#21 The Way of Eden and the Bible’s Garden Story

Eden doesn’t disappear after Genesis 3. In this episode of the Biblical Reenchantment podcast, I sit down with pastor and Two Trees Podcast host John Dillon to talk about his book The Way of Eden—and why the Garden of Eden functions as a theme that keeps shaping the biblical story long after Adam and Eve leave the garden. We’ll trace how Eden imagery shows up in exile, spiritual warfare, and everyday Christian life. What does it mean to resist the darkness without turning our neighbors into enemies? How do “pockets of Eden” form in households, friendships, and local churches? And how does Scripture—like a river in the wasteland—grow resilience in a noisy, unstable world? We also explore dominion vs. dominance, the Bible’s use of tree and river imagery, and why the fruit of the Spirit is part of how Christ’s people bear witness to the kingdom of God right now.

TRANSCRIPT:

Anthony Delgado: I’m Anthony Delgado, host of the Biblical Reenchantment podcast, and today we’re jumping into the Garden of Eden with a discussion with my friend John Dillon from the Two Trees Podcast. He’s a pastor, a friend, and an online influencer in some regard, at least in our theology circles. He’s written a book called The Way of Eden. Really, it’s not about the Garden of Eden exactly in the way that we often think of it.

If you look at Genesis 2, when the bush of the field was yet in the land and no small plant of the field had yet sprung up, the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground. A mist was going up from the land and watering the whole face of the ground. Then the Lord God formed the man. You know the story. From there, the Garden of Eden is planted, man is placed in the garden, and a river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. We get this image of the Garden of Eden as the first place that God designed for humankind.

But what many people don’t realize is that the Garden of Eden doesn’t leave the biblical narrative when Adam and Eve leave the garden, and that happens just one page later in Genesis 3. What Pastor John Dillon has done for us in this book is give us insight into the way the Garden of Eden influences the rest of the biblical narrative, and even how the Garden of Eden starts to come back into our world.

John, thank you so much for being with us. Let me ramble a little bit here at the top of the podcast, but can you tell us a little bit about your background and how your experiences have affected the themes and the narrative of this book?

John Dillon: Thank you for letting me come and talk about my book, Anthony. It’s great to see you, as always, and to have a chance to speak to the Biblical Reenchantment community. I’m from Appalachia. I grew up in West Virginia, and in many ways West Virginia, or the mountains in general, are unlike places in the world. They are neither north nor south. They are their own thing, so you seem odd to people no matter where you go.

Having grown up there, I realized as I grew older and began meeting people from all over the world that living in Appalachia, in the mountains, really shaped the way I view the world. Those mountains and streams, and living the way we did, formed me in ways that were different from how the rest of the world was operating. I don’t think in a bad way. I love Appalachia. I’m currently serving in Ohio, and it’s taken me a while to love flat lands, but I do. God’s put me in a great place, but I miss the mountains.

I use the metaphor of the mountains and Appalachian life to discuss the quiet power of God shaping the world around us as an act of resistance against the darkness. In some ways, there’s a lot of biographical material in the book. I talk about my struggle with depression and also my love of God, and how I’ve seen his creation not just as a neutral thing, but as an active participant in my life.

Anthony Delgado: That’s amazing. I love the way unique theological perspectives and the theological journey of different authors come through in their writing, and I think that was definitely true for your book. It reminds me a little bit of Dr. Carmen Imes and what she tries to do. You can hear her story coming through her writing, and yet she’s also doing good biblical theology, and then taking it one step further into church life. That’s what I try to do in my writing, and that’s what I think you really did in this book.

The book blends theology with story, imagery, and personal narrative in a really unique and beautiful way. It was easy to read, and at the same time deeply meaningful. A lot of times we read dense theology books, and they nail it on the meaningful side, but on the story, imagery, and art side of writing, they miss the mark. Your book is not that.

I do want to mention up front that I’ve got two copies here, because I’m deciding what I’m going to do with one of them. I immediately bought two. I got a free copy from the publisher and then bought two. I want to show how thin it is for those who are watching and not just listening. It looks thinner than it feels when you read it, because there’s a lot to do with this book. Reading each chapter, pondering it, reflecting on the questions at the end of each chapter—there’s a lot here.

