master's degree in this stuff with three semesters of coursework, and you can spread it over five years if you want.

Dr. Brad Jersak: There's also a travel module to Northern Ireland, where you do the contemplative pilgrimage side, but also the peace and justice work with people in Northern Ireland who went through the Troubles there. About half of our students come from America, and half of them are part-time. If we can get you to come to the first intensive, you'll want to be at all of them, because it's so much fun. Anyway, I'd love for you to come study with me, and I can supervise your thesis, whatever you want. So for those looking for an upgrade in their theology, or a degree that will enhance your hireability or what you're already doing, give us a look. The website is a little enticing, and I'm happy to get emails about it.

Johnny Ova: That's wonderful. I know we spoke a little before, but I'm going to honor you now. Dr. Bradley Jersak's work has been life-changing for me, and for friends of mine like Dr. Matthew Hester, and for the whole Sound of Heaven community here, just reading through your books. I'm definitely going to be checking out the new one. I'm going to have all of Bradley's links, to his books and to the school, in the description below on the YouTube channel, Apple and Spotify, so click through, check everything out and email him. Again, I can't thank you enough for this time. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation, and I hope we can do it again sometime.

Dr. Brad Jersak: I would love to. Thank you so much.