Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Speaking Life #3 - Christ in the Culture Wars || SLP685

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Speaking Life #3 - Christ in the Culture Wars || SLP685 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_06: What I thought would be fun, Glenn is if we play a little game.
0:02
SPEAKER_06: I love fun games.
0:04
SPEAKER_06: So in this bowl, I'll just lift that up.
0:07
SPEAKER_06: I have some cultural moments that have happened recently.
0:11
SPEAKER_06: And I thought we could just take it in turns to pick one from the bowl.
0:14
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
0:15
SPEAKER_06: And then we'll discuss is it pre-Christian, Christian, post-Christian, or post-post-Christian?
0:19
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
0:19
SPEAKER_06: And how can we speak life into that moment?
0:22
SPEAKER_06: Should we try and make these rapid fire?
0:24
SPEAKER_06: Here's the most rapid one of all.
0:25
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
0:26
SPEAKER_06: Love is love.
0:27
SPEAKER_06: Queers for Palestine.
0:29
SPEAKER_09: Okay.
0:30
SPEAKER_09: Trump says, I hate my opponents.
0:33
SPEAKER_09: Peter Singer on Infanticide.
0:36
SPEAKER_06: Andrew Tate.
0:37
SPEAKER_09: Taylor Swift.
0:38
SPEAKER_09: Taylor Swift.
0:40
SPEAKER_09: Just the entire person of Taylor Swift.
0:43
SPEAKER_09: How many of these are there?
0:44
SPEAKER_09: Okay.
0:45
SPEAKER_09: Trans women are women.
0:48
SPEAKER_09: Oh.
0:49
SPEAKER_06: Zach Palanski on Jude Bellingham.
0:53
SPEAKER_09: K-pop demon hunters.
0:55
SPEAKER_09: Extinction Rebellion.
0:57
SPEAKER_09: We're going to get so cancelled, aren't we?
1:00
SPEAKER_09: But I think the destination you're always thinking about.
1:02
SPEAKER_06: How do I lift up Jesus Christ and Him Crucified?
1:06
SPEAKER_06: Welcome to the Speak Life Podcast.
1:08
SPEAKER_06: My name's Thomas, and I'm joined by I'm Glenn Scrivener.
1:10
SPEAKER_06: Hello.
1:11
SPEAKER_06: And we're thinking about speaking life.
1:13
SPEAKER_06: That's the series of the podcast at the moment.
1:15
SPEAKER_06: And you and I are going to think specifically about speaking life into the culture.
1:20
SPEAKER_09: The culture, as though there's just one thing.
1:24
SPEAKER_06: And what might be helpful to set this up is this clip of the historian Tom Holland on trigonometry talking about four different options in our culture right now, in terms of what to believe.
1:38
SPEAKER_06: So maybe have a listen and see if you can spot the four different things, and then we'll talk about them.
1:44
SPEAKER_06: Check it out.
1:45
SPEAKER_15: We are living through a great choke point in the history of this country.
1:50
SPEAKER_15: There are many, many paths, and many paths that our society will take because it's it's fracturing in all kinds of ways.
1:57
SPEAKER_15: One path is that this kind of post-Christian Paddingtonism, if you want to call it that, it's like the head of the rocket.
2:06
SPEAKER_15: It's gone through the atmosphere, all the everything else underneath it has been jettisoned, and now it's got the power to blast through the solar system.
2:12
SPEAKER_15: You know, all the stuff that's been jettisoned is all the nonsense about the Bible and Jesus and the church.
2:17
SPEAKER_15: It's just baggage.
2:17
SPEAKER_15: We don't, it's just baggage, it's gone.
2:19
SPEAKER_15: We have now blasted out and we're going forward, and secular principles, the liberal principles, are sufficiently self-evident, self-evidently right and good that it will sustain the future evolution and development of our society.
2:34
SPEAKER_15: Another option, fascism and Nazism, the default assumption among humans is that strength and might is right.
2:42
SPEAKER_15: As the experience of fascism becomes in Europe, becomes a, you know, dies out, lived experience of it.
2:49
SPEAKER_15: So the the the kind of the bogeyman power of Hitler will fade.
2:54
SPEAKER_15: And people who are no longer bounded by Christian inhibitions or assumptions, I can imagine them turning around and saying, well, why shouldn't I do what I like?
3:03
SPEAKER_15: I'm very rich, I'm very powerful.
3:04
SPEAKER_15: Why shouldn't I do exactly what I like?
3:07
SPEAKER_15: And I suppose a third possibility is that people will return to the source and say, Well, actually, maybe maybe I am Christian, maybe I, you know, maybe I should take this a bit more seriously than I have been.
3:19
SPEAKER_15: And there are kind of things, I think, tentative signs that that might be happening.
3:22
SPEAKER_19: What's fascinating is I would argue there are signs of all three of those things happening.
3:26
SPEAKER_19: Of course, and that's what I'm saying, is that all of these things might be happening.
3:28
SPEAKER_15: And of course, we will also have the growth of Islam.
3:31
SPEAKER_15: So that also provides a fourth option.
3:34
SPEAKER_02: But you're gonna get some fascists, uh, you're gonna get the eyes of Islam, you're gonna get these woke idiots running around ruining everything, and what was the other one?
3:41
SPEAKER_02: Oh, the resurgence of Christians.
3:43
SPEAKER_09: I mean, that's the one I'm most happy with, to be honest.
3:46
SPEAKER_09: Wow.
3:47
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, that's interesting from Constantine.
3:49
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
3:49
SPEAKER_09: He wants he wants the Christian resurgence.
3:51
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, and it is important to say that they're kind of all happening at once, and it's not that one is winning.
3:57
SPEAKER_09: I think there are different dominant voices in the culture at any one moment.
4:01
SPEAKER_09: And I guess the historian Tom Holland is teaching it this way because his book Dominion kind of takes us from pre-Christianity through Christianity to the modern day.
4:09
SPEAKER_09: And the telling of that story is within pre-Christianity, you've got uh a Roman society that of course puts Jesus to death because it wants to enforce the Pax Romana.
4:18
SPEAKER_09: Pax Romana just means the peace of Rome.
4:20
SPEAKER_09: And the peace of Rome means uh the subduing of all your enemies, uh, you don't want rebels against Caesar.
4:28
SPEAKER_09: You put them to death as like a placard that basically says, do not go in the way of this wretch.
4:34
SPEAKER_09: Um, because it is disturbing uh Rome.
4:37
SPEAKER_09: It's disturbing peace and stability and the way that nature already operates.
4:42
SPEAKER_09: And yet, even though Rome said no one should go the way of that rebel, um, more people have gone the way of that rebel than anyone else in history.
4:51
SPEAKER_09: More people have followed in the footsteps of that crucified man Jesus Christ than anyone else.
4:56
SPEAKER_09: And that's sort of the the hinge point of the book Dominion, and it's kind of the hinge point of history.
5:00
SPEAKER_09: We've we've kind of decided that, haven't we?
5:02
SPEAKER_09: We've decided that this is the year of our Lord 2026, that 2026 years ago, some rupture happened such that the one who was on a cross, which is meant to be the lowest member of society, was, as Christians believed, raised to the highest heights and considered Lord, such that there has been a civilization built around uh a very subversive story.
5:27
SPEAKER_09: Um that on the cross actually you've got the highest picture of deity that is showing up in the most abysmal depths of of the human condition.
5:39
SPEAKER_09: And that's really what Christianity kind of is.
5:42
SPEAKER_09: Like it's it's the it's it's Jesus is Lord, right?
5:45
SPEAKER_09: The one on that cross is actually Lord, and that has built a different kind of society.
5:50
SPEAKER_09: So you've got pre-Christian society, and then you've got Christianity that orbits around Christ and Him crucified.
5:56
SPEAKER_09: And you know, my favorite tweet of all time was was in 2017, somebody just raced through the National Gallery in London and they said, Well, that's Western art for you, a thousand years of crucifixions, then stripes.
6:07
SPEAKER_09: Right.
6:08
SPEAKER_09: Which is a very reductionistic way of talking about modern art.
6:11
SPEAKER_09: And, you know, I I I wouldn't only say that modern art is just stripes, but it's this idea that we have gotten rid of kind of Christ.
6:20
SPEAKER_09: And what we've tried to do is we've tried to keep art, and we've tried to keep morality and a certain Christian morality without Christ.
6:28
SPEAKER_09: We want the kingdom without the king.
6:30
SPEAKER_09: And so I guess Tom Holland calls it Paddingtonism.
6:34
SPEAKER_09: Um which I I guess he calls it Paddingtonism because the story of Paddington Bear is just this lovely fluffy tale of an immigrant from Peru who makes his way in Britain and he is embraced into the bosom of modern Britain and ends up through kindness, like winning the day, and just a hard stare from Paddington is enough to s to sort of to stare down all evil.
6:58
SPEAKER_09: And somehow, through this surprising grace of a teddy bear, there is a victory.
7:03
SPEAKER_09: And so it is it is really quite um tied to the Christian story.
7:09
SPEAKER_09: You know, it is it has very recognizably been birthed from the womb of Christ Christianity that Paddington Bear becomes a hero.
7:16
SPEAKER_09: That that and that somehow through kindness and mercy there's a sort of a victory, right?
7:21
SPEAKER_09: And that you would love the immigrants and that you would love the stranger and sort of bring them in.
7:25
SPEAKER_09: And that that's what Tom Holland calls um Paddingtonism, it's what Constantine Kissing calls woke idiots.
7:35
SPEAKER_09: And then what Tom Holland says, here's here's like another strand to this, you get the anti-woke movement that's just like I despise the Paddingtonism that is just a cover for power plays.
7:51
SPEAKER_09: And the and you know, in the wake of Trump, you you get a space within society for people to object to the post-Christian story and to to kind of point out that there are all sorts of incoherences to that post-Christian story.
8:08
SPEAKER_09: And let's you know, w they they see a whole bunch of virtue signalling among the woke.
8:12
SPEAKER_09: And so the the anti-woke just want to like tear off the mask of of pretended virtue for for the woke.
8:20
SPEAKER_09: But in in kind of being anti-virtue signalling, they can sort of be anti-virtue, really.
8:25
SPEAKER_09: And they can believe in power, as Tom Holland sort of says.
8:28
SPEAKER_09: And so that's that's a kind of a post post-Christendom kind of reality, the anti-woke.
8:34
SPEAKER_09: And then he mentions sort of Islam, which in a in a sense, Islam is kind of like a pre-Christian sort of thing.
8:39
SPEAKER_09: It's it's it is a civilization built on rejecting the way of the cross.
8:45
SPEAKER_09: You know, like the prophet Jesus within Islam could not be thought of as dying on a cross.
8:50
SPEAKER_09: That's too shameful.
8:51
SPEAKER_09: And so Islam is in that sense, it's sort of pre-Christian in that sense, because it's it's not going to be marked by the way of the cross, and it's it's sort of developed apart from a contemplation of Christ and him crucified.
9:04
SPEAKER_09: So those are the four strands I think that are woven together, and it's it's a mess, isn't it?
9:08
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's really helpful.
9:09
SPEAKER_06: So just to summarize that, pre-Christian we're thinking about kind of paganism or societies that have never had Christ preached, yeah.
9:18
SPEAKER_06: Um, what we what Britain was before uh Christianity was proclaimed on our shores.
9:24
SPEAKER_09: And what some societies are right now, and what during the Middle Ages, if you hadn't heard you know the gospel from a monk who's come to you, you're you're going to live out a kind of a pre-Christianity as well.
9:34
SPEAKER_06: But yeah, so that's almost the default of humanity before hearing the gospel pre-Christian.
9:39
SPEAKER_06: And then Christian society is pretty obvious.
9:42
SPEAKER_06: Um, you know, people believe the story of Christ crucified and have have faith in him.
9:47
SPEAKER_06: And then post-Christian, I've heard that described as wanting the fruits of Christianity without the roots.
9:54
SPEAKER_06: So wanting to cling on to things like what you talk about in your book, The Air We Breathe, Equality, Compassion, Consent, but no longer wanting to have the Christian story as a foundation for that.
10:04
SPEAKER_06: Yes, thinking we can cling on to those virtues without Christianity.
10:08
SPEAKER_06: But then you're saying post post-Christian is the kind of backlash to that, which just says, no, shut up, it's it's about power, and if I want to accumulate resources for myself, why can't I do that?
10:21
SPEAKER_10: Yeah.
10:22
SPEAKER_06: Although Tom Holland here kind of describes that option as that that leads to fascism and Nazism.
