Just like real life, the Bible is full of wild characters. Join pastor David Tieche and journalist Jon Fortt, friends since college, as they explore scripture. The two bring deep devotion and just the right amount of irreverence to the stories of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Lot and more.
Character Study: The Bible for Real
Claim This Podcastby Jon Fortt and David Tieche
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16 episodes
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Podcast Overview
Just like real life, the Bible is full of wild characters. Join pastor David Tieche and journalist Jon Fortt, friends since college, as they explore scripture. The two bring deep devotion and just the right amount of irreverence to the stories of Abraham, Sarah, Hagar, Lot and more.
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Publishing Since
10/20/2025
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Recent Episodes
August 2, 2026
The Bible and The Odyssey: How Odysseus is Like Jacob
<p>Jon Fortt and David Tieche open Season 2 of Character Study, their Scripture-through-people podcast and companion to their dozen-plus YouVersion Bible plans. Season 1 covered the Abraham cycle; Season 2 turns to Jacob. The launch timing coincides with a cultural moment: Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is nearing $1 billion at the box office, and its trickster hero Odysseus becomes the hook for exploring Jacob.</p><p><br></p><p>Jon recounts a comic detour about nearly missing a 70mm IMAX screening while visiting San Francisco — scoring a front-row companion seat blocks from the Metreon so he'd at least know the film's true framing before taking his family to a standard IMAX showing.</p><p><br></p><p>The heart of the conversation is the trickster archetype and the longing for home. Odysseus, Jacob (whose name means trickster, and who becomes "Israel" after wrestling God), Bugs Bunny, and Ferris Bueller share one pattern: a cunning wanderer using his wits to get home. Why does it resonate across millennia? Because these stories wrestle with deep, universal questions — home, moral responsibility, and encounters with forces greater than ourselves — that a "surface culture" of TikToks and cat videos paves over, even though "we're not surface people."</p><p><br></p><p>The central contrast: the Greek gods are powerful but mercurial and remote, offering no intimacy. The God of the Bible invites wrestling. Abraham bargains over Sodom; Moses argues God out of destroying Israel; Jacob wrestles at Peniel and won't let go without a blessing. Jon argues the right kind of wrestling — rooted in faith, not rebellion — isn't merely permitted but required; it's a form of intimacy, unlike Cain's obstinacy or Miriam's challenge to authority. Even Jesus wrestles in Gethsemane ("not my will, but yours").</p><p><br></p><p>They probe desire and passivity: Jesus repeatedly asks "What do you want?" (blind Bartimaeus, the invalid of 38 years), calling people to risk naming their longing rather than passively accepting their conditions. David confesses this is his own struggle — comfortable with God as King and Creator, but resistant to God as friend and spouse — a passivity that pushes God far away, the opposite of the whole point of the Incarnation.</p><p><br></p><p>On trickery in Scripture, they separate deception-for-gain (prohibited) from wit that forces intellectual engagement: Jesus' parables and riddles, "render unto Caesar," the woman caught in adultery, the Syrophoenician woman who out-argues him in faith. Righteous "tricking" appears in preserving life against tyrants — the Hebrew midwives, Moses' basket, the nuns in The Sound of Music.</p><p><br></p><p>The takeaway: The Odyssey is an on-ramp to introduce audiences to Jacob's story and to the radically different, intimate, self-sacrificing God of the Bible — the promise of Season 2.</p>
March 24, 2026
Judas and Peter: Betrayal, Denial and the Way Back
<p>The Character Study podcast episode on Judas, hosted by Jon Fortt and David Tieche, examines the infamous betrayer not as a monster beyond humanity but as a cautionary mirror — someone whose trajectory any of us could follow in smaller ways.</p><p>The episode opens by situating Judas among history's great betrayers — Benedict Arnold, Shakespeare's Iago — before drawing a critical distinction between betrayal and denial. Dave offers a war metaphor: denial is retreating from the line in cowardice; betrayal is turning your gun on your own soldiers.</p><p>Both are failures, but betrayal is an active, hostile act against someone who trusted you.</p><p>The hosts read from Matthew 26, the Last Supper scene where Jesus identifies his betrayer, and note that Judas's fall wasn't sudden — Satan entering him represents the culmination of small compromises practiced over months or years. Jon connects this to Genesis 4, where God warns Cain that "sin crouches at the door" before the first murder. Both Cain and Judas faced a choice at the threshold and failed to rule over it.