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Russell Brand: Christian Reacts || SLP477 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hello and thank you so much for downloading this episode of the Speak Life Podcast, episode 477.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Thomas Thurrogood, Media Producer at Speak Life, and today we're bringing you two reactions that Glenn did to the news about Russell Brand and the allegations surrounding him.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the first reaction we're going to show you went out on our YouTube channel, and it's in response to the Channel 4 documentary, and then we'll have a short break, and Glenn will be back responding to a TikTok video that Russell Brand did, and also responding to some comments that we got for the first video.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: So I will hand straight over to Glenn.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_01: They are trying to shut him down.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: He's become a threat.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: That is how many people see the allegations against Russell Brand, that they are largely politically motivated.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Aware that the story was about to break, Brand took to Twitter late Friday night to strongly deny accusations of rape and sexual assault.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: He called them a coordinated attack by the mainstream media.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Elon Musk replied, Of course, they don't like competition.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: They.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: Someone else who thinks this is a coordinated media attack is Jordan Peterson.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: He tweeted out a link to the Times article saying, someone wants Rusty Rockets destroyed.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: Someone.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it's the shadowy them guys.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we know their agenda.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: They are not motivated by truth, but only by destruction.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: It's a theory.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it's certainly true that everyone is a motivated actor, Brand and Peterson included.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_01: But if our foundational response is to dismiss allegations because they come from the wrong people, then we have prized tribe over truth.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it does sound a little bit like what the Archdiocese of Boston said about the Boston Globe.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: As the Boston Globe shone its spotlight on the church's abuse, they too considered it a coordinated attack by the mainstream media.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: And they too tried to dismiss the accusations initially because the journalists were secular or anti-Catholic or whatever.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying this case is like that case, but I am talking about a tribalistic reaction that decides in advance that truth matters less than tribe.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: Andrew Tate also joined in, obviously, because if an embattled Russell Brand needs anything, it's the offer of allyship from a man charged with human trafficking, rape, and forming an organized crime group.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: Tate tweeted, Welcome to the club, Rusty Rockets.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now the very idea that there is such a club gives me the ick so strong it feels like my spinal column is vomiting.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_01: Lawrence Fox also added to the mix with an early defensive brand.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_01: At least Fox began to watch the Dispatches documentary on Channel 4.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_01: He live tweeted the first half of the show with gems like, Half an hour in, Russell is still horny, does this get better?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a bit tired.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: For those who haven't seen the documentary, the first 20 minutes is taken up by an absolutely harrowing and completely credible allegation of rape.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what Lawrence Fox affects to find tiresome.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: Now you might well say, as Fox does, that criminal allegations should be tried in a court of law, and I absolutely believe that as regards criminality, I do not know if this allegation is true, and legally I consider Brand innocent until proven guilty.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: But A.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: None of this is a yawn fest.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: B, the criminal aspect of what's been unearthed is only one part of what's concerning here.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: And C, it's Brand who has used the media to tell a story about his sex life for years.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: He is the one who has had the microphone for the last decade or two, and with it he has celebrated his aggressively acquisitive sexuality.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_01: He has done it to great acclaim and been rewarded handsomely.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_01: It might be time we heard from some of the women.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe we could let one or two of them frame those encounters from their perspective.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: We have heard Russell Brand on his years of promiscuity.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: He has definitely been able to get out in front of this story.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: For 15 years, he's gotten out in front of it and he has framed it in his own way.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_01: He has portrayed his volcanic libido as some cheeky chappy comedy pirate shtick.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_02: I like to have it off.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And if an entire career has been built on being sexually transgressive, I'm not sure why any of us are shocked that some of Russell Brand's women have felt sexually transgressed.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: Russell Brand, awarded Shagger of the Year three years running by the Sun newspaper, has boasted of 80 sexual conquests a month at the height of his powers.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_01: But now, looking back at those thousands of sexual encounters, he is today absolutely adamant that none of them crossed a legal line.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: That might be true.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And let us, on a point of principle, presume that that's true until proven otherwise in a court of law.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_01: And let's understand that even if all those thousands of encounters were entirely legal, he could still have wronged people, egregiously, appallingly, diabolically, in ways that the courts would not and could not adjudicate on.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: He could be legally innocent and morally corrupt.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this is where I will ask you to put on a pair of Christian spectacles, even if you're not yourself a Christian.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: Is it possible that Russell Brand's behavior is not criminal, but is worse than criminal?