10:27
SPEAKER_06: But anti-woke isn't necessarily that extreme.
10:30
SPEAKER_06: But are you saying that taken to its logical conclusion, that's where it could lead?
10:36
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, certainly on the Rest is History podcast, um Tom and Dominic would would talk about fascism as kind of like absolutely anti-Christian, but sort of unthinkable without the Christian Revolution and the sorts of um the the thousand-year Reich that Hitler wanted to have is sort of being informed by Christian eschatology about the future that they that they want to have, but it's a it's a repudiation of the way of the cross.
10:59
SPEAKER_09: And so the the the the obvious pathway from post-post-Christianity is basically to slip down into paganism and and basically to to go to this this vision of you know nature that is read in tooth and claw and and the the kind of the the hierarchy of power that Rome believed in before the inversion of the cross.
11:20
SPEAKER_09: I think that's that's the natural kind of way to go if you're going to um reject and repudiate not only Christianity, but also this sort of post-Christian Christian Paddingtonism.
11:33
SPEAKER_09: Um now, there are other ways of going, like you could reject post-Christian Paddingtonism and just become Christian, right?
11:39
SPEAKER_09: Right.
11:40
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
11:40
SPEAKER_09: Or you could see the good in Paddingtonism and recognize that underneath that there's no real foundation for it.
11:46
SPEAKER_09: Like, like a Peruvian bear is not, you know, is not the foundations for human rights that uh you had hoped you know might exist.
11:54
SPEAKER_09: But Jesus Christ actu absolutely does provide the foundations for those sorts of things.
11:59
SPEAKER_09: And so you you might go from a kind of a more left-leaning post-Christianity to Christianity.
12:03
SPEAKER_09: And if that's you, I I think Tom Holland is kind of your way into Christianity.
12:08
SPEAKER_09: You you you like the fruits and you start to discover the roots as Tom himself has, as as as a churchgoer himself.
12:15
SPEAKER_09: But he he kind of stands sort of outside institutional church as a prophet sort of inviting people in from the left.
12:22
SPEAKER_09: Um, I think on the right, his well, in the last 10 years, I think Jordan Peterson has been a sort of a prophet on the outside of church, saying to those on the right, hey, have you checked out some of the foundations to the sort of individualism that you that you prize and and the the idea of story and all this kind of stuff, and and and Jordan Peterson has been kind of this prophet from the outside of church on the right, who is in some senses leading people to church?
12:49
SPEAKER_09: Um but there are also ways in which you can just take a hard left out of post-Christianity, and there are ways that you can take a hard right out of post-post-Christianity, and all of it's happening at once.
13:02
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
13:02
SPEAKER_06: So post-post-Christianity, is it possible that that gets so post-as it were, yeah, that it might not as it might as well be pre-Christian?
13:11
SPEAKER_06: Oh yeah.
13:11
SPEAKER_09: Um and obviously post-Christianity can be so anti-Christian.
13:18
SPEAKER_09: Um even if it dresses itself up, it's probably more yeah, it it will dress itself up in certain virtues, certain Christian virtues.
13:28
SPEAKER_09: Um, you know, we we might get into abortion, for instance, you know, that like it's it's hard to think of a more anti-Christian practice than that 70 million babies are killed in the womb every year around the world.
13:40
SPEAKER_09: And yet in a post-Christian framework, that is framed in terms of you know the right to choose and bodily autonomy and healthcare and those sorts of things.
13:50
SPEAKER_09: Um and so, yeah, absolutely post-Christianity can be entirely un-Christian and anti-Christian, and yet clothed in some fairly Christian sounding phrases and slogans.
14:01
SPEAKER_09: Um, so what's what's interesting is that is that Christianity i is this um thing that everybody kind of has to has to deal with.
14:10
SPEAKER_09: And even as Tom Holland like talks about, you know, Nazism or fascism or um going for power, there there still is this sense that oh, that can't be the way, can it?
14:23
SPEAKER_09: And if if somebody really does reject the way of the cross, um that does feel incredibly weighty, that does still have the the feeling of almost the the worst, most abysmal moral stance that you can take to be against the way of the cross.
14:40
SPEAKER_09: And so really you you can't escape the way of Jesus.
14:44
SPEAKER_09: Like even if you are against him, he he still has marked us, and you are marked with his symbol, his sign, uh, such that yeah, no, no one really escapes the influence of Jesus, whether for better or for worse, I think.
15:03
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16:06
SPEAKER_00: Back to the conversation.
16:10
SPEAKER_06: So in this bowl, I'll just lift that up.
16:13
SPEAKER_06: I have some cultural moments that have happened recently.
16:18
SPEAKER_09: It's boiling up, bubbling.
16:21
SPEAKER_09: The cultural moments are frothing on the surface of this cauldron.
16:25
SPEAKER_06: So this is a variety of things.
16:27
SPEAKER_06: These are some of these are movies, some of these are things that have happened in the news, some of them are slogans that you will hear from different ideologies at the moment.
16:36
SPEAKER_06: Yep.
16:36
SPEAKER_06: And I thought we could just take it in turns to pick one from the bowl and then we'll discuss is it pre-Christian, Christian, post-Christian, or post-post-Christian or some combination.
16:46
SPEAKER_06: And how can we speak life as Christians into that moment?
16:51
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
16:51
SPEAKER_09: Um go for it.
16:53
SPEAKER_06: All right.
16:53
SPEAKER_06: How do you win this, by the way?
16:56
SPEAKER_06: That's the very Australian question.
16:57
SPEAKER_09: Just don't lose.
16:59
SPEAKER_09: Okay, all right.
17:00
SPEAKER_06: Don't be a loser.
17:01
SPEAKER_06: Um, right.
17:02
SPEAKER_06: So the first one is Zach Palanski on Jude Bellingham.
17:07
SPEAKER_06: So this is Zach Polanski, leader of the Green Party, talking about Jude Bellingham, who I believe is a football player.
17:15
SPEAKER_06: Maybe we should play it.
17:16
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
17:17
SPEAKER_06: Discuss whether whether he's pre-Christian, Christian, post-Christian, or post-post-Christian.
17:22
SPEAKER_17: I don't know if you're a football fan, but when Jude Bellingham scored for final goal, I think it was whether third and fourth teams were playing against each other, just felt this huge swell of patriotism.
17:31
SPEAKER_17: But also being really aware of the narrative, though, of you shouldn't have to score a goal.
17:35
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
17:36
SPEAKER_17: For someone to celebrate your identity.
17:38
SPEAKER_17: Again, it can be nuanced, and actually I was just really proud that someone of colour was scoring that.
17:43
SPEAKER_15: The World Cup was the perfect encapsulation of all the complexity.
17:48
SPEAKER_06: What is going on there?
17:50
SPEAKER_09: As though the goal of football is to celebrate identity.
17:54
SPEAKER_09: Um fascinating.
17:56
SPEAKER_09: Rather than let's let's have a good game and may the best team win.
18:00
SPEAKER_09: Um and and surely what's being what's being celebrated is the skill of a player who is representing England.
18:07
SPEAKER_09: But Zach wants to make it about yeah, a celebration of identity that's not English identity.
18:13
SPEAKER_09: And and and you get the feeling here that he's very conflicted about just cheering for his nation.
18:20
SPEAKER_09: And looming large here is Hitler, right?
18:25
SPEAKER_09: Like Hitler is in this conversation, right?
18:27
SPEAKER_09: Um, as we've talked about, with like fascism is is just this um it has it has played the role of or Hitler has played the role of antichrist, like in the Western imagination.
18:41
SPEAKER_09: Um because you know, when you orbit around the cross and you know, Jesus' ethic of equality and compassion, um, to have somebody like Hitler who is basically like, no, we're not all equal.
18:55
SPEAKER_09: There are the Arians and there are the rest, and there are the the Jews right at the bottom of the of the hierarchy.
19:00
SPEAKER_09: Um we are not all equal, and we will not have a compassion ethic, you know, and if you are disabled, we will put you to death because you are a drain on the states.
19:08
SPEAKER_09: And so so Hitler kind of in that sense was anti-Christ with a little A, little C, right?
19:14
SPEAKER_09: Um, but I think in the post-World War mythology, like he is antichrist, capital A, capital C, and for the record, I think he was a very, very, very, very, very evil man.
19:25
SPEAKER_09: Um but he is he has become Satan in the same case then.
19:30
SPEAKER_09: And if we're not.
19:31
SPEAKER_09: And did you see how much I wanted to, you know, be make very clear I'm not on Hitler's side.
19:36
SPEAKER_09: And so does Zach Balansky.
19:38
SPEAKER_09: I want to make it very, very clear.
19:39
SPEAKER_09: I'm not going rightward with Hitler.
19:42
SPEAKER_06: So he instinctively reacts against the idea of celebrating his country and like patriotism.
19:48
SPEAKER_09: Because national socialism, right?
19:50
SPEAKER_09: Right?
19:50
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
19:50
SPEAKER_09: He doesn't mind socialism.
19:52
SPEAKER_07: He hates the national bit of national socialism.
19:55
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
19:55
SPEAKER_09: Right?
19:56
SPEAKER_09: And so, yeah, nationality, oh, that's very close to blood and soil.
20:00
SPEAKER_09: And there's a there's a conflict within him.
20:02
SPEAKER_09: Like, w are we really going to fly a flag?
20:04
SPEAKER_09: And and you know, and it's a very heated political climate, isn't it?
20:07
SPEAKER_09: What does it mean to fly an England flag if there's no World Cup?
20:11
SPEAKER_09: Like, if there's no World Cup to fly an England flag is is absolutely a political statement, and it puts you on the right of politics, and it it makes you more nationalistic than globalistic.
20:20
SPEAKER_09: And and so, yeah, he he really wants to shrink back from that.
20:24
SPEAKER_09: But therefore, how is he going to enjoy football?
20:26
SPEAKER_09: But it's not it's not like England beat France.
20:29
SPEAKER_06: Right.
20:30
SPEAKER_09: Um, it it is uh a black player has done well, and let's let's celebrate diversity and let's let's celebrate minorities, yeah.
20:40
SPEAKER_09: Which which I think is is a classic post-Christian move, really.
20:43
SPEAKER_06: And he wants to say even if Bellingham hadn't scored, he still wants to celebrate.
20:48
SPEAKER_06: Yes, yes.
20:50
SPEAKER_09: Not how football works, Zach.
20:53
SPEAKER_09: It's not sport you want, then Zach.
20:55
SPEAKER_06: It's not sport that you want.
20:56
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
20:57
SPEAKER_06: So he's kind of a classic post-Christian figure, slightly tying himself in knots there.
21:04
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, yeah.
21:05
SPEAKER_09: And and yeah, and that's important that we've brought up the the World War II mythology as well.
21:10
SPEAKER_09: The world more the World War II mythology, as Alec Ryrie kind of says, is is where Hitler has supplanted Satan.
21:16
SPEAKER_09: We don't we don't need Satan anymore because we've got we've got Hitler and we're not now motivated by what did Jesus do, let's do that.
21:24
SPEAKER_09: We're now motivated by what did Hitler do, let's not do that.
21:28
SPEAKER_09: And so as Alec Ryrie says, we we are now in in the post-war era, motivated not by what we love, but by what we hate, not by a positive example, but by avoiding a negative example.
21:40
SPEAKER_09: And as Alec Ryrie notes, the the World War II era is coming to an end.
21:46
SPEAKER_09: Everybody who fought in that war is pretty much now dead, and the living memory has faded.
21:52
SPEAKER_09: But also the strength of that story um was never going to last that long.
21:57
SPEAKER_09: And I think we've we're kind of reaching the end.
22:00
SPEAKER_09: End of of that narrative and people are sort of coming apart.
22:03
SPEAKER_09: And are we able to now survive on the on the memory of a narrative that itself was actually just parasitic upon the Christian story?
22:15
SPEAKER_09: Probably not.
22:16
SPEAKER_09: And so what are we going to do about that?
22:17
SPEAKER_09: Are we just going to double down on the slogans?
22:19
SPEAKER_09: Are we just going to like like hashtag compassion?
22:21
SPEAKER_09: Hashtag diversity.
22:23
SPEAKER_09: Are we going to just cling to that?
22:25
SPEAKER_09: That's that's one option.
22:26
SPEAKER_09: It's not the only option though.
22:29
SPEAKER_06: Do you want to go next?
22:30
SPEAKER_06: Let's go next.
22:31
SPEAKER_06: Should we try and make these rapid fire fire as rapid fire as they can be?
22:36
SPEAKER_09: Oh, yeah, here's the most rapid one of all.
