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.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Cold open: mate and a promise
02:19 Sam’s new job
07:50 How to be a gift in thirty minutes
10:43 Portal chess
13:14 Riftbound, top eight of nine
15:56 God’s good world
19:56 Good, not perfect
23:41 Get the hell out of earth
27:25 The Mona Lisa and the brushstrokes
30:20 The Bible is a library
32:43 Revelation and literary origami
38:02 Where’s Waldo glasses
40:39 Page two will break your literalism
45:30 Act five
47:10 Pockets of Eden
50:49 Boots on the ground
55:40 Get the hell out of me

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 2:7 — “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.”
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.’”
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 from the NIV®.

MENTIONED
Portal Chess — https://portalchess.gg
Riftbound
Tim Mackie (BibleProject)
Peter Enns
N.T. Wright — The New Testament and the People of God

LISTEN
https://tabletalk.fm/episodes/03-get-the-hell-out
YouTube: https://youtu.be/7GmLA0_1Bjc

CONNECT
hello@tabletalk.fm
Instagram / TikTok / YouTube: @tabletalkfm
Here’s to faithful curiosity and patchwork spirituality.

In this episode, Jacob and Sam hit record with no script and follow the feedback that came in after the pilot wherever it leads: a family member’s pushback on whether the real problem is naming or labeling, and a grandmother’s read that the true substance of the quilt — the thing that actually keeps you warm — is love.

Along the way: Genesis 2 and a God who waits to see what the human will call things, Meg tasting salmon for the first time, why Jesus at all if love is the point, and a naturalist’s question — “How do I say your name?” — that turns out to be a way of meeting God.

Less defining, more discerning. Pull up a chair.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:37 Cold open
06:12 Welcome back — no script
07:57 Naming, or labeling?
09:33 What Adam was really doing
16:31 Tasting something for the first time
21:01 The tree of knowing
23:07 Love as the substance of the quilt
25:28 Where the metaphor breaks
32:19 Why Jesus
35:11 Discern, don’t define
41:46 Truthing in love
46:49 “How do I say your name?”
57:28 Love without guarantees

SCRIPTURE
1 John 4:8 — “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
Genesis 2:19 — “Now the Lord God had formed out of the ground all the wild animals and all the birds in the sky. He brought them to the man to see what he would name them; and whatever the man called each living creature, that was its name.”
1 Corinthians 13:4 — “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
Ephesians 4:15 — “Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ.”
Scripture quotations from the NIV®.

MENTIONED
Barry Lopez
Tim Mackie (BibleProject)
Jiddu Krishnamurti
James K.A. Smith — Make Your Home in This Luminous Dark: Mysticism, Art, and the Path of Unknowing
The Cloud of Unknowing

LISTEN
https://tabletalk.fm/episodes/02-god-is-love
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smllGrHx5Aw

CONNECT
hello@tabletalk.fm
Instagram / TikTok / YouTube: @tabletalkfm
Here’s to faithful curiosity and patchwork spirituality.

In this pilot episode, Jacob and Sam tell the origin story of Table Talk: how it began as an anti-event at the church where they both worked, why they kept pulling up chairs long after the church-staff chapter ended, and what they mean when they say faithful curiosity.

They share some questions still alive for them, introduce the quilting metaphor that runs through everything they do, and ground the whole project in two verses held in creative tension — Galatians 5:6 and Proverbs 25:2.

Less explaining, more exploring. Pull up a chair.

CHAPTERS
00:00 Intro
00:37 Cold open
02:08 Welcome to Table Talk
04:09 How Table Talk began
10:23 Curiosity over answers
13:36 The table becomes a lab
15:49 Jacob’s mystery: prayer
17:24 Sam’s mystery: spiritual beings
20:29 Faithful curiosity as a banner
24:00 Is this deconstruction?
29:30 The quilting metaphor
37:21 Two verses, one framework
46:00 The royal vocation of curiosity
51:44 Pulling up chairs

SCRIPTURE
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.”
Proverbs 25:2 — “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter; to search out a matter is the glory of kings.”
Matthew 5–7 — The Sermon on the Mount — the Kingdom Manifesto series the original Table Talk grew out of
Matthew 7:7 — “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Matthew 6 — Jesus teaching the disciples to pray
Mark 2:27 — “Then he said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.’”
Genesis 1 & Psalm 8 — Image-bearing and humanity’s royal vocation
Job 1–2 — The divine council scene
Scripture quotations from the NIV®.

MENTIONED
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Brian McLaren — Faith After Doubt

LISTEN
https://tabletalk.fm/episodes/01-why-were-here
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOtVLf_chwk

CONNECT
hello@tabletalk.fm
Instagram / TikTok / YouTube: @tabletalkfm
Here’s to faithful curiosity and patchwork spirituality.