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's sinful.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe you think I can't be doing with medieval terms like sin.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And yet here we are, surveying a situation in which legal categories are insufficient, in which we know that there is wrong, but the law of the land may not be able to capture that wrong.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we know this, don't we?
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Think of one of the women, the one known as Alice.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: She had a relationship with Russell Brand, which he initiated when he was 30 and she was 16.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: And many online are saying, oh well, no harm, no foul.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: The legal age of consent is 16, so nothing to see here.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: But what?
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_01: If she was 15 years, 11 months, and 29 days old, it would be completely wrong.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: But a few days later it's completely okay?
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is that how it works?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: And you might say, well, no, the law has to draw a line somewhere.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: Laws have to draw a line.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: They are to some degree arbitrary, and that is my point, actually, that the law does not and cannot properly adjudicate on whether something is truly right or wrong.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: We need a different kind of measurement.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_01: We need the language of sin.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: And with the language of sin, we can say before and besides any legal pronouncement, Russell Brand was sinning with that girl.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Horrifically.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: That's why I don't understand Christian leaders taking the line, we cannot comment on any of this until or unless a court of law convicts Brand of illegality.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, well, don't we even believe in sin anymore?
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: He was clearly sinning.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And we should all know that consent, as defined in a court of law, is really difficult, especially when there are power imbalances and age imbalances.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Alice herself agrees.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: The Sunday Times article says Alice has decided to speak out because she now believes that she was too young to be able to consent to a relationship with an adult man, and that the law should be used to protect under eighteens.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: We need protection.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: And consent, all by itself, is insufficient to handle the power of sex and the vulnerability of the partners.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_01: But consent seems to be all we have.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_01: Louise Perry wrote in the case against the sexual revolution that nowadays consent is the only moral principle left standing under the reign of sexual disenchantment.
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: And she points out, the problem is the presence of consent is such a very, very low bar, an absolute bare minimum requirement, not an ideal.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_01: We used to have an ideal about what sex was about.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_01: We used to have an enchanted view of the world and of sex.
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_01: In Christianity, sex is called one flesh, and it's the act that belongs in a lifelong union that is also called one flesh.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: The other name for that one flesh union is marriage.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_01: And marriage is a covenant union where husband and wife pledge themselves to one another, saying, All that I am I give to you, all that I have I share with you.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_01: That covenant reflects the love of Christ for his people.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: He's the one who gives himself for us on the cross, so that we can be one with him forever.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: And that covenant is meant to be portrayed in this pattern of husbands and wives loving each other and uniting to each other.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Historically speaking, this notion of covenant is where our idea of consent came from.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_01: In the New Testament, in Paul's first letter to the Corinthians, he wrote that husbands belong to their wives every bit as much as wives belong to their husbands, and the two should only come together by mutual consent.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: An utterly revolutionary idea in the ancient world.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: From covenant came consent.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_01: But now, as Louise Perry says, we've lost our ideals, we've been disenchanted.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_01: We no longer believe in the covenant love of Jesus, and we no longer have a covenant-based view of sex.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: We've removed sex from the context of covenant.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_01: So now the sum total of our sexual ethic is what two consenting adults or 16-year-olds get up to is a moral-free sandbox.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_01: Go for it.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's the dogma.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: How's it working out for us?
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it works really well for sex addicts and libidinous latharios.
• 10:22
  SPEAKER_01: It works very well for sexually voracious 30-year-olds who leverage their wealth, their fame, their power, their experience, and their legal teams in order to target 16-year-olds who are apparently fair game.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: It works really well for them.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I began the video the way I did.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: They're trying to shut him down.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: He has become a threat.
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: He's too dangerous.
• 10:47
  SPEAKER_01: They're frightened he's gotten too powerful.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_01: Those are not the fears of the mainstream media about a popular YouTuber.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: Those are the legitimate fears of vulnerable women concerning sexually voracious men.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: And historically, the thing that has attempted to curb the acquisitive sexuality of elite men is Christianity.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: More than anything else in history, it's Christianity that has tried to train and restrain male sexuality.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: Ask Joseph Henrik, ask Kyle Harper, ask Tom Holland, ask Louise Perry.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: The Christian church has very often failed at its own sexual ethic.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: It has very often been terrible at practicing what it preaches, but its sexual ethic has insisted that men be as disciplined with their sexuality as women had always been expected to be.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_01: In Christianity, covenant marriage ties a man to his sexual partner and to his children.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_01: But with de-Christianization, what happens?