22:38
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
22:39
SPEAKER_06: Love is love.
22:40
SPEAKER_06: Love is love.
22:41
SPEAKER_06: Wow.
22:42
SPEAKER_06: Okay, so that's a slogan probably quite regularly used by the LGBTQIA plus movement.
22:50
SPEAKER_06: That's very post-Christian, isn't it?
22:52
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
22:53
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I would say.
22:54
SPEAKER_09: Um in pre-Christianity, um, there is a lot about honor and duty and and um uh loyalty, and there are all kinds of moral intuitions that you might want to foreground in a pre-Christian society, and and and those are good things to foreground.
23:10
SPEAKER_09: Um but but I think Larry Hurtado in the in The Destroyer of the Gods, he's got this great section about how weird the Christians were.
23:16
SPEAKER_09: The early early church was just weird for just foregrounding love in in this in this way.
23:22
SPEAKER_09: Like friendship was a massive deal for for the Stoics, um but but it was sort of the the camaraderie, the same-sex, sort of platonic um love.
23:36
SPEAKER_09: And then Christians were coming along with this agape love that was modelled after Jesus.
23:41
SPEAKER_09: He says, as I have loved you, so you must love one another.
23:43
SPEAKER_09: Well, how has Jesus loved us?
23:44
SPEAKER_09: Well, in this extraordinary, self-giving, bleeding kind of kind of way that that is visceral, that is gut-wrenching, and that costs him.
23:53
SPEAKER_09: You know, he bleeds for for even his enemies, right?
23:56
SPEAKER_09: And and so this love ethic um just grips Christianity, and Augustine says, you know, love and do what you will.
24:03
SPEAKER_09: You know, that's like all of morality is love and do what you will.
24:06
SPEAKER_09: Brilliant, beautiful.
24:08
SPEAKER_09: I think in a post-Christian um kind of society, Carl Truman in The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self just sort of says that the self is psychologized, that's what Jean-Jacques Rousseau kind of taught us, and then psychology is sexualized, that's what Freud taught us, and then sexuality is politicized, which is what Foucault taught us.
24:28
SPEAKER_09: And now love is love.
24:30
SPEAKER_09: Like that that is now now love means like eros.
24:36
SPEAKER_09: Um, which is really crazy because like love is like the way I love biscuits is not the same as the way I love even the members of my family.
24:47
SPEAKER_09: Like I love the members of my family quite differently, and it's very important.
24:50
SPEAKER_09: But love is love.
24:51
SPEAKER_09: But love is love, but it's just it's it's just the perfect representation of how we've gone from the fruit of the kingdom to virtues of a certain ethic, to values of a certain lifestyle, to slogans in the popular imagination.
25:10
SPEAKER_09: And that's that's really what love is love is a slogan, it's a hashtag now.
25:14
SPEAKER_06: It is because it's fascinating how first John says God is love.
25:17
SPEAKER_06: Right.
25:17
SPEAKER_06: So in the Christian story, if you want to know what God what true love is, look to the God who bleeds on the cross.
25:23
SPEAKER_06: Right.
25:24
SPEAKER_06: Um, but we've replaced God is love with love is love.
25:28
SPEAKER_06: So apparently in post-Christianity, love is a kind of self-defining thing.
25:33
SPEAKER_06: Self-evident, yeah, self-evident.
25:36
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
25:36
SPEAKER_06: And right, yeah.
25:39
SPEAKER_06: It's just vibes.
25:39
SPEAKER_06: What is it?
25:40
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, what is it?
25:41
SPEAKER_09: Didn't I tell you?
25:42
SPEAKER_09: Love is love, right?
25:43
SPEAKER_09: Hashtag love is love.
25:44
SPEAKER_09: That's the end of the story.
25:45
SPEAKER_06: It's meant to be a kind of slam dunk shut the conversation down.
25:48
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
25:49
SPEAKER_09: Which goes to show that like I think post-Christianity is a castle in the air.
25:53
SPEAKER_09: And so there and there are many people on left and right who are kind of recognizing that it's a bit of a castle in the air and they want something beneath their feet.
26:00
SPEAKER_09: And I I think that's partly why people are trying out church, because they're they're sort of they're recognizing that there are foundations to some of the intuitions that they have, and um love is love, uh, the the the hashtag is not the foundation.
26:14
SPEAKER_09: Maybe Jesus is, you know.
26:17
SPEAKER_06: Whose turn is it?
26:18
SPEAKER_06: You?
26:18
SPEAKER_06: Alright, what have we got?
26:24
SPEAKER_06: What is it?
26:27
SPEAKER_06: Can you abort the baby if it's gay?
26:30
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
26:31
SPEAKER_06: This is have you seen this clip?
26:32
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
26:33
SPEAKER_06: This is Ben Shapiro reacting to some Vox Pops in the street.
26:37
SPEAKER_08: Yeah, yeah.
26:37
SPEAKER_08: It rings a bell.
26:38
SPEAKER_08: Yeah.
26:38
SPEAKER_08: Let's have a look.
26:39
SPEAKER_08: Let's have a look.
26:40
SPEAKER_04: We are definitely pro-choice.
26:41
SPEAKER_04: Okay.
26:42
SPEAKER_04: Do you support a woman's right to choose for any reason?
26:44
SPEAKER_04: Any reason whatsoever.
26:46
SPEAKER_04: Maybe just somebody just doesn't want to have a gay child.
26:48
SPEAKER_04: Should they be able to abort?
26:50
SPEAKER_04: Oh.
26:51
SPEAKER_04: Oh.
26:51
SPEAKER_04: Ugh.
26:52
SPEAKER_04: Sound bad.
26:53
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
26:54
SPEAKER_04: No.
26:56
SPEAKER_05: No, I mean, abortion should always be your water your right as a woman.
26:59
SPEAKER_05: But if it's if you're past 12 weeks or whatever, and you find out you have a gay baby, it should never be aborted.
27:08
SPEAKER_05: And maybe then they could put it up for adoption.
27:11
SPEAKER_13: So all it took to flip the lady from pro-choice to pro-life was to say that the baby might be gay.
27:15
SPEAKER_13: What about killing the babies is just bad?
27:17
SPEAKER_13: What if that's what if that?
27:19
SPEAKER_13: Yeah.
27:20
SPEAKER_13: Wow.
27:20
SPEAKER_06: Wow.
27:21
SPEAKER_06: That's again very post-Christian, isn't it?
27:23
SPEAKER_06: Would you say?
27:24
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
27:24
SPEAKER_06: But you're seeing the clash of the two values.
27:27
SPEAKER_06: Because on the one hand, you've got like valuing personal or bodily autonomy of the woman and choice.
27:32
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
27:33
SPEAKER_06: But then also valuing compassion for minorities.
27:35
SPEAKER_06: And the genius question of can you abort the baby on the basis of it being gay?
27:40
SPEAKER_06: That suddenly shows the contradiction in the worldview because it's like, oh no, actually, I don't like the sound of abortion in that case.
27:49
SPEAKER_06: Even if the even if the mother wants it.
27:51
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
27:52
SPEAKER_09: GKS Jeston said that uh it's it's not really that we've got vices running running amok in Western society.
27:59
SPEAKER_09: He said this a hundred years ago.
28:00
SPEAKER_09: It's not that we have vices running amok, we've got virtues running amok.
28:04
SPEAKER_09: They have been divorced from their origins, divorced from the Christian story in which they they once made sense, and now they're out there in the world clashing with each other.
28:15
SPEAKER_09: And I think the the virtues run amok um thing, my goodness, I don't think I've I've seen you know 39 seconds that more displays the the contradictions that are out there because we have divorced the fruits from the roots and and now we don't really know how to how to navigate the world.
28:33
SPEAKER_09: Wow.
28:34
SPEAKER_06: Right?
28:34
SPEAKER_06: Is it your turn, Glenn?
28:35
SPEAKER_09: Wow, okay.
28:36
SPEAKER_06: Uh we've had a lot of post-Christian ones.
28:40
SPEAKER_06: Maybe this will be different.
28:41
SPEAKER_09: What have you put in here?
28:42
SPEAKER_09: Oh, this is very different.
28:44
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
28:45
SPEAKER_06: The Northmen.
28:46
SPEAKER_06: Is it the Northmen or the Northmen?
28:47
SPEAKER_06: The Northmen.
28:48
SPEAKER_06: The Northmen.
28:49
SPEAKER_06: Yes, have you seen that film?
28:50
SPEAKER_09: I have.
28:51
SPEAKER_09: I s yeah, I s I saw it on a on a plane, and the uh the contrast was I couldn't make the screen bright enough because it's just such a dark movie in in in every kind of sense, The North Man.
29:04
SPEAKER_09: But uh yeah, so Viking Society, it's set when?
29:08
SPEAKER_06: I think in the 900s.
29:09
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
29:10
SPEAKER_06: And directed by Robert Eggers, who's known for doing he really takes history seriously in his films, so he'll look at source material from the time and base the script on that.
29:20
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
29:20
SPEAKER_06: So that's very much a pre-Christian story, isn't it?
29:24
SPEAKER_09: Even though it's 900 AD.
29:26
SPEAKER_09: Yes.
29:26
SPEAKER_09: Here is a society that has not grown up venerating the cross.
29:30
SPEAKER_06: No.
29:30
SPEAKER_06: Exactly, yeah.
29:31
SPEAKER_06: And that it's a story of a guy who basically wants vengeance and gets it.
29:35
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
29:36
SPEAKER_06: And I think what people found quite refreshing but also confronting about it was that it felt like an honest depiction of the Vikings.
29:44
SPEAKER_06: It didn't try to sugarcoat it or look at it through a post-Christian lens, kind of try to turn him into a hero that we could all be rooting for as modern Westerners.
29:53
SPEAKER_06: It's like, no, this this it's pretty savage and brutal, uh, but this is the way it often worked.
29:59
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
30:00
SPEAKER_06: It just tells that pope pre-Christian story quite authentically.
30:03
SPEAKER_09: I remember talking to Constantine Kisson on this channel, and um and he was really wrestling with, and and like he's he's been going to church a little bit um more recently, Constantine, but certainly a few years ago um he wasn't.
30:18
SPEAKER_09: And what he was wrestling with is like, are Christians too Pollyanna-ish about what reality is?
30:25
SPEAKER_09: Um is the world really like Middle earth, which is um a a place of deep suffering, but also it is sort of open to um it's open to grace, it's open to mercy, and that actually you can struggle and bring about a redemption within the world of Middle Earth, or is it more like Westeros um, you know, from Game of Thrones?
30:49
SPEAKER_09: Like what is what is reality really like?
30:52
SPEAKER_09: And I I I think some very helpful conversations that will speak life uh to people are just opening up that that issue.
31:01
SPEAKER_09: Like, do we do we live in the Northmen world?
31:05
SPEAKER_09: Do we live in Westeros in in Game of Thrones land?
31:09
SPEAKER_09: Is it all power?
31:10
SPEAKER_09: Is it all power?
31:11
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
31:12
SPEAKER_09: Or can a plucky, you know, group of hobbits and and and humans and dwarves kind of band together in the name of self-sacrificial love and honor and duty and and uh you know and can they through an ordeal bring about triumph?
31:32
SPEAKER_09: Um yeah, what kind of world do we live in?
31:34
SPEAKER_09: Like what what kind of conversations because you're you're used to having these these sorts of conversations around movies and around these imaginary worlds that we inhabit for a couple of hours in a in a cinema.
31:45
SPEAKER_09: Where would you, if you you've just taken a friend to the Northmen, yeah, you go out afterwards and you're like, well, that was bleak.
31:52
SPEAKER_09: How do you speak life into that conversation?
31:54
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I think exactly what you just said, I would probably say something like, that was a really good film, wasn't it?
32:00
SPEAKER_06: I mean, it was very immersive and cinematic, and we enjoyed spending two hours in that film, but is that the world you actually want to be living in?
32:09
SPEAKER_06: Um, probably not.
32:10
SPEAKER_06: I think I think our discomfort at the Northmen testifies to the fact that that is not all there is to reality.
32:19
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
32:20
SPEAKER_09: And and the I think there's something deeper and more mature about Lord of the Rings than there is about the Northmen.
32:28
SPEAKER_09: Like this there's something actually quite infantile about revenge.
32:33
SPEAKER_09: It's very base, it's very oh I I get that, I understand that.
32:37
SPEAKER_09: But there's something like the you catastrophe of what Tolkien is doing, you know, the good catastrophe of self-sacrificial love that actually ends up redeeming.