</p><p>The episode's most provocative moment comes when Dave challenges the conventional reading of Judas's remorse. After the betrayal, Judas returns to the priests, confesses his sin, names Jesus as innocent, and throws back the silver — actions that look remarkably like repentance. Dave argues the priests failed catastrophically here: their one job in the Levitical system was to offer absolution for sin, yet they responded, "What is that to us? That's your responsibility." Crushed under unforgivable guilt with no path to cleansing, Judas hangs himself.</p><p>Jon contrasts this with Peter's parallel failure. Peter denied Jesus three times, wept bitterly, but stayed among the disciples. In John 21, Jesus finds Peter fishing — physically present with the community but spiritually adrift.</p><p>Jesus reinstates him with three affirmations to match the three denials, then says "Follow me" — not with your feet this time, but with your whole heart, even unto death.</p><p>The hosts note that in church tradition, the rooster's crow became a symbol of human frailty and divine restoration — the sound that launched baptismal ceremonies in Florence's Baptistery, where converts identified with Peter's failure before emerging cleansed.</p><p>The takeaway isn't that Peter was a hero and Judas a villain — both failed miserably. The difference is who they went to afterward. Judas went to corrupt priests; Peter stayed with the disciples and was found by Jesus. The episode argues this is the real lesson: not whether we'll fail, but whether we go to the right source for restoration when we do.</p>
February 7, 2026
The Good Samaritan: Minnesota, Mercy, and Being a Neighbor
<p>bible.fortt.com</p><p>In this episode of Character Study, Jon Fortt and pastor David Tieche take up one of Jesus’ most famous—and most misunderstood—parables: the Good Samaritan. Jon frames the conversation around the word neighbor and why it has such sharp relevance today, especially amid modern debates about law, borders, responsibility, and who deserves care. He’s clear that the goal isn’t political positioning but faithful application: Jesus tells this story not to clarify opinions, but to confront hearts.</p><p>David situates the parable historically and theologically, beginning with the “expert in the law” who tests Jesus. He points out that the question “Who is my neighbor?” isn’t innocent curiosity; it’s an attempt to limit obligation. David emphasizes that the lawyer already knows the right answer—love God and love your neighbor—but wants boundaries on how far that love must go. Jesus responds by telling a story that dissolves those boundaries entirely.</p><p>As they walk through the parable, Jon highlights Jesus’ storytelling genius. The wounded man is anonymous—no backstory, no explanation, just human need. He’s “a situation,” not a character, stripping listeners of excuses to judge or disengage. David explains why the priest and Levite matter: these are religious professionals whose identities are built around faithfulness, yet they pass by. Their failure isn’t cruelty but avoidance—seeing suffering and choosing distance.</p><p>The Samaritan, by contrast, is a shock to Jesus’ original audience. David unpacks the deep religious, ethnic, and historical hostility between Jews and Samaritans, making clear that this is not just an unlikely hero but a despised outsider. Jon draws modern parallels, suggesting that the Samaritan is meant to represent the kind of person religious insiders instinctively exclude.</p><p>At the heart of the story is compassion. David lingers on the Greek word often translated “moved with compassion,” describing it as a gut-level response that leads inevitably to action. Jon presses the point: this isn’t pity that feels sad and walks away; it’s compassion that moves. The Samaritan doesn’t do the minimum—he risks himself, spends his money, stays involved, and even promises future care. Jon jokingly calls him the opposite of the “good enough Samaritan”—he goes too far.</p><p>David connects this excess to God’s covenant love, which never stops halfway. God doesn’t rescue and abandon; He stays, guides, provides, and bears cost. The Samaritan, shockingly, mirrors God’s own character. Both note how Jesus ends the story with a reversal: the question is no longer “Who counts as my neighbor?” but “Who acted like one?”</p><p>The episode closes on a sober challenge. Loving your neighbor isn’t about feelings, proximity, or identity; it’s about action. It requires seeing, moving, and bringing healing—and it will be inconvenient, risky, and costly. As David puts it, Jesus is asking whether the love of God is actually alive in us. And as Jon underscores, every encounter with human need forces the same question: will we pass by, or will we stop?</p><p>“Go and do likewise.”</p>
16 total episodes available
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