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: When you blow off covenant, when you blow off marriage, who benefits?
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's the Russell Brands who really benefit.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_01: Disenchant sex, get rid of covenant, build everything on consent only, and you leave the field wide open for predators.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because on the consent-only paradigm, you assume that sex is like any other good or service that can be traded freely.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a genuinely frightening moral framework to bring to bear on something as powerful and as dangerous as sex.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, with sex, you have two people with no one else around.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: They are at their absolutely most vulnerable, they are naked, they are very possibly drunk.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: The physical differences between the sexes are at their most pronounced.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And with this moral framework, you tell these people that the most morally significant question that determines the legitimacy of everything that follows is whether or not someone articulates the word no.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: If there's no no, it's all go.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: The consent-only framework treats sex like it's one more good or service to be traded, or one more leisure activity to be enjoyed.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: And it treats sexual partners as completely equal, rational actors, and there's no social or physical or emotional or financial pressure, is there?
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're just consenting adults, right?
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And they're both sober and in control of themselves, yeah?
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: And there's not a massive power imbalance, is there?
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_01: Or vast difference in upper body strength, surely?
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And there's no age gap, I hope.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: They're just consenting individuals.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: A consent-only framework does not make sense, and you know it doesn't make sense.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the Russell Brand case.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Whether or not anything gets to court, you know sex cannot be disenchanted.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know sex is not just a leisure activity.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: If it was just a leisure activity, then Russell Brand deserves some one-star reviews on TripAdvisor.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: But you know that these allegations are much more serious than that.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: Sex is not just a leisure activity, it cannot be disenchanted.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: Here's something else you know.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know that morality is far more than what the law of the land pronounces upon.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Look at this case, and you realize it's not most deeply about illegality, it's about sin.
• 14:09
  SPEAKER_01: You're not you might not be used to using a word like sin, but we need a heavy word.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's a heavy thing.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: And here's another thing you know this case teaches you that sexual ethics is not simply a matter of consent.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: There must be consent.
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: There must be more.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the Bible says there is more.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: There is covenant, there is a lifelong bond that is strong enough to hold something as powerful as sex.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: There is a triple insulated fireplace which can handle the holy fire that is sex.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's called marriage.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: And this covenant-based view of sex is still and will ever be the world's most romantic view of sex.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's the safest place for sex, all other things being equal.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: And it's the view of sex and family that has in fact built the world you live in.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: More than all that, the covenant of marriage is itself a picture of the ideal loving union.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus commits to us with an unbreakable protective covenant love.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: He does not use his power to exploit us or use us or demean us or silence us.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: His love is safe.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: His love is enduring, his love is dignifying.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: In a dangerous world, there is someone you can trust.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so now Glenn is going to respond to a TikTok video that Russell Brand put out, and this was in the week that Russell Brand knew that the story was going to break about his allegations, but that was before the rest of the world knew.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_00: So he published this TikTok video, and Glenn will get into the theology of that.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: Russell Brand was told what was coming one week before the Dispatches documentary and the Sunday Times allegations were published.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: In that week, in which he knew what was coming, but we didn't, he produced this TikTok video, and I cannot stop thinking about it.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_03: Christ's final words.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Glenn from Speak Life.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: We like to see all things through the lens of Jesus.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: Now, this is the second video we've made on Russell Brand in the last two weeks.
• 16:23
  SPEAKER_01: In the first one, we dealt with the difference between criminal allegations and admitted sin.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: One requires a presumption of innocence, absolutely, and the other requires a theological framework.
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_01: The point I got to on my last video is that our culture is hypocritical on sexual ethics.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: We espouse a disenchanted, consent-only moral framework, but it turns out that such a moral framework simply is the ethic of a sex addict.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_01: At the end of the Dispatches documentary, they play a clip of Russell Brand articulating the settled Western view of sex for the last 50 years.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: If you're having a lot of one night spans, I think like as long as everything's consensual and no one's being hurt, not you or the other person, what does it matter?
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: In the context of this documentary, those words are presented as ominous and enabling terrible behavior.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: In every other context, and on most other people's lips, those words are business as usual for Western society.