32:48
SPEAKER_09: There's there's kind of there's a complexity to that, and there's a there's a variegated depth and richness to that that is sort of missing, I think, in some of these bleaker stories.
33:01
SPEAKER_09: Like, there's there's no one more entitled and infantile than an infant, right?
33:06
SPEAKER_09: An infant who's two years old, like cannot understand why there's any pain in their life.
33:12
SPEAKER_09: Like they they can't, you know, they they have no delayed gratification.
33:16
SPEAKER_09: And if pleasure is not outweighing pain in the moment, they cannot conceive of a story that will make sense of their pre their present suffering.
33:24
SPEAKER_09: And and of course they're very retributive.
33:27
SPEAKER_09: Infants are very retributive, they they behave exactly like the Northmen behaves, right?
33:31
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, and maybe I don't know, maybe maybe there's an argument that humanity has come of age with the Jesus story, and there really is no going back from it, you know.
33:40
SPEAKER_09: I don't know.
33:42
SPEAKER_06: Be mature, a Christian.
33:44
SPEAKER_06: A grow up and a glow up.
33:47
SPEAKER_19: Yeah.
33:48
SPEAKER_06: That's Christianity.
33:49
SPEAKER_06: That's it, there's a real okay.
33:51
SPEAKER_06: What's the next one?
33:54
SPEAKER_06: So from the pre-Christian to 3-2-1.
34:00
SPEAKER_08: Did you really?
34:01
SPEAKER_08: You checked it out.
34:02
SPEAKER_08: 3-2-1.
34:03
SPEAKER_09: Well, if you want to know what Christianity is, then uh you can go to 321course.com and you can get in eight sessions, or you you can binge it in a couple of hours, or you can do it over the eight sessions and get this this Jesus vision for God, the world, and you.
34:17
SPEAKER_09: So yeah.
34:18
SPEAKER_06: There we go.
34:18
SPEAKER_06: Shameless plumbe.
34:19
SPEAKER_06: Shameless plume.
34:20
SPEAKER_06: You just have to poke Glenn and 321 will come out.
34:22
SPEAKER_06: That's it.
34:22
SPEAKER_06: But so so we we hope that 321 is is Christian, right?
34:27
SPEAKER_06: We hope it is.
34:28
SPEAKER_06: It's it's showing people the Christian story.
34:30
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
34:31
SPEAKER_06: And something that you can sew into conversations with people who are pre-Christian, post-Christian, and post-post-Christian, hopefully.
34:38
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, right.
34:39
SPEAKER_09: And and Christian.
34:40
SPEAKER_09: And Christian.
34:41
SPEAKER_09: There are plenty of FAQ questions that are coming from various post-Christian spaces, especially, uh, about how to make sense of Christianity.
34:49
SPEAKER_09: So hopefully that helps people.
34:51
SPEAKER_09: Right.
34:52
SPEAKER_07: Enough of the shameless blood.
34:53
SPEAKER_07: Okay, here we go.
34:54
SPEAKER_07: What's this one?
34:56
SPEAKER_09: Oh, this is for you, Thomas.
34:58
SPEAKER_09: Uh huh.
34:59
SPEAKER_09: The Odyssey, but interestingly, brackets 2026 movie.
35:04
SPEAKER_09: Because I've I've read the Odyssey, the the old Odyssey, the very much pre-Christian Odyssey.
35:11
SPEAKER_09: I have not yet seen the 2026 movie.
35:13
SPEAKER_09: So your your account of the Odyssey 2026 movie.
35:17
SPEAKER_06: Yes, such an interesting contrast with the Northmen, because if the Northmen goes back to a pre-Christian culture and tells it quite authentically, Nolan's film, The Odyssey, um, takes Homer's text, uh, which is pre-Christian, obviously, it's about a pagan Bronze Age warrior, Odysseus, seeking glory, and it kind of views that through a post-Christian lens.
35:41
SPEAKER_06: So in the film, Odysseus is depicted as this kind of tortured figure who regrets the Trojan horse.
35:47
SPEAKER_06: He has kind of Oppenheimer levels of regret for bringing this agent of war into the world and feeling bad about what he did to all those uh helping.
36:00
SPEAKER_06: So it's so fascinating because yes, it's a it's a pre-Christian story, but Nolan's adaptation very much tries to tell him in turn him into an all-American hero and view it through a post-Christian lens.
36:14
SPEAKER_09: And I think uh the there's this example of the the Chinese like like I don't know what she is.
36:20
SPEAKER_06: She she's a kind of a a Homer, she's a classicist, I guess.
36:24
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, Chinese interviewer talking to Christopher Nolan, and I think I love Christopher Nolan, but I think she almost understands his film better than he does.
36:34
SPEAKER_06: Yep.
36:35
SPEAKER_06: Precisely because he's so immersed in his culture and maybe can't see how specifically Christian some of the things he did to that film were.
36:44
SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
36:45
SPEAKER_06: So maybe it takes someone from quite a different culture to kind of diagnose that.
36:50
SPEAKER_06: So here the interview kind of presses him on it.
36:54
SPEAKER_01: I guess the the a natural question that I had when watching the film was did you Christianize the Odyssey?
36:59
SPEAKER_01: Um, do you think that atonement, why did atonement become important for the coming of catastrophe?
37:07
SPEAKER_14: I think it's a really good question.
37:09
SPEAKER_14: Uh it's sometimes it's difficult to draw a line.
37:12
SPEAKER_14: And I think academics often maybe are too dogmatic in drawing a line between different philosophies and as they evolve historically, because I think I was more interested in commonalities.
37:21
SPEAKER_01: You've already started to complain about academics, and I feel like the next question will expose me even more.
37:26
SPEAKER_01: We live in an age that demands apology for from greatness.
37:29
SPEAKER_10: Yeah.
37:30
SPEAKER_01: Um, great storytellers, when they portray greatness, no Homer celebrates it.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: We circle around it, we dance around it, we turn greatness into privileges and we demand apologies for it.
37:39
SPEAKER_01: That's a fact of Hollywood.
37:42
SPEAKER_09: And I think so.
37:43
SPEAKER_09: Obviously, the cross um is the greatest thing that humanity has ever seen.
37:49
SPEAKER_09: Um and it is a picture in one sense of weakness, and it's a picture in in in one sense of self-abnegation and and just like making yourself a zero for the sake of the world.
38:00
SPEAKER_09: Um but that is not the same as saying there's no such thing as greatness.
38:05
SPEAKER_09: It's just it's it's saying greatness is in self-sacrifice, and I guess in the medieval period you would have um great men are gentlemen, right?
38:16
SPEAKER_09: And a gentleman is still great, but uh a gentleman exercises his greatness in you know using his strength for the the lifting up of others and that sort of thing.
38:28
SPEAKER_09: But I think in a post-Christian frame, what we what we hold on to from the Christian story is the sort of the self-abnegation and um and not so much the the use of strength.
38:40
SPEAKER_09: It's sort of the maybe strength by itself is um is is a dead write-off.
38:47
SPEAKER_09: And again, what we've got is the Hitler narrative kind of very loudly in our cultural memory that here is here is somebody who just wanted living space and just wanted to be he wanted to be great, he wanted to have that thousand-year Reich, right?
38:59
SPEAKER_09: And and you know, he he didn't mind being in the tradition of Alexander the Great.
39:06
SPEAKER_09: You know, he he he wanted to be the Fuhrer, and um and so we s we sort of meld the anti-Hitler story with the sort of the Christian story, and we end up with this post-Christian story that doesn't really know what to do with strength, with glory, with greatness, and we just end up apologizing for ourselves the the whole time, which I don't what I don't think Christian society necess necessarily has to do.
39:30
SPEAKER_09: But I I think there's there's something within post-Christian society that that is constantly doing that.
39:35
SPEAKER_09: And it's kind of like the Zach Polanski thing, isn't it?
39:38
SPEAKER_09: Like, like I I see Jude Bellingham score the goal, and I want to say Yay England.
39:43
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
39:45
SPEAKER_09: But if I'm gonna celebrate anything, it's not going to be great skill.
39:50
SPEAKER_09: It's it's gonna be, well, the lifting up of marginalized people, which which is a very different thing to just the greatness of of watching Jude Bellingham score a goal.
39:59
SPEAKER_09: Like, why why can't we just celebrate greatness?
40:02
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, we're bringing that even into football, yeah.
40:05
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and repentance under Christianity has kind of become self-flagellation.
40:11
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
40:11
SPEAKER_06: And to what end and how long for and can it be performative?
40:15
SPEAKER_06: Right, right.
40:16
SPEAKER_06: That's kind of the post-Christian kind of repentance.
40:19
SPEAKER_09: To which the post post-Christian people, the anti-woke, right, just are like, guys, just shut up.
40:24
SPEAKER_09: And then they just want to go for raw power.
40:26
SPEAKER_09: Right.
40:26
SPEAKER_09: So the anti-woke are just stop apologizing.
40:28
SPEAKER_06: Like, oh, it's great that Odysseus like killed all those Trojans.
40:32
SPEAKER_06: Come on.
40:33
SPEAKER_06: Do it more.
40:34
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, if he can, why shouldn't he?
40:35
SPEAKER_09: You know, so Christendom gave us the crusades.
40:40
SPEAKER_09: And many of uh the the atrocities that are performed there um are nothing but war crimes and and and wickedness.
40:50
SPEAKER_09: Post-Christianity, like apologetics in post-Christendom, is largely about um saying, oh yeah, no, the crusades were entirely wrong, entirely unjustified.
41:02
SPEAKER_09: Um there's absolutely no argument to be made, even for the first crusade or whatever.
41:06
SPEAKER_09: And so you're in apologetics mode among post-Christian people.
41:09
SPEAKER_09: It's just apology, just apology, just apology.
41:12
SPEAKER_09: Now, among the anti-woke, the post-post-Christian, they're they're kind of like, hey, we should have more crusades.
41:19
SPEAKER_09: Stop, stop apologizing for war crimes, like go, like, kind of go for it.
41:24
SPEAKER_09: Um, and so yeah, it's it's such a mess, like telling the Christian story now and trying to trying to hold on to Christ and Him crucified, which is a picture of greatness and it's a picture of sacrifice all at once.
41:38
SPEAKER_09: No wonder society kind of splinters when it can't hold him at the center.
41:42
SPEAKER_09: Like if you're not gonna have Jesus at the center, then these instincts that the cross birthed in us are not gonna be held together any other way than in Christ.
41:50
SPEAKER_09: So no wonder when he's not front and center, some people are gonna go with the the just the self-abnegation just to make yourself a zero kind of way, and some people are gonna go with just the strength thing.
42:01
SPEAKER_09: Um, yeah, with without Jesus, of course we're gonna splinter.
42:04
SPEAKER_09: Hmm.
42:05
SPEAKER_09: What we got to try another one.
42:08
SPEAKER_06: What's this?
42:11
SPEAKER_06: Queers for Palestine.
42:13
SPEAKER_09: Okay.
42:14
SPEAKER_09: Is this an official organization, Queers for Palestine?
42:16
SPEAKER_09: It's it's not like it's certainly a movement.
42:19
SPEAKER_09: I don't know if they have It's certainly a hashtag.
42:21
SPEAKER_06: It's certainly a press.
42:22
SPEAKER_06: Absolutely.
42:23
SPEAKER_06: I think lots of people wanting to show solidarity with the the suffering of Palestinian civilians.
42:29
SPEAKER_06: And among them have been queers, uh as they would call themselves.
42:33
SPEAKER_06: But it's sort there's a a weird clash in that sentence, isn't there?
42:38
SPEAKER_06: Queers for Palestine.
42:40
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
42:43
SPEAKER_06: Right.
42:44
SPEAKER_06: Right.
42:45
SPEAKER_09: Right.
42:45
SPEAKER_09: And and so not only do we have kind of two values that are that are clashing within Queers for Palestine, um we we want to privilege the marginalized um in a story in which you know we consider Israel to the be the oppressor and Palestine to be um the oppressed, and so the the Palestinians you know win that kind of brownie point for for being marginalized.
43:13
SPEAKER_09: And and we want to celebrate the marginalized in terms of sexuality.
43:19
SPEAKER_09: And so I guess Queers for Palestine kind of wins both those um, you know, the the the what are they called?
43:28
SPEAKER_09: The the oppression Olympics, or you know, competitive victimhood.
43:31
SPEAKER_09: And yet, obviously, yeah, Palestine itself is not for queers.
43:35
SPEAKER_09: And I kind of it's it's it's what is privileged in both of those, though, I guess, is the the desire for diversity, equity, inclusion, the the desire for the lifting up of the victim and the and the lifting up of the little guy.
