Beyond Simple Answers (new series): Introduction
⭐ What happens when simple answers aren’t enough for the big questions of faith? In the first episode of Beyond Simple Answers, a new theology podcast from Theology Lab, hosts Scott Rice, Kristin T. Lee, and Greg Fung explore how Christians can pursue a thoughtful theological vision in a complex world. This conversation dives into faith, doubt, biblical interpretation, suffering, and the role of theology in everyday Christian life. Rather than avoiding difficult questions, this podcast invites curiosity, nuance, and honest dialogue about what it means to follow Christ today. From deconstruction to unity across theological differences, the series creates space for deeper reflection and spiritual growth in Christian community, inspired by the values of Curiosity, Compassion and Courage at Highrock church. If you're wrestling with questions about God, the Bible, or faith, this Christian podcast might be a good fit for you.
Description
What happens when simple answers aren’t enough for the big questions of faith? In the first episode of Beyond Simple Answers, a new theology podcast from Theology Lab, hosts Scott Rice, Kristin T. Lee, and Greg Fung explore how Christians can pursue a thoughtful theological vision in a complex world. This conversation dives into faith, doubt, biblical interpretation, suffering, and the role of theology in everyday Christian life. Rather than avoiding difficult questions, this podcast invites curiosity, nuance, and honest dialogue about what it means to follow Christ today. From deconstruction to unity across theological differences, the series creates space for deeper reflection and spiritual growth in Christian community, inspired by the values of Curiosity, Compassion and Courage at Highrock church. If you're wrestling with questions about God, the Bible, or faith, this Christian podcast might be a good fit for you.
Resources
📚 Check out Kristin’s book, We Mend With Gold!
Find a local bookseller: https://tinyurl.com/MendwithgoldLocal
Amazon: https://tinyurl.com/MendWithGold
Generated Transcript
Scott Rice (00:00)
Welcome to Beyond Simple Answers. This is gonna be a new theology lab podcast. And I'm here with Kristin and Greg, co-host of this podcast. a second, we're gonna introduce ourselves
But let me just say a little bit at the top, what is this podcast about? And I think the tagline that we'll be using
is seeking after a theological vision.
when simple answers fall short. So there's the beyond simple answers. Let me just unpack that
very briefly and start from the end. like beyond simple answers or when simple answers fall short. We're trying to have some conversations here for this range of audience. It could just be folks who are like curious minded and know something about their own faith traditions that, know, like they've heard simple answers to questions and are still unsettled by those.
and are curious
looking into that all the way to like, if you're just a full-scale deconstructionist type and you've heard simple answers, this is not working for me. But then there's the first part, right? And it's seeking a theological vision for whatever reason, amidst asking these questions and these curiosities, you're the kind of person who still wants to believe and you're looking for some kind of theological vision.
Now we want to unpack that in a very specific way. This is not some proposal for like the thing that solves all of the problems. It's going to be much different than that, but we'll get to that in a moment. ⁓ So Greg and Kristen, I am so glad that you're part of this podcast that
can you introduce yourselves and just say a little bit about like, who you are and what has drawn you to be a cohost for a podcast called Beyond Simple Answers?
Greg Fung (01:39)
I'm Greg Fung, I'm excited to be here. A bit about myself. So professionally these days I've spent about 15 years in the tech world doing partnerships, so not that related to theology. However, in my youth I was in campus ministry for also about 15 years and had a lot of questions. ⁓ I think I left.
that time of campus ministry, which I would sort of consider theological light. ⁓ You know, we would dabble and say apologetics, so you might have ⁓ answers to a very specific question, but there wasn't necessarily an overarching system that brought all these larger theological questions together.
And more recently, what's precipitated my interest was probably my kids. They have a lot of questions. The answers that I kind of carried with me from my youth didn't.
really carry as much water as I had hoped. So that got me thinking a little bit.
I'd also say just contemporary events in the church, the Evangelical Church in America, in my own church, in my own faith, prompted me to look for something a little bit more coherent.
Scott Rice (02:46)
Kristen, how about you?
Kristin T. Lee (02:48)
I'm Kristin. I am a primary care physician by day to mostly Cantonese speaking immigrants in Boston's Chinatown. And then I'm also a big reader, book reviewer and writer with my first book coming out in April called We Mend with Gold and Immigrant Daughters Reckoning with American Christianity, which is a little bit about my own faith journey and struggles with doubts and questions and how
really seeking out theologians of color or are the other marginalized theologians really helped me in my faith.
So I am really excited for this podcast because I think the way I grew up and the faith spaces in which I grew up, questions and doubts were not encouraged at all. And in fact, we're seen as a sign of, I don't know, like you've lost your way. And I think that made me feel very alone. And so it took much longer.
for me to arrive at a place of authentic faith in my adulthood than it otherwise would have, I think, if these questions had been encouraged and explored together in community. So I think I really am grateful for the space that will allow us to do that together.
Scott Rice (03:58)
I mean, I'm already excited that, you know, like we're naming this a place we're coming from where we would like to be able to think theologically amidst doubts and questions, Greg, that you're like prompted to be here partly, but questions that your kids are
pushing your way, ⁓ that should give us some interesting conversation.
I also come from this evangelical background, parachurch, ministry. ⁓
And that shaped me in many ways. I had an experience that kind of led me to look into seminary, but seminary is outside my own tradition.
