This is the script for the recent podcast of the same name for those who prefer the sound of the voice in their head.

Here’s the question that I want to address. It was sent to me by someone who gets the narrative-historical approach to reading the Bible and is wondering whether it has anything to say about the more fundamental matter of the credibility of the Christian view of God.

If you’re looking for a good example of how conservative evangelicalism gets the Jesus story wrong (albeit with the best of intentions), look no further than this piece on The Gospel Coalition site, in which Steve Mathewson asks, “Why Did Jesus Say He Will Crush Some to Pieces?”

It has to do with the parable of the vineyard, which I take to be perhaps the clearest and most precise summary of the story about Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels. Because the tenants violently reject not only the servants sent to the vineyard but also the son, the owner will kill the tenants and give the vineyard to others. Not only that, but the stone rejected by the builders will become the cornerstone of a new temple, and “Everyone who falls on that stone will be broken to pieces, and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him” (Lk. 20:18).

Alex asked what I thought of The Bible Project’s telling of the biblical story in this video. The video is called a “New Testament Overview”, but really it’s a lively, line-drawn, animated presentation of the “epic complicated story of God’s covenant partnership with Israel and all humanity”. The point is pressed that both parts of the Bible tell “one unified story that leads to Jesus”. The Old Testament offers “core themes” and “plot conflict” arranged in “design patterns”—everything you need to make sense of the story to follow. The drama is worked out in three acts, a pattern which is repeated in the literary structure of the New Testament. You can watch it here or a larger version on YouTube.

Here’s an irony, surely. The Gospel to which everyone turns for their definition of the “gospel” is one of the few books of the New Testament in which the euangelion word-group does not appear. The other gospel-free texts are Titus, James, 2 Peter, the letters of John, and Jude—all minor epistles and three of them Johannine. It’s John who gives us the classic statement, so beloved of “evangelicals”, so often the theme of “evangelists”: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (Jn. 3:16). But he nowhere uses either the noun euangelion or the verb euangelizō.

Does that tell us anything interesting? I think it does. I think that the anomaly highlights a pervasive and persistent misunderstanding of “gospel” in the New Testament.

An article in the London Times today reports on what it calls the “patriarchy paradox”, which is that social equality between men and woman appears currently to reinforce rather than weaken gender stereotyping. You need to subscribe to the Times to view the article, but I’ll summarise the content here.

The assumption has been that when women are presented with the same opportunities as men, when the playing field is levelled, gender stereotyping will slowly disappear: we will increasingly see women taking on traditionally male roles in society, and vice versa.