43:50
SPEAKER_09: Which is very recognizably Christian.
43:52
SPEAKER_09: Right.
43:53
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
43:53
SPEAKER_09: Right?
43:53
SPEAKER_09: It has an origin to it, and it's hard to think that we get there except by going through a road.
44:00
SPEAKER_09: That's you know, centuries and millennia long of Christianization, we come out the other side of that and we end up with queers for Palestine, and it would make no sense without the Christian weathering for millennia that it happened.
44:13
SPEAKER_09: But it's it's kind of incoherent, isn't it?
44:15
SPEAKER_06: So we're saying that's post-Christian.
44:18
SPEAKER_09: We are saying that's post-Christian.
44:19
SPEAKER_09: But what I I guess what we're also saying is um we only really know about queers for Palestine because of the post-post-Christian people.
44:26
SPEAKER_09: Right.
44:27
SPEAKER_09: Let's be honest about that.
44:28
SPEAKER_09: It's the anti-woke that are bringing that to the fore.
44:31
SPEAKER_09: Who knows how many people have actually tweeted hashtag queers for Palestine in earnest.
44:38
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
44:38
SPEAKER_09: Um, certainly a lot more anti wok anti-woke.
44:42
SPEAKER_09: Certainly a lot more post-post-Christian people have lifted up this as an example, a reductio ad absurdum of of where post-Christianity goes.
44:50
SPEAKER_09: So that's that's another interesting thing that is at play here.
44:54
SPEAKER_06: There are a lot of caricatures in all of these camps.
44:57
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
44:57
SPEAKER_09: And we kind of yeah, we don't know who we are if we don't have a caricature on the other side to deride and make fun of.
45:04
SPEAKER_09: It's like, yeah.
45:06
SPEAKER_09: Okay.
45:07
SPEAKER_09: I think is this our first person?
45:09
SPEAKER_09: Taylor Swift.
45:10
SPEAKER_09: Taylor Swift.
45:13
SPEAKER_09: The entire person of Taylor Swift.
45:16
SPEAKER_06: Ah, I think maybe you could see Taylor Swift as a very talented and creative kind of figure for post-Christianity in the sense that she hurt a lot of her songs and a lot of what she talks about is I she might resonate with the phrase love is love, for instance.
45:32
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
45:33
SPEAKER_06: And so she's she's kind of And she'd say she's a Christian, right?
45:37
SPEAKER_09: At the same time, yeah.
45:38
SPEAKER_09: Right.
45:38
SPEAKER_09: Oh, does she?
45:39
SPEAKER_09: I didn't know that.
45:40
SPEAKER_09: Okay.
45:41
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
45:41
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
45:42
SPEAKER_06: So she's kind of representing the progressive values, and interestingly, the right maybe doesn't have someone like that.
45:50
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
45:51
SPEAKER_06: A Taylor Swift.
45:52
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
45:54
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I don't know.
45:54
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
45:55
SPEAKER_09: Who's and and when we say left and right, like, what does that mean anymore?
45:58
SPEAKER_09: It's so it's so strange that, you know, because interestingly, like the first popular figure I was thinking about on the right was Joe Rogan, just in that in that in that sense.
46:09
SPEAKER_09: Right.
46:09
SPEAKER_09: But in terms of somebody with with sort of cut through into the culture, and yet he voted for Bernie Sanders in in 2016, right?
46:17
SPEAKER_09: He's voted for Trump second time around.
46:19
SPEAKER_09: Um, he's been on a similar journey that many people have been on in this is in this vibe shift.
46:24
SPEAKER_09: And left and right doesn't really mean anything anymore.
46:26
SPEAKER_09: Um I I think actually what Thomas Holland has is spoken about here is more helpful for diagnosing um our cultural moment than left and right.
46:38
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
46:38
SPEAKER_09: Which is not surprising.
46:39
SPEAKER_09: I mean, left and right is a term that comes from the French Revolution less than 250 years ago.
46:45
SPEAKER_09: Um and so it's it's not surprising that something that that actually has been so culturally located in that post-Christian moment.
46:55
SPEAKER_09: Um, the fact that it isn't it has not survived Donald Trump, this post-post-Christian figure, you know.
47:02
SPEAKER_09: Left and right kind of worked in the environment that it it it emerged from, which is French Revolution, okay?
47:10
SPEAKER_09: And that's very post-Christian, obviously.
47:13
SPEAKER_09: But um, yeah, it it hasn't survived post-post-Christian, I don't think.
47:16
SPEAKER_09: Um, yeah, we need to think about other ways of describing things and maybe maybe like woke and anti-woker, other the new terms that that um define people.
47:30
SPEAKER_09: Oh, interesting.
47:31
SPEAKER_09: So we've got uh Peter Singer on Infanticide, uh, which is interesting because I I think Peter Singer is on the same side as Tom Holland in one regard.
47:41
SPEAKER_09: Both Peter Singer, um, who's this ethicist, he's uh Australian, he's been at Princeton for many, many years, um controversial.
47:48
SPEAKER_09: Uh he is kind of at the heart of effective altruism and all that kind of movement for trying to do as much good as you possibly can.
47:56
SPEAKER_09: And yet one of his most controversial views is that uh we shouldn't have a taboo on infanticide.
48:03
SPEAKER_09: Most other cultures in the world haven't had a taboo on infanticide.
48:07
SPEAKER_09: And the reason why we have a taboo on infanticide in Western culture is drummer all Christianity.
48:15
SPEAKER_09: So that's that's the that's the sense in which Peter Singer and Tom Holland are saying exactly the same thing.
48:19
SPEAKER_09: Christianity has utterly thoroughly shaped our moral sensibilities.
48:23
SPEAKER_09: It's just that Tom Holland tends to think that's a good thing, and Peter Singer uh thinks that that is in many regards uh a bad thing, not in all regards, but in many regards.
48:32
SPEAKER_09: And in particular, he's like, well, pre-Christian societies would wait to see whether they should keep the child that's just been born, or whether they should drown it or, you know, expose it, put it on a rubbish dump or something like that.
48:45
SPEAKER_09: And so, yeah, he's on the record um as being kind of pro-infanticide in certain circumstances.
48:54
SPEAKER_09: And I think that actually uh shows us how post-Christianity and Christianity really work together.
49:02
SPEAKER_09: Should we have a lip?
49:03
SPEAKER_09: Should we give it a watch?
49:04
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
49:05
SPEAKER_16: Because I don't think that humans are special just in virtue of being a member of the species Homo sapiens.
49:10
SPEAKER_16: I think that if you have humans who are, for example, uh severely damaged at birth, um, that it's not wrong to end their lives.
49:19
SPEAKER_16: So I think that in some cases uh human beings don't have a right to life uh because they're they don't have the possibility of having a worthwhile and meaningful life.
49:30
SPEAKER_16: And so, of course, I get flack from uh the conservative uh moralists and uh conservative Christians uh from that perspective.
49:37
SPEAKER_09: Those religious naysayers, they just get in the way of wanting to kill babies, don't they?
49:42
SPEAKER_09: You know, we want to kill babies, and the religious just they spoil they spoil all our fun, don't they?
49:48
SPEAKER_06: What is confronting about that for our culture is we're okay with infanticide when it's inside the womb.
49:55
SPEAKER_06: So what is it that changed why is the taboo?
49:58
SPEAKER_06: Which is exactly Peter Singer's argument.
50:00
SPEAKER_06: Right.
50:01
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
50:01
SPEAKER_06: He's like, oh, I thought we'd decided this.
50:04
SPEAKER_06: So he's trying to follow it to its logical conclusion.
50:07
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
50:08
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
50:08
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
50:08
SPEAKER_09: So come on, Western society.
50:10
SPEAKER_09: We know the right answer.
50:11
SPEAKER_09: We've been doing the right answer for many years, since the 1960s.
50:14
SPEAKER_09: We legalized abortion.
50:15
SPEAKER_09: Like this is just you know, and sometimes, you know, it's it's really hard marketing infanticide.
50:21
SPEAKER_09: Right.
50:22
SPEAKER_09: And so you might want to call it ethical euthanasia, ethical infant euthanasia or something like that.
50:27
SPEAKER_09: Um, or one of the one of the proposed titles um that might make it more acceptable in Western society is post-birth abortion.
50:35
SPEAKER_09: Right.
50:36
SPEAKER_09: Right.
50:36
SPEAKER_09: And so if if abortion is okay, why why not post bo post-birth abortion?
50:41
SPEAKER_09: And people like, you mean infanticide?
50:43
SPEAKER_07: Like, yeah.
50:45
SPEAKER_06: Wow.
50:46
SPEAKER_06: I mean I'm torn on this one because part of me hears that and thinks it's post-post-Christian because it just sounds like cynical, kind of if this person is useful or ideal uh for the family, might as well do away with it.
51:02
SPEAKER_06: But I feel like it's coming from a place of being very progressive and you know, choice and healthcare.
51:10
SPEAKER_06: And if the language around this, if we want to try and couch this in terms of compassion and stuff like that, Christian sounding language, maybe it's it's post-Christian.
51:21
SPEAKER_06: But I think a lot of pro-choice people would recoil at that.
51:25
SPEAKER_06: And it's interesting to ask them why, I suppose.
51:28
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, yeah.
51:29
SPEAKER_09: I mean, some of the arguments in favor that that are commonly trotted out are just things like I I don't want that child to suffer.
51:38
SPEAKER_09: Right.
51:38
SPEAKER_09: So the compassionate thing is I want to eliminate suffering, so I will eliminate the sufferer.
51:44
SPEAKER_09: And interestingly, even that is sort of clothed in a language of kindness.
51:50
SPEAKER_09: Um cruel to be kind.
51:52
SPEAKER_09: Um and yet it is it is utter cruelty.
51:55
SPEAKER_09: And as I said earlier, you know, 70 million abortions per year.
51:59
SPEAKER_09: More people die in the womb every year than outside of the womb every year.
52:03
SPEAKER_09: Only 60 million people die outside the womb every year.
52:06
SPEAKER_09: We managed to kill 70 million of them inside the w womb.
52:10
SPEAKER_09: Which which is so that that is to say, therefore, that post-Christianity is not um less cruel than the anti-woke.
52:19
SPEAKER_09: Yes.
52:20
SPEAKER_09: As much as you might really viscerally dislike Andrew Tate, and I do, um, there are figures that are his equivalent on the left that are advocating for just as much violence as Andrew Tate.
52:36
SPEAKER_06: But it's dressed up in terms of healthcare and choice and compassion.
52:40
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
52:41
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
52:41
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
52:42
SPEAKER_09: So it's yeah, so it's it's not the case that one side is just soft to a fault and the other side is just harsh to a fault.
52:51
SPEAKER_09: Um there is there is a harshness either way you go if you're going to reject the way of the cross.
52:56
SPEAKER_06: And to go fully pagan on the abortion or infancy question would be to to lose all of that kind of Christian dressing and just say Hashtag shout your abortion or yeah, yeah.
53:10
SPEAKER_06: That's then justifying a pagan thing with pagan language.
53:13
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
53:14
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
53:14
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I would I would say so.
53:16
SPEAKER_09: But um at that point, who cares whether you call yourself left wing or right wing, whether you call yourself progressive or traditionalist Right, yeah.
53:27
SPEAKER_09: It's so interesting that yeah, we we're almost so tribal that we we we don't allow ourselves to see the atrocities on either side, because you know oh, but th those are our atrocities.
53:38
SPEAKER_09: Your atrocities are worse than our atrocities.
53:40
SPEAKER_09: Like, yeah.
53:42
SPEAKER_09: Let's just stop killing people, maybe.
53:45
SPEAKER_06: That's the most unreasonable thing you've said too far, but we're gonna get so cancelled, aren't we?
53:51
SPEAKER_06: Man.
53:51
SPEAKER_06: Okay, what have we what do we have here?
53:54
SPEAKER_06: Well, speaking of which, Andrew Tate.
53:57
SPEAKER_06: Oh.
54:00
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
54:00
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
54:01
SPEAKER_06: So Andrew Tate's kind of the figurehead of the manosphere, as it's called, would you say?
54:06
SPEAKER_10: You're all over the manosphere, Thomas.
54:10
SPEAKER_06: Um this kind of movement of quite brash, masculine, here's what true masculinity looks like, kind of thing.
54:18
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, the reassertion.
54:19
SPEAKER_09: And and you can see why.