• 17:22
  SPEAKER_01: And I invite you to be consistent.
• 17:24
  SPEAKER_01: If that sexual ethic is harmful when it's articulated by Russell Brand, it is harmful whoever says it.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: That's how ethics works.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_01: So let's be consistent.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_01: But before diving into this video, let me also respond to some other reactions to my previous video.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Quite a few people were saying that the timing of the allegations was suspicious because Russell was over the target, as they say, with his critiques of Big Pharma and the war on Ukraine and so on.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: Here's where the grain of truth in that lies.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Humans are tribalistic, and we tend to turn a blind eye to evils committed by bad guys if they are our guys, and we really notice them if they're committed by the other guys.
• 18:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's true.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: And there has been some soul searching by those at Channel 4 and the BBC and The Guardian where people have admitted we did not ask enough questions because he was one of us.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: That is regrettably a very common feature of human behavior.
• 18:19
  SPEAKER_01: But the response to that should not be to make us even more cynical of every allegation, dismissing them as all politically motivated.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_01: Surely the right response to that is to question ourselves.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Am I turning a blind eye to stuff because I prize the tribe over the truth?
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: And it will mean this: in our ever more polarizing culture, I might have to respond righteously to allegations that are both politically motivated and true.
• 18:49
  SPEAKER_01: And unless I want things to get worse, I must not dismiss them as untrue just because I suspect a political motivation.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: As for the specific timing of these allegations, I think it's best explained by the fact this is how long it takes for people to personally process what they've experienced, and this is how long it takes to dot every I and cross every T in a thorough journalistic investigation that hopes to survive any potential super injunctions or legal challenges.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: On the other hand, people have suggested that Brand himself went to alternative media to cocoon himself from the coming allegations.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think Russell Brand does whatever Russell Brand does.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not sure he has much of a plan for how to get to the end of the sentence he's on, let alone a 10-year plan to cunningly navigate possible allegations.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: But let's get to this video because a number of my commenters in the last video said, Glenn, he's changed and he's Christian.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, the quick and correct response to both those things is to say, even if that's 100% true, our changed lives do not expunge our past.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, if the police knock on my door about a historic murder case, I don't say, oh, that was before I became a Christian.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: I I'm a changed man, I hardly ever do a murder nowadays.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: Our changes do not expunge the past.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_01: That's the quick response.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I think there's a deeper dive to do here into the theology of Russell Brand.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because good theology is good, and bad theology is worse than no theology.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: And let's have a look at Russell Brand's theology and figure out whether his kind of theology might actually be making things worse.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_01: Here's his TikTok.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_03: Christ's final words.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: So uh, in the context of Russell Brand knowing that these allegations are coming, um, he speaks of Christ forgiving others, and as we'll see in this video, he casts himself as the Christ figure, and that won't be a surprise to those who uh claim that Russell Brand has kind of a messianic ego.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he is in this moment drawing our attention to Christ and his forgiveness, but this is why it's so important to have a look at his theology, because Russell Brand is not going to speak of the forgiveness that he requires from Jesus, but the forgiveness that he as a Christ figure will offer to others.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: And now there is a absolutely a tradition in Christianity of a mystical interpretation of the cross, in which, going right back to the Apostle Paul in some of his earliest letters, in the 40s AD, the Apostle Paul was writing things like Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, in which he says, I was crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: So that there is a mystical interpretation of the cross.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And as we as we imagine ourselves into Good Friday, there's a sense in which I am on that cross with Christ, and being crucified with him, there is a mystical interpretation, but there's also a foundational.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Historical truth to the cross.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: The Son of God loved me, past tense, and gave himself for me, past tense.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: There's a history to the cross that meets the history of me and my own wrongdoing.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that historical element is absolutely vital, and it's something that Russell Brand kind of elides.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, in this moment, Christ is referring to his own execution at the hands of the Roman judiciary and Pilate famously washing his hands of our Lord and Saviour.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Our Lord and Savior.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And some might be surprised that Russell Brand talks about Jesus as our Lord and Savior, but he does speak of Christ as Lord.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: He also, as we'll see in this video, speaks of other religious figures as Lord.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: But that might surprise people.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think it should surprise people.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: If you've read his 2017 book called Recovery, it's an ode to the 12 steps.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_01: And in that book, he speaks of how he has found deliverance, recovery, transformation through the 12 steps.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: The 12 steps based on Alcoholics Anonymous, but they've been turned to other addictions like narcotics, like sex.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: And Russell Brandt, whatever else you think of him, has figured out some way of transforming himself from the sort of person that the Dispatcher's documentary made a documentary of to a man who is now, you know, monogamously married to one woman with three children.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_01: He has seemed to settle down, which is an extraordinary transformation.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: And we should be curious what is it that is behind that transformation?