This isn’t something anyone should be done with in a couple of hours, and that’s what I really like about it. At the same time, if you just needed something quick to read on a plane ride, it would serve that purpose as well. There’s a lot to chew on here, and I think that’s going to be really meaningful for people.

Jon Dillon: I took that away from it. I purposefully made the book small. I’ve found it’s much harder to say something in a hundred words than in a thousand words, especially for a pastor. I can ramble and go for a long time. So I tried to compress the book because I used to be a literature teacher. I love reading books that have shaped the world I live in as well.

But if I hand somebody a book that’s 500 pages, especially a farmer from my community or a coal miner from where I grew up, they’re just not going to read it. It becomes a decoration instead of a tool. What this book is, is ten conversations I’m trying to have with the church as a whole. I wanted it to feel very small. I wanted it to feel non-aggressive. You pick up the book and no one thinks, I don’t have time to read that book.

Instead, what I’ve found is people say, This book is too small. Is it worth my time to read? I think it is, but you’ll have to let me know what you think as a pastor. You’ve experienced this too. You’ll have people who are deep in their Bibles and know the stories forwards and backwards, and then you have people who are brand new. You have to speak in a way that reaches different levels of your congregation if you’re going to feed your flock. I tried to bring that into this book.

If you’re someone who knows the Bible stories really well, I think there are things in here that will reach you. If you’re new to the Bible and need explanations, this book has you in mind as well. It doesn’t fit into a clean category, which the publishers didn’t like, but it’s what I wrote. So there it is.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah.

Anthony Delgado: It really is a unique and kind of new style of writing. If I had to condense it and ask, What genre is this? I would say this is a biblical theology for the church. It takes the narrative of Scripture and says, Here’s how you should think about this as the church today.

That’s not really a category that exists yet, but there are a lot of people doing this. I just read a book from another pastor with the same idea, written from his perspective for his congregation, and it was about a hundred pages. He wrote it for his church and asked me to proofread it. I don’t know how this keeps happening, but I’ve had a couple people reach out like that. I can only do so many, everybody.

I love proofreading books because then I get to say I read it before it came out. But real quick, before we jump into the content of the book, could you tell us—just so our audience knows—what are a couple authors who have influenced your thinking, and maybe one or two who have influenced your writing style or voice?

Jon Dillon: Oh yeah. I used to be a literature teacher, so I love books. I grew up with books. My parents were educators, and there were always books around the house. I don’t remember ever asking for a book and being told no. It was actually the opposite. There were high expectations for what I should read. Even in the summer, my mom had a reading list for me.

I’ve always found books to be a blessing, a good force in my life, a place of joy and challenge. I like a lot of different authors. The author who challenged me the most is C. S. Lewis. I’ve always loved his lighthearted style. Even when he really disagrees with someone, he has a non-confrontational way of addressing big ideas and bringing you to the core of what he’s talking about. I wanted that to be part of my writing style as well.

I love Hemingway. I love a lot of different kinds of literature. Michael Heiser was a major force in shaping how I view the Bible, so I love his work. I also grew up on J. R. R. Tolkien and those kinds of stories.

Storytelling, fairytales, all of that mattered. G. K. Chesterton was formative too. And beyond named authors, in West Virginia storytelling is just part of life. Gathering on a porch while someone tells stories, or around a campfire, is part of the culture. I grew up loving the scary stories people would tell about the mountains or local history.

That’s just part of the culture I grew up in, and I try to honor that in the book. I also want to acknowledge that storytelling is part of what it means to be human. This isn’t a textbook. It’s not about memorizing terms and moving through arguments. It’s designed to be more appealing than that.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, and it definitely is. I’m sure plenty of my audience knows Michael Heiser and those guys. There’s definitely a biblical theology influence here, but I knew there had to be a couple of literary authors in the mix as part of that influence, and I think you can see that.

How should followers of Jesus interpret the conflict in the world around them based on the Way of Babylon?

I want to talk about The Way of Babylon first. This is chapter two of the book, and I don’t want you to give away the whole thing, obviously. In that chapter you write, “Our enemy is not flesh and blood, but principalities and powers, the rulers of the darkness of this world.” You’re thinking about Ephesians 6 here and the cosmic powers of darkness. How should followers of Jesus interpret the conflict in the world around them based on this passage?