54:21
SPEAKER_09: Like post post-Christianity, and certainly the post-World War II story, if if Hitler and that war was bad and everything you know bad about society is that, then what is good can start to be a lot more left-wing coded and kind of feminine coded in in different ways, to the degree that things can be masculine-coded and feminine coded.
54:44
SPEAKER_09: But there therefore the backlash against that is is going to accentuate kind of male strengths.
54:51
SPEAKER_09: And Andrew Tate is chief among them.
54:53
SPEAKER_09: Hmm.
54:54
SPEAKER_09: Here's what he has to say.
54:56
SPEAKER_12: You know the best thing about Islam, the best thing about Islam is how simple it is because there's wrong and right.
55:00
SPEAKER_14: It's a simple religion.
55:01
SPEAKER_12: Well, it's wrong and right.
55:02
SPEAKER_12: I mean, you look at other religions and it's also subjective now.
55:05
SPEAKER_14: Yeah.
55:05
SPEAKER_12: And that's why I've said many times on different podcasts that it's the last true religion.
55:09
SPEAKER_12: If you don't have a strong barrier, if you don't have a yes and a no, you don't have a religion.
55:14
SPEAKER_12: If you tolerate everything, you stand for nothing.
55:16
SPEAKER_12: And if you believe in God and you say, I believe in God, but I'm not a Muslim, I'm gonna say, okay, that's fine.
55:21
SPEAKER_12: You're a Christian.
55:22
SPEAKER_12: What is Christianity anymore?
55:24
SPEAKER_12: What does it mean?
55:25
SPEAKER_12: You you can go to a Christian country and America, let's take, for example, and you'll get in more trouble for insulting George Floyd than you will for insulting Jesus Christ.
55:35
SPEAKER_14: Yeah, for sure.
55:36
SPEAKER_12: You literally you can walk down the t the walk down the street with a t-shirt saying Jesus is gay.
55:41
SPEAKER_12: Girls barely go to church.
55:42
SPEAKER_12: If they do, who knows what they were doing the night before?
55:44
SPEAKER_12: None of it means anything.
55:45
SPEAKER_12: And then if you go and find a Christian that says this trans person has has changed gender, what do you think about that?
55:52
SPEAKER_12: Christians are so soft, they're gonna go, well, I hope he finds redeem and I hope they, you know, he finds guidance.
55:59
SPEAKER_12: Haram, bro.
56:00
SPEAKER_12: Haram.
56:01
SPEAKER_12: No, you didn't.
56:02
SPEAKER_12: It's haram.
56:03
SPEAKER_12: And I like that it's yes and no.
56:04
SPEAKER_12: And what's the point in what's the point in a religion if you're too afraid to say what you believe in, or afraid to stick up for it, or afraid to to defend it?
56:14
SPEAKER_12: Then what's the point in any of it?
56:15
SPEAKER_12: So I feel like it's the last true religion.
56:18
SPEAKER_12: I feel like it's the last religion on the planet.
56:20
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, what's interesting about that is I suppose he's he's saying that Christ Christianity to him, as he sees it practiced in the West today, feels post-Christian, like it's just completely uh capitulated to woke ideology and isn't really standing up for itself or its beliefs, and therefore the response is power.
56:44
SPEAKER_06: Right.
56:45
SPEAKER_06: Masculine, Islam, right and wrong.
56:47
SPEAKER_06: Let's let's jump on that bandwagon instead.
56:49
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, and you can point to any number of mainline Protestant denominations that that's uh have done exactly what Andrew Tate is talking about, but it's it's sort of we we ha we are living in this antithesis between either side of of divides, and we live off the worst uh examples of the other side.
57:11
SPEAKER_09: And so, you know, I yes, of course you can point to any number of you know, Christians who've capitulated to X, Y, and Z.
57:18
SPEAKER_09: Um and you can point to a heck of a lot of robust Christianity that is living out the way of Jesus and actually calling on a true masculinity that is not your infantilized masculinity, your puerile masculinity, which is the the the so-called masculinity of an 11-year-old.
57:37
SPEAKER_09: It's you know, Andrew Tate is what an 11-year-old thinks a true man looks like.
57:42
SPEAKER_09: Um He's not what a 25-year-old newly married guy thinks a man looks like.
57:49
SPEAKER_09: Like anyone with any maturity looks at Andrew Tate and and sees that as utterly backwards and uh yeah, completely immature.
57:58
SPEAKER_09: Um but what Andrew Tate despises is a different kind of immaturity.
58:03
SPEAKER_09: You know, he despises the immaturity that is spineless, that shrinks back, that stands for nothing and falls for everything.
58:09
SPEAKER_09: Okay, sure.
58:10
SPEAKER_09: We can all do that, but now now how are you going to how are you going to respond?
58:15
SPEAKER_09: And I I often think like the Adam story is fascinating.
58:19
SPEAKER_09: There is Adam, he's meant to protect his bride.
58:22
SPEAKER_09: He was told about the fruit, she wasn't told about the fruit, and the whole time, like the the serpent is talking to Eve, and Adam is standing right there and he says nothing, like the cowardice of Adam, the shrinking back of Adam.
58:35
SPEAKER_09: Andrew Tate is right that that is false masculinity, right?
58:39
SPEAKER_09: But then after Eve takes the fruit and she gives some to Adam and he's like, sure, let's go first.
58:44
SPEAKER_09: Like, what an what an idiot.
58:46
SPEAKER_09: And then as soon as he does it, he lashes out at her.
58:48
SPEAKER_09: And he's like, like, this woman that you put here.
58:51
SPEAKER_09: And so, like, both expressions of false masculinity are on show in Genesis chapter three.
58:58
SPEAKER_09: He shrinks back and then he lashes out, right?
59:02
SPEAKER_09: And Andrew Tate can point to any number of examples of you know masculinity that is false that shrinks back when it should stand forth, you know, boldly.
59:13
SPEAKER_09: But he is the example of the masculinity that just lashes out, which is even more of a problem, right?
59:20
SPEAKER_09: And then Jesus is proclaimed in this in this passage in Genesis chapter 3, verse 15, like he is the one who will come to crush the head of the snake in order to save his bride, the the church.
59:35
SPEAKER_09: So he is he is not shrinking back or lashing out, like he is pouring himself out in order to lift us up.
59:42
SPEAKER_09: And so, yeah, absolutely Andrew Tate can rail against all the false masculinity that's out there in the world, but he is an avatar of the most dangerous kind of false masculinity.
59:54
SPEAKER_09: And you've got to go back to the source, you've got to go back to Jesus to see the real thing.
59:58
SPEAKER_06: It's notable that he likes Islam because yeah, Islam unashamedly spread by the sword, I guess, um, for much of its history.
1:00:10
SPEAKER_06: Would Andrew Tate look at he's he's kind of looked at parodies of Christianity.
1:00:14
SPEAKER_06: If he looked at real Christianity and turning the other cheek and loving your enemy instead of advancing by the sword, would he still call that weak?
1:00:23
SPEAKER_06: He probably would.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_06: Right.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_06: And it's like, actually, I think that's a lot stronger than spreading by violence.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_09: Right.
1:00:30
SPEAKER_09: And you've made your choice, and I I think that's the cowardly choice.
1:00:33
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_09: What's next?
1:00:36
SPEAKER_09: We're so cancelled, aren't we?
1:00:38
SPEAKER_09: Um I think it's your go.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_09: Is it me?
1:00:40
SPEAKER_09: All right, okay, here we go.
1:00:42
SPEAKER_09: How many of these are there?
1:00:44
SPEAKER_09: Okay.
1:00:45
SPEAKER_09: Trans women are women.
1:00:48
SPEAKER_09: Okay.
1:00:49
SPEAKER_09: This is a this is a this is a quick one, isn't it?
1:00:52
SPEAKER_09: Um I mean On the count of three.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_09: On the count of three post-Christian.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_09: Post-Christian.
1:00:56
SPEAKER_09: Post-Christian.
1:00:57
SPEAKER_09: Um and then yeah, the the anti-trans backlash um is kind of an anti-woke, you know, post-post-Christian sort of thing.
1:01:06
SPEAKER_09: Um but it's it's interestingly, there's an interesting thing going on with nature and grace there.
1:01:11
SPEAKER_09: That that actually in Jesus you've got you've got the union of nature and grace.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_09: Nature is the way things are, yeah.
1:01:18
SPEAKER_09: And grace is the way things ought to be.
1:01:21
SPEAKER_09: The avatar, the the representative of nature is Adam, the representative of grace is Christ, but it's Christ who becomes the second Adam, who unites himself to our nature so that he doesn't jettison the way things are, but he joins us in the way things are.
1:01:36
SPEAKER_09: And in his self-giving love, he redeems the way things are and rises up to the way things ought to be, having not left behind nature, having not left behind the way things are.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_09: And so within Christianity, you've got the union of nature and grace.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_09: Um, I think in post-Christianity we've we've gotten rid of Jesus and we're trying to hold nature and grace together.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_09: And there's something really important about saying that that masculinity there's a thing to masculinity that might not be identical to our biology.
1:02:06
SPEAKER_09: And there might be a thing about femininity that's not identical to our biology.
1:02:10
SPEAKER_09: Now it's it's dangerous to say that because then you might be left in the realm of caricature.
1:02:15
SPEAKER_09: Right.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_09: Right.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_09: Um, my masculinity is not my chromosomes, it's my ability to barbecue or whatever.
1:02:21
SPEAKER_09: Like, um, and then you can fall into to to caricature, but but possibly I'm gonna float this out there.
1:02:28
SPEAKER_09: There might be something to masculinity that's more than just just biology, and maybe our biology shapes us in ways that are not just physical, but perhaps emotional and that sort of thing as well.
1:02:38
SPEAKER_09: Um, but it's really difficult to hold nature and grace together without Jesus.
1:02:43
SPEAKER_09: Um and I guess the post-Christian thing is to actually jettison nature and rise up to grace, and now by sheer force of will, what my gender is has nothing to do with my nature, nothing to do with my chromosomes.
1:02:59
SPEAKER_09: It's all to do with how I identify now, right?
1:03:02
SPEAKER_09: And so if I identify as a trans woman, then I'm a woman, right?
1:03:06
SPEAKER_09: And and you know, by biology is a totally different conversation to be had.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_09: And so it I I think that's what's sort of going on in the post-Christian moment.
1:03:16
SPEAKER_09: And it's it's underneath it all is a kind of a separation of nature and race.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
1:03:22
SPEAKER_06: I think, yeah, trans women are women is very much a slogan of post-Christianity and wanting it's about wanting to grant compassion to trans people.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
1:03:33
SPEAKER_06: Um so it's it's not Christian, but it's unthinkable without Christianity.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_06: But I think trans ideology itself is actually weirdly kind of pre-Christian or almost Gnostic or pagan the the it's a spiritual view, really, to say that I could I'm a woman trapped in the man's body.
1:03:53
SPEAKER_16: Yes.
1:03:54
SPEAKER_06: That's uh a fascinating kind of it's like, wow, since since when uh did we think of humans in those terms?
1:04:02
SPEAKER_09: Um well, and that's so um uh I mentioned before Carl Truman's book, um, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self.
1:04:09
SPEAKER_09: Um he says like his whole project is how do we get to the stage of a sentence like I'm a man trapped in a woman's body or I'm a woman trapped in the man's body?
1:04:18
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:04:18
SPEAKER_09: How do we get to that sentence making any kind of sense culturally?
1:04:23
SPEAKER_09: And he sort of he sort of takes us through sort of those post-Christian figures of Rousseau and then uh Freud and then Foucault.
1:04:29
SPEAKER_09: Um and yeah, and and I think I think it does deliver us actually to a world in which the logos and the flesh are not united, you know?
1:04:39
SPEAKER_09: It's passed through this Christianization and then this post-Christianization.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_09: But just as the anti-woke can end up in a pr a kind of pre-Christianity.
1:04:49
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, I I I think the post-Christian can end up in a kind of pre-Christianity as well.
1:04:53
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_09: We're going deep, man.
1:04:55
SPEAKER_09: We are.
1:04:56
SPEAKER_09: Oh man.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_09: Extinction Rebellion! Oh wow.
1:05:00
SPEAKER_09: So throwing soup over artwork because you know the planet has 12 years to live and and was that just stop oil?
1:05:08
SPEAKER_09: Or maybe that's just stop oil.
1:05:09
SPEAKER_06: The kind of adjacent cause, I suppose, and net zero at all costs.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_06: And yeah, the planet is is burning up, humans are causing it.
1:05:18
SPEAKER_06: We need to take immediate action.
1:05:20
SPEAKER_09: It has its own eschatology and its own sort of ethics that are justified because of its eschatology.
