Christianity After Deconstruction: Cabernet and Pray

For seven weeks, Job has been waiting for God to answer him. In part seven of the Job in Exile series, God finally shows up in the whirlwind and then wants to talk about lions, ravens, mountain goats, and two creatures that sound like they wandered off a monster movie set (yes, we get into whether Behemoth is a dinosaur, complete with a disturbingly catchy children's song). God never answers a single one of Job's questions about his suffering. If God actually blesses Job's questioning and protest at the end rather than his surrender, that reshapes how we bring our own hard questions to God. Pour a glass and sit with one of the strangest, most beautiful endings in the Bible.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/lPIXQHMSGjk

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My new book, The Edge of the Inside, is now available. You can get a signed copy or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

Just when you'd expect the Book of Job to reach its climax, a new character barges in. Elihu is young, angry, and completely certain he has the explanation everyone else somehow missed. In part six of the Job in Exile series, we see Elihu do the one thing the story keeps refusing to do: he shows up with a confident answer. The uncomfortable part is how familiar he sounds in many churches today. This episode argues that your posture around your faith matters more than the beliefs you hold within it, drawing on the apostle Paul, Brian McLaren, and decades of research suggesting it's fundamentalism, not orthodoxy, that tracks with prejudice.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/hVxsZ69QFwo

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My new book, The Edge of the Inside, is now available. You can get a signed copy or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

Joshua Colburn spent twenty years inside a megachurch, and now he's known as the "Original Sinfluencer." In this conversation, he and Jeremy dig into why humor and satire might be the most honest tools survivors of church trauma have, how fear gets used to keep people in line, and the day Joshua grew his hair out as an act of rebellion the moment he walked away. The heart of it is his story of being diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia only after leaving, and realizing the church had spent years reading his neurodivergence as a gift of the Holy Spirit and leaning on it to keep him from seeing the harm. If you love the church, parts of this will be hard to hear. If the church left a mark on you, this might be the episode that helps you heal from it.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/zWrTv6TlI4k

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My new book, The Edge of the Inside, is now available. You can get a signed copy or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

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Find Joshua online on all platforms at:

@originalsinfluencer

@joshuacolburnmusic

@prezmoymusic

Job had a way out. All he had to do was apologize for something he never did, agree that God was punishing him, and his whole world would snap back into place. His community, his reputation, his peace, all of it one lie away. Yet he wouldn't say the lie. In part five of our walk through the Biblical book of Job, we sit in the moment Job tells his friends he will defend his integrity until he dies, even while standing utterly alone. If you have ever been pressured to repent for your questions, to admit you were wrong just to get back in the room, you already know this story from the inside. We get into Job 19 and 27, Dr. David Gushee's Job in Exile, and what it actually costs to speak as you think instead of saying what you are supposed to say.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/rzmZNc-LQhg

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My new book, The Edge of the Inside, is now available. You can get a signed copy or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in

Job's three friends showed up while his life was in ruins, and by the end they had turned into accusers, convinced that a man suffering this much must have earned it. In part four of Job in Exile, I stay in the long, ugly middle of the book, the stretch most people skip, where everyone closest to Job decides the problem has to be him. If Job's collapse was undeserved, the same could befall any of them, and blaming the man in the ashes is easier than living with it. This is an episode about what a community does when defending the system starts to matter more than defending the person in front of it. We sit in the tension together. Pour a glass and come find out where it leaves us.

Watch the episode on video: https://youtu.be/4IUChiNnzik

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My new book, The Edge of the Inside, is now available. You can get a signed copy or in whatever form you prefer: https://www.edgeoftheinside.com/

Join the online community and get access to exclusive content and experiences: https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/online-community

Trying to make sense of faith? Download my free Deconstruction Field Guide. It's a ten-page resource to help you navigate what's next so you don't have to do it alone. https://www.jeremyjernigan.com/opt-in