Let me explain where I’m coming from. I think it’s common in biblical theology circles to get caught up in demons, fallen angels, and even holy angels, and all the supernatural things, and to miss that there’s a practical element to this—something we should be thinking, doing, and living. Why should we understand our war as being primarily spiritual rather than physical, or at least spiritual first before it’s physical?

Jon Dillon: The short answer is because Christ loves people—sinners. He came and died for them on the cross. You should never be surprised when the world acts worldly. That’s where they are. It’s what they are.

For me, talking about the calling of Christ is first and foremost the gospel, which your book does a great job discussing. The gospel is bigger than you think. It’s not just about dying and going to heaven. It’s about representing the King. It’s about knowing that God is at work on the earth and that he desires us to image him and show the world what he is like.

Beauty, love, joy, the fruit of the Spirit—these are not passive things. These are weapons we wield against the darkness. My point isn’t to push people around. My point is for them to hear me and to receive the gospel in a way they aren’t pushing back against.

I feel that the more Christianity turns into a political mindset of this party versus that party, we end up demonizing people. Having grown up in a place where racism was very real, and having served the Lord in different places, I’ve seen what this us-against-them mentality looks like, and I don’t find it in the gospel.

What I see God doing in the creation of the church is forming a new kind of human, a new kind of people. It didn’t matter what language you spoke or where you grew up. Once you came to Christ, you were family. That concept is missing in the modern tribalism we see today, especially on the internet, which has become a place to bash people you disagree with.

In my mind, C. S. Lewis was instrumental in changing how I think about this. He was an Anglican, and I’m not. We disagree on things. But he spoke so beautifully about the things we do agree on that it felt like a conversation rather than a textbook. It was a man’s voice speaking through a book. Thinking of a book as a person you’re talking with, rather than something you simply like or dislike, changes how you engage ideas.

When I encourage my church to study the Bible or to do acts of righteousness and goodness, I don’t see those as defensive or passive. This is us moving against the darkness in our community. We don’t do that by pushing sinners out. We do it by shining the light of Jesus into the communities we’re part of.

I don’t think the church is doing a great job of that today, to be honest. I don’t think I do as good a job as I’d like to. But I can see in the text this calling to be something that’s missing.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. And to your point about politics, that’s one of the big struggles we have. We get caught up warring against flesh and blood—red versus blue, blue versus red. I think you’re right. It might sound a little conspiracy-theory-ish, even to me, but there really is a darkness underneath that. That’s a classical motif you see in literature and films, that what’s really happening is driven by something deeper.

I think the evil one wants to keep us distracted, fighting each other, so we’re not coming to Christ. Our hope ends up in red or blue instead of in Christ.

Jon Dillon: When Israel went into captivity, Nebuchadnezzar came, destroyed the temple, and there was a series of movements where people were taken from Jerusalem into Babylon. There’s this really powerful text where Jeremiah is speaking to the exiles.

Anthony Delgado: Mm-hmm.

Jon Dillon: He doesn’t tell them to overthrow the government. He doesn’t tell them to run away. He doesn’t tell them to burn anything down. What he says is, build houses, plant gardens, get married, and pray for Babylon. That idea shapes the way I view what’s happening. I can’t change people’s lives, but I can show them Jesus. I can allow the movement of God to take hold of my heart and my life so that I’m giving a clear presentation to my children and to whoever I have authority to reach. Everyone has a small sphere of people who respect them.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah.

Jon Dillon: I want them to see in me a person who is showing them not just that heaven is coming, but that the ways of God are influencing me now. When I die and go to be with the Lord, it will be better. I have no doubt about that. But God is the God of the universe right now, and I am an ambassador of his kingdom, and I want to represent that.

When Jesus talks about bringing war to the gates of hell, it’s not by burning witches at the stake or taking up arms and bringing violence to places. What the exiles were doing in Babylon—refusing to be broken, planting gardens, getting married—there was joy, even in the midst of sorrow. That’s a powerful statement. In a world that is loud and aggressive, a movement like this is custom-built to make a difference in the world we’re living in right now. I think that’s part of God’s sovereign plan at work throughout time.