1:05:25
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's it's got end times.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:05:28
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, that's right.
1:05:30
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:05:30
SPEAKER_09: Not particularly happy end times.
1:05:32
SPEAKER_06: In its extreme, some Extinction Rebellion people can come across as being quite anti-human.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_06: And will say things like, This planet has too many people on it.
1:05:40
SPEAKER_06: To which you say, What are we going to do about that?
1:05:43
SPEAKER_06: What do you suggest we do?
1:05:44
SPEAKER_06: What are you going to do about that?
1:05:46
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_06: Um so it can come across as being quite anti human.
1:05:52
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:05:53
SPEAKER_06: And we need to live on this planet as if we're not here.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_09: Right.
1:05:57
SPEAKER_06: And just let it become the jungle that it should be.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_06: That's not actually the genesis view, is it?
1:06:03
SPEAKER_09: No, no, exactly.
1:06:04
SPEAKER_09: I I think you know, creation is wild potential that humanity is meant to steward, and that this wild potential will not reach its potential without humans having dominion over it.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_09: And and you know that sounds very threatening because we know what humans are like and and humans can can be a blight on the planet, let's be honest.
1:06:21
SPEAKER_09: And and human greed uh is just this acquisitive, extractive human impulse to devour everything in our wake just to you know just to self-aggrandize.
1:06:35
SPEAKER_09: That that is very recognizably human, and I think the Bible has plenty to say about that, and and you know, what is the West's God?
1:06:46
SPEAKER_09: Um we can make all sorts of claims that you know Jesus Christ has been the West's God for for at least a thousand years and that that sort of thing.
1:06:54
SPEAKER_09: But I think Mammon has been the West's God in some very profound and uh destructive ways.
1:07:02
SPEAKER_09: And when people recognize that, um, yeah, we should definitely those with Christian ears um should definitely prick those ears up and and hear whatever messages that we ha we have to hear.
1:07:14
SPEAKER_09: But it's not humanity itself that's the problem.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_06: Cool.
1:07:18
SPEAKER_06: So Extinction Rebellion, we're thinking post-Christian.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_09: Post-Christian, I guess, but but again, can can end up in the pagan thing.
1:07:26
SPEAKER_06: Ah, so we've talked about abortion and infanticide.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_06: This is euphanasia or assisted suicide.
1:07:32
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_06: So this is the dignitas motto.
1:07:35
SPEAKER_06: Is that the organization in Switzerland that um would allow people to kill themselves?
1:07:41
SPEAKER_06: So to live with dignity, to die with dignity is their motto.
1:07:48
SPEAKER_09: Well, I mean, yeah, dignity, honour, it's like it's a very sort of recognizably traditional value.
1:07:56
SPEAKER_09: Um married to a very recognizably post-Christian um sense of personal choice and autonomy and the the individual.
1:08:06
SPEAKER_09: Um and unthinkable in in the modern ways that we think about euthanasia, obviously loads of cultures practice euthanasia.
1:08:16
SPEAKER_09: Um, but the modern ways in which we we think about it tend to be we're post-Jon Stuart Mill and sort of utilitarianism and and the sort of the greatest good of the greatest number and and trying to maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
1:08:31
SPEAKER_09: And in that frame, we are very much we struggle to to think that life is worth it if it's if there's more pain than pleasure.
1:08:40
SPEAKER_09: You know?
1:08:41
SPEAKER_09: We live for pleasure, we we live as hedonists, and when the hedens run out, right?
1:08:46
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:08:46
SPEAKER_09: When the utils run out, when the pleasure runs out, um I guess life is no longer worth living and and and then it's a dignified end, uh which which I I guess there's there's dignity, and I think that is borrowing in some s some very traditional kind of um ideas, but also it's quite clinical.
1:09:04
SPEAKER_09: Like I I want to take the vial of the thing and just make it as yeah, as absolutely clinical and medicalized and and um yeah, I I I I want it to be in the same way that I I start my new iPhone.
1:09:23
SPEAKER_09: And I want the I want the old iPhone to be uploaded to the cloud and then downloaded to my new iPhone and just uh the the consumer experience needs to be as frictionless as possible.
1:09:35
SPEAKER_09: And when life is no longer a good consumer experience, and when there's friction that that's um that is beyond our ability to tolerate, then we we want the more frictionless um consumer solution of just clinically ending it all.
1:09:49
SPEAKER_06: Yes, and choice very much at the forefront there as well.
1:09:52
SPEAKER_06: I've chosen to live my life with dignity, so I should be able to control how I die as well.
1:09:58
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:09:59
SPEAKER_06: Um yeah.
1:10:00
SPEAKER_06: Okay, so post-Christian.
1:10:01
SPEAKER_09: Post-Christian, yeah.
1:10:03
SPEAKER_09: Trading on the individualism and the and the f and the free will, which is a a kind of a concept that that first actually the early church brought to the world.
1:10:10
SPEAKER_09: So you know, taking the individual to individualism and taking choice to a kind of a supreme value.
1:10:16
SPEAKER_06: Um Although in places it feels like the euphanasia question is shading into post-post-Christian when it starts to be let's eliminate the poor and the vulnerable in our society because they're not a burden on our health service anyway.
1:10:28
SPEAKER_06: That it people aren't explicitly putting it that in in those terms, but there are people in countries like Canada that have taken their lives for those sorts of reasons.
1:10:38
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
1:10:38
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, yeah.
1:10:39
SPEAKER_09: But again, and but but none of them would identify on the right of politics.
1:10:44
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:10:45
SPEAKER_09: And so we we we shouldn't we shouldn't say, oh, you know, on the left, it's just fluffy and nice, but they're f they're probably nice to a fault, and probably the right wingers are probably harsh to a fault.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_09: Um like there's death dealing on all sides and justified for all kinds of reasons.
1:11:01
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:11:02
SPEAKER_09: And some of the most impeccably left-wing arguments can be made in favour of.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_09: And and there are left-wing people who are totally against euthanasia and against abortion.
1:11:12
SPEAKER_09: There are atheists who are against euthanasia and against abortion.
1:11:15
SPEAKER_09: Um, yeah, but uh it's not a one-size-fits-all.
1:11:20
SPEAKER_09: There yeah, you can go left and right and end up in some in some very um pagan places.
1:11:29
SPEAKER_09: K-pop demon hunters.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_07: The 2025 movie.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_09: Have you seen that?
1:11:35
SPEAKER_09: I have, I can't really remember it, but um, yeah, it was a bit of a romp.
1:11:39
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:11:40
SPEAKER_06: I feel like a lot of Christians got excited about it and said, Yeah, this is a Christian movie.
1:11:45
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_06: I don't know if I was quite convinced.
1:11:47
SPEAKER_06: Certainly it it doesn't have a Christian demonology.
1:11:50
SPEAKER_06: No.
1:11:51
SPEAKER_06: In that they're not true demons because they're depicted as being redeemable in the film.
1:11:56
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_06: Um but it is a it's uh it's a story of redemption.
1:12:01
SPEAKER_09: Redemptive love and sacrifice that brings about a happily ever after.
1:12:07
SPEAKER_09: Again, like when we say post-Christian, we don't mean anti-Christian, do we?
1:12:10
SPEAKER_09: When we say post-Christian, we we we mean having been shaped by the Christian story in some really quite profound ways.
1:12:16
SPEAKER_09: Um and I think in storytelling, um those profound ways end up bubbling to the surface, you know, eve even if the director never intended for them to.
1:12:27
SPEAKER_09: But yeah, there's a there's a kind of a sacrifice for love, isn't there, in a redemptive moment?
1:12:33
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:12:33
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, we'll go with that.
1:12:36
SPEAKER_06: So yeah, nice.
1:12:38
SPEAKER_06: Who's next?
1:12:40
SPEAKER_06: Um Just Love Everyone.
1:12:43
SPEAKER_08: Oh, just love everyone.
1:12:44
SPEAKER_08: I I told you about this today.
1:12:46
SPEAKER_08: Yes.
1:12:46
SPEAKER_09: I saw it over the weekend.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_09: Uh Jeff Dye, uh a stand-up comedian.
1:12:50
SPEAKER_09: I've been um, I don't know, the algorithm has sent me some of his stuff recently.
1:12:55
SPEAKER_09: And uh and I thought this is interesting.
1:12:57
SPEAKER_09: So Jeff Dye um identifies as Christian, and he's just doing stand-up in in a club.
1:13:04
SPEAKER_09: Um and so just to to uh you can imagine quite post-Christian audience, he's he's reprising Jesus' message in a certain way, and he's getting whoops and hollers.
1:13:14
SPEAKER_09: And I just thought that was interesting.
1:13:16
SPEAKER_09: Okay, let's give it a watch.
1:13:18
SPEAKER_18: Even if you hate the Bible, you gotta admit Jesus was a nice dude.
1:13:23
SPEAKER_18: That's why I like him so much.
1:13:24
SPEAKER_18: He was nice.
1:13:24
SPEAKER_18: He would go talk to everyone, he'd say, Hey, love everyone.
1:13:28
SPEAKER_18: That's the answer to all your problems.
1:13:30
SPEAKER_18: Love everyone.
1:13:32
SPEAKER_18: And then they're like, but what if they look different than us?
1:13:35
SPEAKER_18: He's like, Yeah, yeah, love everyone.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_18: And like, but what if they come from a different area?
1:13:49
SPEAKER_18: Are you serious?
1:13:54
SPEAKER_18: Love everyone, everyone.
1:14:00
SPEAKER_18: And like, but what if they did something bad to us?
1:14:11
SPEAKER_18: Guys, forget all the other stuff I was gonna talk about.
1:14:15
SPEAKER_18: Just remember to love everyone.
1:14:20
SPEAKER_18: Love everyone.
1:14:21
SPEAKER_18: The least of us, the rich, the poor, different colors, wherever people come from, smart, dumb, ignorant, love everyone.
1:14:30
SPEAKER_18: Love everyone.
1:14:33
SPEAKER_18: And they're like, but what if and he's like, screw it, just kill me.
1:14:36
SPEAKER_18: I can't do this.
1:14:39
SPEAKER_18: Let's just fast forward this.
1:14:42
SPEAKER_18: Let's go to that CrossFit.
1:14:44
SPEAKER_18: I can't do this.
1:14:45
SPEAKER_18: It's a pretty simple message.
1:14:47
SPEAKER_18: I don't know how you're muddying it up.
1:14:50
SPEAKER_09: So the hoops and the hollers are kind of, yeah.
1:14:53
SPEAKER_09: I mean, how is that not gonna go down well, you know, in a in a post-Christian society?
1:14:58
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, so love everyone, that that that still resonates, but we all we all struggle to do it, don't we?
1:15:06
SPEAKER_06: We all struggle to do it.
1:15:07
SPEAKER_06: And uh we may not name it, but uh yeah, there are definitely people beyond the pale uh for some of the some of the people in our culture who would be most likely to to celebrate that message.
1:15:19
SPEAKER_06: Love everyone.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_06: Right.
1:15:21
SPEAKER_06: Oh, but what about the the reform voters or that kind of thing?
1:15:26
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
1:15:26
SPEAKER_06: Or green voters, or you know, yeah.
1:15:28
SPEAKER_09: Back and forth it goes.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_09: And Jesus like showed up in the middle of a culture war, like in in which, you know, he he's he's got Simon the Zealot in his inner group of twelve, like who is very anti-Roman.
1:15:41
SPEAKER_09: And he's got Matthew the tax collector, who's kind of working for the Romans, and he's like, throwing them together.
1:15:46
SPEAKER_09: Let's like, and then and like I used to read the gospels, like not really with with an eye to the culture war that's that Jesus is in, but like the tax collectors are different from the sinners, and then on the other side, the teachers of the law are different from the Pharisees, and they're different from the Herodians, and they're different from the Sadducees, and like there are so many different tribes, and there's so many different like landmines for Jesus to kind of tread on, and he does just go love everybody, like yeah, like it is, but it that's a dangerous message, not an easy message, like in that room, love everybody, yeah, is kind of an easy message, yeah.
1:16:23
SPEAKER_09: And especially when the love that Jesus is talking about is the love of the cross, yeah.
1:16:28
SPEAKER_09: Like in this routine, like the cross is just his way out of like I can't even with my with my disciple, I just want to escape the stupidity of my disciples, I'll just end it, right?
1:16:38
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, but the love he's talking about is like bleeding his heart's blood for his enemies, you know.