I went to Princeton Seminary to get my MDiv, and then I went to Harvard Divinity School to get my doctorate. And for me, the reason something like Beyond Simple Answers
resonates with me is because that experience while I was kind of being formed theologically, ⁓ there was obviously conflict between that and then the way I had come out of this evangelical ministry. But there's also a lot of things in my evangelical background that I really appreciated. So my journey in some ways has been this question of like, how do I hold those two things together? How are there things from my past that are troubling and unsettling theologically in the midst of my faith life, but also deeply wanting
to still believe. I can still believe, I feel like for whatever reason, I want to continue doing that. And that's just required a whole lot of thinking and
All right, so folks have a idea kind of of who we are right now, what are the goals of this podcast. Let me say a little bit about how I see this series, Beyond Simple Answers,
as being a bit unique, and then I'm gonna just say them really quickly, and I wanna invite your responses.
So the first one is this, we want to be able to combine this desire to continue to believe with,
I was thinking of the word critical inquiry, but just like,
deep critical thinking, right? That the questions become part of the faith process. Sometimes you find answers, sometimes you continue to explore. But that way of critical thinking is part of what it means to believe and trying to bring those two together. So that's one. And I think there's other, you know, there's so many other conversations happening where people are doing this really well.
right. So the second one is that we're doing this podcast. You know, it's a podcast under Theology Lab, which is supported by High Rock Church.
this exploration into like
belief and critical inquiry within the context of a church. And you know, no doubt, I think that can make things, ⁓ in some ways,
It can make them more challenging, right? You can't just kind of go out there and say like, here's my beliefs that I think everybody should believe or But you're also within this community and you've got to kind of think about how do these ideas bear on folks in that community that I might see eye to eye with, but also like folks who come from different backgrounds and experiences and trying to work those out. there's strengths to that and there's limitations. think going forward, our goal is to maybe just to try and name some of those things.
⁓ The best part is I think it's a little bit closer to kind of like what real life and maybe like family experiences are like where it's tricky to talk about big important questions. But it also gives you like a place to do something with
Okay, and the last one is that I think we see this as a project to, I hope we see this as a project where we're working out a shared theological vision together.
Like we'll come with our own views and opinions and then try to put something there on the table.
raise like, know, why is the issue, what ways are these, is the issue kind of awkward? How do we come at that? And then can we move forward in some shared sense of belief together, maybe as like a model for like what faith communities can be like. And if nothing else, you know, I think it's just putting ideas out there and then thinking, all right, we've had this conversation. We definitely still think differently about a topic,
but are there ways that we maybe have been changed or we'll think a little bit differently?
All right, so I've named three there,
Any of those stand out to either of you.
Kristin T. Lee (07:42)
I think for me, the first one is definitely very central to just how I live my daily life now. And also, I didn't know if it was possible back when I was starting my journey of questioning, like, can we bring our full critical faculties to this journey of faith, or do we have to squash some of our intellect in order to believe some of the harder parts of the Bible, the story of God? But I think what's hopeful to me is that
there will always be tricky and troubling parts of scripture or our theological doctrine that I will wrestle with for the rest of my life, I think. doing this with you all and doing it publicly on this podcast kind of normalizes that instead of making it a thing we do in secret or a thing we do with shame. ⁓ So I'm thankful for that and
I'm hopeful that listeners will also be able to be invited into the conversation and bring their full intellect to their faith.
Scott Rice (08:45)
That reminds me, there's this popular movie out right now on Netflix, The Wake Up Dead Man from the Knives Out series.
And I'm only halfway through it, so who knows if I'm about to mention a bunch of characters that end up just ruining everything I'm about to say. But there's just one little scene in it so far that I really like, and it's between a priest and this detective. And the detective,
he's like, I'm an atheist. And they have this conversation in the church. And they go on for a bit, but the detective says,
He's like, know, in my thoughts on what faith is, he's like, I just needed something where I could actually be really critically honest. And the priest responds to him in this way where he's like, yeah, me too. And the priest believes and the detective doesn't. I don't know, who knows where the thing goes in the rest of the movie.
But it's that like they connect, I think, over this sense of desiring to be honest. And and man, that is like
I don't know, I hear that in what you're saying, Kristen,
and it's just something that
Greg Fung (09:41)
I am looking forward to not always being in my head on some of these questions. So the community piece,
but also drawing on ⁓ the thinking and readings from people who have wrestled with this for a long time. I know that content is out there, but I feel like I rarely get to do it in a conversation in a way that's a little bit closer to real life. So I understand that happens in the ivory tower, and that's great, and that's important.
Like someone needs to do that. But to have it come down to a sort of like layperson church level, that's really interesting to me. Can you have it both thoughtful where people have really wrestled hard about this, but also in a way that can be understood by any parishioner? That'd be fantastic. So I think, I hope, I hope our conversations will sort of be a little bit of both of those.
Scott Rice (10:32)
Me too, me
Kristin T. Lee (10:34)
Great.
Greg Fung (10:35)
Some get voted off at the end.
Scott Rice (10:38)
And then like a
new co-host just like slides in after that. And then this is all about, is beyond simple answers becomes the show of like which host can last the longest. ⁓ Okay, ⁓ friends, thanks for tuning in. We'll have episodes out for this new series pretty soon.
Kristin T. Lee (10:42)
Yes.
Greg Fung (10:47)
Yeah ⁓
Kristin T. Lee (10:47)
Survivor
edition.
Scott Rice (10:57)
Greg Christin, thanks so much for being part of this podcast. See you all next time.
Greg Fung (11:01)
Great to be here. Thanks.
Kristin T. Lee (11:02)
Thank you.
⁓
