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The goal was never to get the hell out of earth — it was to get the hell out of earth. Genesis never calls the world perfect. It calls it good — and then, before anything has gone wrong, not good. After a long break, Jacob and Sam pull back up to the table and follow that one small word wherever it leads: why a good world and a perfect one set you on completely different paths, what it means to read Genesis as literary instead of literal, and why the Bible’s second page seems designed to disorient anyone looking for certainty. Along the way: a yerba mate review nobody asked for, an academic advisor’s thirty-minute ministry, portal chess, the Mona Lisa, N.T. Wright’s missing fifth act, and a working definition of hell as the places where creation has come off the rails — starting with the hells inside us. Less perfect, more good. Pull up a chair.
Timestamps
- 00:00 Cold open: yerba mate and a promise kept
- 02:19 Sam’s new job as an academic advisor
- 07:50 How to be a gift to a student in thirty minutes
- 10:43 Portal chess
- 13:14 Riftbound — and a top-eight finish out of nine
- 15:56 God’s good world
- 19:56 Good, not perfect — why the starting point changes everything
- 23:41 Not to get the hell out of earth, but to get the hell out of earth
- 27:25 Counting brushstrokes on the Mona Lisa
- 30:20 The Bible is a library, not a science textbook
- 32:43 Revelation, chiasms, and literary origami
- 38:02 Taking off the Where’s Waldo glasses
- 40:39 Page two will break your literal framework
- 45:30 N.T. Wright’s lost fifth act
- 47:10 Pockets of Eden
- 50:49 Boots on the ground
- 55:40 Get the hell out of me
Mentioned in this episode
- Portal Chess — the game Jacob and Sam have been playing since their college-ministry days, now live at portalchess.gg
- Riftbound — the trading card game Sam’s been playing with his brothers-in-law
- Tim Mackie (BibleProject) — the goal was never to get the hell out of earth, but to get the hell out of earth
- N.T. Wright — Scripture as an unfinished five-act play (The New Testament and the People of God)
- Peter Enns — reading the Old Testament christotelically
- The Faith Talks quilt — Bible verses as patches, hanging in Jacob’s church classroom
Next time: we never got to why humans are here at all.
Scripture
- Genesis 1:31 “God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning — the sixth day.”
- Genesis 2:18 “The Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper suitable for him.””
- Genesis 2:7 “Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”
- Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.”
- Matthew 1:23 ““The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).”
- Galatians 5:6 “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®). Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.
The Faith Talks quilt