1:16:44
SPEAKER_09: But I think just as love is love kind of just becomes a slogan, love everyone just becomes a slogan, and the everyone just gets shrinked down to like remember what the teacher of the law asked Jesus in Luke chapter 10, and who is my neighbor?
1:17:00
SPEAKER_09: Yes, great, love everyone, great, I'll do that.
1:17:02
SPEAKER_06: And one second.
1:17:04
SPEAKER_09: Who is everyone so assured?
1:17:07
SPEAKER_09: Couldn't be couldn't be those guys, could it?
1:17:10
SPEAKER_09: And so, yeah, I think he's put his finger on um the the explosive kind of center, the radioactive center of Christianity that has like had such an impact on the world.
1:17:24
SPEAKER_09: Um but he's also showing how that can just become domesticated by becoming a slogan.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_09: And then that slogan can be used as a baseball bat.
1:17:34
SPEAKER_09: Oh yeah.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_09: You're not loving everyone at the moment.
1:17:39
SPEAKER_09: Loving.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_09: Like, and so like on the other side of the euthanasia debate, you know, like surely the loving thing to do is this.
1:17:46
SPEAKER_09: No, the loving thing to do is that.
1:17:47
SPEAKER_09: And and so, like, stop being a cruel, you know, stop hating, you stop hating.
1:17:53
SPEAKER_07: Oh, I hope that you hate.
1:17:54
SPEAKER_07: I'm intolerant of your intolerance.
1:17:57
SPEAKER_06: And around it goes.
1:17:58
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:17:58
SPEAKER_06: And it comes back to what is love?
1:18:00
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:18:01
SPEAKER_06: Is love just love?
1:18:02
SPEAKER_06: Love is love, or yeah, is it this self-sacrificial, radical, across difference, yeah, Christian kind of love?
1:18:10
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:18:10
SPEAKER_06: Okay, so he's Christian, but in a post-Christian context.
1:18:13
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:18:14
SPEAKER_06: That's kind of cool.
1:18:15
SPEAKER_09: And the messaging, the s the the messaging is going down well in a post-Christian context because of the angle that he's coming at.
1:18:22
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:18:22
SPEAKER_09: I think that's sort of Yeah, I think it's emblematic of our moment in lots of ways.
1:18:27
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's the great thing about comedians, isn't it?
1:18:29
SPEAKER_06: They get everyone laughing along and then you kind of go, oh, hang on.
1:18:33
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:18:33
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, he's actually got a point there.
1:18:35
SPEAKER_09: And actually, I th I think he can be a prophet for people on that side of things to sort of say, maybe take a second look at that Jesus.
1:18:43
SPEAKER_09: You know, like you you you know that message that you love.
1:18:46
SPEAKER_09: Like it was spoken by this guy Jesus, and it was embodied by this guy Jesus.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_09: Um, if you pull it that thread, um you might find your world turned right side up.
1:18:58
SPEAKER_09: Amen.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_09: Well, Glenn, I think we have one more.
1:19:01
SPEAKER_09: Is it me?
1:19:02
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:19:02
SPEAKER_09: Okay, last one.
1:19:03
SPEAKER_09: Here we go.
1:19:04
SPEAKER_09: Oh, oh, there's a link.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_09: Oh yeah.
1:19:09
SPEAKER_09: Trump says I hate my opponents at Charlie Kirk's memorial one year ago.
1:19:14
SPEAKER_09: Charlie Kirk's memorial, which was kind of like uh uh an evangelistic revival meeting, and there were all sorts of Christian worship artists who were doing it, and and Erica Kirk like gave a very moving speech about how like she forgave Charlie's killer.
1:19:32
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:19:32
SPEAKER_09: And so the context is Erica Kirk has has spoken about forgiving the killer of her husband, and then the avatar of post-post-Christianity gets up and he says everything we need to know about who Charlie Kirk truly was.
1:19:51
SPEAKER_11: He was a missionary with a noble spirit and a great, great purpose.
1:19:56
SPEAKER_11: He's reading a script there, he did not hate his opponents, he wanted the best for them.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_11: That's where I disagreed with Charlie.
1:20:04
SPEAKER_11: I hate my opponent.
1:20:07
SPEAKER_11: And I don't want the best for them.
1:20:09
SPEAKER_11: I'm sorry.
1:20:10
SPEAKER_11: I am sorry, Erica.
1:20:12
SPEAKER_11: But now Erica can talk to me and the whole group, and maybe they can convince me that that's not right, but I can't stand my opponent.
1:20:20
SPEAKER_09: Oh my goodness.
1:20:21
SPEAKER_09: Like, talk about immaturity, right?
1:20:22
SPEAKER_09: Like this topic has come up quite a few times in this conversation that actually rejecting the way of Jesus is to revert to a kind of a yeah, uh a purility.
1:20:35
SPEAKER_06: What was quite helpful about this moment is that after Trump, you know, ha had almost died himself and um was was shot at, um, there was a moment where people saying, Has he become a Christian?
1:20:47
SPEAKER_06: Now he's talking a lot about God and stuff.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_06: And what was quite clarifying about this moment is he he admits, yeah, he he doesn't agree with the Christian love thy enemy.
1:20:57
SPEAKER_06: Um open to being convinced, maybe.
1:21:01
SPEAKER_06: But yeah, that that's actually a really helpful question, maybe, when we're wrestling with what does who it what does Christianity look like?
1:21:10
SPEAKER_06: Do you love your enemy?
1:21:11
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:21:11
SPEAKER_09: Because what is natural is the Northmen, right?
1:21:15
SPEAKER_09: What is natural is, you know, you kill my father, I'll kill you, or you know, like um, what is super natural is you kill my father, I somehow forgive you.
1:21:28
SPEAKER_09: I I somehow want to love my enemy, pray for those who persecute me.
1:21:35
SPEAKER_09: Um if somebody steals the coat off my back, I'll I'll you know I'll give them my shirt as well.
1:21:41
SPEAKER_09: If somebody forces me to march for one mile, I'll I'll go the extra mile with a smile on my face.
1:21:47
SPEAKER_09: Like that that is supernatural, isn't it?
1:21:49
SPEAKER_09: Like it's so above and beyond the natural.
1:21:53
SPEAKER_09: And that's what's that's gonna that's what's gonna win the world.
1:21:55
SPEAKER_09: It's gonna wake up the world to the supernatural, isn't it?
1:21:58
SPEAKER_09: When when Christians actually grow up and live out the way of Jesus, I guess.
1:22:03
SPEAKER_06: Wow, yeah.
1:22:04
SPEAKER_06: So Erika Kirk comes in with the the Christian love your enemy uh idea, and then Donald Trump gets up with the post post-Christian response to that.
1:22:15
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:22:16
SPEAKER_06: He kind of goes full pantomime villain there, doesn't he?
1:22:19
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
1:22:19
SPEAKER_06: I hate my enemy.
1:22:21
SPEAKER_09: But he knows that he shouldn't say that.
1:22:23
SPEAKER_09: Whereas if you take Donald Trump saying that and you bring it back into the first century, like him saying I hate my enemy is like, of course.
1:22:31
SPEAKER_09: Like, yeah, of course you're going to hate your enemy.
1:22:34
SPEAKER_09: You know, one of the great slogans of the ancient world was every day you should do something to help your friends and to harm your enemies.
1:22:40
SPEAKER_09: Right?
1:22:41
SPEAKER_09: Like nobody like nowadays, since the Jesus Revolution, we cannot hear that sentence without flinching at the second sentence.
1:22:48
SPEAKER_09: You know, every day do something to help your friends.
1:22:50
SPEAKER_09: Oh, great.
1:22:51
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:22:51
SPEAKER_09: And harm your enemies.
1:22:52
SPEAKER_09: How dare you, you monster.
1:22:54
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:22:54
SPEAKER_09: Um, you're a monster to say that second half, like in a Christianized world.
1:23:00
SPEAKER_09: But but it takes a Donald Trump to sort to really force through this post-post-Christian kind of mentality, and then there are other people coming in behind him to really say a quite pagan thing, really.
1:23:16
SPEAKER_09: And that's why there are four things going on at the moment, you know.
1:23:19
SPEAKER_09: There there is the the this pagan idea that sort of life without the cross, life as as as if God crucified had never happened.
1:23:28
SPEAKER_09: There's Christendom, in which Jesus Christ unites nature and grace and dies for the world to rise up again, invite us into his love revolution.
1:23:35
SPEAKER_09: There's post-Christianity that takes the fruit of that and turns it into values that then turns it into slogans, that then turns it into baseball bats where where we can beat our enemies up with.
1:23:45
SPEAKER_09: And then there's post-post-Christianity, the anti-woke, who are just sick of the the hypocrisy and the virtue signaling of the woke, and they just want to get back to power and strength and masculinity and reassertion and those sorts of things.
1:23:59
SPEAKER_09: And it's not the case that there will either be Christian revival, or there'll be woke idiots, as as Constantine Kissing calls them, or you know, Andrew Tate disciples, or Islam, you know, triumphing.
1:24:13
SPEAKER_09: It's kind of all at once.
1:24:14
SPEAKER_06: It's all at once.
1:24:16
SPEAKER_06: And so just to close, we've been thinking about how to speak life into the culture.
1:24:19
SPEAKER_06: Hopefully, as we've whized through all those hot button issues, maybe there've just been a few things there that have come out that might be helpful for people as they're processing them.
1:24:29
SPEAKER_06: But do you when you when you have this in your head, these four kind of things that are going on, would you share the gospel differently to each of those four groups?
1:24:41
SPEAKER_06: Is it just helpful to be aware that that's what's going on in our culture?
1:24:45
SPEAKER_09: You can have all four in your head, and it can be helpful to have all four in your head.
1:24:49
SPEAKER_09: I think what's most important to take away from this is Christ and Him crucified, because I I think he delineates those those four kind of options for you, like quite starkly.
1:25:02
SPEAKER_09: Yeah.
1:25:03
SPEAKER_09: Um, you know, the Roman who's at the foot of the cross looking up at Jesus doesn't really get the the scandal of it all.
1:25:11
SPEAKER_09: Uh and and the post-Christian can understand one side of the sort of the ethics of the cross, um and can sloganize them and and um and can affirm you know aspects of the of the Christian story that that can be helpful as we try and build a civilization.
1:25:30
SPEAKER_09: The post-post-Christians, um, again, the thing to bring into conversation with them, like how do you talk to an Andrew Tate, how do you talk to a uh Donald Trump, is again to bring to bring Christ and Him crucified.
1:25:43
SPEAKER_09: So, yeah, the the starting point for somebody on their journey could be any one of these these four places, but I think the destination you're always thinking about how do I how do I lift up Jesus Christ and Him crucified?
1:25:57
SPEAKER_06: Um and we'll all be shocked by the cross.
1:26:00
SPEAKER_06: Right.
1:26:00
SPEAKER_06: For different reasons.
1:26:01
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, the post-Christian will be shocked by it for different reasons to the post-post-Christian, but let's keep proclaiming that shocking alternative.
1:26:10
SPEAKER_09: Because there's there's a there's a massive pay there's a massive pagan in me, and there's a massive post-Christian in me, massive post-post-Christian in me.
1:26:17
SPEAKER_09: Like I can resonate with any of these stories, I can resonate with the Northmen, right?
1:26:20
SPEAKER_09: I can resonate with Donald Trump, you know.
1:26:22
SPEAKER_09: I can resonate with Zach Polanski.
1:26:24
SPEAKER_09: Like like I that's that's totally in me as well.
1:26:26
SPEAKER_09: But yeah, as the the Christian needs to, we we need to recenter ourselves on Jesus, definitely.
1:26:32
SPEAKER_06: Amen.
1:26:33
SPEAKER_06: Well, Glenn, thank you.
1:26:34
SPEAKER_06: This has been a lot of fun.
1:26:36
SPEAKER_09: My goodness, what a roller coaster ride this has been.
1:26:38
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:26:40
SPEAKER_09: Yeah, we'd love to hear what you guys think.
1:26:41
SPEAKER_09: So, podcast at speaklife.org.uk.
1:26:45
SPEAKER_09: Let us know uh if you would take a different uh route with people, if you would characterize uh any of these positions differently to the ways that we have.
1:26:54
SPEAKER_09: Um, and if you want to do uh a Christian basics course, then uh three two onecourse.com.
1:27:00
SPEAKER_09: We'll get used to the heart of the Christian story.
1:27:01
SPEAKER_09: Go to three two onecourse.com.
1:27:03
SPEAKER_09: Thank you very much.
1:27:04
SPEAKER_09: Bless you.
1:27:05
SPEAKER_09: See ya.