How do ordinary followers of Jesus cultivate pockets of Eden in the rhythms of daily life—at home, at work, in neighborhoods, in the church?

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. I was really taken by your illustration of Jeremiah and the exile, because you’re exactly right. That’s a good example of what you mean in chapter three by a pocket of Eden. They were supposed to create a pocket of Eden within the exile, within a kingdom that was not God’s kingdom, where God’s kingdom still had a presence and an influence that brought blessing to the world at large.

In chapter three, you write, “The weapons of our war are not those of this world—not violence, hatred, isolation, self-obsession—but quiet, steady light.” You’ve already said some about that. I’ve often described a Christian household as a little Eden, or maybe now I should say a pocket of Eden. I’ve also described local churches as little Edens or pockets of Eden.

From a pastoral perspective, how do ordinary followers of Jesus cultivate pockets of Eden in the rhythms of daily life—at home, at work, in neighborhoods, in the church, wherever?

Jon Dillon: I don’t think there’s really a substitute for friendship. I know that’s not always what people want to hear. The idea that we’ll just add another program and our community will be better appeals to me as a pastor, because I like scheduling things and doing stuff. But honestly, you have to invest in people—make them feel valued, listen to them, give your time. That’s a sacrifice.

You see this throughout Scripture and throughout life. People have come into your life and made it better, and people have come into your life and made it worse. There are places you go because they bring rest. There’s joy in drinking coffee or tea in a café, and a lot of work goes into making it feel that way.

Churches, at least here, often become very cold, utilitarian spaces. Everyone sits here, we throw out some seeds, and maybe something will grow. God can use that, but God has placed us in a beautiful world and equipped us with people who have skills and creativity. As the church, we need to lean into those things so people can use them to bless others.

Church often exists around the platform. You preach on the platform, sing on the platform, or help people find seats so they can look at the platform. But that’s not life. Sunday service is the gathering of the church. Life happens when we host art, emphasize beauty, bring food to people, host funeral dinners, or bring gift cards to parents who’ve just had a baby. Those moments show not only love for people, but love for God by honoring the people God loves.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. That reminds me of the pandemic debates over livestream church. This oddity—where church becomes an event instead of the ekklesia, the gathering of the saints—has really shaped us. We have to preach and teach; that’s a biblical requirement. But it’s strange how that can drive the idea of church as an event, and we’re always fighting against that.

We’ve got a membership information class coming up at Palmdale Church, and I’m rethinking how I do those classes because I want people to understand that membership is about family and community and to take that seriously. A lot of people experience that kind of Eden in their homes, but taking it into the rest of life is challenging. It’s difficult, but it’s necessary.

Jon Dillon: There are a million practical ways to do this. My church is rural Ohio—farmers, factory workers—and their skill sets are incredibly practical. Instead of saying those skills don’t belong in the church, we try to connect them with ways to serve. We’re active in our community and in the mission field, always looking for ways to connect people through friendship. Not in an assigned way, but by breaking bread together. There’s tremendous power in that.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah.

Jon Dillon: In finding these things, if you’re trying to invite the whole church to one place, none of us have houses big enough to do that. It requires a community that’s determined to show the love of God and make it present. Sometimes we do this corporately, all together, but a lot of the time it’s each of us shining this light that enables us to do big things.

I think I use the imagery of starlight in the book. Growing up, my mom would take us outside to look at the stars. She’d point out the constellations and tell us stories about them, and we’d always look for the first star. It’s not very big. We did a lot of wishing on stars. None of it ever happened, but it was fun. The idea was that it just takes one pinprick of light to lift your eyes from the earth toward the heavens. I think our lives can become that.

We live in a world where people are begging for connection. That’s the whole premise behind social media and why it’s exploded the way it has. The church is custom-built to connect people, if we’ll turn our eyes from receiving to giving.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, for sure. I love that.

How would you distinguish between exercising dominion as God intended and slipping into the world’s pattern of dominance, knowing that some form of dominion or influence is still happening?

No Biblical Reenchantment podcast would be complete if we didn’t bring up giants. Chapter six, Dominion Ends Dominance, made me think about the giant narratives. I’ve done a lot of thinking on the symbolism of giants in earlier podcast episodes. In that chapter, you write about how power in the kingdom of heaven is wielded differently than the world expects.