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_01: Russell Brand says, well, if you ask me, it is the Twelve Steps, where he has found deliverance from his addictions.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: The Twelve Steps are very profoundly Christian-ish.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_01: They don't settle easily into other religious and theological frameworks, but they do sit very naturally within a Christian worldview.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: Just listen to the Twelve Steps.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: Number one, we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_01: Two, we came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_01: Three, we made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood him.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_01: And those first three are a profoundly Christian understanding of what we are like and what God is like.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_01: What we are like is we are addicts by nature, and we get overwhelmed by our besetting sins.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: And we turn to our besetting sins as though they are the solution, they are in fact the problem.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: And when you turn to your problem as though it's your solution, you really do ratchet down and down and down into addiction and into slavery, into bondage, into something you need deliverance from.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: And didn't Jesus say in John chapter 8, whoever sins is a slave to sin.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_01: But then Jesus goes on to say, if the Son sets you free, you'll be free indeed.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: If the Son of God delivers you and sets you free, then you can know freedom.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_01: And here we have the higher power of the twelve steps.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And Russell Brand has, to a degree, considered our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to be his higher power.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: I've heard him speak about this in other contexts, in which he's sort of said to himself, Well, uh, we're in a Christian country, I suppose, and so I I guess I better learn from the Christian God.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_01: And so Jesus is to some degree his Lord and Savior.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: And is it not interesting that Russell Brand has found some level of deliverance from some certain behaviors in the past?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think he has.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: I think he has.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: Does that mean he knows Jesus as his true Lord?
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know about that.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_01: Does that mean he has the right theology?
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: He certainly doesn't have the right theology because he departs quite dramatically from a theology that the Twelve Steps is comfortable with, as we'll see.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: And the key problem that Russell Brand has is he wants to detach the deliverance that was wrought by Christ on the cross, and he wants to detach that from history, and instead he wants to escape from history, he wants to escape from his flesh self and just know an enlightenment now.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's a particularly Buddhist way of framing things.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not a particularly Christian way of framing things, and I think that's where he goes wrong.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_03: But its relevance in that moment is very particular.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_03: Of course, the sacrifice of a living God is a massive, seismic, epochal, and defining human event.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: But right, so he notices what is absolutely unique about Christianity.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_01: There is a sacrifice of a living God, the living God, Christ, the Son of the Father, full of the Holy Spirit, our Maker, is dying on that cross in atoning sacrifice.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: That is different.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_01: That's different to all the other religions and spiritualities that Russell Brand might want to turn to in order to seek deliverance.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: And if he doesn't notice how very, very different Christ in him crucified is to every other spirituality, he just needs to pay more attention to the other spiritualities that he commonly cites.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: So I looked up online a video where Russell, about four years ago, talks about the Jesus tattoo that he's got on his arm.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: He's got Christ crucified on his arm, and he wants to explain to his followers what Jesus means to him.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Notice what Russell Brand does here, he will transform the utter uniqueness of a living God and the seismic significance of a living God dying in history in atoning sacrifice for our sins.
• 27:42
  SPEAKER_01: And somehow he manages to squash that into a kind of a religious schmogersboard in which everyone is basically saying the same thing.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_01: Check it out.
• 27:50
  SPEAKER_02: Hello there.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_02: Let's talk about spirituality, particularly in the form of these tattoos.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_02: I got this tattoo done recently of Jesus Christ, the symbol of the resurrection, the possibility for divine God consciousness to be expressed through mankind.
• 28:10
  SPEAKER_01: I mean it's hilarious, isn't it?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_01: He looks at a living God dying with seismic and epochal significance, dying, a living God being sacrificed, slaughtered for the sins of humanity.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then he turns into it into, like, first of all, he says it's a picture of resurrection.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, well, no, the resurrection happened, you know, on the third day.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and then he says it's it's about the God consciousness of all mankind.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: And you just think, no, Russell, just take more seriously our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and you will see what a profound difference it makes to really take seriously Christ and Him crucified.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_02: Whether or not you identify as a Christian, meaning you believe that Christ is the Son of God and that the Christian or what one particular branch of the Christian theology is the answer to the problem of being alive and dying and that Christ rose again.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_02: You know, for me that's uh not where I go with religion, because you'll notice just on this arm is Ganesh from the Vedic philosophy, and over here there's a Sikh symbol, and just over here that's West Ham United.