I see three venues here. First, a worldly sense of dominion, which is really tyranny. It’s top-down and says, I’ll tell you how things work, you obey, and maybe life will be good. That’s dictatorship. Then you have the wilderness, where there’s no order at all—just chaos. Tyranny is high order, but it’s the order of man. The wilderness is no order.

The third venue is God’s order—how God orders everything through an inversion of human expectations. I know this terminology has been abused, but in a biblical sense, it’s servant leadership: the last shall be first and the first shall be last. It’s high order paired with high humility, not what we usually see in the world.

In Scripture, the giants seem to depict tyranny. They’re kings or generals because they’re the strongest, they stand head and shoulders above everyone else, and they’ve killed their way to power. That’s how the world handles authority. We still have giants in that sense. If you’re charismatic, strong-willed, and able to control people, you become the dictator in the story of this world.

God’s call to dominion—to control chaos—goes back to the dominion mandate in Eden: to multiply, fill the earth, and spread the garden of God to the whole world. God’s vision of dominion is different from the world’s. Yet it’s interesting that the world is still trying to do this. Worldly flourishing is still centered on dominion, but it’s about the kingdom of man rather than the kingdom of God.

So how would you distinguish between exercising dominion as God intended and slipping into the world’s pattern of dominance, knowing that some form of dominion or influence is still happening?

Jon Dillon: Yeah.

Anthony Delgado: How do we combat that? As we want to bring dominion into the world, how do we keep, as Christians or as churches, from doing it the way the world does it?

Jon Dillon: Throughout the Old Testament, especially with the giants, they’re eaters and killers. They enforce their will through fear and the subjugation of others. If you’re in the way, you kill them. That’s where the language around giants comes from. At the root of it is warfare based on violence.

When you look at humanity as God designed it, it’s not warfare based on violence. It’s gardening. It’s giving attention to a plot of ground and desiring to bring living things out of the dirt. I grew up with gardens as part of life. Almost everyone I knew kept one. My grandparents, in particular, grew a massive garden, and they ate from it out of necessity and because it was good for you.

We would walk around and look at each plant. You pay attention—what parts are healthy, what needs care, what bugs are getting to it. There’s a plan, but there’s never an expectation that every plant will look the same. You don’t prune two trees the same way, even if they’re growing just a few feet apart. Each one is unique.

If we try to mass-produce people who look, act, and talk the same—where unity comes at the expense of diversity—gardening doesn’t make sense. Gardening is almost the opposite. It rejoices in diversity as plants reach fruitfulness and health. You know a healthy plant when you see it. A healthy tomato doesn’t look like a healthy apple tree, but both are healthy. There’s a unity that binds them together.

Rather than forcing people into a particular shape, what I see in Scripture is a calling to lift our eyes toward the things of God. If we acknowledge him in all our ways, he will direct our steps. My job as a pastor is to shepherd sheep. That’s the imagery Scripture uses. Even the word pastor carries that meaning.

In the Old Testament ideal, it’s gardening, and in the New Testament, the same idea is used to describe the work of the Holy Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit grows. So my job isn’t to put on a good show on Sunday. It’s to make sure the garden I’m tending is fruitful. I have to know how far my authority goes. It’s not my job to mandate outcomes. It’s my job to cultivate—to give good ground for growth, to bring good things into people’s lives, and to shelter them as much as I can from what harms them.

Eventually the metaphor breaks down because people aren’t plants, but it changes how I approach people. My calling isn’t to push them from one pasture to another, but to make sure that where they are, they have what they need to grow.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah. That’s so good. It’s fascinating to hear you move from biblical theology to the work of the Holy Spirit as a gardener, and then place that into the shepherding role of the church. It reminds me of the episode we did with Nick at 3M on pastors as theologians.

I’m thankful for pastors who are fully committed to shepherding, even if they don’t have a strong desire for formal theological education. I’m glad they’re there. But I also love meeting pastors who think deeply about the biblical narrative and then bring that thinking into the life of the church. We have a problem on the other side too—too many academics who don’t think pastorally. People read those books, go to church, argue with their pastors, and for what purpose? There’s no application in mind.