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_02: Let me tell you something about these tattoos, okay?
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_02: That is Buddhist, that is Nordic, that is Hindu, that's just gibberish, they are completely conflicting ideologies, and that does not make you a citizen of the world.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_02: It makes you full of shit.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, uh, you know, props to Russell Brand for for leaving that clip from Forgetting Sarah Marshall uh on his YouTube channel, because it it is a ridiculous thing.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: He's got, you know, the religions of the world tattooed all over his body.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_01: And in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, it's it's said of him uh that does not make you a citizen of the world, it just makes you full of bleep.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Now, um there's something to that, and I think Russell Brand realizes there's something to that, and he ought to realize it more because Ganesh did not die.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: This living God did not die for the sins of the world.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: And and different philosophies do not deliver you in the way that Christ is sacrificed for your sins in history to deliver you.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: What so many of those other Eastern philosophies are into is not deliverance but detachment.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Certainly Buddhism, which Russell Brand goes into in his TikTok video, Buddhism is not about deliverance from your former sins, but about detachment from your flesh self in order to arrive at enlightenment.
• 30:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that's a very different way of handling what you have done in the flesh and handling what you have done in your history.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: Christianity takes seriously what we do in the flesh and what we have done in history.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_01: And it answers what we've done in history in our bodies by Christ taking our flesh and in history being sacrificed for our sins.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: And to the degree that we pull away from that, we're going to pull away from a philosophy and a theology and a spirituality that can cope with the historic nature of our sins.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: And that's really what what Russell Brand needs.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: So going back to the TikTok video.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_03: Is it not more relevant right now?
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_03: Because as Joseph Campbell says, what does it matter if Christ dies on the cross 2,000 years ago that we are not continually dying and reborn unto ourselves, that we may experience each moment anew?
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_03: Is this not exactly what Lord Buddha is referring to?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_03: Remain awake, remain in the present.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: No, that that that is not what the cross is all about.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: And quoting Joseph Campbell, who is a disciple of Jung and his psychologizing of the cross, um, yes, there's a mystical element to the cross.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_01: I I read to you Galatians chapter 2, verse 20, there is a sense in which I am crucified with Christ, and I need to consider the old ways dead, and to live into my new identity, my risen identity in Christ.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: That is true.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: But the Son of God loved me and gave himself for me because he had to die in history, and he had to die for me for my wrongdoing, the stuff that I've done in the body.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_01: And Galatians chapter 2 says, the life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a life to live in the body, and I'm not to escape that body, and I'm not to escape my history.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_01: And this is what the 12 steps gets right, and this is what Russell Brand seems to not be paying attention to.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: Having done the first three steps of the twelve steps, um, you get to step four of the twelve steps.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: I have made a searching and fearless moral inventory of myself.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_01: Step five, we admitted to God to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see?
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: We're taking sin seriously.
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_01: We were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_01: Step seven, we humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_01: Step eight, we made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_01: Step nine, we made amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or ourselves.
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Step ten, we continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted to it.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: This is a theology, this this is a uh a methodology of transformation that derives from some pretty Christian foundational presuppositions.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: What Russell is doing in Easternizing and going to Lord Buddha, as he calls him, um, is actually to dehistoricize the cross and to detach himself from his body, from his history, so that he can just become an awakening wonder.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that theology, which is more Buddhist than Christian, that theology really suits him.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_01: So it's really important that we take Russell Brand's um Christian teaching seriously, and that we investigate it, because I think to the degree that he gets that wrong will be the degree to which he goes wrong in far more broad ways.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: Let's finish off the TikTok video.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_03: Perhaps what is meant, or one interpretation that I might offer you, of Christ's words, forgive them, Father, they know not what they do, is that most people, most of the time, are unconscious.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_03: Forgive them, they know not what they do.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_03: They don't know why they're saying that, they don't know why they're doing that, they don't know why they're driving that way, they don't know why they're treating the planet that way, they don't know why they're talking about one another in that way.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't it our duty to like Christ, awaken from the flesh body?