When we see how the Bible’s wisdom shapes the way we live, that’s where things come together. We need teachers, shepherd-teachers—pastors in the full sense of the word, those who tend the pasture.

And your podcast is called The Two Trees Podcast.

Jon Dillon: That’s right.

How do Scripture and the pursuit of knowing God form resilience in Christian living, especially in a culture filled with noise, distraction, and instability?

Anthony Delgado: And that’s based on the two trees in the garden. We see that idea show up again in chapter nine of the book, which I think is titled Trees Planted by Streams of Water.

Jon Dillon: Right.

Anthony Delgado: I’m not surprised at all to hear you talking about trees, plants, and fruit. In that chapter you write, “The word of God is the river in the wasteland where exiles sink their roots.” I think that’s really interesting.

How does Scripture, and the pursuit of knowing God, form deep resilience in Christian living, especially in a culture filled with noise, distraction, and instability? I’m looking for both the practicality and the theology here. What is the word of God doing in us to permeate all that noise? And of course, I’m going to need you to talk about trees.

Jon Dillon: Yeah, no problem. I can talk about trees all day. It’s one of my favorite topics. When you think about how God made us and put a calling on us, and you start reading the Bible, there’s this idea in the church that there’s a hard line between the practical and the theological.

We think, I’m learning facts about the Bible. Nobody loves useless facts more than I do. That’s my thing. I love history, trivia nights, all of it. But what I began to realize is that studying Scripture is not passive. It is changing me. The more I pour it over my mind and allow my life to be rooted in its teachings, what feels like passive fact-gathering actually has active power. It changes how I live and how I interact with the people around me.

A tree that pulls from an abundant water source will look and act very differently from a tree growing far away from healthy water. When we see people in Scripture described as part of the garden of God—something God has placed on the earth—that imagery begins to shape us. The Bible talks about people as trees. A king like Nebuchadnezzar is famously cut down because he is a bad tree. The kingdom of God is like a mustard seed that grows into a great tree. This imagery runs throughout Scripture.

When I put that into practice, I see how fitting the image of a tree is for a follower of God. A tree provides homes for creatures and produces fruit that does nothing to benefit itself. In fact, if a tree didn’t produce fruit, it would be healthier. It would have more energy to grow branches, leaves, and height. Fruit costs the tree energy. The entire purpose of fruit is external. It’s for others. It doesn’t improve the tree’s life. It shows that the tree exists as a channel to bless others.

Jon Dillon: When the Psalms describe us as trees planted by streams of water, that’s the goal. We want good theology. We want to know our Bibles. I need that. But that knowledge is meant to change how I interact with people. It changes how I view my wealth, what I do with my money, what I do with my time, and how I see the people in my community. Are these drains on my income, or are they opportunities for me to invest?

There’s a real difference in how we view ourselves once we begin to be filled with the word of God. I don’t see Bible study as passive. I see it as something that changes the very flavor of my life.

One of the things I remember from my childhood is that with my grandparents and my parents, there was always hot tea and coffee. It was a big part of life, and kids weren’t allowed to have it, so I wanted it badly. I loved the smell of it. There was this moment when you were finally old enough to sit and drink coffee with the grownups. It tasted terrible, but you’d never tell them that because you wanted to be seen as cool.

The way you make coffee is by letting hot water linger around the beans. The longer it stays in their presence, the more it changes the water into something different. It’s still water, but it’s not the same. I tell my wife this all the time when she says I should drink more water instead of coffee. It’s mostly water, but it’s become something different.

If I’m pouring out knowledge—things I know about the Bible—but I don’t have love, I’m a sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. I’m not engaged in the song God intended his shepherds to sing. This becomes a way of asking whether we’re actually walking as God intended. How many pastors have fallen into tyranny or narcissism? Ministry can attract people with that mindset because it’s an effective way to wield power.

That’s why Scripture gives commands about what leaders in the church should be like—and not just church leaders, but leaders in general. A follower of Jesus is meant to be a gardener, someone who wants to bring goodness out in others. The only way you do that is by having deep roots, being nourished from elsewhere. That’s one reason reading is so important. You need exposure to conversations with other people, even those outside your echo chamber, not just people who will say amen at all the right moments, but people who will challenge you and help you approach ideas differently.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, absolutely. I love the coffee analogy. We drink a lot of coffee at our house, but we go through a lot of tea too. I’ve often compared Scripture reading to dipping versus steeping. I’m the kind of person who puts an Earl Grey teabag in, adds sugar and cream, makes a big cup, waits ten minutes, and leaves the teabag in so the last few sips are really strong. I want everything out of that teabag.