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_01: So is it true that we need to wake up to things?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Wake up, O sleeper, and rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you, as the book of Ephesians says.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and is Jesus into enlightenment?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 34:46
  SPEAKER_01: John chapter 1, verse 9, the true light who enlightens everyone, Christ is coming into the world.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: So absolutely, there's a massive category for waking up.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but we wake up to our sin, really, and and we the reason why we are sleepwalking through this world is because of our sin and our self-justifying ways, where we pretend that we are the central figure in human history and everyone must orbit around us.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: We walk around like we have this Messiah complex, and everyone else is the unenlightened one, right?
• 35:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we actually need to wake up from, right?
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: We need to wake up from our Messiah complexes, and we need to wake up from our sin and our self-justifying ways.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's true we need to wake up and and and have enlightenment, but we do not need to transcend our bodies and the flesh and our physical lives and our physical histories.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: We do not need to transcend them.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_01: Christ takes all of that very seriously, so seriously, He He took our flesh, He was crucified, He was raised in a body, and He promises us eternal embodied physical resurrection life, not just floating off into disembodied enlightenment.
• 36:00
  SPEAKER_03: Isn't it our duty to like Christ awaken from the flesh body and into the transcendent being of light, the elevated, escalating, transcending individual?
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_03: Let me know in the comments if you agree with this interpretation.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: I do not agree with this interpretation, and uh instead of writing a TikTok comment, I've made a YouTube video instead.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: And here's what I think Russell Brand can do.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: I think he should return to that tattoo that is on his arm and look at Christ and him crucified, recognize the profound difference between Christ crucified and every other spiritual, religious, philosophical view of the world.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: I think he needs to return to the twelve steps that he so prizes, especially steps eight, nine, and ten.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_01: More than that, I think he needs to return to the scriptures.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was crucified with Christ and I no longer live.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, but Christ lives in me.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_01: The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: I am not Christ forgiving other people.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_01: I need Christ's forgiveness now.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_01: I need him to take my bodily life and my bodily sins seriously.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_01: I need him to die for me.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: I need him to rise again in the body, and by the Spirit offer me fresh ways of living out my bodily existence.
• 37:12
  SPEAKER_01: I need him to take my sins seriously, my history seriously, my body seriously.
• 37:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I need to take seriously Christ Himself.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's too convenient to leave aside all of that and to go for a new age interpretation in which the body does not matter, in which history does not matter, and I just become an awakening wonder who is not alive, who is still asleep, to my history, to my bodily wrongdoing.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_01: I think Russell needs to truly turn to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and I pray that he does.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: So there we go, that's the Speak Life Podcast for this week.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: Do get in touch if you have any questions or comments, and we might read some of those out on the show.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_00: You can email info at speaklife.org.uk.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: But I'd just like to draw your attention to the launch of 321, and it's our evangelistic course.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's been kind of in the works for about 10 years in various forms.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: There have been books, there have been earlier versions of the course online, but now we're bringing you the latest launch of 321, and we're really excited about it.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's eight online videos that you can access for free via an online learning platform, and you can just share them with your friends.
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: You just have to provide an email address, and then you can watch all late videos.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: They have Glenn uh speaking to camera about God, the world, and you, and also some really captivating animations that a guy called Andy Touvey did for us.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: So we're really excited to bring this resource to you as something that you can share in your churches, something that you can send out to your friends on WhatsApp, introducing people to Jesus and his vision for God, the world, and ourselves.
• 39:08
  SPEAKER_00: So do come along to our really interesting Zoom call.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's on the 2nd of October, so this Monday at 8 pm, live on Zoom, and you will get a first glimpse of the 321 course as we launch it to the world.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_00: And Rico Tice will be joining to share his insights on evangelism in 2023.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_00: So we really hope you'll be there to join us.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: I think it's going to be a lot of fun, it's going to be a very exciting event as we release this long-awaited shareable faith resource designed to captivate church and the world.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to come along, and I hope you do, go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash houseparty, and there's a very quick form that you can fill in there, and you will get the zoom link.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_00: You do need to fill in that short form to get the zoom link, so do please do that perhaps right now on your device of choice.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for listening.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: See you on Monday for the very exciting launch of 321, and we will be back soon on the Speak Live podcast.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: God bless