Other people just dip—dip, dip—get a little color and move on. In the analogy, the dippers are the people who show up on Sunday, hear the Scripture, like what they hear, learn something, and are colored by the word of God. The steepers are the people taking notes, going home, praying over them, and bringing Scripture into daily prayer.

The way we teach our church to pray daily comes from our liturgy. People take that home, take the Scriptures, and bring them into everyday life. When you do that—when you’re saturated in Scripture, reading books that flow out of the Bible, or simply reading the Bible itself—you become someone who can recognize when something isn’t quite right and ask how it fits with Scripture.

That’s not just for pastors. We have church members who know the Bible at a level that makes me nervous on Sunday mornings, and that’s a good thing for all of us.

Where Did The Way of Eden Come From?

I love how the agrarian imagery points us back to Eden and how that imagery saturates the whole Bible. Even though the book is short, it’s dense. There’s a lot to chew on. It can become a hermeneutical lens so that when people return to Scripture—even books like Chronicles—they start to see patterns and images come together. The whole Bible is driving toward the same ideas.

Jon Dillon: And Joseph is described as a fruitful bough, a tree that runs over the garden wall. So he is a tree. It really is a hermeneutic. People in an agrarian culture in Israel would have seen trees as sources of wealth, as means of generational blessing, and as a powerful part of life, because the fruit they ate didn’t come from grocery stores. It came from trees.

There are even laws in the Torah about how you treat the trees outside a city if you are attacking it. So for a modern reader, we have to adopt an ancient way of looking at life when we pick up the Bible, because it is an ancient book.

On the Two Trees Podcast, that’s our jam. We get into that as much as Rose and my friend Martin will let me. I’ve been greatly impacted by it. The Bible Project has some great videos about the use of trees in the Bible.

This Eden language, even though Eden isn’t mentioned very often, lingers in the background of almost all the stories. When you reach the end of the book, the tree of life is there. There are trees on the edge of a river flowing from the throne of God. You’re back in an Eden-like state.

So yes, it’s an agrarian way of life, but it’s also a biblical theme that’s present in the text.

Anthony Delgado: Yeah, absolutely. I should say this too. I found your podcast when you were only two or three episodes in, so I don’t think I’ve ever missed one. I went back to the first couple, and it was right around the time when we weren’t getting any more Naked Bible Podcast episodes from Dr. Michael Heiser. I don’t remember if it coincided exactly with when he passed, or if it was a little before that.

Your podcast filled a space that was missing. I always recommend your podcast when people say, “I finished Naked Bible and I’m all caught up. What do I listen to now?” I point them to yours because you’re coming from a more pastoral place. He had a PhD in Semitics and all of that, and you and I don’t have that, but you’re filling a similar space. You’re making people think critically about Scripture, giving history and etymology behind words, and helping us understand things. I love that. And you’ve had me on your podcast a couple times, so it’s great to have you on mine now.

Jon Dillon: It’s good to talk with you. Our podcast started after Dr. Heiser passed away because I was a huge fan of the Naked Bible Podcast. At first, somebody gave me a copy of The Unseen Realm. It was my dad. He said, “Is this guy right?” I read it and thought, “No, he is not right.” I couldn’t figure out why he was wrong, and I had to change my mind. He is correct.

So I listened and was blessed by his teaching for years. When he was dying, he sent out a letter to his listeners and basically said, “I’ve done what I can. You guys need to do things as well.” I took that to heart. Obviously I’m not Dr. Heiser. If he stood up and had something to say, I would sit down immediately. But I will use what strength I have to try to help. That’s what the Two Trees Podcast is—us trying not to take over the conversation, but to participate in it.

Anthony Delgado: Yep. And that’s what the Biblical Reenchantment podcast is too. I had a former podcast that’s been wiped from the internet called Theology with Feet, and it was more about applying theology to daily life. It was a lot of fun. It had a run, but I got too busy and had to stop.

When I started my podcast back up, it was for the same reason Dr. Heiser said, “Other people, some of you have learned a lot from me. You’re reading all the scholars. Go out there and do the work.” We haven’t been as consistent posting episodes as Two Trees, but of all the different podcasts that have popped up since then, I’ve really appreciated yours. I’ve tried them all, but I’ve really appreciated yours, so I commend your podcast to my listeners.

Let’s go back to the book for a minute. Tell me about a moment—maybe there isn’t one, so just say if there isn’t—but what moment or experience would you say planted the seed for The Way of Eden? I’m being a little kitschy here, but was there something that happened where you thought, “I have to write this book”?

Jon Dillon: Oh yeah. I’ll tell you exactly how it happened, because it wasn’t a book for a very long time. It was conversations with Rose and Martin, my co-hosts on Two Trees. Rose is the kind of person who won’t take half answers or any dodging. She wants a fully formed, deeply thought-out answer, and she wants it right now. Martin is the kind of guy who always asks, “So what’s the application?” He loves that.

And I knew the Bible talks about Eden throughout the entire book.

Anthony Delgado: Mm-hmm.

Jon Dillon: That imagery of Eden is so important to the way I read Scripture, and I wanted to explain why. So what? Why does this matter? How does this actually work? I sat down to put my thoughts on paper, originally as a massive text message to Rose and Martin—basically, this is what I think about that. Then I thought maybe it would be an article.

I wrote one chapter, then another, and before I realized it, I had ten things to say. So I put them into ten chapters and sent it out into the world. If people read it, that’s great. If they don’t, I was at least able to give an answer to two friends who were asking questions. And people in my own community have read it, which was honestly the goal from the beginning.

Anthony Delgado: That’s so good. I love that, because I have a similar story with The Gospel Is Bigger Than You Think. It started as conversations, then became an article, and I had maybe three paragraphs that eventually turned into full chapters. That wasn’t enough, so I preached a sermon series to develop the ideas, and then I came back to the book.

I love when things come together organically like that. You can usually tell when someone has an idea first and then forces all the content into that idea. Your book doesn’t feel like that at all. It feels like an honest exploration of Scripture, something worked out over time. You can tell it grew naturally, and I think that’s what makes some of the best books.

Jon Dillon: I had a lot of fun writing it. It was challenging, but it was fun. I’d do it again. I really enjoyed the process.

Anthony Delgado: Well, I hope you do. If it were bad, I wouldn’t care if you wrote another one, but I enjoyed it, so I’m looking forward to what you do next. It doesn’t have to be next year, but I’ll be watching.

Let me ask you a question I hate being asked myself. If Christian readers could take away one thing from The Way of Eden, what would you want that to be?

Jon Dillon: Love God with all your heart and love your neighbor as yourself. That’s what we’re trying to do. This is more than accumulating facts. It’s becoming a community that gives feet to faith, that lives out the love of God for the people around us.

We shouldn’t be disconnected from the Bible, and we shouldn’t be disconnected from our communities. God made you on purpose and for a purpose, and he placed you where you are. You need to garden and cultivate the place you’ve been given. Worship the Lord through study and through service, and look for ways to show Christ to your community. In the end, that’s what the book is about—resisting the darkness wherever it grips your soul and becoming a force of life and goodness wherever you live.

Anthony Delgado: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Becoming who we were created to be. I love that.

All right, before we sign off, I want everyone to know that links to the book, the podcast, and everything else will be in the description. If people want to reach out to you, they’ll be able to do that there.

Is there anything else you’d like to address or plug before we wrap up? Obviously we want people to read the book, but I want to give you space to share anything else before we sign off.

Jon Dillon: I’d just like to say thank you to anyone who has picked up the book. And thank you to you, Anthony. You wrote the review on the back of the book, and that meant a lot to me. I want to thank you for investing in my ministry and being a blessing. I wish you well, and to everyone listening, I pray God’s grace and peace over your lives.

Anthony Delgado: Awesome. We appreciate you as well, and we pray that same prayer for you—grace and peace over your life, your church, your ministry, and your family. And for everyone else, Christ is King, and that changes everything. God bless.

Jon Dillon: Amen.